It's not legitimate, otherwise you'd take 100% paid time off, get a second job, and collect two paychecks in perpetuity.

It's not unlimited. It's never unlimited. It's always a lie.

I don't fundamentally disagree with you that yes, of course there is always some ultimate limit, nor that it's generally done in bad faith as an accounting scam to get around legal paid time balance sheet requirements. That said, I don't think you're right here:

>otherwise you'd take 100% paid time off, get a second job, and collect two paychecks in perpetuity

Even if 100% genuine, "unlimited PTO" in no way implies PTO for any reason. It's not incompatible to offer it while at the same time having eligibility requirements and other continued employment requirements. At the most simple it merely means there isn't any set limit. A 25 year veteran who gets cancer can be treated differently then someone who just skives off to go party. The latter can just as easily be fired not for exceeding some arbitrary PTO limit, but absence from work without a listed reason in the contract, defrauding the business (if they lie about it), etc.

In practice I don't think "depending on the fuzzy discretion and good will of management/HR/whomever" is a good practical deal for employees in general vs actual hard PTO which translates to money, since at scale the incentives for the business just are not normally aligned that well and even on the employee side those who abuse it will inevitably arise as well further throwing the thing into a negative spiral. It wouldn't stun me though if someone could find a few real examples of companies that had it because they wanted to offer really good sick people more time, there are lots of ideas that depend on human factors which work very badly on average but well in instances.

Sure, if you approach everything in bad faith then yes it's not really "unlimited". That said, calling it unlimited is much easier than saying "we offer no set number of days, use what you need. you still work here though so you can't just not actually ever come to work. act in good faith, use good judgement" every time you open your mouth about a vacation policy.

Be honest. Your manager will decide how many days you get off = unlimited

>It's not legitimate, otherwise you'd take 100% paid time off, get a second job, and collect two paychecks in perpetuity.

This is not a great argument. Unlimited just means there isn't a pre-defined limit, not that every amount has to be approved.

Do you think there's unlimited amounts of money in the world? If yes, then by definition it's worthless (also, can I have a trillion dollars an hour?). If no, then what's the maximum amount of money?

> Unlimited just means there isn't a pre-defined limit, not that every amount has to be approved.

Do you work for my ISP's marketing department?

So you mean 'no defined limit but definitely not unlimited' or do you mean 'unlimited except with the following limitations'? You don't have a great argument.

Then it's not unlimited, it's flexible.

Fair. I agree that it is not truly unlimited.