I've said it before and I'll say it again, unlimited days off (or "open") and zero days off are identical.
If you have unlimited vacation people are inclined to take less and people respect the vacation you take less ("as you can always take more!").
Here's a study[0] (PDF) called "Overwhelmed America: Why Don’t We Use Our Earned Leave?" It is biased (travel association) but interesting nonetheless.
According to this study[1] you need at least ten consecutive days of leave to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones. In "europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to American's "long weekends."
A lot of these "unlimited" places have a "as long as your work gets done" policy, meaning you can take tons of short days off or afternoons off, but almost no extended holidays (e.g. travel abroad, out of state, etc).
As someone who works for a company that offers unlimited vacation, I don't think its as cut and dry as you make it, although I see where you are coming from.
I think the success of unlimited vacation really depends on the company, your manager, your peers, and you. That is a lot of things to get right, but if everything works out, I think unlimited vacation is really great. At least for my team, I think everyone shares the feelings that vacation is important, and people are good about taking it.
As you say, I do end up taking a lot of random days off, but that is in addition to longer vacations. I think thats the real advantage to unlimited vacation (when done correctly). If I want to take a random day or two off to take care of a backlog of errands, I just do it without a second thought. I don't have to worry about all these randoms days eating into my 1-2 week trips I have planned in the spring or fall or the 2 weeks around the christmas with my family.
Having said all that, this is my perspective and I am sure that there are probably people even within my own company that don't feel this way. The idea of a minimum policy sounds interesting. I wonder if that would lead to some people taking less because its tracked, but with other people taking more because they don't feel pressure not to.
I found that communication in projects and time-off is important. A company I worked for had unlimited PTO and it worked because we all planned accordingly. I took a three week trip to Europe in 2013, no one else took anything more than a day off when I was gone. My other colleague took a three week trip early in 2013, I didn't take any time off at all.
When we can, we also managed remote work. So I would go back to Chicago for one week stretches to hang with my family but I would work during the day. Even though it was a trade off (work remote or wait until another time to go back) it wasn't nearly as bad. We also communicated with business when we would be gone which really help manage our backlog.
As a team we communicated our time offs to each other. LIke we would go into each other's office (since my team was small, there's three of us) and have discussions as to when we would be gone so we each knew and expected it. It also helped us manage our sprints.
Unlimited PTO requires a bit more dancing and managing than having it tracked, but honestly, the pain is worth it. I never had to worry about being sick because if I'm sick, I'm encouraged to take time off to get well. It made it less stressful and, coincidentally, could de-stress faster in my vacay than I did when I had limited PTO.
problem with minimums is people like myself and certainly countless others will forget about it till end of year, then take off the entire month of december because they "must".
I would say this year would probably be around around 4-5 weeks, with a 1 week and a 2 week break mixed in there plus a bunch of random days off.
This is a ways off, but in Jan 2016 I will probably be taking even more, because I have a 3 week long trip with my wife to visit her family in the Philippines + plus typical holiday time off and random days off.
In "europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to American's "long weekends."
To that point, if you've ever wondered (as I have) about the differences in philosophy on the topic of vacation between America and Europe, you may enjoy this paper [1]. It attempts to examine those differences. It's entitled "Europeans Work To Live and Americans Live To Work (Who is Happy to Work More: Americans or Europeans?)."
Interesting paragraph: "This is the first study to test empirically whether working more makes Americans happier than Europeans. This study suggests that as the number of work hours increases, Americans become happier about life than Europeans. The purpose of this study was to document this relationship. More research is needed to find out why working more makes Americans happier than Europeans. I just note here one possible explanation: Americans may work more because they believe more than Europeans do that hard work brings success."
I'm American, and I love taking time away to recharge. I'm fortunate enough to be able to completely break away and unplug. I don't work while I'm on vacation, and I don't check email either. Again, I'm quite fortunate, as I know a lot of people simply can't do that for various reasons. I do wish our culture placed more emphasis on the importance of down-time. It just makes so much intuitive sense to me, and my personal productivity seems to corroborate the intuitive feeling that I have about the topic.
I think for many Americans, work is life. You get up, you spend an hour in the commute to work, you spend your 9 hours at work, you spend some more because overtime is expected, you commute home, you watch some reality television and go to bed.
