If leadership often takes vacation and doesn't do more than basic email checking, if that, then employees will feel comfortable doing the same and enjoy this policy over your standard "you accumulate 5 hours of PTO per pay period."

If leadership rarely takes vacation and when they do they're basically working full-time anyway, then employees will be frustrated because they'll feel they have to emulate the same.

And as I said, this goes for everything. I was briefly at a startup where the CEO would be in the office from 11am to 8pm and it drove me crazy. Every time I left work I would wonder if he thought I was 'slacking off,' because he wasn't in early enough to see when I got in, just that I always left before him. Some engineers just emulated his hours, but given my various other life commitments, that was impossible. There's a reason why "go home on time" is in a lot of CEO advice books.

I took two weeks of almost zero-work in August, and take a few days off here and there for travelling/conferences as well.

It's probably worse than you think. I would bet that the CEO works 8-8, but like many managers has trouble getting dedicated blocks of time while in the office and so does all of their focused work at another ___location before coming in to the office.

If your dialogue was better with the CEO then you wouldn't feel that way or just ask him/her easily.

In a small company, there are rarely such neatly demarcated lines. Regardless of how well you communicate with your boss about arranging to be done earlier, you will feel the eyes of your coworkers when you head out the door.

edit: A notable exception being results-focused cultures that emphasize flexibility as a company value. If punching the clock is an expectation, it's hard to manage to be on a shifted schedule without there being at least a twinge of resentment when you head out earlier.

Also, when it comes to taking time off, you have to just suck it up and do it. Our work ethic makes us feel like slackers for it, and makes us project that others are judging us likewise, but the truth is that if you have been doing a good job, you deserve the time off and you are entitled to it. It's normal and it's a good thing, nobody wishes they had worked more on their death bed, et cetera.

As others have said in the comments, in systems like this, people will take less vacation than if there were a defined plan. Because there is no defined plan, one is set by example. They look to you and to their peers. I suspect strongly that you will take less vacation than them being the CEO of the company. I also suspect that their peers will gravitate toward taking less vacation, and human guilt will be the guide.

I urge you to reconsider. Instead give them a very generous vacation policy (20 days! a whole month!) and then MAKE THEM TAKE IT! You can do that by simply telling them 'You need to take a vacation' or just have a max cap on vacation (say 40 days) or have vacation expire after 2 years (time enough to build up a nice sabbatical).

I suppose that whether that's good or bad is pretty subjective.

Unless you literally mean take as much vacation as you feel is right and no matter how much you take (even 4 weeks straight), we won't ask questions, then I'd rather have a specific number.

For sick time, I think this is a great idea. I have unlimited sick time where I work, so I only take it when I'm really sick. It's like the saying that what gets measured gets done. The measure of legitimate sick time is not "do you have the time" but "are you sick," so that's what people use to judge when taking sick time. If it was "do you have the time" then as long as they had the time, people would feel fine taking sick time, even if they weren't sick.

If you tell me I can take as much vacation as I want as long as I need a vacation, then even to take a half-day, I need a justification. Every vacation day, or part of a day, becomes a risk that I'm going to look like I'm taking too much vacation.

Or even worse, the policy at my employer - within a given year you may take up to five of your accrued sick days no questions asked (assuming you have the sick days banked), but to use any other sick time you have, you must submit a doctors note as verification. As an incentive intended to reduce absenteeism, if you take no sick days in a given year, you're given an extra "free" vacation day usable during the following year.

What this means is that if you end up taking even one sick day during a year, you've lost your bonus vacation day. So now you may as well burn down the remainder of your five unverified days by calling in sick when you really aren't.

After a lot of hand waving "don't worry about it" answers to preliminary queries about sick time logistics, I was told (after the fact) I had to take open-heart surgery as a vacation day.

While on the face of it this policy looks like an improvement, it turned an entitlement into something that depends on the generosity of one's boss. Also, keep in mind that when quitting you don't get any accrued money. I highly dislike it.

Also, when you do leave a company, you don't always get the vacation days as a bonus in your paycheck. Sometimes those days just disappear. What's even worse is that some vacation days may be a part of your compensation plan, but work pressures prevent you from using them, and they expire within a year. Vacation days are hardly an entitlement.

