Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

I&#x27;m highly suspicious of &quot;unlimited&quot; vacation or leave policies because the line between reasonable and not is still there, it&#x27;s just way less visible and ultimately arbitrary, depending on your management chain and workload. I can&#x27;t wait for this fad to die. Let&#x27;s just have generous, well-defined leave policies that don&#x27;t put the onus on the employee to figure out what is OK and what isn&#x27;t.<p>&quot;Experience shows people perform better at work when they’re not worrying about home.&quot; People also perform better at work when they&#x27;re not worrying about repercussions for being seen to abuse their &quot;unlimited&quot; leave.

Unlimited leave policies encourage employees to self-police and conform to peer pressure. At a place like Netflix I can imagine the result being that people end up taking less than the industry average.<p>A better gimmick would be if Netflix picked one of the Nordics and announced that they were going to adopt all of the social policies provided by that country&#x27;s government.

&quot;We want employees to have the flexibility and confidence to balance the needs of their growing families without worrying about work or finances ... Each employee ... works with their managers for coverage during their absences.&quot;<p>So, the conversation could be just &quot;Hey manager as per the new policy, I would like to be a full-time mum &#x2F; dad for the next 12 months; will you arrange cover for me?&quot; Is that right, no questions asked?<p>If Netflix&#x27;s &quot;unlimited vacation&quot; policy actually meant that, they surely wouldn&#x27;t need to publish a _second_ &quot;unlimited&quot; parental leave policy as well?

&quot;With this in mind, today we’re introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child’s birth or adoption&quot;<p>Ah, unlimited for a year. So no taking 30 years off after your child is born then.

Congratulations Netflix. I&#x27;m personally a big believer that equal maternity and paternity leave is crucial for future equality in the workforce, and Netflix have just set a great example to the rest of the industry. And a full year is excellent too. Hopefully other employers will take notice, or even better it becomes a legal requirement. Why it isn&#x27;t already in some countries[1] continues to mystify–to my mind, a business should not be considered successful unless it can afford to, and does, treat its employees like human beings.<p>[1] I say &quot;some countries&quot; but really it&#x27;s only the United States and Papua New Guinea that haven&#x27;t made it a legal requirement to have some form of paid maternity leave, among countries where data is available (e.g. North Korea isn&#x27;t listed). Oman used to be in that list, but they left in 2011. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Parental_leave" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Parental_leave</a> and <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ilo.org&#x2F;wcmsp5&#x2F;groups&#x2F;public&#x2F;---dgreports&#x2F;---dcomm&#x2F;---publ&#x2F;documents&#x2F;publication&#x2F;wcms_242615.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ilo.org&#x2F;wcmsp5&#x2F;groups&#x2F;public&#x2F;---dgreports&#x2F;---dcom...</a>

I&#x27;ve seen quite a few reactions to the Netflix unlimited PTO policy that are similar to the reactions to the new Maternity and Paternity policy. Many of these opinions are the likes of:<p>* &quot;I&#x27;m suspicious of this.&quot;<p>* &quot;No one takes any vacation at Netflix because of this.&quot;<p>* &quot;Unlimited == None&quot;<p>* &quot;Peer pressure means that everyone works 52 weeks a year.&quot;<p>* &quot;Without a PTO policy you can&#x27;t cash out unused vacation. This is a rip off.&quot;<p>The thing I haven&#x27;t seen in these statements are &quot;I work at Netflix and this is what it is really like&quot;...<p>Here we go - I work at Netflix (as an engineer) and this is what is <i>really</i> like:<p>* I&#x27;m pressured to <i>take</i> vacations.<p>* Managers are taught that they are examples to the teams therefore they must take regular vacations.<p>* I take more vacation now than I did when I had 2&#x2F;3&#x2F;4&#x2F;5 weeks a year of stated, paid, vacation.<p>Questions I&#x27;ve answered about this: * Does my team fall apart when someone leaves for 4 weeks? No. They&#x27;re adults and they know how to prepare to be away for a while.<p>* People must raise their eyebrows at you when you leave! No.<p>* You get called all the time right so you keep your laptop with you on vacation? No. They&#x27;re adults and they know how to get along without me for a while.<p>* You must do tons of extra work when people go on vacation! No. People don&#x27;t just drop stuff and run. They prepare, get stuff ready, postpone things until they&#x27;re back, etc.<p>* Managers must &quot;encourage&quot; you not to take vacations. Nope, opposite.<p>* You feel irresponsible taking time off then. No I don&#x27;t.<p>* People must leave for months a time right? The policy gets really abused! No, stop it. Assuming the extreme case must be the common case is silly. You&#x27;re smarter than that.<p>* This can&#x27;t possibly be true. You&#x27;re a liar&#x2F;shill&#x2F;idiot! Next.<p>* This doesn&#x27;t&#x2F;can&#x27;t work at my company. Therefore, it can&#x27;t work at yours! Netflix corporate culture is likely very different than your company. Take a look at the culture deck presentation.<p>This type of policy likely can&#x27;t work everywhere.<p>It may not work everywhere in the valley.<p>It <i>does</i> work here.<p>[edit] formatting fail

Doesn&#x27;t Netflix already offer unlimited vacation? Parental leave isn&#x27;t vacation, of course, but the cynic in me thinks this is another example of a case where a corporation can benevolently offer the moon while replying on peer pressure to ensure that no employee accepts what is on offer to anywhere near its fullest extent.<p>Does Netflix publish any stats about vacation usage?

