Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program
techcrunch.comI'm highly suspicious of "unlimited" vacation or leave policies because the line between reasonable and not is still there, it's just way less visible and ultimately arbitrary, depending on your management chain and workload. I can't wait for this fad to die. Let's just have generous, well-defined leave policies that don't put the onus on the employee to figure out what is OK and what isn't.
"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.
Working at a SV company that recently instituted an unlimited vacation policy, I can't agree more.
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.
Netflix employee here. I've been at a company that changed vacation policy to unlimited from 20 days [Nvidia] and now at netflix which has the freedom and responsibility culture and unlimited vacation policy quite established in the culture and it's a different experience. During the interview I asked our VP what he thinks of the unlimited vacation policy and his response was along the lines of `When I got back to [far away country] to visit family I can't just go for a week, it takes me 2 days to get there and the rest of the week to recover, and again on the way back, so I take the whole month`. Having been here 2 years now, I can tell you it is quite common to take long vacations at netflix and no one has blinked an eye or tried to make me feel guilty when I take them.
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.
Why not just give everyone 6 weeks vacation a year, like a civilized nation, and meter it to avoid politics?
Because US policy is generally pretty worker hostile and few (definitely some) employers have any motivation to change that.
"not having PTO on the books" inherently makes it an anti-employee policy, since the employee no longer will receive anything upon leaving. In theory it could come out better for the employee, because they may get more vacation time than they would otherwise, but my experience has been that unlimited vacation means less vacation.
> since the employee no longer will receive anything upon leaving
Even when it replaces non-reimbursable PTO (i.e they already would not recieve anything), it feels lame.
In California there's no such thing; Vacation and PTO is earned as it is accrued and must be paid upon separation. Sick leave specifically does not fall into that bucket, but lots of places use a single PTO bank as the combo sick/vaca bucket which makes it all payable.
(I mention CA because that's where Netflix is HQ'd)
"the actual policy states "generally, this means about 4 weeks"
Sounds like they should just make it 20 days.
Agreed. I'm not sure if similar "unlimited" policies typically give a "generally this means" kind of statement, but it seems to nullify the point of such a policy right off the bat.
I think unlimited with a minimum is really the solution.
Without a minimum people are reluctant to take time off from what I've seen and read.
I've seen places that have that minimum be mandatory. As in, if you haven't taken a vacation by a certain time, they will insist, even go so far as restricting access until the vacation is over.
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.
In countries where vacation time is mandated by law, restricting access during vacation time, and ordering the employee to enjoy the vacation before its expiration date is common practice.
An employee who fails to take vacation on time or goes to the job during vacation time is actually a liability to the company.
It's also a somewhat hilarious contrast to those companies who take away your vacation time if you don't use it within a certain time period (often just 1 year).
"It's also a somewhat hilarious contrast to those companies who take away your vacation time if you don't use it within a certain time period"
This is pretty standard in the UK. If you're a permanent employee, your annual leave allowance (e.g. 4-6 weeks of holiday) covers a period of one year. If you don't take that leave during the year, you lose it (you're unlikely to get paid for the untaken leave).
Some companies may allow you to carry over some of that leave to the next year (e.g. a week) or may allow you to "sell" or "buy" some extra leave. However, this normally needs to be done at the start of the annual leave year so requires some pre-planning on the employees part.
At my previous employer, this seemed to be the case in our UK offices. 30 days a year, mandatory.
that's sort of just a UK minimum in general, IIRC (fwir, at least 20)
It also tests your office's bus factor.
We have a 10-day minimum here at Khan Academy, with unlimited PTO. It's also communicated to us that the average is 20-30 days.
Couldn't agree more that a realistic minimum, with some sort of "teeth" would be a great means of preventing burnout (and other issues that arise from unhealthy work/life balance).
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.
Or maybe it just should be a mandatory minimum number of hours of which PTO should be used either yearly or quarterly (with exceptions)? Unlimited seems a bit odd to me if you have people who often take as much PTO as they can then they're not really working are they? Just an open question.
