I worked at a startup where the CEO reverted the unlimited PTO because one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately. We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company's generosity.

When I worked at Uber engineering which had unlimited PTO, I took between 6-8 weeks of PTO every year. Most years was at least 6, but one year I took 8. No one batted an eye. I think it all depends on company culture or maybe team culture.

I would never work for a company that denied me a PTO day, even if it was a single day. I would never irresponsibly take PTO but I would also make sure that I took at least 4 weeks off per year no matter what. The secret is taking 1 week off per quarter, and then another 2 weeks off during Christmas. That automatically brings you up to 6 weeks.

But make no mistake, unlimited vacation is a way to keep PTO off the books as a liability. In California you cannot lose PTO that you have accrued. They can stop accrual however once you reach a certain level. Once you max out on accrual, you are giving the company money, which is stupid so it's important to consistently take PTO.

Hang on, I’m in danger of understanding something.

If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?

If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take any and leave after 2 years, what do you get?

Edit: Thanks. Yikes. Unlimited PTO actually seems worse than a specified allowance from where I sit.

That's exactly why so many companies are enacting "unlimited" policies.

What they do is say "It's unlimited, but if you take more than 4 weeks it has to be approved" or something and then that way they can cap you like they did before but also not pay you out if you leave because wink wink it's "unlimited".

This reminds me of "unlimited" cell phone plans where you can use as much data as you like, but at some point the data gets slower and slower.

Those plans are much better than plans that are strict cap and then no data, which are better than no limits but if you use more than your quota it costs a ton and by the way the usage information is delayed at least 7 days.

I do remember seeing the plans that said unlimited (tiny print slow after 30Gb) and that's misleading... better to put the 30gb in big letters, but I just want like 1 or 2 gb fast... Just switched to a hard capped plan cause it was half the price though and a higher cap and I haven't hit the cap in a long time.

I'm ok with that. I'm still on an old data plan that throttles me after I got the limit for high speed data. But they don't hide that limit or my usage, and it's really cheap.

I don't want to pay for unlimited data, and I don't want to lose data after hitting a cap.

Everyone is ok with being sold something that they understand, most people are not ok with being sold something that screams "UNLIMITED" and then uses fine print to limit your seemingly unlimited plan.

Maybe the plans you're describing could spin the feature as "throttled for your pleasure" or some such. I'm sure there are marketing people that can come up with a positive way to spin it that isn't a borderline falsehood.

If I throttle your car to 5mph, is the distance it travels unlimited?

Bandwidth is the same, if you set a speed limit, you are also setting a distance limit.

Only if you're maxing out all the time. I had a plan with a similar sort of thing, even after using up all my "fast" data I had enough bandwidth for regular browsing and streaming music.

Skype iirc used to have an "unlimited" talk time capped at some ten thousand minutes as fair use.

I am pretty sure even today if you have a phone call on Google voice that goes over two hours or so, your call will drop. I like it better this way because I can call back immediately after being disconnected.

The difference is that they are very reasonably up-front about "first X GB at 4G speeds" where the PTO thing is going to have a shrowd of mysteries and unwritten limits.

Unless a union is involved, firms do not enact policies that make them less money. Unlimited PTO removes a liability.

If there are specific policies that demarcate how an employee uses PTO to the degree specified in this blog post, I would argue that the firm does not have "unlimited PTO" and in fact accrues a vacation balance.

Awaiting the class action in CA.

As just one example, a few years ago our company changed parental leave to 4 months from 6 weeks. Is that making them the same or more money?

I think companies do things like Unlimited PTO because although it may mean some people take more leave than before, other people take the same or less and there's no liability, so it may net out roughly the same but sounds better to new hires.

I don't think every company is extremely cynical as you're suggesting. As others here have mentioned, it depends where you work - we don't bat an eyelid if people are using 4-6 weeks plus holidays, in fact we check to make sure people are actually using their PTO.

Can you name this company? They sound like good people.

Yep as a business owner it's a great way to get out of paying PTO.

Sounds like this is just a lawsuit away from not being a thing anymore.

All the former employee would have to do is to illustrate that the 4 weeks was enshrined in policy somehow, then boom.

Companies would just react by adjusting their HR rules to comply with the court decision. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Some states don't require the payout and companies there will not unless posted like in the employee manual.

Some stats do and that is where this could be ducking worker rights.

Yep as a business owner it's a great way to get out of paying PTO.

These are all just the slow crawl of American businesses towards irrelevance.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your business isn't doing well.

> If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?

Even in this case, it depends where you live and sometimes what your contract says. California requires it, but most states don't.

Yep in California PTO and vacation get paid out. They can not do use it or lose it. They can cap how much of PTO and vacation you can have at one time. Sick time does not need to be paid out. The whole scam of unlimited PTO is so they do not have to pay out when you leave. Then can not roll over your PTO or vacation at the end of year but if they do that, they have you pay you out.

Seems pretty cynical. Isn’t this trick easily defeated by taking regular PTO instead of hoarding it?

Yes you never want to hit your cap. At some of my older jobs people would be like oh crap I gotta take two weeks off starting next week. I much rather have defined PTO. My last role and current role are "unlimited PTO" I take about 4-5 weeks off with out issue. But you are taking a risk for sure going to company with "unlimited PTO".

At a company I worked at in St. Louis I was pairing with the owner on the PTO system when we noticed I was at the cap that day... we were using my data as the test. He made me go home right then and there. We implemented the system emailing HR when people were nearing the cap so we could make sure people didn't work too much and lose vacation.

California companies and work culture largely discourages taking PTO, so it tends to accrue.

