[CrankyFool]

(I manage at Netflix)

We can't publish stats about vacation usage.

That's because I don't know of a single manager here who tracks vacation usage. There's a general allergy to doing that, because that can lead to trying to manage that number and then the 'unmetered vacation' is no longer so unmetered.

I suppose I could, for my people, try to find all the out of office notifications, but that'd be a silly level of effort.

(There's no consistent process across the board for dealing with vacations, but to the best of my knowledge the typical way this works -- and the way it works in my own group -- is that an engineer will at some point probably mention to me that they're taking days off casually. I try to make sure it's clear to them that they're not asking for permission, and then move on).