At GitLab we encourage you to take your 'unlimited' vacation
Give examples of people taking vacation. Give examples, include both IC's and management. Executives give the example, Sid going to Hawaii.
In the industry unlimited vacation sometimes means social pressure not to take any. And people can't really take vacations 80% of their time for 2 years.
Maybe we should call it permissionless vacation since you don't have to ask for permission if you go for less than x days. Calling it unlimited feels like a dishonest data plan that has limits in the fine print.
To prevent people not taking vacation we think about taking less than 2 weeks of a negative in your performance review.