Really depends on the company and in big companies it depends on your team. My very first job out college had vacation and sick time. You could take your vacation at any time no questions asked. It was really nice but they paid less than everybody else. But the work life balance was much better. You saw a lot of people with families come and work there and take paycut. It was interesting seemed work well for them.

I can give a comparison to Germany. Here at least 25 days PTO a year are mandatory for each full time job. Anything below that is illegal, most companies offer around 30. Sick days don't count into that. Even if you're on a planned 2week vacation and get sick for three of those days, those three days can't be subtracted from your annual PTO days. You have to get a confirmation document from your doctor though, which is of course free. If you don't take your PTO, it will be transferred to the next year, but most companies try to avoid that. You can usually decide if you take those days within the first three months of the next year, or they have to pay you out. You are usually not free to choose when you take your PTO and it's normal to only take one or two weeks around holidays like Easter or Christmas and the rest for individual occasions.

> If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take any and leave after 2 years, what do you get?

In all the "unlimited PTO" jobs I've had, nothing.

nothing, that's part of the motivation for companies to offer it.

You get nothing because you've accrued nothing.

Yep, you figured it out. Preset PTO must be paid out (at least by CA laws), "unlimited PTO" pays bupkis if you don't use it. If the workforce routinely under-utilizes the PTO (which is easily achieved both culturally and managerially) the whole scam is pretty clear.

Nothing. That's why they don't have to keep it on their books.

It depends on if your company capped how much you could accrue. However much you accrued should be paid out.

Nothing.

> one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately. We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company's generosity.

I don't understand why you're mad at someone for using a benefit he's entitled to?

Unlimited PTO means you should never have to work if you don't want to. Otherwise it's not unlimited.

If there's a limit just state it upfront.

Well, this is kinda like complimentary condiments or whatever. Technically you are allowed to abuse it to the wazoo, but in practice it just means "Take a reasonable amount, we're not stingy". There obviously is an unspoken "we're all grown ups here" type of social contract in these sorts of things. Abusing it is going to come at the cost of the commons, and in the GP's case it did cost them the perk, so being angry at the abuser seems justified.

One of my co-workers a few years ago decided to go to Japan for 3 months, but that didn't fly with my company and it ended up being mostly an unpaid sabbatical (despite the unlimited PTO policy). 3 months later, the guy extended his stay and let us know he wasn't coming back. There were no hard rules anywhere in sight, but the way this played out seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Some people are just missing that part of their development that helps them to intuitively grasp what counts as abuse when there are no clear written rules. You can't just ask them to be reasonable. I worked for a company that ordered free dinner for folks who stayed late. No limit to what you can eat, but if you're feeling a little hungry, grab a slice of pizza! Well, sure enough a few people ruined it for everyone by taking armfuls of pizza home with them, enough to feed 10 people. I'm talking multiple whole pizza pies, boxes and all, straight to their cars. "It was for employees, and there were no written restrictions" was the justification. So, that perk ended.

It's interesting how inconsistent and asymmetric these intuitive limits seem to be. Pushing employees to work extra hours, easily $X000 in time? Perfectly acceptable. Abusive JIRA-powered micromanagement? That's just how it is. But $60 worth of pizza!? How could a reasonable person possible justify that?

I would find not having defined benefits extremely uncomfortable.

Saying that you have unlimited paid leave when that is obviously untrue and leaves the policy open for abuse by both employee and employer. I'm sure the example stating that less leave was taken when it was "unlimited" was because people understood that there were limits but didn't know what the limit was and didn't want to trigger management. Once things are defined, of course people will think that it's ok to take the maximum leave allowed.

Consider that your employment contract doesn’t even specify how much work you will get done. Isn’t that a much more extreme degree of freedom than number of days of PTO? It’s between you and your manager to figure out what your expected amount of output is. Given that, isn’t PTO just one of many factors in that ongoing negotiation?

> Some people are just missing that part of their development that helps them to intuitively grasp what counts as abuse when there are no clear written rules.

I think the guy who quit after two months' leave knew perfectly well it was abuse; he just didn't care. Or maybe he felt slighted by the company in some way (unfair resolution of a conflict, promotion denied, underpaid, whatever) and this was his way of getting even with them.

How can it be abuse? If 2 months leave is part of package then surely it's up to them how they use it. You wouldn't criticize them for using all the money they get paid would you?

The problem isn’t taking two months off. It’s taking a large chunk of time off, then immediately quitting.

That means the team was down an engineer for basically an entire quarter, without notice. That wrecks schedules and causes headaches for your coworkers who now have to figure out how to make up for the lost time or figure out what work to cut from the schedule.

So it is an HR problem. They need to extend the cancelation periods in contracts..

No, HR doesn’t schedule work or features. It’s practically impossible to pad timelines for the case where an engineer decides to effectively pad their two weeks notice by an additional six weeks except for large companies like Google.

> Some people are just missing that part of their development that helps them to intuitively grasp what counts as abuse when there are no clear written rules.

2 months is clearly abuse, but I'm worried my CEO or HR will have a far less generous definition of abuse. I'm already reading a thread about 4-6 week vacations where I get at most 2 weeks.

> There obviously is an unspoken "we're all grown ups here" type of social contract in these sorts of things.

It's absolutely not grown-up behavior to remove terms from an explicit business contract (employment agreement) and move them to an implicit, unwritten "I know it when I see it" social contract.

Obviously there's some actual limit that your platonic grownup has in mind, between 2 weeks and 40 weeks of PTO per year. Just write it down.

Yes, xkcd had a great comic on the toxic attitude of abusing the ambiguity of a gentlemen's agreement:

https://xkcd.com/1499/

It's not, because people won't easily benefit from taking unlimited condiments, while they would easily benefit from real unlimited holidays.

Holidays should come with some limits, eg. no more than X weeks per year, like it was in the past.

