[aspir]

A similar point: I've never actually met someone who has 4 weeks of vacation to actually use all 4. Generally, when you work up to the point at a BigCo where you can command a larger vacation, it's hard to remove yourself from the day-to-day practices of work.

Plus, America has an embedded culture of trying to "outwork the competition" in everything we do, from sports, to academics, to the workplace.

It stems from the postwar era of growth where human hours logged in an office were the only drivers of progress. Obviously the world is different now, with the advent of the internet, but old habits die hard.

[latch]

From what I understand, a company which allows employees to accumulate large pools of timeoff tend to have very unpleasant liabilities on their balance sheet. It is, I believe, a very serious liability (regardless of where you live, all places have very strict rules about it).

It's a lot like reward points. The initial programs didn't have expiry...after years, auditors warned them that they had billions in liabilities in unclaimed points.

In my experience, any company that gets a serious CFO or some outside accounting/auditing, is going to rectify their vacation problem pretty quickly

[crazy_startup]

This happened at my previous job. They forced everyone to burn down the vacation time from their previous limit of 280 hours to 120. After that they instituted policies with a maximum of 180.

The issue is that it was impossible to take vacation time. Even on vacation I was working 3 hours every day and during the normal workweek was 60-75 hours without overtime or rewarding the extra time.

Frankly, I think that the company should just have a bucket for PTO and put it in the bank and earn interest on it. The liability should be backed by actual dollars so it's not a serious financial risk.

[throwawayday]

I actually get 6 weeks paid, plus 10 holidays, and I work in the US. I make sure that I take the full amount. Why? It's considered part of my compensation. It'd be like saying "No, I don't need that 26th check, you keep it".