[addlepate]

I work for a company that offers unlimited vacation. It works, and I think it's great, and it's a major hurdle for me leaving to work somewhere else. It seems that even top companies offer maybe 3 weeks vacation, which just seems pitifully small to me these days. I don't wanna sit around trying to figure out how to optimally use my remaining 1.79 weeks of vacation time, I just wanna do a good job and take time off when I need or want to.

I see this argument about unlimited vacation pretty often, and I think the people making this argument think they are out-clevering a clever idea. But it comes down to the organization's culture -- if you work for a place where taking time off is encouraged, then you feel free to take vacations and others do too. If you don't work in that sort of place, it doesn't matter what your allotted vacation time is because you won't use it anyway. Or if you do, you won't enjoy it.

Here's the real problem in a tech context, though -- conferences. If you can't get away, you can't go to conferences, and you'll end up forfeiting the knowledge and outside perspectives you get from going to conferences. It's just not the same thing at all as learning on your own.

I mean, I'm not in a situation where I think my tiny company will one day be worth untold billions. Maybe in that situation you need to keep your nose to the grindstone. But I think that sounds like kind of a grim existence.

I will say this, though: if you have a balanced life to begin with, the idea of laying on a beach somewhere kinda loses its urgency. Vacations become less necessary to keep your sanity or whatever, which is great. But there still is the need to step away and see something different for a while. There is value in that, believe it.