Personally, my ideal work situation would allow me unlimited and untracked vacation days, absolute freedom to work when, where, and how I choose, and pay me ONLY based on performance (both my direct contributions and a percentage of overall company profits). I suppose this is fairly close to actual business ownership.

Depends on the state. In California, vacation time is earned as it is accrued and thus must be paid out on termination (voluntary or not).

I disagree with your use of the word scam to describe an untracked vacation policy. An employee at any one point in time will probably have no more than 6 weeks of accrued, unexpired vacation time (assuming they get 3 weeks per year and haven't taken a vacation in 2 years and their vacation rolls over a little bit). This is only 3 pay periods, or just over 10% of their actual pay (6/52 weeks).

I would agree that in general vacation policies are a bit of a scam in that you are promised x days as part of your compensation package, but then are told when they can or can't be used, and resist if you try to use them all at once, and expire them if you hold on to them for too long... Come to think of it, defined vacation days are a bit like airline miles.

Also, don't give up on old wages. An employee at a former employer filed a class action lawsuit (somehow I got attached), his hardwork resulted in an $8k check that found its way to my doorstep. ;)

I'm thinking it some genius/evil HR ploy at this point.

Where I work, we're given pretty generous paid time off, with very precise definitions of how said paid time off is to be taken, accrued and if not taken in its entirety by the end of the year, how one can "roll over" some of those days into the next year. Every 5 years or so, we get an additional 5 business days.

I get 30 days of paid time off. I used 15 last year. And I've never even come close to the 30 allotted.

I'm salary, and I have really real deadlines. But I've been at my company and in my sector for a long enough time that I know when I can take time and when I cannot. I can get in 15 days by taking the first week that most public schools start off. It's usually a lull time, and being a homeschool family, vacation packages around that time are usually great deals. We have a lull time around Christmas and August due to being a B2B business, and outside of that, I know my deadlines, manage my workload and have a boss that doesn't care if I give a day or two notice when I want time off (primarily because of the former ... I self-manage my time to ensure the least impact for that time off).

All of that said, we have a PTO policy, and I know of very few people who get anywhere close to it. Nor do I know of anyone I work with that actually takes advantage of the "rollover into next year" policy because there's no point. We simply won't use them because there's too much to be done and too few people to do it and in our corporate culture it's "get it done" or enjoy unemployment. Frankly, I'd find other employment if my employer decided to do the whole "we don't track vacation" policy because in my field at my company that'd basically mean "no vacation".

I can definitely agree to shift them around, but if they expect me to take less total time off in order to get things done, then I get another job and they get to enjoy their time of not getting anything done at all.

The Barings bank collapse, for example, was brought about by one guy who juggled the books and hid information over a long period. That's much easier to pull off if you are around all the time.

Looking at job descriptions with their little 3.5 weeks of vacation is just a bummer now. Who wants to sit around thinking about the optimal way to use that time? Just do a kick-ass job and take vacations when you want. This benefit means more to me than a considerable increase in salary would.

Perhaps. It'd be tough to swallow the hit in productivity though.

And I guess it might mean a few extra jobs, which surely can't be a bad thing.

This is one of the policies that I fear might not work if we ever reach a certain size, but so far we're all happy with it...it's just not something we keep track of for other people, just ourselves.

Thanks again for the feedback, it's a big reason why I'm sharing our current policies.

I'd also strongly recommend looking over that shared vacation calendar and identify anyone who may not be taking a reasonable amount of time off. Some people are just love their jobs ... I'm one of them, and it's not as big a deal (though, I believe nearly everyone benefits from some time off, even when forced). But make a point to ensure they don't think the "we don't track vacation time" equates to "we don't take vacation time".

I'd also steer clear of the "laptops to the beach" comments. I don't take frequent vacations, but when I do, I need to go places where I can barely get a phone call and have no internet (I fight with myself on this topic every time, but when I go on a cruise or camp in a remote part of the state that I live in, I always return more refreshed than when I go somewhere that I can keep up with e-mail). I don't know the culture of your company, but at my company "laptops on the beach" would be code for "obligation to carry your laptop with you at all times".

Just my 2p, you sound like a decent leader and I appreciate the transparency.

- If a company is really about "we don't care about how much vacation you take", then why not to give me minimum vacations? It seems intellectually dishonest.

- How I do know how much of vacation I can take and whether that amount is preventing me of getting raise/bonus/promotion?

