The problems we see is when people are overloaded because of bad planning on our side or customers asking for too tight deadlines and we wanting to be nice and help them achieve it (again our fault). Then people actually tend to feel pressured doing more for the company's sake. Which is sometimes ok in my opinion and also appreciated when there's an emergency, but we try for it not to become the rule.

Regarding owners/managers working less, I see it the same as you: leading by example. And generally I don't see a problem with that, as everyone is mostly working very responsibly (in our case). However, what we've noticed over the years is that it still needs some people with a global company vision and also visionary mindset to push the company to new frontiers and help people to look beyond what they're currently working on and to think outside the box.

> The opposite might also be very true, where if the manager is working harder than what is expected/accepted, people will follow and do the same too.

I think this is a serious risk for unlimited PTO. It's easy to miss, because well-meaning managers are least likely to notice the problem. Sure they were busy and came in all year, but they genuinely wanted their reports to take more time off!

In that sense, it almost has to be a responsibility at the management level; visibly booking time off and disconnecting is part of making a PTO policy usable for everyone else. Fortunately, it's the sort of responsibility that also helps keep management and founders from burning out or already being exhausted when crunches do hit.