my best vaca was straight out of college with accenture. consulting and travel, they give a generous amount as it is disruptive to your life. 5 weeks a year (200 hours). carry over was also allowed up to a bank cap of 240. so i could bring 6 weeks into a new year, and earn 5 weeks that year. anything over the cap was automatically paid out. i left in 2007.
i started working at a local model consulting firm. i forgot how much i had, 4 weeks? they had a bank and cap of 100 hours. over that you could not carry into a new year, and you would not get paid out. after 6000 billable consulting hours, with a consulting utilization rate of 80%, you were expected to earn a sabbatical in 4 years. 80%-85% is a typical utilization target for consulting; this means you are working for a customer not just sitting around doing internal things but kind of costing them money. close to 100% you'd earn this in 3 years. the sabbatical was 4 contiguous weeks off; you had to take them in a row. you were paid 75% normal rate, and this was separate from vaca. in 4.5 years i had something like 9000 billable hours, so basically 1.5 sabbaticals. if i didn't get my current job at ibm i was going to use the 1 i earned to go to eastern europe for a month. but i did get this job. i wasn't paying attention and lost some of my hours to the cap as well.
leaving both these jobs i got paid out money earned up for hours in the bank.
i'm at ibm now which supposedly doesn't track your time, and had articles i read about in the paper before that indicated as much and that they had not for years. my offer letter came with no specification for vacation time; i asked the HR person who said 3 weeks. i asked my boss who said they don't keep track. he was new; joining ibm via getting acquired. in reality he certainly didn't track or care; if i took vacation every week he wouldn't have had a problem if i was selling stuff and getting my job done. orientation said 3 weeks, and after a long time (10 years?) 4 weeks (i don't know if i'll even be here at the end of this year.) there is no bank, and it is possible but painful to move days from this year into the next year, if you have a manager that keeps track or cares. i should also note i have 5 personal holidays so it does kind of net out to 4 weeks. PH can't be carried into a next year though. and it is unfortunate that 1. the articles i read prior to joining are completely incorrect and 2. my current manger keeps a pretty watchful eye on what i have and what i use. my original manager i could have told "i'm going to be in germany next week" - working remotely or not working at all - and all would be good. i wouldn't write down i was taking vaca anywhere either, only the people who would need to reach me would know or care. my current one, that's simply not an option.
i actually am pushing as many vaca days this year as i can into the next, and already taking 2 international vacations by the end of may. i have a flight scheduled to go to buenos aires 9/21 with no return. i can move it (at a cost) up to january 15 in the future. we'll see how this all shakes out. on one hand my current vacation policy is a #fwp, on the other it's still the crappiest i've had since graduation.
this is the new york times article on IBM vacation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/nyregion/31vacation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
i'm actually curious if it even represented the state in 2007 accurately. my (new to ibm and getting acquired) boss told me to google and read about policy after i noted it was missing in my offer letter and this is what i read.
a bank that pays out, or a policy that actually worked as noted in that article would be nice options. unfortunately my policy works absolutely nothing like that in this article. under a different boss it is possible to get closer.