"Experience shows people perform better at work when they’re not worrying about home." People also perform better at work when they're not worrying about repercussions for being seen to abuse their "unlimited" leave.
This is probably an indication of other issues, but half of the team didn't realize there was a new policy, one team lead thought the guidance was "generally, this means about 3 weeks", the manager thought "generally, this means about 2 weeks", the actual policy states "generally, this means about 4 weeks".
It apparently simplifies things from a financial standpoint - not having PTO on the books, etc. but I'm of the opinion that it's a very anti-employee policy.
Edit: I very much agree with the "unlimited with a minimum" concept mentioned in the sibling comment. Without something like this, it's hard to see the policy as a real perk.
My experience at Nvidia's was more like what you describe, where my manager said that even though the vacation policy was unlimited now, he thought it would be unfair to others if I were to go over 20 days, and it was always a guilt trip taking a few days off.
Sounds like they should just make it 20 days.
Without a minimum people are reluctant to take time off from what I've seen and read.
The great thing about a mandatory minimum (never thought I'd be saying those words), is that it doesn't allow someone to over work themselves into a frenzy, making everyone else look lazy, while simultaneously burning themselves out.
Company I work for (Rubicon Project), uses a different approach that is still pretty effective (in my experience, your mileage may vary) - in addition to unmetered PTO, they provide a week off for 4th of July and a week (or two, depending on how calendars fall!) for Christmas/New Year. This way, even if you take no vacation time, you still get at least 2 weeks of downtime where the company basically stops, aside from keeping the lights on functions.
Though, where I work we have unlimited vacation and there definitely seems to be peer encouragement to take _more_ vacation, not less.
That meant we could work our 30 minutes flex per day in a totally flexible fashion...
You can look at a vacation cap as the same thing, where having a cap really can cause people to use more than they would if it were just whatever they could negotiate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling#Price_ceilings_t...
Your manager will give you yearly (or quarterly) objectives with 10 or 20 days of vacations in mind, so if you use your right to unlimited vacations to take more than that, you will most likely be off your target, and that will be reflected upon your pay raise at yearly review time.
A fixed (and high) number of holidays is the only way to go.
Just take it at face value:
adj. not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent.
But in this case, it clearly does not actually mean it. Oh, I have actually unlimited vacation at my Big Corporation job? I guess I'm never going in to work again! Except we can be pretty sure that 12 months of vacation each year is way beyond the secret limit.
A better gimmick would be if Netflix picked one of the Nordics and announced that they were going to adopt all of the social policies provided by that country's government.
The industry average in the US is abysmal though. Yahoo 'doubled' theirs to 16 weeks, which is 1/3 of Canada's (and many other countries') legally mandated minimum. Taking double the industry average would still be abysmal by global standards.
I'm sympathetic to your concerns, but this is still a good thing and–importantly–a very good step in the right direction.
Playing devil's advocate a little, but this "peer pressure" idea seems to come with paid vacation too. I think, to an extent, it's peoples own responsibility to resist this peer pressure, rather than the company's. I would always take paid vacation on principle, for example. If you don't want me to take it, don't offer it to me–and if you don't offer it to me, I'll take a job somewhere else, thank you. I'm quite happy for the quality of my work to be judged on its own merits. Which is not to say it's easy to do if you're working at a company with an entrenched culture of abusive expectations. But we only become complicit in it if we give into peer pressure rather than asserting our rights, no?
That said, I say this from the privileged position of living in a country where taking paid vacation is expected, so perhaps it's easy for me to say...
So, the conversation could be just "Hey manager as per the new policy, I would like to be a full-time mum / dad for the next 12 months; will you arrange cover for me?" Is that right, no questions asked?
If Netflix's "unlimited vacation" policy actually meant that, they surely wouldn't need to publish a _second_ "unlimited" parental leave policy as well?
And then I'd backfill them. And when they got back, I'd have an extra engineer. Chances are by that point I'll be looking to expand the team anyway.
Ah, unlimited for a year. So no taking 30 years off after your child is born then.