At work you have made friends, you spend time browsing the internet, following up on your hobbies, etc. This is where life ends up happening. 8 hours consumed by sleep, or the avoidance of sleep, 3 hours in the process of getting ready and getting to and from work, 10 hours of work. When you're at home you're too tired to do much in the way of hobbies, so instead you do the few things that you're not going to get away with doing at work, maybe you have a drink, play video games, watch TV. But hey, maybe your work has a facility to let you play video games and watch TV anyways when you're working overtime. So instead of getting home and doing things for 3-4 hours, you stay at work with your coworker "friends" and spend your time knowing that if you want to take a break, there is a break room right there. You don't use it for those 4 hours, but you know you can, you know, if you weren't so busy, or if you really need it.
Contrast that to somewhere like Germany, which is where this article was written. Work days end early. The culture in Germany is not to live at work. Work is for working. You come to do a job, not to have interpersonal relationships with co-workers. The average work week in Germany is the lowest of all OECD countries at 25.6 hours per week according to a 2011 study.
I think the reason that Americans live to work is not because of something specific to Americans, but rather that workplace culture demands that Americans spend so much time at work that their work BECOMES their life. I mean, if you are working 80 hour weeks and commuting, and actually sleeping, it's impossible to have a life outside of work, but we need to have a life, so that life takes place at work.
So when Americans work more, they see their associates more, they are in the environment that they're most familiar with, they are basically at their home. On the other hand, when Germans work more, they are away from home.
I guess the question is which is better for people, and which is better for industry. Germany's industry is doing well, and I think that with shrinking demand for human resources, a more efficient, but shorter individual work week is a better long term scenario. It would be a big cultural shift for something like that to happen in the US though.
On a somewhat related note, one of the things that irks me the most (working in Germany) is that I have to take a 30 minute break after 6h of work and another 15 minute break after 9h and can't work more than 10h without someone signing off on it. I can't even opt out of this.
This seems totally broken, especially since you are not technically supposed to take other breaks without signing out of work. As someone using the Pomodoro Technique I just don't fit into the system. I obviously don't consider those breaks as work-breaks but rather as stuff that makes me more efficient overall and thus benefits my employer greatly.
It blows my mind that there's even work time regulations in pure "knowledge worker" fields. I tend to trust people to be interested in optimizing their workflows however they see fit.
Note: 40h is the standard work week here, we get 30 days of paid vacation (which is handled very differently in the US).
Yeah that's obviously the reasoning behind it however the specific structure with the forced 15 minute break as well has lead (unintentionally I assume) to a structure of work 9h on Monday-Thursday and 6h on Friday for most employees. So basically everyone generates roughly 2h of OT every week then takes a Friday off once they hit 6 (or saves up).
And I tend to eat a "power breakfast" and smaller snacks (apple etc.) during the day so I can live with a later lunch break. However if you don't check out after 6h the system automatically checks you out. So technically you can't just take the lunch break after 7h (you can take it after 5h).
In practical terms it's a nonissue really but the overall design just upsets me for some reason :D
er that's a tea break and these sort of breaks are supposedly for the blue collar workers (eg working on the line at audi ) if your salaried you are supposed to be adult enough to manage your own time.
Surely you could go self-employed with contract in the same company. This way you can follow your own path while everybody else can use what os provided by the law. You would also earn more per hour to compensate for holidays you would normally be entitled to.
> This seems totally broken, especially since you are not technically supposed to take other breaks without signing out of work.
That really depends on your employer. Plenty of companies have Vertrauensarbeitszeit (~trust-based working time) where nobody writes down when or how long employees worked. However, it's usually seen as a bad thing because people tend to over-correct on the breaks they took and under-correct for the overtime they worked.
> Contrast that to somewhere like Germany, which is where this article was written. Work days end early. The culture in Germany is not to live at work. Work is for working. You come to do a job, not to have interpersonal relationships with co-workers.
Apparently I need to move to Germany because this is exactly how I work and like to work.
I'm an American, and this is true for me.... /but/ -
It's true because I wanted it to be. I look around at my artistic friends, and I see that they live what they do, and I wanted that. It only works because I (mostly) love what I do (and the stock); so now, "work-life balance" means finding things I want to do that don't have anything to do with work, rather than making sure I have the time to do them.
To reiterate: Working more generally makes me happier because I'm doing something that I love, and that I can take (some) ownership of.