- This policy means that my vacation will vary depending on manager and current project. I cannot commit to travel with my kids, I cannot commit to visit my parents... because who knows: I might have a different manager next month.

- If I take two weeks vacation and none of my teammates are taking vacations, am I going to be fired? Are they going to consider me that I'm not a team player?

- I can lose a job after working for year or so without taking any vacation, but if I did accure vacation I will get some money (kinda reward for working hard for a year and not taking vacation), while in case of "flexible vacation" I get nothing.

If you want to work remotely for the next month and nothing depends on your physical presence at the office, fine.

If you want to fuck off for the next month and you're not on anyone's critical path, that's fine, too.

Restricting things a bit, "not hosing the company" could be interpreted to mean that you can take off when you want, but for absences longer than x days you need to let your supervisor know y days in advance so s/he can take it into account when necessary. It doesn't sound like this would be an unreasonable thing to ask, as long as x and y are clearly stated by the company and respected by employees.

This whole thread reminds me of why I don't work for other people. The idea of someone demanding my physical presence for a portion of each day, for no reason other than the fact that they can, makes me frown and cock my head to the side like a puzzled beagle.

But if you can do this, maybe they and you will think about whether they need you the month after that, too.

The overriding goal is to run an outfit where the employees want to be there. If you do that, then vacation-policy abuse will not be a major problem. If you don't, then vacation-policy abuse is the least of your problems.

That being said, a fair amount is definitely not two weeks (10 work days)! I'll never work for a company that's that cheap again!

European law states a minimum of 20 days (which can include public holidays though often / usually won't). In the UK where I work 20 - 25 days plus 8 or 9 days public holiday is the norm, and 28 - 30 days plus public holidays not unheard of.

I seriously don't understand how people don't just go mad on so little.

I know I do.

To their credit they really did mean take vacation when you want to, but to them, what that meant was, feel free to take a week or two if you want, or a random day if it pukes on the hill.

The problem is that my wife and I save our vacation, she's a teacher, and take 2 months every other year in Europe.

With the "typical" you accrue vacation policy this isn't much of a problem as long as you book in advance.

With this take what you want I've had some pretty heavy handed conversations about "not begin a team player" and taking advantage of the company when I asked to do this.

My employer has "normal" vacation policies (though we accrue faster than most other employers), but most managers (including mine) won't blink if you ask for four weeks at a time. The CEO typically leaves the country for at least four weeks a year (as well as taking other holidays throughout the year), and my direct manager was gone for five weeks, with no contact, this year. I was out of the office for six weeks as well, though I did work remotely for about six days and spent four days at our west coast dev office (where my manager is stationed).

Another person mentioned golden handcuffs--I agree. There are some things that bug me about the way the company works, but when I look at what the company offers me, I'm more likely to either look past those things, or work to fix them.

Minimum vacation time per year is only 25 days though, so not everyone take all vacation at once.

Lithuania is impressive. Not only are there the 13 public holidays, workers with a child under 14 get an extra week. Now that's how you prevent population decline! So that's five weeks plus two-and-a-half work weeks in holidays.

Well played, Lithuania. I wonder what worldwide correlations there are with minimum vacation days. Gapminder unfortunately doesn't include that dataset.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo...

What I learned from that link though -- is that the concept of "Long Service Leave" is unique to Australia/New Zealand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_service_leave

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive

On a related subject, I am currently on parental leave for 7 months, with about 80% of my regular salary compensated by the government. The first months the employer, thanks to a deal with the union, give some extra compensation, so it's around 90% in total. Of course it meant some hassle and extra planning, and even a new hire, but managers and colleagues mostly just wished me a good time.

The problem is that eventually the policy like this will create a backlash and burn out. However, it will be hard to find why ... As of now, this policy will work because balsamiq is cool and hot. But after your company is not a startup anymore ('running repeatable business mode') you need to find something which will be more predictable. If nothing you might want to recruit a more senior people which do have a family. And then you will get into this "it is hard to find talent" bs.

Also if this is really a policy, why not to accrue minimum vacations anyway?

For one thing, when comparing positions, I like to have quantitative data. Ok: Position A gives me $150,000, expects me to work 45 hours a week, provides me 25,000 in benefits, and gives me 4 weeks of vacation per year and it requires 10 hours per month of commute / preparation time.

