Obligatory Disclaimer: this post discusses unlimited vacation policies. My employer (Heroku) has one such policy. However, this post isn’t really specifically about Heroku’s policy; it’s about the concept in general, not any specific implementation. As is always the case, on this site I speak for myself, not my company or anyone else.

Many companies, especially tech companies, have adopted “unlimited” vacation policies — instead of a set number of days of paid time off (PTO), employees are told something along the lines “take as much time as you need”. For example, here’s what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on vacation, from his famous and influential slide deck on Netflix’s employment culture: