take home point, for startups and big slow companies: "The worst thing is for a manager to come in and tell me: `Let's give Susie a huge raise because she's always in the office.' What do I care? I want managers to come to me and say: `Let's give a really big raise to Sally because she's getting a lot done' - not because she's chained to her desk."
Interesting policy. It sounds great, in theory, but would be hard to implement.
A recent employer gave me 3 weeks of vacation. Great! Never mind that they kept asking me to delay it, for a year because each artificial deadline they created ended up slipping. There's never a good time to take vacation.
EDIT Therefore, it's always a good time to take vacation (given sufficient notice).
"It sounds great, in theory, but would be hard to implement."
There's nothing difficult about implementing it. Clearly your employer just doesn't buy the concept at all. They probably only offer 3 weeks (slightly higher than average) as a recruiting incentive, which is pretty dishonest if they don't actually let you use it.
The reasoning behind this concept is what's important. It's about treating employees as equal partners in a relationship, as opposed to children, like most employers do.