Regarding Hunter's opinion on this subject, do you think that open vacation policies are the first step in evolving the way American business culture views vacations and perhaps we will soon adopt a more "european" approach that mandates vacation and emphasizes the importance of time off as a valuable asset, rather than an expense? There are many articles written on the subject and as we see companies such as Google, Twitter, and Square beginning to mandate holiday time off is this the direction companies will move towards?

I'm not sure where, but I've read that the US is the only country that doesn't mandate a single day of vacation time.

I think that open vacations (whether fully utilized by employees or not) can actually make for happier employees simply because they know the option is there. And of course, happier employees tend to be better employees.

I actually had an interesting conversation today with some friends at a company with no formal vacation limits. The idea is that you get unlimited vacation and have no set working hours with the expectation that you get all of your work done. It sounds nice in theory, but in practice at this particular company it has resulted in crazy burnout because people feel like they can't ever disconnect-- they either don't take vacation or they feel that they need to work through vacation (and work 24/7 even when they aren't off.) As with most all things, it all comes down to company culture.

I previously worked for a company that had an "open vacation policy," and it didn't have the effect I think it was meant to.

As many of us in the working world know, your work is never really "done" -- there's *always* something to do. When you add to that a culture of "he who is in the office the latest wins," and no mandated vacation time, no one ends up taking much. People who had been with the company for a while certainly took time off, but those just starting (who maybe felt they had to earn their stripes) didn't.

Now working in a place that earns me a concrete number of vacation days, I think it's good to be told that you need to take the time.