I like the concept, but $7,500 is an outlandish amount of money for a vacation. It also represents 5-10% of total compensation for an engineer. Plenty of people take 6 month vacations for that kind of money.
Since you apparently get the full $7500 regardless of how much your vacation costs, what he's effectively doing is docking everyone's pay $7500 if they don't take at least one fully disconnected vacation a year.
Almost everyone's salary / bonus is exactly market, because it was by definition set by the employment market. It was market when before the $7500, and market afterwards.
I'm not being pedantic and missing the point that you mean 'market average', because employment is not commodity purchase - so market average isn't meaningful unless you're painting with very, very broad strokes.
That is not so bad, I didn't read clearly enough and was under the impression it was for actual expenses. This just means all existing employees get a $7500 raise, and are now forced to take a disconnected vacation. Future employees will just treat it as part of the compensation package.
If you're planning on flying somewhere not near by (ie: going to another continent, far away islands, etc), plane tickets alone could cost $1k to $2k. 1 or 2 weeks in nice hotel / condo will be another $1k to $2k. Eating, activities, rental car quickly spend yet another $2k to $3k over 2 weeks.