> This study suggests that as the number of work hours increases, Americans become happier about life
This makes sense. From a very early age, Americans are inundated with the idea that their worth is tied to if they work hard and have a job. Those that don't have a job or those that aren't perceived as working hard are below them. The worst thing they can say about someone is they are lazy.
I work from home 2-3 days a week. My in-laws believe I goof off and play games (which they also disapprove of) or watch TV all day. Nothing will dissuade them of that belief unless I change to working at the office for long hours.
I think one of the most important points in the article is that forcing people to take vacation, and encouraging them to be completely unavailable, means that the company must learn how to survive the absence of a team member. It forces you to reduce the bus-factor, and this is critical.
I ask my team members to take at least 20 days off per year (we also have an unlimited vacation policy) and I'll be using this argument to encourage them to switch off and enjoy their breaks.
Just to be that guy ... it actually _increases_ the bus-factor (which is good). The _higher_ the bus-factor the more people you can loose before your company goes under.
Pedantic niggling aside, I completely agree this is a huge benefit to the organization.
How do you do this without creating a bloated organization?
For example if you have 20 team members and expect for 2 to be gone for some kind of vacation at any point. When all are at work you have a 10% inefficiency.
I wonder if it would be more effective to have have stretches of intense work (4-6 months) with long rest periods (1-3 months) between. This would minimize the operational switching frequency, though it would take longer probably.
Let's assume that no engineer is getting less than 2 weeks of vacation off a year on paper. Most of these articles are written by people giving 4 weeks of vacation. So we're talking about the difference between a 'stingy' vacation policy and a generous vacation policy being 2/52 weeks in the year.
If people gain more than 4% productivity by avoiding burnout, you net win by giving people more vacation. I would argue that net productivity gain from letting people de-stress is way more than 4%, though I have no numbers to back that up.
What's wrong with bloat? Isn't profitability the goal, not efficiency? If it's best achieved by having more resources so you continue to be profitable when one resource is unavailable, then have more resources. This is as true of hard drives and fire exits as it is of employees.
Expanding on a point by brational, see Tom Demarco's book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency. It makes the argument that if your goal is long-term profitability, you must have some excess capacity in human resources at all times. http://amzn.com/B004SOVC2Y
Slack is a fantastic book. If you're even the least bit unclear about why/how TFA thinks that minimum vacation is a good idea, then you'll find this a fantastic read.
I manage a software engineering team, and there's always more work to do - we have a big icebox full of things we wish we could get done. I imagine this is pretty normal in my field, and I can't imagine that we'll reach a point where we're overstaffed when people aren't on vacation. For other teams it may be the case that you end up overstaffed; I don't have much experience outside of my field.
I, personally, like your suggestion of stretches of intense work followed by long breaks, but I think that the reality of family life, hobbies, interests, and other commitments make that pretty unrealistic to impose on a team. You'd also have to be very committed to making sure that the work periods are strictly bounded, and it could be very tempting to slip and say "just another few days" / "just another week" and end up working to breaking point.
Well the former is structural, the latter is behavioral, so there is difference in kind. Said another way, you can't get work from a ghost, but you can find incentives/realign people so they are more productive.
Or quit thinking of them as resources or machines that were advertised to you as 100% efficient for 8 hours 5 days a week and realize that the 2 hours in a given 8 hour day spent reading HN or browsing YouTube _are_ part of the 100%. No one can walk into an office and be at 100% efficiency within microseconds. Windup and spin down time is part of the cost of running an organization. Not only is there windup/spindown at 9AM and 5PM, but at 12PM and 1PM, and probably at around 3 or 4PM in addition.
If someone is only putting in 2 hours of efficient work a day, then maybe you should start thinking about shuffling them within or out of the organization depending on the position and level they're filling, but asking about 10% inefficiency due to "missing bodies" is equivalent to complaining about getting shorted a penny from the barista. It's literally pocket change, get over it.
If you ask them, most developers will have something about the current codebase they would like to improve, or a 20%-like project that might improve the products. You can have them do this during times of over-availability.
Inefficiency in the short term, yes, but it still leaves you in a position where a single surprise (an accident, a firing) can erase _all_ the efficiency gains.
It's the same way that buying extra hard drives for backups is "inefficient," since you rarely use those drives, but still far more efficient than recreating all of your lost data from scratch.
