[gavingmiller]

> 'progressive' practices such as unlimited vacation

Unlimited vacation is not progressive and it is also unhealthy.

It causes feelings of guilt while on vacation. Often there's an unspoken obligated to check-in (email & chat) when on vacation. And leads to taking fewer vacation days not more. When leaving a company, they have no obligation to pay out accrued vacation days since there is none defined (this may be a Canadian thing). Additionally, it can also come with the unspoken culture of overtime, since it can easily be made up with "more time off".

Having worked with unlimited vacation, if I am ever offered it again, I will decline and negotiate defined vacation into my employment agreement.

[nfriedly]

I had unlimited vacation on my last job, and I think I personally did great with it (4-5 weeks per year, very little email checking and such).

But on average, I'd say you're right. Many of my coworkers took almost zero vacation. At one point, the CTO just started scheduling a week off at a time for people who hadn't taken one in a year+.

[harryjo]

4-5 weeks vacation per year, tracked, and an option for unpaid longer leave, sounds great.

[gambiting]

That's what you get by law in EU, standard, no matter what you do. Plus unlimited sick time off that doesn't come out of your holiday allowance.

[mkesper]

After six weeks, you'll get paid by your health insurance, though (german standard). Definitely less cash but still. :)

[eru]

Unlimited vacation should come with a mandatory minimum vacation taken per year.

Funny enough, of all places, banks have such rules. You have to take at least two weeks of leave as a single block. That was introduced after rogue traders hid losses from the beancounters by shuffling their positions around every day.

I don't think all banks introduced these measures to the same degree and at the same time. So there might be plenty of data around for some enterprising statistician to tease out the effect on productivity from these natural experiments. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment)

[toomanybeersies]

Can you elaborate on how mandatory holidays stopped rogue traders?

[PeterisP]

The point is to ensure that all tasks are periodically handed off to someone else - i.e., when you're off, the task doesn't wait for you to do it when you get back, a designated replacement has to do it.

It has the following benefits:

* if hiding something requires certain "adjustments" to periodical reports, then having someone else do it would often expose it - the particular rogue trader case, we was falsifying control documents, if someone else would do it a single time, then it would have been detected.

* if a particular customer or portfolio has problems that should have been escalated but haven't; having someone else handle them independently during your vacation would often expose it.

* if you suddenly need to replace someone, because they leave, die or get fired, you have a good understanding on what needs to be handed off, how to do it, and have some people who have done this before. It ensures, so to speak, that you don't have an absurdly low "bus-factor".

In addition, since it's not a one-off event but a policy, it acts as a preventive measure to do things in a manner that can be handed off, because they will have to be handed off, and a preventive measure for fraud because you have an expectation that you will get found out instead of knowing that you are the sole keeper of some information and can "adjust" it as needed.

[eru]

What PeterisP said, and http://www.marketplace.org/2011/12/15/business/easy-street/c...