Then I can make a rough estimate of pay per hour, consider the qualitative aspects, and compare positions apples to apples. When things are vague, it makes comparisons more difficult.

Teaching in a public school isn't the easiest job in the world (nor the hardest, probably), and not everyone has the personality for it, but I really believe that having a lot of time off contributes to my mental / emotional / physical health and helps me to be an excellent teacher when I am working.

In my district, we get one week off around Thanksgiving, two weeks around Christmas, one week around Spring Break, and ten weeks off in the summer. Plus most of the state and national holidays.

I know people often suggest that the U.S. should move to a year-round school year, but I'm not sure the ills in public education would be solved by more days in the classroom.

As an engineer, I would not consider working for a place that had a problem with less than 4 weeks vacation. It is absolutely necessary to have that as a minimum to recharge and do a great job. If I'm not allowed to do what I need to to do a great job, I don't want the job, I tell people to give it to some lackey instead and just be comfortable with their full on corporate BS environment.

I think that the extremely lengthy vacations should be taken into consideration when discussing teacher pay issues. It's relevant since a lot of teachers take part time jobs in the summer, something 12 and 11 month workers can't do. Some even write books and generate additional income that way, and recognized copyright case law in the US has the cool exception that books written by full time academics are not work for hire by their bosses. That's not the case for those of us in engineering where companies try to grab all they can.

Teaching high school in the US is extremely emotionally exhausting. You're expected to be a social worker and you deal with people with problems, yet you have little training and no support or back up or authority for dealing with this. When I was a teacher, if I did not have the entire summer off, I would have gotten a gun and come in and shot the entire administration. Not because I am crazy, I've had a psych eval for security clearance and am completely stable. It's just how close to breaking being a teacher in the US will drive you. The system is incredibly dysfunctional. Work stress is comparable to being a soldier on the front line. Most teachers are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. I am not surprised when I hear of so many female teachers having sex with their students - that is not because they are pedos, it is a stress response from having a total emotional breakdown from working in a horrific system.

If the 3 months of vacation time was removed from US schools, we would see a wave of teacher led psychotic breakdowns, suicides and massacres that would be so legendary they would be spoken of 1000 years from now.

I do agree that time off should be considered when talking about teacher salaries. I know other states are different, but in Texas I feel like teacher salaries are mostly pretty good now, but they weren't for a long time.

In 1997, when I started teaching, my salary was $24,000 per year. That was about 43% below the median household salary in the Austin area at the time.

A teacher starting this year would make $42,000 per year, which is only 15% below the median household salary.

The median salary for the Austin area has only increased ~20% in the past 15 years, but the starting teacher salary (in my district, anyway) has gone up 75% in that same time period.

So, in my opinion, a lot of the "teachers are underpaid" rhetoric comes from folks who haven't run the numbers recently.

Um. About that clearance...

I don't understand what notified means? Notified of termination? So each year the company measured which people had the most sick days, which would of course be those dealing with cancer treatments as such, and fired them? IF so, it is reminiscent of Jack Welch's notorious dictat to fire the 10% "at the bottom" each year.

No doubt I am misunderstanding the policy you are describing, which is why I am asking for clarification.

I think a hybrid of that approach could work, where you get X weeks of paid vacation and can take more as unpaid leave. That way, everyone gets the benefit of being encouraged to take a certain amount of time off, and those who want more can have it without other employees feeling like people are cheating the system. However, I asked about this at my current job and was told that unpaid leave was "strongly discouraged". I think there's also some risk of being seen as "not a team player".

But I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would rather have more time off than money.

> But I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would rather have more time off than money.

I suspect you're right, I think debt holds back a lot of people.

Sadly, not everyone can afford to hire only those who will act this way. It's expensive, and not always worth the cost.

Most stupid HR policies come about from an employee abusing the system. Come in before 9:30! No sick pay! etc etc

You tend to need a very good reason, backed up with evidence and, unless it's a major major thing, you need to have worked with the employee to correct the behaviour.

In a country like that a policy which states "Take some vacation" couldn't be used to discipline someone because the issue is actually that they're conforming with it a little too much?

It doesn't mean good vacation policies aren't possible though. For instance you can have flexible allowances. You get, say, 25 days as a basic allowance, you have to take at least 20, you can take up to 30 but you get charged for / paid extra for the variation from your allowance of 25 days.

