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Paragraph 3 of the RiverGlide employment contract ( https://github.com/RiverGlide/contracts/blob/master/employme... )

The law entitles You to a minimum of 28 days of paid leave per year. This consists of 8 public holidays and 20 days of paid leave per year. We expect you to take at least the minimum amount of leave each year. We also encourage you to take as much additional leave as you need to maintain the health and well being of yourself and the company, as long as to do so would not cause harm to You, Us or any client We are engaged with.

Basically, we expect our employees to take a minimum amount of time off but we don't track it. Hopefully the other paragraphs make sense to responsible adults too

Because I am a workaholic who doesn't trust management to look out for me, I want a formal vacation policy that accrues vacation days so there's no chance for misunderstanding either way.

If you can solve the problem of finding a management chain that truly looks out for its employees rather than chasing maximal profitability and/or covering its own a$$, I salute you. Until then, I'll stick to a formal vacation policy as the 80% solution that just isn't broken.

The problem with that is it will take quite a while when you join before you can actually do anything with your vacation.
That's why more Americans need to take at least a month off between jobs, no?
I'd really like to know if they have any actual Europeans working there? I wouldn't call myself a slacker, but having worked only in Germany I like my 25+ days of paid vacation very much.

Oh, and about every person who moved to the US (i.e. the valley) said they miss their vacation time a lot. And they also said they love their jobs...

Sure, we do. They take advantage of the vacation policy just like the rest of us.
I was referencing this exact paragraph:

> Imagine an employee who takes this policy and chooses to live like a European with umpteen weeks off every year. What to do about that? Simply tie it back to performance and things become clear.

It's probably just my bad English that I don't get the nuance, but it sounds a little condescending.

Are the Europeans actually taking more time off due to being used to it? Is their performance judged more because of this, if they do? I can't really imagine anyone answering YES to that, but it just struck me as odd to include this.

That said, your model sounds very good (compared to what seems to be the American standard) :)

Author here. Definitely didn't mean to condescend. I used "like a European" as short-hand for, "this is an employee who regularly chooses to take off far more time than the typical American would generally be expected to take off".

This section of the article was meant to speak directly to management who may be concerned about using this policy due to this particular possibility. The following text is attempting to answer their concerns. That is, don't worry so much about this. Rather, judge the results, as you should be anyway.