Plus in some jurisdictions you have to track unused vacation days and either pay them out or bank them.
I agree.
Though, where I work we have unlimited vacation and there definitely seems to be peer encouragement to take _more_ vacation, not less.
I'd expect it to work much better when there's an unlimited vacation policy from the start and the founders make a determined effort to push the culture in that direction.
I'm highly suspicious of "unlimited" anything. In practice the term usually means "there is a limit, but we won't tell you until you've almost reached it."
Or worse, "there is a limit, but we won't tell you until you've gone over it and now there are marks in your file against you."
Or "there is a hidden limit we as employers have and there is another number that all of your co-workers have for you."
I'm suspicious that they don't specify how much vacation you get so you can't "cash out" the vacation time. I too have an unspecified amount of PTO at Adobe. Recently people have been cracked-down upon because they were taking a month off every year to go visit family back in India (without doing any work whilst there).
They cracked down when they got people using the benefit as advertised? Adobe is striking out all around these days.
Agreed. I'm a big believer in set vacation days. However I think untracked sick and personal days have merit. If you need to go to the dentist or stay home with your kid, do it. Similarly, I like core hours when you're expected to be in (crucial for meeting planning), but still have the flexibility to come in late or leave early.
I interned at Daimler-Benz in Germany. We had a 37.5 hour work week and "flex time" with core hours of 9:30-4:30. My boss made a big deal of explaining that, unless we were at a test track, that we were expected to abide both the core hours and 37.5/week. Core hours were 7hrs/day.
That meant we could work our 30 minutes flex per day in a totally flexible fashion...
I agree. My wife has "unlimited" vacation but taking even a single day raises eye-brows. A generous policy with an expectation to use the days is way better. This isn't even close to unlimited since I believe there's a 1 year window.
There might be a parallel with credit: Back when the maximum credit card interest rate charged in many states was limited to 18%, credit card companies tended to charge right at that, whereas when it was unregulated the interest was lower. [1]
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...
The biggest problem with "unlimited vacations" is that companies that offer these kind of policies cannot organize and compute their employees' workloads without using an arbitrary number of holidays, which will probably be set to the minimum.
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.
I'm split on the whole unlimited policy myself. Mostly because I've known people who have sneaked out of work early or sneaked in late. Maybe that could be classified as separate behaviors, but what prevents someone from doing the same thing on this sort of policy? The honor system? I have no doubts in a small firm it would work out because you notice, but in a big company I can't see this working out so much.
It's a tool, which can vary in effectiveness depending on how it's used, which ultimately ties into corporate culture. Unfortunately, I suspect that in isolation an unlimited vacation policy doesn't generally promote a healthier corporate culture so it's not as advantageous as it may seem.
Are you an AT&T (or other) customer? Confused about the meaning of the word "unlimited"?
Just take it at face value:
Why must words always have a hidden, contradictory meaning?adj. not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent.At least with things like internet use, I can mostly just pretend it's truly unlimited. What I want to use when it's truly unlimited is typically within the actual limit.
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.
Unlimited leave policies encourage employees to self-police and conform to peer pressure. At a place like Netflix I can imagine the result being that people end up taking less than the industry average.
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.
> I can imagine the result being that people end up taking less than the industry average
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.
It's a shame that canada has a better mat/pat leave standard but such a terrible (same as the U.S.) vacation standard.
Global standards include a government paid paycheck. No country has companies pay for a anywhere near a year.
> Unlimited leave policies encourage employees to self-police and conform to peer pressure.
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...
I agree. This is Netflix we are talking about.
"We want employees to have the flexibility and confidence to balance the needs of their growing families without worrying about work or finances ... Each employee ... works with their managers for coverage during their absences."
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?
I'm a hiring manager at Netflix. If one of my employees told me "I'm going to take the year off, see you in a year," I'd basically go "OK, have a great time with your kids. Send us a picture every once in a while."
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.
How about if it was, "I just had a kid, so I'm going to stay home to raise them, and I'll be back in 18 years, assuming they get into college"?