I don&#x27;t get all the backlash in these comments around the &quot;unlimited&quot; policies. Do any of the people opposing the unlimited policies have them in place at their own company?<p>I&#x27;ve had unlimited vacation at my last two companies. I&#x27;ve seen it abused as my previous employer but it&#x27;s worked out great at my current job. I&#x27;m not &quot;peer pressured&quot; by my other coworkers like everyone here seems to think I would be. As long as I get my work done on time my manager let&#x27;s me take a day off here and there for a long weekend. I tend to take friday&#x27;s every once in a while for a weekend vacation. I&#x27;m leaving for 2.5 weeks pretty soon for an international vacation.<p>It&#x27;s just easier on everyone. HR doesn&#x27;t have to track how many days people are taking off and my manager and I don&#x27;t spend time coordinating time off either. I simply put it in my calendar with enough notice and everyone is happy.<p>Why does everyone seem to think unlimited vacation forces people to &quot;conform to peer pressure&quot; and to work harder than they normally would?

I&#x27;m glad to see paternity leave included and given equal weight to maternity. So many employers don&#x27;t offer this important benefit.

This is dumb. As others have pointed out, all it does is use peer pressure to decide what the &quot;proper amount&quot; of Paternity Leave is. Netflix is probably such a pressure cooker that when people need to and want to take Paternity Leave, they won&#x27;t take it for fear of upsetting the group and losing their jobs. Managers will abuse it just to keep productivity up.<p>Want to be a progressive company? Clearly define how long Paternity Leave is, make it generous, tell employees to take it and order managers not to harass employees that do. Don&#x27;t do nebulous HR policies that just end up confusing people. Make it so that people can take a couple of 2 week vacations a year without worrying about their jobs, that would help too.

This is a laudable policy and I truly respect Netflix for doing it. But the sad truth is that the people who need this most are those on minimum wage or less, or those treated as &quot;contract workers&quot; so their employer can keep an even bigger cut of profits (e.g. Uber).<p>In other words the Mathew Effect in our economy and society is further reinforced. The Mathew Effect is &quot;the other invisible hand&quot;, except that it is insidious rather than virtuous. And unlike Adam Smith&#x27;s invisible hand, it is most often ignored or trivialized, if not outright denied, by pure free-market adherents.

This is a step in right direction.<p>&quot;The United States remains the only member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, that does not guarantee mothers any paid time off from work after the birth of a new child. (see Figure 1) In fact, the United States is one of only four countries in the world—along with Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Papua New Guinea—where workers do not have the right to paid maternity leave.&quot; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn.americanprogress.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;IWD_PaidLeave_fig1.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn.americanprogress.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;I...</a>

I don&#x27;t see why it&#x27;s your employer&#x27;s job to subsidize the birth of your children with paid maternity&#x2F;paternity leave.<p>Why not just pay everyone more and those who want children can use the extra to save up to take a year off work?

This is what I think of Unlimited vacation or otherwise: There should first be a mandatory vacation time, then an unlimited option beyond this mandatory time. Plain and simple.

&gt; With this in mind, today we’re introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to <i>take off as much time as they want during the first year</i> after a child’s birth or adoption.<p>(emphasis mine)<p>&quot;Unlimited&quot;, as in &quot;unlimited data until 1GB&quot;. Fascinating. What Netflix calls &quot;unlimited&quot; just means &quot;normal&quot; in a lot of Europe.

That seems great. Is there any protection from abuse? It seems that one could say &quot;See you next year&quot; with this and get a year-long vacation.<p>Is that accurate. Would that actually work? Is there any contract saying you won&#x27;t take your year off and quit on your last day? OR is this all hinging on you getting a continued workload complete, and not just a year vacation.

just to reinforce the point: &quot;United States is one of only four countries in the world—along with Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Papua New Guinea—where workers do not have the right to paid maternity leave.&quot; How is this possible great USA?

In contrast, I hear Amazon has no paternity leave (or maybe its like 2 days or something?)

when will there be a &#x27;unlimited&#x27; salary?

The way this is going to pan out, is that the House Slaves and Tools who love to crab bucket and compete with others will not take any maternity&#x2F;paternity leave, and politically push out those who would take a reasonable amount of leave.<p>To be fair, of course the others would still be paid during this, but they will have to move to another company and take a hit in reputation.<p>So in the end, this is either great news for people with crab bucket mentalities, or for everyone else, a great way to get a year-long severance while finding a better place to work.