> I personally am so spoiled by this
I had the standard six weeks of vacation per year at my first real job. How many weeks of vacation do you use per year?
I know, I was trying to add some outside perspective. Where I'm from, 5 weeks is the legal minimum, and everyone has the legal right to get 4 consecutive weeks off in the summer. Consequently, since everyone does this, and expects this, companies adjust for it, and most importantly: No-one bitches about it. There's no masochist culture around not taking vacation.
The problem with "unlimited" vacation is that it's of course not unlimited. There is a limit, it's just not written down on paper, it's not part of your employment contract. It's arbitrary. At one point, either your boss or your boss's boss is going to say no.
And if you get told no, you have no legal recourse! If you get fired for taking "too much", you can't sue for wrongful termination!
Fixed vacation time protects you as an employee. Why doesn't your company just give everyone five weeks of vacation and have that written down in the employment contract?
It's exactly like bonuses vs. salary. A bonus can always be withdrawn for any reason or no reason, but it's very difficult to lower someone's salary.
If it's written, it means that you have the minimum legal number of days in your jurisdiction and you are being screwed severely.
That's just not universally true at all. Using my current employer as an example, they have been very good about encouraging employees to take advantage of unlimited PTO.
Managers take PTO and encourage people that haven't taken it in a while to do so. Even the CEO goes in front of the company at all hands every once in a while and tells people "I just came back from a week vacation, you guys should too, remember to take time to recharge". It's something you have to get right in the company culture early on, granted.
I personally am so spoiled by this that the thought of having a set number of vacation days gives me anxiety. I don't want to count vacation days. It's not that I take a ton of vacation, I'm not a big traveler. But I like knowing that I can go to my manager and say "I'm taking friday off cause I'm going on a road trip this weekend" and he can just say "cool, just put it on the calendar" without worrying about counting days.
That said, I know this is really dependent on the company and have been in the opposite position at a company where PTO wasn't counted but was culturally discouraged, so I get where people are coming from. But I wouldn't just flat out dismiss the idea like so many on HN do.