Also, current co-worker conversation is on flat-earth theory. Apparently another co-worker believes the world is flat, or at least likes making that argument.

Flat earth?!? Seriously??? Who ARE these people??

Do you work with Shaq or something?

Flat earth?!? Seriously??? Who ARE these people??

Yeah. That's really weird. I mean, aside from everything else, you can, you know, fly around it.

OTOH, Trump is President, so flat earth? Sure, why not.

I didn't pay too much attention to the "logic" of the arguments. I think it's a case of "How can I be clever and rile people up?" rather than actual belief.

Unlimited time off has gotten to be a pretty common perk in techlandia - the upside is not having to do the obsessive how many hours do I have left thing, and the companies that do it right really are more humane than most. The downside is that some companies abuse it - either by dangling it as a perk when workload is too high to ever take it, or using the fact that there isn't a fixed amount in the compensation package to avoid paying out accrued time when people leave.

Or punishing people who take "too much" time off in other intangible ways. I like having a set number of days that I am entitled to as a part of my overall compensation, because there is no question about taking too much time off.

I don't think my manager is the type to punish people for taking too much time. She's kind of a pushover.

I imagine this will have more of an impact on the foreigners who work in our US office, who take extended trips home.

Most American corporate culture sucks.

But really, use-or-lose forced me to change my perspective and get more serious about carving out time away, even if it was mostly long weekends or half-days here and there instead of true vacations. And it really does make a difference in terms of life balance/mental health.

This is the way I have things set up for the employees, it's use it or lose it, and with 6 weeks per year most of them actually don't quite use all of their vacation time. The idea is to encourage the to take the time off when we have some slow periods, because when we are busy, we are really busy.