That gives people the flexibility to have either more money or a very generous allowance, while still being manageable.

Meet all your milestones for the year while taking four months of vacation? You get a commendation for efficiently doing in eight months what your colleagues needed eleven for.

As long as the work gets done and you're not holding anyone else up, who cares when you choose to do it?

Actually, in one of big companies developing world class mission critical software, my manager would send me an email saying something like "please take vacations since we are making Mercedeses and not Pintos".

Yes, there were pople working really a lot and not taking vacations, but it ended up that their designs are not well thought and implementation sloppy (yea, it is done faster than planed but locking was just not performing on SMPs), so they were passed during promotion / bonus time.

So I want to know.

1. What is the average number of weeks per year taken by US employees. This tells the reality apart from the showmanship.

2. Please confirm that by "doesn't accrue" you mean that when you lay someone off, they are not compensated for time not taken off.

3. Please explain why US employees are denied vacation accrual if your intent is truly to have a good vacation policy.

But your secretary HAS to be there every day from 8-5. Your phone and email customer support service people HAVE to be there during a specific set of hours and rotate in an organized way, and have set vacation times that don't overlap, etc.

When it comes to this kind of stuff with employees, it's always going to be tricky. There's always going to be exceptions to the rules.

Where I choose to work, I would personally like someone to tell me I have 2 weeks a year of vacation, and 1 week of sick time, or something to that effect.

For hours per week that I work, I would like that to be based on accomplishments, and NOT based on how long I'm sitting in my chair. I can spend 3 hours dwelling over a stupid problem, walk away for the night, show up in the morning and realize I misspelled a single variable.

a) distributed amongst the globe

b) where just the local labor laws for vacation time applied

(Note that I'm talking about operations where you still know your colleagues in Europe/Asia/America, not bigger outsourcing operations)

Even considering the different attitudes about vacation time(^1), I'd guess that something like this would breed more envy than it's worth it. If there's a slight disparity (even 5-10 days), it would probably work out, but if one team is working in Texas, have almost no holidays, don't get any vacation time, whereas the other team is in Germany where you'll get your 4+2 weeks of holidays/vacation, this won't go down that well.

^1: We "socialists" are a pampered bunch

How about if they say - you get a minimum of X vacation days per year and on top of that you can take any number you want. At least people will take the X days without any feeling of guilt.

My only problem with it is that (at least in the US) you're not accruing vacation time. So when it comes time to leave the company, you're not going to get any sort of payout for that.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself and the people I've observed in various companies and startups: we don't take much vacation time. I don't believe I know anyone who has cashed out their time off in companies that have traditional policies.

So, in my case, while I like Balsamiq's vacation policy better, it has turned out that the traditional style has been a better deal for me.

Everyone at the company is so new, though, that there's really date to see how it's working.

But I can tell you one thing. I'm feeling much better working for the company compared to the previous job where we had no sick days (I spent half my vacation days taking care of sick kids, or myself getting sick due to sick kids) despite the fact that the owner made a PERSONAL income of $2B from the company. I know that even if my kids get their usual winter time flus and colds, I still have actual vacation time left after taking time off to take care of them.

My point, hire smart people, give them a reason to give a st and they'll do the right thing.

Incidentally, we're hiring if you want to try it out yourself ;)

What? How is this even possible? Even if one doesn't set internal deadlines, I can't imagine avoiding integration commitments with any number of third parties, whether they be strategic partners, clients/customers, api/feed integrators, etc.

While working with external parties who expect things done by a certain date prevents the 'no deadlines' policy from working (by definition), we have observed that typically work expands to fill the time allotted for it. This means that from an internal product development point of view, telling your team that your product should be ready by Q3 of next year will almost guarantee that the product will be done by Q3 or later (with copious amounts of scrambling as Q3 approaches). When you eliminate the deadline, workers (I would argue) are more likely to complete the task in the actual time it SHOULD take, instead of letting the job expand to fill the deadline. (You could argue that instead workers will be lazy and take longer than it should take, thus demonstrating that deadlines are necessary.)

You have the actual development time, and you have the artificial deadline. If the actual development time is longer than the deadline, then trying to meet the deadline will be stressful and quality to be sacrificed for speed. Alternatively if the deadline is longer than the actual time, then work will expand and the team will be less efficient. In both cases, working without a deadline should prove the better outcome.