I get it, the government made a stupid rule (forcing PTO accrual in the contract between employer and employee) and companies were creative enough to find a solution to bypass that rule and made it sound attractive on a job ad. In an ideal world we would just have an explicit upfront amount and no government interference.

In a world without "government interference" you wouldn't have leave, you'd work every day of the week, and you'd work 12+ hours a day.

Being paid out leave, and having leave accrued isn't a stupid rule. It's a law that's made in reaction to companies writing an upfront amount of leave into contracts, and never allowing their employees to take that leave.

When you side with no regulation, you side with abusive employers, not for "common sense winning out". People will abuse you as much as they're legally allowed to.

>In a world without "government interference" you wouldn't have leave, you'd work every day of the week, and you'd work 12+ hours a day.

If this were true, none of us would be earning more than the minimum wage.

Roughly 1 in 5 workers do earn just that or very close to it. Easy to forget working in tech. But labor laws aren't just for in-demand techies. They are for everyone, including your cashier.

You are moving the goal posts. The original post said:

>...In a world without "government interference" you wouldn't have leave, you'd work every day of the week, and you'd work 12+ hours a day.

The claim is that without a government rule specifying otherwise, we would be working every day of week for almost all of our working hours. The government does mandate a minimum wage - if the original point was true, we would all be paid at the minimum wage. Your "1 in 5" percentage seems high, but as you point out, most people are paid more than the minimum wage.

Wasn't governments that won the 8 hour workday. It was unions.

> Holidays should come with some limits, eg. no more than X weeks per year, like it was in the past

That's anchoring bias. Unlimited does have some nice properties (e.g. very generous allowances in many cases, and the possibility of spending unaccrued time, for example)

If we're in talking about ideals, I'd just ask for people to be more transparent about what the actual dynamics are: if taking 2 months vacation where everyone else takes 1 week affects metrics tied to promos, then say that upfront so people can make a conscious decision about whether signing up for asshat culture is worth the brand prestige or career trajectory potential or whatever it is that people value.

"In many organizations, there is an unhealthy emphasis on process and not much freedom. These organizations didn’t start that way, but the python of process squeezed harder every time something went wrong. Specifically, many organizations have freedom and responsibility when they are small. Everyone knows each other, and everyone picks up the trash. As they grow, however, the business gets more complex, and sometimes the average talent and passion level goes down. As the informal, smooth-running organization starts to break down, pockets of chaos emerge, and the general outcry is to “grow up” and add traditional management and process to reduce the chaos. As rules and procedures proliferate, the value system evolves into rule following (i.e. that is how you get rewarded). If this standard management approach is done well, then the company becomes very efficient at its business model — the system is dummy-proofed, and creative thinkers are told to stop questioning the status quo. This kind of organization is very specialized and well adapted to its business model. Eventually, however, over 10 to 100 years, the business model inevitably has to change, and most of these companies are unable to adapt." [1]

[1] https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

This is so well-written. Now I want to work at Netflix!

Wasn't that the point? They're talking about being mad about someone taking 2 months of PTO off and then talk about how they always take 6-8 weeks cough of PTO with no one batting an eye.

So the reason for being mad is the company and team culture. The first company had a clear unspoken culture that actually using the benefit was off limits.

On that same point, I see a lot of turnover throughout my career and would say about 50% chance someone goes on medical leave and actually comes back to work. We basically start recruiting expecting they’ll not return. It’s obviously correlated with that persons income and ability step out of their employee compensation. But, especially with first time mother’s in their >30. They’ve been saving for it and often hold a key position within the organization by this point in their career. Or perhaps that’s just what I’ve observed at several companies.

Probably because it changed the workload or leave approvals for the remaining staff

Depends on your mental model, some would say the company should be staffed to account for x% on leave, thou account for a person taking 2 months is likely out of reach for smaller companies

> Once you max out on accrual, you are giving the company money, which is stupid so it's important to consistently take PTO.

Early in my career I never took a vacation, so I maxed out. I realized that I'd be losing money by being maxed out, so I worked out a deal with my boss to take every Friday off from May to September that year. Four day work weeks all summer was pretty nice!

I'm a FIRE type personality, which means I would like to take the hit now to be better off in the future.

What that meant at my first real job was that even though I would have liked to take time off during the year, I liked the idea of having time off saved up better.

Since we couldn't carry days over, that meant that around the middle of November I told the team, happy holidays, see you all next year.

On January second, my boss told me he would never let me do that again. Which was sort of my first clue that employment conditions could be negotiated on a one by one basis.

I'm not at all a FIRE type person, and don't tend to trust these sort of casual time off in exchange for time worked up front agreements, but I like what you did there. In my area, compabies aren't required to pay tech workers overtime. Thanks EA!

What does FIRE mean?

financial indepenedence, retire early. frontload all your money making and then reach a point where you can statistically expect to die on the day you reach 0 money left.

That second part isn't a requirement. Fire doesn't require you to spend all your money, and indeed, that's generally a bad idea...

Genius. I'm asking to do this tomorrow.

Another option is if you can alternate every other friday and monday you'll get 4 day weekends every other weekend. This can really be refreshing too.

Just be careful. When I went to part time I made the mistake of choosing Monday as one of my days off - most public holidays here are Mondays so I missed out.

Ive explicitly chose wednesday as my day off for that reason.

yeah, I reached maxout, and switched to taking every Friday off. It was wonderful.

Let me tell you the song of front-lin nurses where summer vacation must be requested in March, time off for March break be put in before the end of January and Christmas/New Years requests must be put in September. Oh, and you have to alternate once every year.