That's simple - just keep having children. Time it right and you can take off permanently for decades.
I suspect many of these simply end up as less formal polices. However, there are large benefits to allowing for extended leave which few Americans actually use. It’s bad enough that some companies require people to take at least 2 weeks off every year.
[1] I say "some countries" but really it's only the United States and Papua New Guinea that haven't made it a legal requirement to have some form of paid maternity leave, among countries where data is available (e.g. North Korea isn't listed). Oman used to be in that list, but they left in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave and http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcom...
Unless you're claiming that the fact that most states don't offer any paid maternity leave (and almost certainly no paid paternity leave, either) counts as the kind of parity the GP was arguing for, I guess.
* "I'm suspicious of this."
* "No one takes any vacation at Netflix because of this."
* "Unlimited == None"
* "Peer pressure means that everyone works 52 weeks a year."
* "Without a PTO policy you can't cash out unused vacation. This is a rip off."
The thing I haven't seen in these statements are "I work at Netflix and this is what it is really like"...
Here we go - I work at Netflix (as an engineer) and this is what is really like:
* I'm pressured to take vacations.
* Managers are taught that they are examples to the teams therefore they must take regular vacations.
* I take more vacation now than I did when I had 2/3/4/5 weeks a year of stated, paid, vacation.
Questions I've answered about this: * Does my team fall apart when someone leaves for 4 weeks? No. They're adults and they know how to prepare to be away for a while.
* People must raise their eyebrows at you when you leave! No.
* You get called all the time right so you keep your laptop with you on vacation? No. They're adults and they know how to get along without me for a while.
* You must do tons of extra work when people go on vacation! No. People don't just drop stuff and run. They prepare, get stuff ready, postpone things until they're back, etc.
* Managers must "encourage" you not to take vacations. Nope, opposite.
* You feel irresponsible taking time off then. No I don't.
* People must leave for months a time right? The policy gets really abused! No, stop it. Assuming the extreme case must be the common case is silly. You're smarter than that.
* This can't possibly be true. You're a liar/shill/idiot! Next.
* This doesn't/can't work at my company. Therefore, it can't work at yours! Netflix corporate culture is likely very different than your company. Take a look at the culture deck presentation.
This type of policy likely can't work everywhere.
It may not work everywhere in the valley.
It does work here.
[edit] formatting fail
Would you mind clarifying on:
>"I'm pressured to take vacations."
Is that as a result of the following bullet around managers being taught to be a good example? Or is it because the day-to-day is stressful and the average hours are not even close to 9-5 so the pressure to take vacation is to combat burnout? (Not saying that is actually the case at Netflix, but I've heard of other places where the day-to-day was miserable, so they forced vacation to prevent burnout vs. solving the root issue of reducing overall workload, promoting true work/life balance throughout a given week, etc.)
Along with the that, one of the tenets of the business is "Freedom and Responsibility". If you can be responsible taking six months off then you are free to do so. I know people that take 4 weeks off at a time without issue. They plan their projects and commitments, communicate to their team, and make sure they're ready to be out for 4 weeks. Then, they leave for 4 week.
And how much is that?
When I worked at a BigCo (in Europe), our holidays amounted to around 10 weeks per year. Senior employees (with more than 10 years) would get even more (around 12). Which means you can take a week off every month. Now that is a lot of holidays. And these were enforced, you had to take all of these (for legal reasons, the company has to either pay the holidays to you, or force you to take them, and most of the time financial reasons dictate that it's better if they don't pay you).
Does unlimited vacation cover that?
Titles aren't that important at Netflix, so all engineers have the same title of Senior Software Engineer. (Similarly, there's no Senior Manager or Senior Director titles-- just Manager and Director.)
That said, most roles do require lots of experience. The individual job posts will list the expected number of years.
You're not automatically disqualified but you probably don't have enough experience, unless you worked a full time job in the past or had some really intense summer internships.
So, does that mean you take more than 5 weeks per year?
