> Instead, the benefit is that you don't have to think about it.
But that benefit is in no way realized. The opposite is clearly true. With a set number of vacation days, it's incredibly easy to know how many days I have remaining, and it's fairly easy to pre-plan extended vacations while leaving some days for spontaneous breaks. With "unlimited" days, I have to essentially guess whether or not I'm "abusing" the system.
Compare it to another employment benefit: salary. What if a company offered "unlimited salary"? You could say it's great, because you don't have to think about whether you can afford a neat guitar you spontaneously found on craigslist, while still being able to pay for rent and other fixed costs. But with a fixed salary, assuming you have a decent job with a "living wage," it's pretty easy to balance how much you spend on fixed costs with how much disposable income you want for spontaneous purchases.
I think most people would have no problem recognizing the ludicrousness of an "unlimited salary" policy.
For me this comparison falls apart because I've seen very few companies as generous with vacation days as with salary, compared with the two companies in a row I've now been at with unlimited policies. I rarely see more than 3 weeks offered for new employees, and many feel that that's generous ("it's more than two"). So I'm not comparing it to a generous metered vacation policy, I'm comparing it to what I usually see for "peer"-type roles. And I haven't had any trouble whatsoever taking more than 3 weeks, or seen other people get into hot water over it. :)
So the benefit is definitely realized for me. I don't think about it. I couldn't tell you exactly how many days I took off with all the incidental ones here and there, but I can tell you it's more than I was allowed to at my first job because there were enough larger, multi-day trips in there.
I would have no problem if they instead switched it to, say, five weeks + a separate generous sick time pool, but at that point the math also gets more messy with accrual and all since that money would be coming from somewhere... and frankly, I like that I don't make relatively less money because someone else was a workaholic and accrued a bunch of vacation they never take but will eventually get paid for, if I can be at my most productive with a healthy amount of time off.
It is a downside, though, in that it may require some more negotiation skills to make sure you get a fair amount of time off. However, I've also seen people get denied time off at certain times under metered plans—they're no panacea for "but it's crunch time for the project, you can't take off now!" tactics.
There's a solution for that, though. Just like a minimum wage, allow for a minimum vacation. IIRC Europe does exactly this, specifying a given number of days that non-temporary workers have to be given off.
But that benefit is in no way realized. The opposite is clearly true. With a set number of vacation days, it's incredibly easy to know how many days I have remaining, and it's fairly easy to pre-plan extended vacations while leaving some days for spontaneous breaks. With "unlimited" days, I have to essentially guess whether or not I'm "abusing" the system.
Compare it to another employment benefit: salary. What if a company offered "unlimited salary"? You could say it's great, because you don't have to think about whether you can afford a neat guitar you spontaneously found on craigslist, while still being able to pay for rent and other fixed costs. But with a fixed salary, assuming you have a decent job with a "living wage," it's pretty easy to balance how much you spend on fixed costs with how much disposable income you want for spontaneous purchases.
I think most people would have no problem recognizing the ludicrousness of an "unlimited salary" policy.