I can see a stiffer policy in critical care, (or assembly line) types of jobs that have to be organised to fill the position well in advance to train-in/hire/book via temp agency the workers so they know when you are going/returning so things work well on a continuous basis. Some companies have a full shut down and people get some sort of bonus for scheduling their 2, 3, 4 weeks then. Often line changes/upgrades/model shift etc are done efficiently so the line runs flawlessly at startup. High tech jobs, esp startups often have novel policies that are rarer in the average industry. Lots of interesting points of view in this thread.

I definitely could see health care borrowing ideas from manufacturing for scheduling. LEAN/Six-Sigma has indeed been applied to this world.

However, innovation is sometimes stifled because care providers being compared to assembly-line workers is taboo.

In this case, I applaud the engineer. He called the company's bluff. Though, I believe quitting immediately was a bit too much.

Don't falsely advertise to lure people! Be clear about your vacation policy.

> He called the company's bluff

It wasn't a bluff. Unlimited PTO has never meant taking months off at a time.

I've never met an adult that needed clarification on what unlimited PTO means. Nonsense like this just ruins it for everyone else.

If a company is advertising unlimited PTO as a positive part of their compensation, but intends to give you 10 days in 1.5 years I guess it isn't a bluff...they just think you are stupid. He =outlines how he was told that the expectation was to take 20 days off a year- don't give employees some benchmark unless it is followed. I've definitely worked at companies that publish the average or median taken as a way to guide employees about what the true quantity of "unlimited" is. I agree that most of us understand unlimited PTO a bit better, which is why most of us would never be as honest as he was with his employer. I would definitely counsel anyone in his situation to get whatever PTO approved FIRST, come back for a few days, and then request FMLA straight with HR. Your manager should understand that what you use your "personal" (not "vacation") time off isn't their business. Be cheerfully vague about PTO prior to approval. Before and after any kind of leave, take notes on all conversations with date/time, outlines of subjects and direct quotes. This is actually something all employees (and really managers, but managers already have the company and HR in their corner) should do with any and all one on ones. A manager telling someone they can't approve PTO because they aren't going on a fun vacation but rather staying home with family, and then mis-directing them to take their FMLA before exhausting whatever PTO could have been granted, and then denying them any additional PTO after the FMLA is insane. FMLA is not a Federal Government program to subsidize a private company's PTO expenditures. I would also love to know how this ruins anything anyone. Are fun, vacuousvacations being ruined by people with real problems having a reasonable expectation that unlimited PTO policies would include the sorts of extended/bereavement leaves that used to be offered in separate policies?

Unlimited can also mean erratically occurring. Plenty of 2 job + 2 kid families have sudden 'parent must be at home' times, when families/friends are suddenly not able to fill the instant need. Look at how many people complain how Amazon fired them where a parent had to be absent for such an emergency - they then go from bad to worse in a heartbeat - AND they now have no job at all. I feel enormous compassion for these people, and I can do nothing at all for them.

Taking care of children, much like being sick yourself, is not vacation. Staying home to do so shouldn't reasonably be deducted from your vacation days, regardless of vacation scheme.

True enough, it is a sick day. Sadly US labor relations has been cast into a them versus us scenario - recall the worker riots in US and UK history. This has it's roots in the relics of 'royal rule, kings - god linked etc = workers are to be out down, and of course slavery follows. Japan and Europe treat the workers as partners in an enterprise, US/UK and Canada in the past cast the worker as the enemy who wants to steal the bosses $$ by underworking and overcharging for that work - thus we have Amazon's labor relations - to a degree. Amazon is a middling abuser, however, Amazon is rapidly improving, as we see, when they sit down and think about traditional roles. Of course, labor wants an enemy to rally against. Recall how the UAW steadfastly refused boards seats on the car makers board? I think union management wants an adversary. They do not want to see 100% of all financial and management matters. They would be able, as board members are entitled to, see the details of all costs, wages, benefits etc., so they would know how much an auto-maker can afford in reality. Makes you wonder. This board seat process works very well in Japan and Europe - on occasion the unions see that a manufacturer has a valid need to lower labor costs and the unions agree, and the car makers agree to restore wages after a depression - after all, no-one benefits when the company goes broke.

People probably should just have 2 months off a year, I don't see what your problem is. It would be way better for everyone's mental health, this guy was just smart enough to take it, probably in an effort to see if it would help them feel fine about staying at the company afterward.

> Unlimited PTO has never meant taking months off at a time.

Isn't that exactly what it's supposed to be? To give people an ability to work whenever they feel like working. It's not like the company just wanted to give people few more days of vacation like everyone else. They wanted to "stand out" with unlimited amount.

Not to mention that 2 months vacation is something that can easily happen even under normal circumstances (at least in Europe). If someone gave me "unlimited" amount of vacation I would certainly use more than that.

~320 hours isn't an uncommon amount to bank, I had more than that when I left my first tech job after 2 years. Albeit I didn't just take time off at the end I went the payout route but that's not really an option for unlimited PTO. I also took over a month off at the end of every year at then next job as they had decent total time off but didn't allow it to be rolled over year to year so I wouldn't say taking a month or two off is ridiculous in it's own right either.

Hard to say if it was actually unfair or not given the lack of background details (e.g. were they only there for a couple of months working the minimum needed or where they there for 2 years working heavily) but nothing about what was said so far actually seems unfair. "unlimited pto" should be about flexibility not about trying to silently lower the amount of PTO people take.

My current place now is much smaller and has unlimited PTO. I just act like it is no rollover front loaded and arranged my major blocks throughout the year up front. Throughout the year I'll make additional minor requests for unplanned things. Unfortunately many others don't do this and even though nobody is ever denied very few come close to using how much I get approved on Jan 1 and they'll just leave without it.

