Somewhat expected in the more conservative midwest (the author is comparing her Zürich experience with living in Chicago) but apparently "unlimited vacation" seems to become increasingly common in the Bay Area at least.
back
3 comments
I have a former colleague that on looking for a new role was offered "unlimited vacation".
He asked what the limit was. "Unlimited", they replied. "Honestly?", he ventured. "Yes, unlimited".
"OK, then", he said, "I'd like to book the entire year off".
"Oh no, you can't do that!", they replied.
"I thought so. So what's the limit?", he asked again. "There is no limit", they replied. "But you just said I couldn't have a year off", he pointed out. "It has to be reasonable", they said.
This went back and forth. In the end "unlimited holiday" in the UK for this firm was 28 days. That is the statutory legal minimum in the UK. If he went over this, it would likely be accepted at the time, but "noticed" in performance/salary reviews, etc.
So, in short, unlimited vacation is a con, and you should try the above yourself. It'll lead to an interesting conversation, although it may harm your chances of getting an offer if you time it wrong.
I agree. I think of it more of flexible working arrangement. I work for 60-80 hrs/week for urgent releases and then disappeared for a month, maybe repeat this multiple time in an year. In traditional company it would be 40 hr / week and no month long vacations. In worse companies 60 hr/ week still no month long vacations.
From what I see among my friends working in the Bay area, those who moved to startups with "unlimited vacation" are taking less than the few ones who are at generous[1] big corps. And then of course there are still companies like Apple that give 12 days to new employees.
[1] By US standards :) For instance 25 days plus ~10 national holidays.
Unlimited vacation sounds nice, but from what little I read on it, it wasn't really unlimited. Rather, it seems to be based on what's acceptable at your workplace and how much work you can get done.
Hopefully someone with first-hand experience or more knowledge will elaborate a bit on this.
Yes -- unlimited vacation is a perk of flexibility rather than number of days off.
Since you're responsible for getting your work done, you can take any manner of time off provided that the results hold up. This past year, I prolly tallied anywhere from 4-6 weeks off, technically speaking. Unplugged though, a handful of days at most. (Otherwise, mostly on vacay but maybe a few hrs worth of work a day sprinkled in morning / evening.)
Because I own my area of work + results though, during decent chunks of this time I still answer emails when I can, try to unblock people etc. So it means that I get to travel more and see other places, or work in other offices (would say 'remote' here but some are in places like NYC & Seattle so hardly remote in that sense of the word!)
Then, when I am around town in San Francisco, I make a point to check in with people in person, often through the evenings. And work part of the time on Sat/Sun to unblock people if I need to review or provide someone else the context to do so.
For my role I have made this work and love it, but this unlimited option is not for everyone. And there is a cap to how much you can realistically be away and still get things done.
So how is that better? You're not actually getting days off. You're still having to work. So you're not getting the benefit of vacation.
Your work/life balance sounds utterly horrific and I am glad I don't have "unlimited vacation" like this. I feel depressed just reading it.