[lmkg]

> If you have accrued vacation, you "earned" your vacation and they can't take it away from you without compensation... If they fire you, they should even have to pay you your salary for those vacation days.

This is the law in California but not most other states.

In most states, vacation time is a benefit that can expire, evaporate, or be rescinded. The company is just deciding not to assign you job duties during your time off. How generous of them! But it's totally their right to decide not to do that, or to put a bunch of boxes around how they will do that. So it's legal, and common, that unused vacation time will actually be lost.

In CA, accrued vacation time is classified as "deferred compensation." It is legally money that is owed to you. It will be paid at a later date, but it must be paid.

It strikes me as no coincidence that the "unlimited vacation" fad started in tech companies with a large chunk of their workforce in California.

[mark-r]

Nebraska goes a step further. Lots of companies have a "use it or lose it" policy for vacation time, so they won't have a ton of liability on the books. Nebraska courts have declared that vacation time is compensation that can't be taken away from you, so "lose it" isn't an option. I worked for a company with half its workforce in Nebraska even though I'm in Minnesota. To comply with the law, the company didn't pay out your vacation at the end of the year - they locked you out and forced you to take it, now.

[leetrout]

Bingo: unlimited vacation is a scam

[ghaff]

It's highly dependent on company (and team) culture. If you can actually take a generous amount of vacation, personal, and sick (if you need it) time, I have no real problem with it. (Then, I haven't moved around a lot--I know some people who move jobs every year or two count on a payout from accrued vacation when they do.)

Someone I know who retired from a fairly senior position at Netflix rather liked it and took some fairly long vacations but said there really was a good tradition of umplugging at least as he observed that came from the top.

[leetrout]

Minimum / mandatory PTO is the answer.

https://namely.com/blog/minimum-pto-what-is-it-why-you-shoul...

[ghaff]

I don't really disagree although you can't really keep people from working on their days off if they want to, at least in a remote/WFH situation.

[Schiendelman]

You most certainly can. I work for a US company where when you're out on (paid, six month) parental leave, your system access is disabled.

They don't do that for normal PTO but it's certainly feasible.

[ghaff]

There are a lot of reasons to cut access for people out for an extended period who may not even come back.

Pretty much no one (outside of maybe something regulated who may mandate two week PTOs for security purposes) is going to do that every time an employee takes PTO. In any case, if I really want to do work I don't even need access to my employer's computers.

[VincentEvans]

It really depends. The company I work for - doesn’t even have a time-keeping system. Taking vacation is a matter of sending a slack or email, or simply verbally letting your manager and team mates know that you won’t be available. So far this year I’ve taken more than 3 weeks at least. I know it’s not a ton, but the point is - that I don’t know the actual exact count, I strongly suspect that nobody really tracks it in any way, and I am planning to take few weeks more before the next year.

[leetrout]

I replied to the sibling comment, minimum vacation policies are more employee friendly and can offer the same flexibility as "unlimited".