TFA says the policy is 1 year paid leave, with an option to work (toward promotion/bonus, i assume). not unlimited. Calling it unlimited is just nonsense.
Heh, you're right. I sort of glossed over that.
"With this in mind, today we’re introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child’s birth or adoption."
What kind of idiot writes this nonsense?
Funny enough, in Canada 1 year maternity leave is the standard for mothers. Paternity leave is less common, but it can usually be split from the mothers amount, or used in total if she doesn't work.
"With this in mind, today we’re introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child’s birth or adoption"
Ah, unlimited for a year. So no taking 30 years off after your child is born then.
> 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.
And yet virtually no ones does this.
After the first one or two most people start to fully understands the downsides of such a proposition.
A friend has 6 kids and I'm beginning to wonder what his company's pat/mat policy is...
So basically what Canadians and Europeans get?
It's paid by the government over there, not the company. Not sure about different places in Europe, but it's also not paid at 100% (at least in Canada)
In Canada, if you're on maternity/paternity leave, you're on Employment Insurance. The maximum insurable amount is 49K or 55% of your earnings. Maximum payout is around 28K per year.
As far as I'm aware in Canada you get 60% of your pay for a full year while on maternity leave. Many companies contribute the other 40% for at least 6 months of that time.
Mind you, Netflix has an unlimited time off policy, but today’s policy update is a clear reminder that the company wants the best talent.
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.
My company has a policy requiring that individuals take at least one contiguous week of time off a year.
You've got to wonder what would happen if someone tried to take that full year off, then was fired for taking "too much" of their "unlimited (up to a year)" time off after having a child.
If they're an at-will employee in the US, probably nothing.
There's always a catch.
That's not a catch. This is unlimited maternity and paternity leave. If you don't have a new child it's not maternity and paternity leave anymore, it's just leave.
Congratulations Netflix. I'm personally a big believer that equal maternity and paternity leave is crucial for future equality in the workforce, and Netflix have just set a great example to the rest of the industry. And a full year is excellent too. Hopefully other employers will take notice, or even better it becomes a legal requirement. Why it isn't already in some countries[1] continues to mystify–to my mind, a business should not be considered successful unless it can afford to, and does, treat its employees like human beings.
[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...
Saying "the US" is usually not helpful here, since many of these issues are simply not legislated at the national/federal level. Some states do have paid leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_leave_in_the_United_...
GP is talking about parity between maternity and paternity leave. Citing statistics about the existence (or, as is demonstrably more common, non-existence) of maternity leave is pretty orthogonal to that.
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.
GP is talking about parity between maternity and paternity leave.
Not when talking about the US, otherwise it wouldn't just be two countries, since many -if not most- countries in the world don't have any paternity leave at all (even in Western Europe - see Switzerland).
It's very encouraging to see some states have it, but an awful lot of that map is blank... I did see a news article recently about the Navy being quite progressive in this regard though (recently tripling its maternity leave time), which is also encouraging.
I've seen quite a few reactions to the Netflix unlimited PTO policy that are similar to the reactions to the new Maternity and Paternity policy. Many of these opinions are the likes of:
* "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
Thanks for posting this. I work at a place with a similar policy and in my experience, it's exactly as you describe.
Thanks for sharing an honest 1st party perspective.
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.)
My management chain encourages me to take time away from the office. Vacations, conferences, et al. I determine my workload, so, if the day-to-day is stressful, I need to change something.
Honest question: why don't people just leave for months at a time? Is it because everyone understands that "unlimited" is actually "one month a year, more or less" or whatever the actual amount is?
I can speak for me and others I know rather well - I like what I do. I enjoy going to work, finding things to fix, and fixing them. There are those things that I don't enjoy doing, but, they're not the majority by a long shot. So, six months away wouldn't be that attractive.
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.
Maybe that's the difference. No matter how cool the company is (unless it's, say, SpaceX) I have a hard time imagining that the work would be more interesting than whatever I could come up with to do on my own. Which is probably a big part of why I don't work for a big company.