I like the idea of personnel redundancy, but my guess is employees don't like that and it's not really best for tackling tough problems because you increase your workforce 2x.
The only way to be able to quantify "10%" is if you have the ability to predict the future perfectly. If you don't have any stockpiled bandwidth you will have big issues if anyone leaves the company for any reason, and you will also not be able to easily take advantage of any unexpected opportunities that come your way. I wouldn't call it a bloated organization, more like a flexible organization.
No mechanical system is ever exploited at 100% capacity. The elevator in your building never has to carry more than half of what it's absolutely capable of. Any kind of building is built with materials that can withstand a lot more than the average load. Your computer never has to work at full capacity - I doubt the CPU's temperature ever reaches past 70C, far from the ~100C at which it can still perform reliable calculations, but also well clear of the ~105C at which the magic smoke escapes.
Smart people don't exploit systems operating at their absolute limits.
That mean's it's NOT bloated. If you have a bus factor of 1 anywhere, that means your organization is in pretty significant danger. People die, get sick, quit, or otherwise get unable-to-work'd ALL THE TIME.
The biggest part of unlimited vacation is really the culture of your company. If your company is filled w/ workaholics who look down on taking time off, it won't work. I'm an engineer at HubSpot and we have an unlimited vacation policy and for my team, it works great. Everyone is great about taking time off, we are happy for people when they do, and everyone gets their work done and is responsible. Everyone trusts each other on the team and things work out fine.
More than the sheer # of days for vacation, having the flexibility to take a day off to hang with the kids or make a spontaneous trip to Iceland (happened for some coworkers) is pretty awesome.
I actually just went through my calendar and counted about 31 vacation days. I'm surprised I took so many but never did I feel like I was shorting my team in any way and felt any guilt for it. This includes a 10 day trip to Europe and basically all of Christmas -> NYE off.
Most seem very skeptical and cynical of unlimited vacation, but it's more about the culture than the policy itself.
Totally agree.
In our case, we have people who are workaholics, and our solution was to make them take at least 2 weeks/year and make sure that people are taking breaks when needed/wanted to spread the culture that while work is important, this is your life, enjoy it. Having outside of work hobbies is extremely important to a healthy you.
To be fair in most big tech companies people take all of Christmas->NYE off without reporting it as PTO. Unless your manager is literally nazi, marking it as WFH and sending a couple emails a day qualify as doing work.
A lot of these "unlimited" places have a "as long as your work gets done" policy, meaning you can take tons of short days off or afternoons off, but almost no extended holidays (e.g. travel abroad, out of state, etc).
My friend works at a company with unlimited vacation and they pay you $1000 for every full week you take off.
As weird as it may seem, in Mexico we have the same deal, although if I remember correctly, by law we get a 25% extra pay on vacation days.
Some places use this as a benefit to lure employees. For example I worked at a place where I got 75% extra pay on vacation days.
The downside is that getting more than the minimum mandated by law (6 DAYS a year) is not that common. For example, for that place that gave 75% extra, I had I believe 10 (or 12) days a year, and it was actually above industry standard.
Edit: To answer one of the posters below, I believe someone once explained to me, that at least in Mexico, the extra pay is supposedly to make it easier for families to actually go out of town and spend money, so it becomes a factor that helps drive the economy. I.e. if you have vacations but no money, then you won't spend anything and ultimately won't take vacations. This way you get vacations and also have money to spend during those days. At least that's how it's supposed to go.
I don't know about Sweden but in Finland we get a nice bonus after you come back from your vacation.
This was introduced because in the 1960s and 70s a lot of skilled workforce (several %, tens of thousands of people) emigrated to Sweden, in particular to work for Volvo, Saab and other industries. Workers had their full (4 weeks or so) summer vacation and then left for Sweden, where they were offered a house, a car and a relocation package.
This pattern kept repeating for a few years, so to counter the wave of emigration, the after-vacation bonus was introduced.
I also do not know why but I've read about encouraging people to take days off has effects like people who are ill taking care of themselves and not spreading a cold around the office and ruining the whole work place attitude.
Paid, paid (paid2) vacations: We’re so serious about you being recharged that we go above and beyond your regular paid vacations; you’ll get an extra $1,000 when you take a week off of work and fully “unplug” (no work, no exceptions!).
Depending on your base pay, I guess it could be around 8-12% for most developers.
