When done right the vacation is sprung on them without notice. In reality they usually know when their vacation is coming so they can alert their cohorts.

The idea is everyone must take vacation (sometimes X+ consecutive days each year), not just the people you suspect of running scams.

Giving all of your employees two weeks unannounced vacation at random times is a disruptive way to run a company. It's certainly innovative but I wouldn't say it's HR "done right".

You have to take at least half you annual vacation starting tomorrow. Have fun!

Yeah. That doesn't work. Forcing the same thing in a scheduled way may be a bit of an imposition but isn't unreasonable in general.

Doing so in an unscheduled way is beneficial for similar reasons you want to test when services go down in controlled circumstances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_engineering

Large companies simply have different risks. If someone quitting randomly is a huge risk for your business you want to know about it ahead of time to mitigate it while they still work for you. 1 random week of vacation every ~3 years shouldn’t be a big deal, and discovering it was is valuable.

If you want to give me an unscheduled couple of weeks off with pay, I'm perfectly cool with that--so long as you don't hold it against me that work doesn't get done. Don't expect me to take it out of my limited planned vacation time though.I have my own plans. That would be a big FU for me.

Sure, so maybe that is a sign that trading isn’t the right industry for you?

I know firefighters often work 72 hour straight shifts. For a similar reason, I know being a firefighter isn’t the right career for me.

I suspect some jobs need to optimize days off for things other than employee happiness. For trading specifically, they can generally make up for it with above average pay.

Fair enough. If you know the deal going in--e.g. you get 3 weeks of paid vacation but we will tell you when you have to take one/two of them with no notice. Certainly there are many jobs that have to schedule people, e.g. support, although there it's mostly about having to schedule well in advance and possible having to work at popular times. I am indeed fortunate to have a lot of flexibility.