Now I can a week or two here and there, a few days off, a long weekend, etc. It's my job to plan it out, balance my work, and go. Thinking back on last year (without going over my calendar) I'd estimate I took between 5 and 6 weeks of total time off.
Any Netflix-level stats?
And ironically, Netflix doesn't have any data because they don't track vacation time, not even just for data purposes.
The best "data" I can offer is that everyone I knew there took ample vacation except one person, who hated his family and like the excuse of "I have to work".
Does Netflix publish any stats about vacation usage?
In that light I'm reading this as essentially setting the expectations bar very low, potentially to nothing, for a year.
Basically this policy and pretty much all of Netflix's policies come down to behaving like a professional and treating other people with the same expectations. If you lose that culture and either side starts to misbehave of course things could go very badly. But that culture is very important to Netflix and they are always working consciously to preserve it.
I haven't seen any official stats about vacation (as someone else pointed out, in order to do that they'd have to track it) but I've never known anyone to have a problem with it. I've seen quite a few people take 3 weeks or so at a time because they're going overseas, and in Silicon Valley that's pretty unheard of.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, I don't speak for the company, yada, yada. I'm just a rank and file employee interpreting what I know.
We can't publish stats about vacation usage.
That's because I don't know of a single manager here who tracks vacation usage. There's a general allergy to doing that, because that can lead to trying to manage that number and then the 'unmetered vacation' is no longer so unmetered.
I suppose I could, for my people, try to find all the out of office notifications, but that'd be a silly level of effort.
(There's no consistent process across the board for dealing with vacations, but to the best of my knowledge the typical way this works -- and the way it works in my own group -- is that an engineer will at some point probably mention to me that they're taking days off casually. I try to make sure it's clear to them that they're not asking for permission, and then move on).
I would love to see stats. I doubt they'll publish them. If people use less vacation than they used to (before the policy went into effect), then they would take a negative PR hit for it. If they used more than before, then it might encourage other employees to do the same.
I've had unlimited vacation at my last two companies. I've seen it abused as my previous employer but it's worked out great at my current job. I'm not "peer pressured" by my other coworkers like everyone here seems to think I would be. As long as I get my work done on time my manager let's me take a day off here and there for a long weekend. I tend to take friday's every once in a while for a weekend vacation. I'm leaving for 2.5 weeks pretty soon for an international vacation.
It's just easier on everyone. HR doesn't have to track how many days people are taking off and my manager and I don't spend time coordinating time off either. I simply put it in my calendar with enough notice and everyone is happy.
Why does everyone seem to think unlimited vacation forces people to "conform to peer pressure" and to work harder than they normally would?
The peer pressure is usually not explicit, it's implied by the ambiguity of the policy and the (unknown to you) true expectations from management. How do you know that your vacation time isn't secretly being counted against you? What if other people aren't comfortable taking it because they want a good performance review? This was definitely happening at the mid-size enterprise shop I used to work at where they couldn't wait to jump on the Unlimited PTO fad because they knew people would end up taking less. It's definitely anti-employee unless the company aggressively demonstrates that it's ok to take as much PTO as you like. With a more definite PTO policy, you don't have this issue as much.
Plus, it's just dumb and kind of insulting. It's not "unlimited," everyone knows that. Just set a reasonable policy so people don't have to guess.
1. http://www.paperplanes.de/2014/12/10/from-open-to-minimum-va...
2. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/07/14/unlimited_vac...
My $.02 is that it is totally dependent on company culture as a whole. In my case, the company treats employees like responsible adults and pays them to get a job done, not fill a seat. It is an incredibly family-friendly company overall, and they really get the notion that "life happens" and that "family comes first."
As a result, I take time off when I need it, or work from home, or take a half day, or whatever. As such, I've found that I'm overall more productive, and when I'm just not feeling productive, I don't try to force myself to do work. I haven't had pressure, but that's also because I'm responsible with coverage, and effective in the outcomes of what I do.
I wouldn't be surprised if it came up as a discussion point if I was letting things fall through the cracks left and right. And that is the trade-off to this kind of policy. Basically, when there is a minimum, people take the days (especially if they don't roll-over). That is a healthy forcing mechanism. If things aren't going well, and you don't take the days, or are a workaholic (guilty), you might end up taking net fewer days.