Unlimited vacation doesn't work. Where I work, all it resulted in was our project manager taking a week off at the same time that us developers were pulling 10pm nights and coming in on that weekend to get a feature done that he had promised an unrealistic deadline for. God help us if one of the people who actually builds things had wanted a vacation during crunch time. In 14 months of working there full time, I've managed to take 6 vacation days, and that's more than what most of the dev team got.
Then again, that's what you sign up for when you work for a startup with a culture that values time at work above pretty much everything else. The only dev who got a real promotion in that time was the guy who pulls 10 or 11-hour days every day, to prove his 'dedication' to the company. And no, he hasn't taken any vacation either.
> According to this study[1] you need at least ten consecutive days of leave to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones.
That can't be true across the board. I haven't taken a vacation in 3 or 4 years by that definition. And frankly, I feel fine. I work with awesome people solving cool problems and love what I do. I've had friends tell me I should take a vacation, and my response is, "why?" I enjoy my time at the office and I enjoy my leisure activities away from the office. I typically work more than 40 hours, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes I'll put in 12-hour days for awhile, but I always make sure to get some recharging time. The longest "vacation" I've taken in the last 4 years was something like a long Thursday - Monday weekend. Those leave me feeling plenty recharged and ready to get back. I can even get that from a lazy Sunday where I just stay home and relax.
If a billion dollars dropped into my lap tomorrow, I probably wouldn't do much differently. I might think about taking some time off, but I'm working on things I actually want to accomplish. Even if I did just take off on an extended vacation, I'm pretty sure I'd want to get back to my current job before too long. Part of me might want to work fewer hours since I wouldn't need the money, but that would probably slow down my rate of progress on the things that I want to accomplish.
The fact that you're an outlier doesn't mean that the findings of the study are invalid. There are lots of people who are genuinely good at their jobs, but who would do something completely different with their lives if a billion dollars dropped into their laps. Those people stand to gain much more from a long vacation than you do.
Yes, I realize that...hence my first sentence "That can't be true across the board." But people tend to cite these things like they're a fundamental truth about humans. I think the generalization is less useful than it might seem.
> That can't be true across the board. I haven't taken a vacation in 3 or 4 years by that definition. And frankly, I feel fine.
How do you know you don't feel much less fine than you would with an otherwise-similar job and occasional 10 day leaves? Being accustomed to something as normal doesn't mean that it doesn't make you feel substantially worse than you would in some other situation.
Yikes, I burned out something fierce after a year of solid Mon-Fri 12 hours days - just started my awesome December vacation and I'm loving it. Starting 2015, I'm aiming for a 30 hour work week at most. I'm assuming you don't have a family?
Agreed. If you're serious about letting people take vacation, give six weeks. We've seen in this very thread that "unlimited" just turns into the 2-3 weeks you'd get anyway.
Having X number of days off for vacation per year is an explicit contract. Company culture can still be broken enough to not allow you to use those days, but in most cases the expectation is that the vacation days you've been given are yours to use to the fullest (making reasonable accommodation for scheduling, etc).
"Unlimited" vacation is an implicit contract. You can take off as many days as is considered acceptable by the company or team culture. This number is not something you can know before you start your job, and it is something that can change as workplace culture evolves.
The "unlimited" part is also a load of bosh. If the company culture isn't completely sick nobody is going to begrudge you using up your X vacation days per year. But if you take more vacation than average at a place with "unlimited" vacation you run the risk of looking bad and suffering attendant consequences. (I hate that "looking bad" is even a thing apart from actual effectiveness, but unfortunately it's something we still have to worry about...)
At work (http://cafe.com/careers), we have unlimited vacation that I've definitely been taking advantage of. In addition to not worrying about random days off here and there (which have easily added up to a week or two a year), I'm completely comfortable taking off to Shanghai for a month.
At Trulia we have an unlimited vacation policy and it really does work for us. People routinely take extended, foreign trips of two or more weeks. This year I will be taking 4 weeks off in total, 2 on proper vacation and one week each with my family and my wife's.
So take this as an anecdotal data point. Oh, and come work for Trulia, we need great iOS and Android engineers desperately.
I don't find 4 weeks to be a "lot" of vacation time, but I think the hundred million workers or so who have 2 weeks or less every year would disagree that 4 weeks is "standard." On top of that I took 2 weeks of remote work.
