I've personally had a good experience so far with "unlimited PTO". I've been working at a company with that policy for a year now, and I've never had an issue taking as much time off as I need for vacations, personal days, etc. It helps that my supervisors are pretty cool about it.

>It helps that my supervisors are pretty cool about it.

This is why I prefer actual accrued PTO policies. I should not even have to consider whether or not my supervisor cares that I take a day off. It should just be agreed upon that I am able to take x time under x circumstances on day 1 of my employment. Worrying whether or not my supervisor is cool with is just tastes too much like relying on the largess of some benevolent overlord.

Never been in this situation but couldn't you just take off a few months with unlimited vacation or even a few years.

See, the problem is you're interpreting words like "unlimited" by their dictionary definition.

You are pretty much guaranteed to get let go if you tried to do this without having a very good reason and a very understanding boss. Even though it is called "unlimited" that doesn't mean you actually get to take unlimited vacation.

So, it’s like “unlimited” Internet data plans.

The term my employer is using is "unaccrued".

Productivity is productivity. If you take so much time off that you aren't getting anything done, you're going to be fired.