By contrast, the relative I referenced has a manager that holds a double standard. It is fine if the manager takes whatever time they want, but if my relative wants to take time off, they get push back, despite being exceptionally good at their job and getting shit done.
That's broken IMHO, and speaks to larger cultural issues I've heard about that company.
Bottom line, I think these policies can work, but they are intrinsically tied to how a company treats their employees in general, and it can also be specific down to individual team culture.
I know a case of a manager who came into a situation like this from a much more "traditional" big company, and had trouble adjusting to their team working from home or taking frequent days off on short notice. It was alien to them. For the most part they let it slide, but they definitely pushed back some times which didn't go over well with the employees who expected the culture to be upheld.
Really? What employer doesn't offer family leave on equal terms? Certainly, this used to be quite common, but every place I've seen for many years has explicitly been equal.
"Yahoo will give mothers after the birth of a child from 8 weeks to 16 weeks. Fathers of newborns will get 8 weeks paid leave. Google gives mothers five months off and fathers seven weeks off." http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-doubles-the-len...
Want to be a progressive company? Clearly define how long Paternity Leave is, make it generous, tell employees to take it and order managers not to harass employees that do. Don't do nebulous HR policies that just end up confusing people. Make it so that people can take a couple of 2 week vacations a year without worrying about their jobs, that would help too.
In other words the Mathew Effect in our economy and society is further reinforced. The Mathew Effect is "the other invisible hand", except that it is insidious rather than virtuous. And unlike Adam Smith's invisible hand, it is most often ignored or trivialized, if not outright denied, by pure free-market adherents.
"The United States remains the only member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, that does not guarantee mothers any paid time off from work after the birth of a new child. (see Figure 1) In fact, the United States is one of only four countries in the world—along with Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Papua New Guinea—where workers do not have the right to paid maternity leave." http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/I...
Why not just pay everyone more and those who want children can use the extra to save up to take a year off work?
In places where population growth is not a concern, such as in the U.S. where birth and deaths are at equilibrium, those who have and raise children and do it at least reasonably well are producing positive externalities[1]. And the better the children are raised and educated, the more the positive[2]. Policies like Netflix's thus benefit society as a whole.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive
[2] The flip side is that when children are raised poorly, be it the fault of the parent or the society that sets the parent up for failure, it turns negative.
But that's beside the point; we don't have Netflix pay for public schools, the state does that. Similarly Netflix paying for maternity/paternity leave seems silly to me.
Basically this. Why not just be open about it - those who don't end up working for the 'top' companies are at a considerable disadvantage.
This gives the power to these big corporations to bully their way around in all sorts of ways. The ridiculous Google hiring process is just one example of this.
Some see that as a form of slavery or extreme control, and they want the government to step in to prevent that.
Further, if companies didn't have to pay for that, that disproportionately means that lower-income workers may not be able to have kids while higher earners can because they can afford day care, only having one working parent, etc. That goes down a whole discrimination rabbit hole.
That said, while I am on the side of enforced maternity/paternity minimums, I respect that it is a complicated issue. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if this impacts the hiring of young women by startups. It wouldn't be entirely illogical to assume that a young woman has a higher likelihood of taking extended time off due to maternity leave. For an early-stage startup, that can be their death if a key employee leaves for several months.
(emphasis mine)
"Unlimited", as in "unlimited data until 1GB". Fascinating. What Netflix calls "unlimited" just means "normal" in a lot of Europe.
Is that accurate. Would that actually work? Is there any contract saying you won't take your year off and quit on your last day? OR is this all hinging on you getting a continued workload complete, and not just a year vacation.
LOL. Going to work is a vacation compared to taking care of an infant.
To be fair, of course the others would still be paid during this, but they will have to move to another company and take a hit in reputation.
So in the end, this is either great news for people with crab bucket mentalities, or for everyone else, a great way to get a year-long severance while finding a better place to work.