That said, if you're an awesome engineer (especially mobile -- Trulia has about a dozen mobile apps to build out), and you want 10 weeks every year, lets talk. I don't hire for the mobile teams so I can't speak for them but I am certain that would at least love to talk to you.
But you've highlighted the problem I have with "unlimited" vacation. If I have to negotiate for 10 weeks, then I don't have unlimited, I have 4 weeks with possibly some extra but I don't know how much extra until i'm told off for taking it
No negotiation is required. The policy is 'we don't track vacation days' and that would be just as true for you looking for 10 weeks as it is for me who took 4. I'm not a benchmark-setter (or follower) I just happened to take 4 weeks so that's what I shared.
That said, you can't expect it to be considered in a vacuum. If you want to take 2.5 months of vacation, your work does need to be unimpeachably strong, and your dedication needs to be obvious to your teammates.
I think that depends on where you're from. Being in the US, my first job gave me the "standard" 4 weeks off, and I thought I was being spoiled by it. My current company only gives us 2 weeks off(ok, plus a week for Christmas but I only sort of count that..), and most people I know only get two weeks.
I think many companies dive head first into unlimited vacation policy without really thinking things through. I had a job where we had it and it somehow worked (despite the CTO's inability to follow any kind of project management structure).
Our PTO's were scheduled ahead which was policy. So if you took a two week trip, you filed it three months in advanced. You let your team, your PM, and business know you'll be out of town so they can manage expectations (e.g., less work). Our sprints were based on how much work we can do based on the existing resource. My team had a team of 3 so we never scheduled PTO's were two or more people were off for any prolonged period of time. Sometimes schedules collide, but we do our best to be transparent about big trips so that we can all plan accordingly.
You know, it worked well. I'm glad it worked well for you at Trulia (which, btw, helped me butt loads when I was shopping for a home, so thanks!). I'd work for you guys except I'm not a mobile dev, I like where I'm at, and I'm not looking to move. :)
I'm curious to read about what it means to "de-stress" from work but I think you forgot the [1] citation.
Maybe this is not common, but if I worked at a company with "unlimited vacation", I would definitely take extended vacations occasionally. I think as long as you timed them appropriately and gave advance notice, you could easily take a week or more off.
I work for a Boulder tech startup with an unlimited vacation policy.
Last year I took a month in Japan and South Korea, I just returned from two weeks in Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong. I also spent two weeks in Europe earlier this year, plus some odd long weekends and a planned week away around Christmas. I think my total for 2014 comes to around six weeks.
We also have a policy of working one month a year remotely from anywhere and the company pays part of the expense. I'm heading to Hanoi next year to take advantage of that. Our CEO/co-founder took his family to Australia for a month.
It is compared to a "long weekend" as described in the parent comment. Although it would be nice, taking a month off every year would be grail-status vacation time for a US employee I think.
Twenty years ago, back in England, I had 5 weeks of vacation and standard public holidays. I moved to the United States and after twenty years I have "progressed" to zero vacation days and all public holidays as unpaid time off.
And if you have unlimited days off, and your superior refuses to give you a day off and you take it anyway, the same thing happens. And in some company cultures, just asking for vacation gives you a bad rep, because you're not dedicated enough to the company.
The solution at my office has just become that nobody asks anymore. Who wants to be the first to stick out their neck?
A bit hyperbolic sure, but not that far off. If you're given zero days off you will "get sick" more often, or whatever politically/structurally acceptable way to take time off.
Which is remarkably similar to what happens at a lot of "unlimited vacation" companies anyways - you take time off only when it can be "justified" beyond reproach.
In the EU, all workers are entitled to minimum 4 weeks paid time off per year. If the employer is able to control your time, then that doesn't count as holidays.
If you have unlimited vacation people are inclined to take less and people respect the vacation you take less ("as you can always take more!").
Here's a study[0] (PDF) called "Overwhelmed America: Why Don’t We Use Our Earned Leave?" It is biased (travel association) but interesting nonetheless.
According to this study[1] you need at least ten consecutive days of leave to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones. In "europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to American's "long weekends."
A lot of these "unlimited" places have a "as long as your work gets done" policy, meaning you can take tons of short days off or afternoons off, but almost no extended holidays (e.g. travel abroad, out of state, etc).
[0] http://traveleffect.com/sites/traveleffect.com/files/Overwhe...