>>Contrast with many places in Europe such as Sweden where you are entitled to at least 25 days.

As far as I know, that's a minimum required in all EU countries. Nowadays I think that companies that don't provide at least 30 paid days off a year are not worth working for. 25 is like the bare minimum.

Germany only requires 20 days. (The law states 24 but it’s based on a 6-day work week)

Less than 25 is rare though. And it excludes bank holidays - those are on top.

From what I heard in France 40 - 50 days a year is common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

> As far as I know, that's a minimum required in all EU countries

It's not, 20 is minimum.

> Nowadays I think that companies that don't provide at least 30 paid days off a year are not worth working for. 25 is like the bare minimum.

Providing just the minimum (20 days) is very common for software companies where I live (it's in EU).

Netflix has unlimited vacation. It works well because they encourage people to take vacation, starting at the top. The CEO always makes a big deal about how he's taking 1-2 weeks off at a time, and encourages all the VPs to do the same.

Not all unlimited vacation cultures are bad. The best way to find out is to ask how much vacation the CxOs took and how much vacation the hiring manager took. If they can't answer that, then be concerned.

Sorry, I don't understand why 1-2 weeks off is significant. That's a short break?

My department lead works about four days in August. My boss takes three weeks to visit family abroad each year.

A few Swedish companies I know basically shut down entirely for July.

Are American tech companies so fragile that you can't lose staff for more than two weeks at a time?

> Are American tech companies so fragile that you can't lose staff for more than two weeks at a time?

Almost everything in the US is understaffed to the point that one person missing will ruin someone's day.

In the USA, since the standard vacation is two weeks total a year if you have a good job, no one takes more than a week off at once usually. The fact that he's taking two is significant.

OMG you poor buggers.. I'm in Australia and admitidly in a job that has very good worker relations but legally it's a minimum of 20 days per year. I've rarely had less that 4 weeks off per year (mostly in one of two blocks) and as we can bank our leave, it is possible to take a batch of 6 or 8 weeks if you plan ahead.

How is it possible that you don't all end up in the mad house with work absolutely dominating your entire lives?

> How is it possible that you don't all end up in the mad house with work absolutely dominating your entire lives?

Oh that's easy. Only people with good jobs get medical and mental health care, so the rest just die off!

But less sarcastically, it's a huge problem in the US. Many people do in fact die or have serious issues from burn out.

Another factor here is consumption.

Even at salaries far below Netflix-tier offers, many people depend on consumption to stay sane. Media, food, buying unnecessary items, seeking the next sale, etc.

Hell in the UK most people get atleast 6 weeks. I currently get 27 + 9 'public holidays' that I can take when I like.

I'm not buying that they're doing it out of the generosity of the business. Otherwise why not just offer a generous number of days vacation in the benefits package? They're making it unlimited because they're counting on people using less than average vacation time so the business can save money while maintaining a good image.

I worked at an unlimited-vacation-time company for years, and I loved it. I would easily take 5-6 weeks off per year. I worked my ass off when I was there, and so there was no issue.

In the same way you count on your employer to provide you pay every two weeks, you should be able to count on them to provide you with the amount of vacation time you need to be both happy and productive. If they fail in either of these duties, it's time to quit.

Yes, I'm sure some companies "hope you take less time off than would otherwise happen" but that's really short-sighted of them, as the question isn't how long you're in the office, it's how much are you getting done relative to your goals. A company that can't see that likely has other issues IMO.

More likely, they would rather avoid paying you out accrued PTO on your last day.

I think the "unlimited" thing started as just trying to get the vacation time off the books as a liability, and treating it as "no time off" happened for cultural reasons.

Ugly and hostile reasons, but still cultural -- I don't think there was ever an evil cabal of CEO's rubbing their hands over the thought of engineers working 50 weeks a year.

That's how a lot of these things work: There's (almost) never an actual conspiracy of people meeting in secret to orchestrate the terrible things that have been done to our society. It's just that given the way our version of capitalism has been set up for the last few decades, the incentives are structured such that already-rich people can get themselves even more money by finding more and more legal-if-shady ways to squeeze everyone else.

It's mostly for exerting peer pressure and having to pay nothing out if someone leaves (versus paying out their PTO). Unlimited vacation is a scam, next time a company tries that, mark off the entire calendar for the rest of the year.

It fits the culture of freedom and responsibility. You have the freedom to take off whenever you want, as long as you meet your responsibilities.

It happens to have a nice side effect of saving the company a bunch of money, but at least in the case of Netflix, that money goes into your salary.

I thought Netflix was the company that, in another thread, it was mentioned that 2 years later, anyone below “above average performance” was let go.

How many long vacations can a small subset of the company continue to take while still delivering ‘above average performance’ relative to other employees they experience the regular fears of taking vacation that come with unlimited vacation?

I actually replied to that comment and pointed out that it was completely wrong. There are no performance reviews like that.

And most people take the long vacations because everyone else is.

1-2 weeks off isn't unlimited vacation. It's below minimum.

At a time, not total.

unlimited vacation just means "there's a limit but we won't tell you what it is because we want you to do less than that"

OP is the primary advocate of Unlimited Vacation.