Is it possible that in healthy environments where people are valued and value each other as people they are capable of behaving ethically and responsibly?
What's unethical about taking them at their word that vacation is "unlimited"?
Well, it conflicts for this thing called "work ethic", for one.
According to my dictionary, work ethic is "the principle that hard work is intrinsically virtuous or worthy of reward." I think only a tiny minority of programmers would hold to that.
> * I take more vacation now than I did when I had 2/3/4/5 weeks a year of stated, paid, vacation.
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?
This and other things have sold me into applying to netflix. However, looking at your job openings, EVERYTHING has "senior" on it or "director". Literally, go check it out: https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs Does that mean I'm automatically disqualified because I am only just graduating college?
Netflix employee here.
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.
> Does that mean I'm automatically disqualified because I am only just graduating college?
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.
> I take more vacation now than I did when I had 2/3/4/5 weeks a year
So, does that mean you take more than 5 weeks per year?
When I had 5 weeks ago I never took all of it. The environment didn't support it. It was very much the "here are 5 weeks of vacation we hope you won't use".
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.
I think the key point you make is that it depends more on the culture/environment than the policy. You can have a 5 week entitlement and still feel pressure not to take it. Or you might be able to take more than 5 weeks by going into "vacation debt" if your manager approves.
There's one distinction though: at least with a minimum entitlement you'll be compensated for unused vacation. (At least that's how it worked at a previous employer of mine.. it might even be the law?) So even if you feel pressure not to take it you'll get a nice payout. Not the case with "unlimited" vacation where nothing's on the books.
Plural of anecdote is not data unless you have data :)
Any Netflix-level stats?
Well I can 100% back up what OP said. So now you have two data points.
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".
Likewise, are all of these dismissals of Netflix's policy backed by data rather than anecdotes?
Doesn't Netflix already offer unlimited vacation? Parental leave isn't vacation, of course, but the cynic in me thinks this is another example of a case where a corporation can benevolently offer the moon while replying on peer pressure to ensure that no employee accepts what is on offer to anywhere near its fullest extent.
Does Netflix publish any stats about vacation usage?
Although the word "unlimited" gets thrown around in casual usage, of course no company is going to pay you forever if you never show up for a day of work. You've still got to get your job done at a high level perspective (say quarterly) but the idea is that management is not tracking every hour you show up to work or decide to take off; they're looking at results not attendance.
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.
(I manage at Netflix)
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).
Does Netflix publish any stats about vacation usage?
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.
Isn't part of their unlimited vacation perk a promise not to track how much vacation you use?
It's not explicit, but as I noted above that generally ends up being the case. Most other managers here with whom I've talked consider tracking vacation usage ... suspect and worrisome. It feels icky, so we don't do it.
I don't get all the backlash in these comments around the "unlimited" policies. Do any of the people opposing the unlimited policies have them in place at their own company?
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?
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.
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.
Some reports of companies where a change to unlimited vacation caused employees to take less time off:
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...
I currently have unlimited PTO and the experience is great, and have family working somewhere that their boss pressures them to not take it.
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.
I'm glad to see paternity leave included and given equal weight to maternity. So many employers don't offer this important benefit.
> I'm glad to see paternity leave included and given equal weight to maternity. So many employers don't offer this important benefit.
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.
The link references an article about yahoo that states yahoo and google give more time off for maternity leave (the article is from 2013 so it may have changed since then).
"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...
Google gives non-birth-mother parents 12 weeks of paid parental leave if they're the primary or equal caregiver during that time.
For example, if you work at Google and both you and your wife work full time, and then she has a baby (or you adopt) and you'd like to both stay home to be equal caregivers, you get 12 weeks of paid leave with basically no questions asked.
This is dumb. As others have pointed out, all it does is use peer pressure to decide what the "proper amount" of Paternity Leave is. Netflix is probably such a pressure cooker that when people need to and want to take Paternity Leave, they won't take it for fear of upsetting the group and losing their jobs. Managers will abuse it just to keep productivity up.
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.
"Netflix is probably..."