This is pedantic, and goes to your point of “never met an adult…”, but what exactly does unlimited PTO mean here if not “whatever you want”? What is the cutoff for what a “responsible adult” does? Is two weeks at a time okay? Is it okay if I do that in June and then August?

I’m not trying to justify a 2 month paid vacation, but this kind of clarification is all up to who’s doing the interpreting. The 60 hour week boss who never takes vacations may think anything beyond National holidays is excessive.

If I want to travel to Brazil I’m not going to spend 38 hours round trip to go for just a week.

How many people have you asked what it meant? Because I'd be willing to bet the answers would be all over the place with respect to how many weeks are ok.

I for one won't take an offer that includes "unlimited" PTO because it's a lie, and it means I can't compare the offer to my current job, and an employer offering it has a good chance of being underhanded. If they're not, they should be willing to put a specific number in my contract.

While I was at HubSpot during the initial rollout of their infamous $30k developer referral program, I remember one person getting a referral, paying out the $30k, and then taking PTO until they quit 90 days later. The developer who was recruited was already set from a previous equity cashout and had effectively retired.

Both programs got dramatically reformed after that, though naturally retrospective profiles of the program give it a much shinier glow.

Strange you can take paid leave during a probation period. I'm guessing no probation?

> took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately

That's absolutely common practice in places where you can accrue PTO without limits. People rest with compensation they earned and then leave re-energized. And that's a good thing.

You either take accrued vacation as a lump sum and take the tax hit or just take time off and get paid as you would.

Yup, have seen similar thing where we hired and SWE and took 2 months off stating he need to take care of sick parents in India. He came back, 2 days later he resigned & joined FAANG.

How is the engineer a asshole for utilizing one of the company perks? It sounds more like they were being underutilized and had management material written all over them.

It's the good old "tragedy of the commons":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Also known as "that's why we can't have good things"... :/

It’s often potentially a slight financial trick as well. At least it can be. Depending on structuring it can a tinnnnnny one time pickup on profitability due to not having a vacation accrual balance sheet liability any more. Aka 1)when you leave no payout, and 2) the one time reversal of that acrual can(*) impact profit. Do the math with payroll at 40% of revenue that can be a ~2.5% one time pickup in profit margins. Slightly less tax adjusted and fully rolled back.

Just saying it could be even more nefarious than you intended to convey :)

> We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company's generosity.

In other words, we tried to scam him on "unlimited" vacation which isn't, but he scammed us back by taking us at our word and treating it as if we weren't actually lying. Indeed, what a jerk.

I personally would hate to lose unlimited vacations, or more specifically what Atlassian provides. I like the freedom of not worrying about how much vacation I have available. It allows me to take random days off or take a long planned vacation.

I wonder what would happen if California just passed a law that called for unlimited PTO to be paid out (using some pretty high implied accrual rate, like 8 weeks a year or something).

I don't know how it would work in cali, but in the UK I'd pitch at statutory minimum holidays (25 days+bank holidays) OR average time off taken at the company, whichever was higher. I'm sure an employment tribunal would take either.

Slight correction: UK statutory paid leave is 28 days. Bank holidays can be counted as part of the 28, if given as paid leave.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

Every company I've worked at forces you to take your vacation if you hit the accrual cap. Simply preventing you from continuing to accrue seems like a terrible policy.

>I worked at a startup where the CEO reverted the unlimited PTO because one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately.

The CEO made a dumb bet and lost. You can't be mad when you offer unlimited PTO and people use it.

> The CEO made a dumb bet and lost. You can't be mad when you offer unlimited PTO and people use it

This is such a dumb take. Unlimited PTO does not mean you take two months off.

I'm tired of everything needing a footnote and qualifications because people like you only understand things in the most superficial sense.

But 2 months off could be a totally reasonable amount? If you worked for 2 years without taking PTO, taking 2 months off to avoid burnout seems like a normal thing to do. Some people prefer to take bigger, longer vacations rather than smaller more frequent ones.

> But 2 months off could be a totally reasonable amount?

Sure. Leave of two months should obviously be coordinated with your leadership, which this person didn't do.

Which makes your comment moot.

>Sure. Leave of two months should obviously be coordinated with your leadership, which this person didn't do.

How do you know that individual wasn't approved for the 2 months? I missed that part of the story. Do you not believe an employee has the right to resign from a job, or are they a slave for a certain period of time after taking a vacation?

> How do you know that individual wasn't approved for the 2 months? I missed that part of the story.

Context clues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_(language_use)

> Do you not believe an employee has the right to resign from a job

Of course. Nobody said any different. Are you confused about the thread you're responding to?

I appreciate your honesty that it is complete conjecture on your part that the 2 months hadn't been coordinated.

If that's what you think context clues means, I can't help you.

By the fact that the two months of PTO didn't result in an immediate "you are fired for not coming to work", I take the position that it was approved PTO, and (thus) coordinated with (some) management. I do not see any context that supports another interpretation.

As my dad has always told me, you have no idea what agreement the other employee had with the company, so never speculate.

Well what does it mean? the words are pretty plain and clear. I've never worked in a place with a unlimited PTO policy, so I have no idea what it means and would need clarification. Most of us work in technology and understand that in most cases the devil is in the detail.

Yes, the words are pretty plain and clear. You can take as much time off as you want, within reason. There is no cap.

Need a few days off for a break? Go for it. Want to take a two week vacation a few times per year. Approved!

Think you can take two months off and disappear? Nope. Some people were born without a nuance gene and don't understand this distinction.

>Think you can take two months off and disappear? Nope.

Apparently you can, because he did, and it worked.

If by "worked" you mean pissed off everyone and ruined your reputation and career, sure!

If it's your first job, then sure maybe.

