I agree that "untracked" is probably the better term. The point of such policies is that if you need to take say, 90 days off because of family issues, the official company policy stipulates that this is ok to do.
If this had happened in a company with a fixed e.g 20 day vacation policy, then the outcome depends on your manager. Now, many would have no issue giving the extra time off "unofficially" in such cases, but there are also many who might deny that request - see other example in this thread about a company denying an extra 1 day of vacation!
This policy is a way to empower employees against such managers. Now, there are several other downsides to this policy, as OP has pointed out, and as I've witnessed first-hand as well, but unlimited/untracked vacation policies certainly merit a discussion vs. outright dismissal.
> if you need to take say, 90 days off because of family issues, the official company policy stipulates that this is ok to do.
Depending on the nature of the family issues, in the US they're required to by the Family and Medical Leave Act (http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/)
> 20 day vacation policy
In my experience in California, 20 days is pretty generous. Most companies with vacation policies start you at two work weeks per year, not including sick days. While this increases slightly with seniority in larger companies, tech companies tend to have high turnover so seniority is kind of meaningless
> This policy is a way to empower employees against such managers
Other than some high profile large companies, most companies that I'm aware of with untracked vacation are small. The manager/employee dynamic at small companies is very different and the manager and employee have little empowerment over each other at all (in both a good and bad way)
Personally, I'm at a small company with untracked vacation and it creates a lot of social pressure not to use it. Some is imagined pressure in that it it turns it into a "can I take..." favour-type question instead of "I'm taking..." declarative form to fill out, but also real pressure in that the small-team dynamic means that I know personally everyone that will be inconvenienced by my not being around. This gives them a sort of social veto power that does happen in real life anywhere near an event like a release. Since no company is sitting around doing nothing all of the time, there's always a release of some sort on the visible horizon and of course those have "real" veto power rather than just social.
It also creates a significant disparity in how much employees at the same company take. Some employees feel the social pressure and don't take any, and some seem to not feel it and never seem to be around. IME vacation taken tends to be inversely correlated to general employee quality which is exactly the opposite of what you want.
As a result, I probably take half the vacation I could if I just knew the magic "okay" number to take and generally only for something that I can articulate like a trip somewhere or because family is in town. When I had tracked vacation, I'd take off an arbitrary Friday to sleep in or run the errand queue or just hang out. Now I don't do that and the difference in mood that creates is palpable.
I didn't think that burnout was real until I got "unlimited" vacation.
If this had happened in a company with a fixed e.g 20 day vacation policy, then the outcome depends on your manager. Now, many would have no issue giving the extra time off "unofficially" in such cases, but there are also many who might deny that request - see other example in this thread about a company denying an extra 1 day of vacation!
This policy is a way to empower employees against such managers. Now, there are several other downsides to this policy, as OP has pointed out, and as I've witnessed first-hand as well, but unlimited/untracked vacation policies certainly merit a discussion vs. outright dismissal.