[nicoburns]

> Or consider unlimited vacation for developers. At one point that was a fairly novel perk. Now, everyone has that.

I would argue that nobody (or hardly anyone) has this. Otherwise you’d find most developer only working 6 months a year.

[MattGaiser]

Fair, it is not truly unlimited, but for plenty of people (at least where I have worked) it has still ended up being 5-8 weeks a year.

In contrast to the more traditional employers who say that you can start with two weeks and after 3 years of loyal service with no real raises, you can have three.

[nicoburns]

Ah, I guess that makes sense from an American perspective. For context, 5.6 weeks (28 days) is the legal minimum for absolutely every full time employee here in the UK, and I believe that’s one of the lower legal minimums in Europe. Higher allowances are not uncommon here.

My employer considered introducing unlimited holiday, but we said no once they admitted that they were hoping it would result in us taking less holiday in practice. I’d rather have my 5 weeks guaranteed, no guilt, than be worrying about whether I’ve taken too much unlimited holiday.

[mc32]

Indeed. It’s a wolf in sheeps clothing.

It’s like letting the kids mind the house by themselves while you go on holidays.

If they take too much liberty, they never get that privilege again. If they do it within implied constraints they get to have the house more often.

If you have power (not necessarily managerial) you can exploit thus and be okay, if you’re mediocre and you take the same advantage, you could very well have signed your own pink slip.

Now if you have a minimum everyone takes, then even as a mediocre worker, you’re not an outlier.

[simplestats]

People I know take about four weeks a year. 8 weeks seems nuts. Do their managers push back all the deadlines related to their projects since they take a lot of vacation? I'd imagine managers don't even consider it and plan deadlines according to a typical (e.g., 50 weeks a year) worker output.

[MattGaiser]

I haven't ever worked for a company with hard deadlines. Always enterprise software, so delays are of seemingly no consequence.

[fvdessen]

The managers indeed push back the deadlines or hire more people