Does it draw your vacation time? Mandatory vacations (especially around Christmas) were started in the early 2000s among Bay Area tech companies in order to reduce collective accrued PTO, reducing liability on the balance sheet—had nothing to do with worker health. Although that regime is certainly preferable to so-called "unlimited" PTO.

At Adobe, we have unlimited flexible PTO. In my personal experience I have never heard of PTO being turned down by a manager.

Unlimited PTO means they don’t have to pay out anything. It’s effectively 0 on the balance sheet.

Doesn’t the “P” mean paid?

Unlimited PTO is a money-saving tactic for businesses. Traditional unused PTO is paid out upon resignation, but flex unlimited PTO has no such requirement.

PTO can also mean Personal Time Off. e.g. contractors usually aren't paid during their time off.

I've also worked at places that didn't pay out accrued time when you left.

if you leave your job, the company has to pay for your unused vacation days as part of your severance if you have a set number of vacation days.

In that case just take PTO before handing in your notice.

Incidentally, I just helped a family member work around the process of quitting his job and moving to a new one.

Their contract basically states:

1. PTO can't be paid out at the end of employment

2. PTO can't be used to quit the job

3. PTO can't be used _the entire last month_ of your employment with them

Which is nuts

If that is based on calendar month, and not rolling 30-day period, then quit at the beginning of the month

Unlimited PTO would be great - if combined with worker protections so that you couldn't get fired for actually taking time off.

By which I mean real time. Like a month or more.

But unlimited PTO + you can't get fired for taking it means you aren't obligated to show up for work ever.

If unlimited PTO wasn't just an accounting (and psychological) trick to screw workers out of accumulated vacation time, this might concern me. If they want limited PTO, that's fine. It should just be spelled out.

I'm working a total of 7 nonconsecutive days in the next 30. Does that count?

EDIT: Might be less. I forgot to count some other holidays.

Where do you work and do they allow telecommuting? (I assume you're being paid regularly over those 30 days)

Like I said earlier in the thread, Adobe. Currently we're fully remote, with a plan to go 50/50 hybrid when offices reopen. There is a process to apply for fully remote but you need to live within a reasonable distance of an office and "digital nomad" lifesytles won't be available. I have do a few coworkers who were fully remote pre-pandemic but that was generally the exception.

A friend works at Oracle and they have unlimited PTO and in December, their CEO announced you could do full time remote or hybrid.

I wonder if it would be substantially more effective to prevent burnout by having shorter work days or work weeks.

I think it would be but I also would like forced time off as well. As well as forced socializing with team mates. And a sabbatical every 5 years or so.

But if I can find a job with full health benefits that lets me work three days a week, I'm going for it. Heck, that is the best argument in favor of universal healthcare. It would help unemployment, because way more people would be working part time.

> As well as forced socializing with team mates.

One of these things is not like the other...

I can tolerate the occasional "mandatory fun" corporate event, but only within reason (e.g. I have kids, so don't give me grief for leaving early).

And I think the entire "work hard play hard" office culture, where you're expected to do happy hour everyday and build your social life around co-workers in order to prove you're a teammate, is ageist and absolutely toxic.

To be blunt, if you have to FORCE people to socialize with you, then maybe you need some self-reflection on why that's necessary.

I was thinking along the lines of a fun day during working hours, where everyone who lives near by should come in. Holiday party, Icecream Social, Even just a day of meetings with breakfast and lunch included. Basically give people a few work days a year where they are expected to be there, but not really get anything done.

Bloomberg let you do philanthropy work during working hours, and they assign you some amount of money depending on the hours you do that you can donate to charity.

I met a few people during such events, which is more or less what you say: you are with people from the company (not necessarily teammates, we did it as a team only once) and you might be helping public parks clean, or take trash from canal on a canoe, or sort food in a food shelter. It's a nice way to take a break, meet people from other areas, feel good about something you do, and managers have been very supportive of that, and they do it too.

I think that is a good balance of what you are talking about

Just the mention of "mandatory fun" sends shivers through my socially anxious spine

Adobe also does a sabbatical every 5 years!

You are part of a very small, very skilled minority that voluntariliy wants to work part time and lack of health care is all that's stopping you. In Canada where we have universal health care, the vast majority of people working part time are in low skill jobs because that's all they can schedule with another primary focus, or that's all they can get but really want FT.

I'd be curious how much different it would be if you got the same 1 week off twice a year but it was for a company trip, as in the company would pay for everything to take all employees (and a +1) skiing or some other activity. This would be independent of personal time off and these 2 weeks off would still be paid.

I've never been on such a thing but I wonder if it ends up being a real vacation or if everyone is still mainly talking about work except not in front of a computer.

Does anyone want to share a few stories on how their company trips went?

By definition I go on vacation to get a break from my coworkers and spend time with friends and family.

I also generally get to decide the activities on vacation. Many things the company might fund that are fun for some people, like skiing, aren't activities that I'm interested in but would be obligated to participate in.

What you described is a work retreat, not a vacation. I have been on such a trip. It was good for work relationships. It definitely wasn't a vacation.

> What you described is a work retreat, not a vacation. I have been on such a trip. It was good for work relationships. It definitely wasn't a vacation.

Would you mind sharing the details of what you did during the trip?

That wouldn't be a real vacation, full stop.

You guys check work email and work Slack when on holidays?

Some people do. My team within Adobe discourages it.

There are some really great hobby slack channels that I personally check on vacation. Can be hard to ignore the random work questions while doing that.

Once another team investigating an outage tried to contact me on vacation... I sent them a photo of my bike in an empty field in the mountains of Oregon and said "Sorry, bad internet out here!"

In Germany it's expected that vacationing workers are as good as dead until they return.