I've done something similar, walking off a bad job at the most critical time they needed me. Would you like to know what happened? I used one of my many other references, and within two weeks I had a job for 20% more money making six figures. Your value isn't attached to what some idiot CEO thinks of you.

You made 20% more and broke into six figures. Congrats, you're an average tech employee with baggage. Everyone that remembers you will be a hard no on future interviews.

Congrats I guess.

Thank you! This was many years ago, and I've held several jobs since then, 1000+ miles away from there now. It has not impacted my career the slightest, but thank you for your concern! I don't have some superiority complex against those making a median wage, so your sarcasm really isn't an insult at all. It's quite a good living, and I don't begrudge those making more.

It it doesn't mean that, why not say "up to 2 months PTO"? If you say "unlimited" and mean "limited", then yes, it needs a footnote, just as if you said "we're going to pay you $200K per year" but then paid only half and said "what, are you crazy? I'd never pay so much as $200K, surely you know I didn't mean this, do I need a footnote over every tiny thing?" No, not every, only in cases where you say one thing, but mean completely different one.

See that word "unlimited"?

Oh, you can be mad. But you shouldn't be a jerk about it.

I also worked at Uber as an engineer and could barely take off a few days to visit my family during Christmas. I'm not even Christian but I at least thought that would be a good time. I guess it was very dependent on department.

Of course we got rid of slavery many years ago... We just call it different things now.

Honestly as a long-tenured employee, I'd be more happy with a modest, capped N weeks / year, with an explicit XX week sabbatical every M years.

It's difficult to get that "hard reset" you need every once in a while with a 1-2 week vacation [which to be fair, is already fairly privileged], and even if you have 4-5 weeks / year ["generous by US standards"] it can be hard to take more than a couple of weeks at once because you need to save a week or so for Christmas, a few days for your anniversary, a couple of days for you or your spouse's birthday, three days to close out Thanksgiving, etc etc.

> 1-2 week vacation [which to be fair, is already fairly privileged]

Sucks not to be German. 6 weeks a year that gets used is pretty humane.

Western Europe in general. Something between 4-6 weeks is pretty common. Not having at least 4 weeks of paid vacation sounds bonkers?

I think the funniest part of discussions like this on HN is all the Americans who are somehow... proud? for not taking any paid time off, and then the ones that are weirdly grateful for getting a pittance of time off from their employer?

Listen, PTO is money is salary.

Not taking PTO is leaving money on the table, it's the same as being proud that you're not receiving your full salary for your work, or being grateful that your company actually paid the agreed-upon salary this month.

But some people don't make that connection, because they're conditioned by shitty labour rules in the US.

Yoke to the plow, baby. Or spend all your time grinding the yoked yokels. Puritan work influence still strong.

Same in Australia and New Zealand. The US is the odd duck here, both legally and culturally.

I enjoy taking my month (20 days) off each year. I even have the opportunity to double it and take it at half pay if it suits. Work to live, not live to work.

Canada says... hello.

The UK also gives people 6ish weeks (5 weeks to take when you want, plus 8 fixed bank holidays). I grew up in the US and am American more than I am anything else. I've lived in the UK for a relatively short time (6 years, under 20% of my life) -- but that's been my entire professional career. It's cultural differences like this that lead me to believe that America will never feel like "home" again -- I now can't imagine living somewhere where 6 weeks of vacation time seems like it's far outside the norm.

You might have misunderstood the 6 weeks. That's 6 weeks actual vacation.

Bank holidays (different depending on the federal state you're in but minimum is 9 - in Hesse) are on top of that.

To be fair 30 days PTO is simply the standard in tech jobs. Minimum by law is 21, which some other industries do stick to.

5 weeks is 25 days and not at all uncommon in tech jobs, sadly.

The UK minimum is "25 days, including Bank Holidays". Most decent places will make that "25 days, plus Bank Holidays". One place I worked did "25 days, plus Bank Holidays, but since we need in-office cover, you can work a Bank Holiday and take that day off somewhen else."

The UK minimum is now 28 days.

Since bank holidays can be included many places have stuck to 25 + bank holidays, though.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

Thank you for the fact-check.

Australia is 20 days as well, some companies voluntarily offer 1-2 weeks more. It accrues if you don't take the leave and must be paid out if you leave, there are no caps. But most companies will force you to take leave if you have accrued 40 days as it affects the balance sheet.

Sick/Personal leave is min 10 days/year and also accrues with no cap but is not paid out if you leave. In addition there are myriad of unpaid leaves for causes like bereavement, natural disasters, domestic violence etc.

Don't forget long service leave. A uniquely Australian/New Zealand leave offering. After 10 years you deserve a nice long break from the office. Came about due to the excessively long travel times back in the day to Europe.

Depends on your state, in mine it's 7 years - looking forward to my 6 month half pay sabbatical next year!

(For those unfamiliar with LSL, I could take 3 months full pay if I wanted but half pay for double the time is my choice.)

My employer just let me take it piecemeal, like any other leave. Looking back that was probably worse for both of us. LSL is a good excuse to improve your bus factor.

I could take it piecemeal once it's accrued, but I just don't think that's a good idea. It's quite an opportunity to take a long period off work paid and I intend on honouring it.

Yeah, that's the good stuff.

I don’t know if it’s still the case (it’s a long time since I lived in Australia) but at one point Australian workers were actually paid _more_ while on vacation. About 17% more. The rationale is that there was no opportunity for overtime while on vacation, and the extra pay on vacation was to make up for that.

Only for some Awards.

Do lot of people stay for that long at one company?

So I found this article that says in 2018 it was around 17% (and rising) of employees are at an employer 10 years or more and similar for 20 years and more https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/we-don-t-job-hop-a...