All you're doing is speculating. If people don't like these policies then they have the power to leave.
That is a contentless rebuttal. Obviously people choose among their options. That doesn't mean the options are optimal or efficient.
I don't think you know what you're talking about. As one who works for a company with an unlimited policy, I'm enjoying it, taking full advantage, and am getting things done.
How do you define "full"?
This is a laudable policy and I truly respect Netflix for doing it. But the sad truth is that the people who need this most are those on minimum wage or less, or those treated as "contract workers" so their employer can keep an even bigger cut of profits (e.g. Uber).
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.
This is a step in right direction.
"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...
I don't see why it's your employer's job to subsidize the birth of your children with paid maternity/paternity leave.
Why not just pay everyone more and those who want children can use the extra to save up to take a year off work?
For the same reason it makes sense for everyone to collectively to pay for public schools, including those who do not have kids.
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.
A country like the US would be better served by immigration than having its own children. You could choose only the best of the best in the world to grow your population instead of throwing the genetic dice.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
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.
Because in a down economy where jobs are hard to come by and corporations take advantage of employees any which way they can, this results in people being forced to choose between having a kid or keeping their job.
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.
In most countries (that you'd want to raise a family in), it is the job of the government to ensure employers make allowances for child rearing - an activity some consider indispensable.
Why doesn't the government pay for the maternity/paternity leave? It doesn't make any sense that it's Netflix's responsibility.
Because they recognize that finding a job while having to take care of a 1 year old is a bit stressful, I think.
They could offer a year's unpaid sabbatical to their employees, parents or not.
This is what I think of Unlimited vacation or otherwise: There should first be a mandatory vacation time, then an unlimited option beyond this mandatory time. Plain and simple.
I would find a mandatory vacation to be intrusively big-brotherish and -- while I can't guarantee I wouldn't work at a place that required it -- it'd be an overall negative in my retention. I'm a fully-formed adult. How about letting me manage my time off?
> With this in mind, today we’re introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child’s birth or adoption.
(emphasis mine)
"Unlimited", as in "unlimited data until 1GB". Fascinating. What Netflix calls "unlimited" just means "normal" in a lot of Europe.
That seems great. Is there any protection from abuse? It seems that one could say "See you next year" with this and get a year-long vacation.
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.
Having a newborn is not a year long vacation. While it's possible that some employees could abuse a year of maternity/paternity leave by quitting after the one year term, I imagine this move will greatly increase company loyalty amongst new, potential and existing parents.
Having a newborn isn't a task put against you. You elected for it. Don't perpetuate the idea that some credit is owed to parents as if it's not a year long vacation.
Nowhere did I say it was a task put against you or that something is owed to parents. This is a perk being offered by the company, just like free lunches or monthly team outings.
It's a very attractive perk for couples looking to have a family and will like engender loyalty within that cohort.
> It seems that one could say "See you next year" with this and get a year-long vacation.
LOL. Going to work is a vacation compared to taking care of an infant.
Dad of 11 month old. Can confirm.
Dad of six week old. Laughs hollowly at the OP.
I have ten-month-old twins, and I took six weeks of paternity leave when they were born (I don't work for Netflix). And I love my kids to bits, but by that point, getting to come to work every day felt more like a vacation than being at home did.
Several people I know have taken care of newborns, and the idea that they were taking a "vacation" is ridiculous. It's a 24-hour-a-day sleep-deprivation-heavy job.
A year of maternity or paternity leave would be pretty reasonable, I think. Taking the full year would not be abuse, it would be following the letter of the policy.
In practice it's unlikely to be a problem. Step 1 is that you just avoid hiring people who aren't intrinsically motivated anyway. The rest pretty much takes care of itself.
just to reinforce the point: "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." How is this possible great USA?
In contrast, I hear Amazon has no paternity leave (or maybe its like 2 days or something?)
when will there be a 'unlimited' salary?
The way this is going to pan out, is that the House Slaves and Tools who love to crab bucket and compete with others will not take any maternity/paternity leave, and politically push out those who would take a reasonable amount of leave.
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.