I thought this was common sense, but can't you just ask? "Unlimited PTO" does not mean "do whatever you want". Your manager can deny requests when you have limited PTO, too, so I don't see what you're getting at.

FWIW we did have somebody take an entire month off to visit family in China. He was responsible for tons of code and functionality, and it worked fine because management knew about it and planned around it.

If you can't handle the responsibility, don't ruin it for everybody, just go work somewhere else.

I agree with you. I've seen people take 8 weeks for a similar reason. Over that time period they checked in, fixed a few bugs related to work they had done but were generally gone.

In a strict PTO environment that would have been almost impossible for them to do.

Some people are going to respond and be upset that they want to work exactly 8 hours, get exactly 41.5 hours of PTA and get paid that way. That's fine, although I hope they are giving the company back money for browsing HN.

I on the other hand like the freedom and flexibility that unlimited PTO provides along with a flexible work schedule. Do I end up working more? Probably, but I have way less stress. I much prefer working that hour on a rainy Saturday instead of the beautifully sunny Friday.

I've never worked at a place with unlimited PTO. I don't know. This is me asking :P

Only ever worked at UK companies where we get 5.6 weeks PTO as standard. Never had a request denied as long as I've given 2 weeks notice of a long'un

You're probably requesting with a degree of sense.

If you requested your 5.6 weeks off all at once and over an go-live date that you were 100% responsible for, you might receive a request to see if you could move those holidays a bit later

Booking those whole two months wouldn't even blow through standard 25 day allotment of PTO :) Which makes it even more obvious just how shortchanged you get with unlimited.