Also note in some states where it's after 10 years you actually start accruing the leave after 7 years and if you leave the company prior to 10 years you get paid out for the amount of long service leave you have accrued. Again from the article at 5 to 10 years tenure is around 18%

Even with low participation it would be political suicide to make long service leave harder to gain or even try to take it away. Probably why Victoria actually made long service leave kick in after only 7 years.

23 years and counting... I've taken one block of 6 months long service leave (1/2 pay) and will be taking another block of a couple of years.

It all depends upon what your priorities are. Mine are working to live, with a minimum of ratrace.

the minimum is 4 weeks. But it's true that it is usually closer to 5 or 6 weeks.

I was an executive manager at 2 different startups that originally had "unlimited" PTO. In both of cases it felt wrong to me: The reality is that PTO is never unlimited. Like, if it was unlimited, someone could come to me and ask for 40 days of PTO and I'd have to tell them yeah. Or what about taking every Friday off?

The result was that, lazy/low-performing people would take the most PTO while high performing more dedicated people would sometimes NOT take 1 day in a year (I had to remind/push them to take PTO at the end of the year for their own sainity!!).

Personally, I prefer companies that tell me "25 days of PTO" or 20 or 30 or whatever. That way you everyone including the managers know that every employee WILL be out of the office that time, and it becomes a RIGHT of the employee instead of a charity of the manager.

Ultimately, in these two startups changed from "unlimited" to something between 2 and 4 weeks of PTO per person.

I'm a contractor, and I do pretty well.

I bill by the day or by the hour. Client's choice. I even round down to the nearest even hour each day so I don't ever have to have that icky feeling of "did I really bill them right this week?" which would just distract me.

When I work 14 hours in a row, that's what I bill. If I'm in the zone I push it till I fall over. It's worth it for the client. If I'm having an off day, I go home early and bill 4 or 6 hours.

If I'm billing by the day, I just bill by the day. Whether it's 14 hours of working or 4, it evens out and if I'm unsure, I'll bill half a day. The important part is that the work gets done. And if I work a Saturday, you bet it's billed.

Now, why do I say all of this? Because when it comes to time off I vastly prefer my situation. Sick for months? I'm not worrying about whether my PTO qualifies or whatever. I just don't get paid. This has happened recently and when I was healthy again my clients were happy I was able to help again.

This weird sorta dance around time off (sick days, PTO, government holidays, dealing with a manager under pressure for the quarter, etc) makes a bit of sense for the working poor, but I don't understand why so many software developers bother. Just bill what you work and if you want a day, week, or month off take it. I'm sure if more developers asked to work this way large corps would be happy to accommodate them.

> I'm sure if more developers asked to work this way large corps would be happy to accommodate them.

Oh, yes the penny pincers in accounting will just love the fact that their budget calculations for the next year will entirely consist of statements like "whatever our 1000 code monkeys feel like working even if it exceeds the amount you are willing to pay if they get into 'the zone', best case you wont have to pay them at all because none showed up".

I'm not saying your comment was in bad faith, but if you have a thousand developers working for you I'm pretty sure the law of large numbers brackets your outlay.

But setting a fixed amount and accounting for the few unavoidable out layers brackets it even more.

It sounds like you're someone who is comfortable in dealing with uncertainty. I think most people desire certainty and stability, so they want employers and the government to 'guarantee it' (even when the guarantee is illusory).

I am a contractor/consultant, and I do occasionally consider going back to permanent employment. What stops me every time is the dread of returning to just 25 days off.

I don't do much dynamic hours like above as I work with/manage others but I do take 40ish days off a year. 2 weeks at Christmas and Easter, 3 in the summer, and 3-5 days off for some of the kids half term holidays.

I prefer just informing the clients when I am unavailable and that is it. Never had an issue since going solo 9 years ago.

There are many downsides to being a contractor, but time off is an upside, if you can afford it.

Exactly. I hadn't even considered kids because I'm childless. I imagine it would be so much fun to actually spend some real quality time with them in the summer or during the holidays.

What would happen if you negotiate leave as part of your employment?

I hear this, but when I was a consultant, I found it difficult to take any time off. When I took time off, I wasn't billing, and when I wasn't billing I was leaving money on the table.

That sounds like your situation but not general advice. Mortgages are required to be paid monthly a sudden loss of income would hit many hard.

Obviously for this stuff to be workable you need to way more than what's needed to cover living expenses and have long term savings.

If you want to retain your freedom, don't sign yourself up for overwhelming debt.

The whole point of being an employee rather than a contractor is to have a stable income and not run the risk of e.g. suddenly having no money because you're sick for months. (Speaking as a European who would expect legally protected sick pay as a matter of course)

> Sick for months? I'm not worrying about whether my PTO qualifies or whatever. I just don't get paid.

How is that different from quitting or taking an unpaid sabbatical and hoping the job still exists? I mean, your clients may have found a new contractor in those months.

If PTO was really unlimited then nobody would have to come in at all. Which obviously wouldn't work in practice.

My employer noticed that people weren't taking enough PTO, even with an unlimited PTO policy, so made new minimum PTO requirements. Each employee is required to take at least 2 days off per quarter and at least 2 weeks per year. People have actually started using it.

A company I worked for required everybody to attend anti-corruption sessions (and later made it part of the induction process). A fun fact is that a reliable indicator of corrupt behaviour is never taking time off. If you're cooking books you don't want to let anybody else looking at them.

Huh, that's interesting and wouldn't have occurred to me. Even without that, there's value in testing the "bus factor" of critical roles. So, Jane wants to go on vacation and everyone's panicking because work can't get done without her around? It's much better to find that out now than when Jane switches jobs.

This is probably why the UK banking industry requires everyone to have at least one unbroken 2-week vacation every year.

Nice, this seems like the best way to do it. Fight workaholism, threatens the long term success of the business.

The problem is without other changes you likely incentivize people to take "PTO" but still work.

I've made it a personal goal to lead by example on this.

Coworker: I'll be out of office for my friend's wedding next week, but I'll check in sometimes to make sure everything's OK.

Me: Oh no you won't! Go have fun and stay away. We'll be fine for a few days.

Chalk it up to enlightened self interest if you want. When it's my turn to be on vacation, I don't want to feel obligated to check in. Therefore, I don't let the people who report to me do it, either.

I used to work at a company that, like everyone else, tracked PTO days. But I'm kind of a pain in the ass so I never bothered, plus, I worked ridiculously hard and came in at least one day every weekend and sometimes both Sat and Sun (plus most nights in general). Anyway, the head of HR asked me to start putting my PTO days in the system and I said sure, just let me know where I can submit the overtime slips. They got the point...it helped that I was good at my job.

I've always liked the "treat people like adults" policy with unlimited PTO and no formal tracking. If someone can't manage PTO and is abusive of it, my guess is they either might not be a great hire anyway, and if they are, what are you accomplishing by bothering them?

I'm quite confused at your response. Why are you so proud to give a company all your time, including nights and weekends, and for no additional costs?

Then when asked to take PTO you asked for money instead of holiday, despite working nights and weekends?

wat

Seems you misunderstood their comment. They took time off but never logged it in the system. HR asked them to log the days they took off, they said sure but I also get to log my overtime and get paid for those then.

Ignoring the fact that they are considered an exempt employee (at least in the US).

Probably illegally misclassified as exempt, you mean.

How do you figure? Technology roles are well understood to be exempt, no? Don't get me wrong, I think it's stupid and should be changed, but it is what it is (for now).

Do you figure a software engineer is likely to not meet the criteria for classification as exempt? I’ve never heard that called into doubt before.

I did well and was promoted and given raises and bonuses - that was kinda the point of working hard, not to get more days off. I just didn't like people making PTO a thing, it struck me as juvenile. I used plenty of PTO days, one summer I took every Friday off, but I didn't like the idea of being tracked like I was a child. My simple thought was if people do a good job, who cares about PTO tracking.

I see. That's much clearer, thanks.

Although the point of documenting PTO is both useful for you (to quantify days off as you may be taking much less than you thought!) and the company (was behead meant to be in work today?! What if there's a fire alarm and headcount is needed?)

Congrats on the promotion and raises! I agree that ideally working hard should lead to those outcomes.

Unfortunately "adult" does not have a universal definition in this context.

However I'm with you... I'd never work somewhere again (circumstances permitting) that did not offer me the flexibility I need to perform well. Sometimes that means I take a Monday and do nothing because I'm not recharged and my brain isn't being productive. Sure I could try to force something out, but honestly that doesn't benefit me or the company. My output would be poorly thought through, and I'll grow resentful. The tradeoff is, when I'm in the zone on something, it tends to consume me a bit and I'll gladly work until I'm done with it, nights or weekends be damned, because it's interesting.

Knowledge work is not a "show up and punch the clock" gig. Brains have off days and inconsistent output. When the quality of the thinking matters, and impactful output scales way beyond the cost of the individual employee, it pays for employers to be flexible.

Companies like "unlimited" PTO because it doesn't put a liability on their books (e.g. 6 weeks of PTO x N number of employees amounts to a large liability).

What companies doesn't like though is when you put restrictions on it.

What I've seen as a middle ground is to have unlimited PTO but if you take more than 3 consecutive weeks off, it must convert to a leave of absence.

I like the word "liability" you used here, because in Germany (where I've worked for the last ~5.5 years) there is another perspective of 'liability': an employer has to ensure that their employees take their vacation and adequately rest, else they expose themselves to legal liability. This isn't just about vacation - but also rests during each working day (I think it's 30 mins for < 9 hour workdays), and between working days (at least 11 hours between the end of day X and the start of day X+1).

I was travelling by bus and we got delayed. The bus stopped 15 minutes before reaching the destination because the bus driver had to take his 30 min rest. The rules are pretty strict especially for drivers.

so, the middle ground is, "unlimited" is not, at all, unlimited.

In California PTO is considered part of salary. You either take the vacation or else company will pay you the vacation days or all your days will be rolled over to next year.

Thats why most of the companies in Bay Area have unlimited PTO to bypass this law.

CA allows employers to put a cap on accrued vacation. See https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_Vacation.htm

> Q. My employer's vacation policy provides that once an employee earns 200 hours of vacation, no more vacation may be earned (accrued) until the vacation balance falls below that level. Is this legal?

> A. Yes, [and a bunch of examples]

They're only required to cash out your vacation at the end of your employment, and rolling over vacation isn't really a thing because you accrue it incrementally with each paycheck. See "Q. How is vacation earned?" in that link for more info.

It is like unlimited benefits. As soon as you put limits on it, some people start to look at "using them up."

The counterpoint is also valid: don't have policies which, if used, would be untenable to the company.

The best places I've worked have had PTO policies, no rollover (but flexibility for longer trips), and (critically) managers who would gripe at you at the end of the year if you didn't use your PTO.

Expectations were clear, everyone was on an equal playing field, and PTO was sized to something the company could afford everyone making use of.

> don't have policies which, if used, would be untenable to the company.

I am ambivalent on this. Some benefits are a bit like insurance, I don't mind not using them fully but I am glad its available when I need it.

The big issue is that it has to be available when I need it and it can't just be a scam.

I think that's where policy + manager discretion for overages is the better approach. Your manager should know if you and your team are killing it.

"Unlimited PTO" just sounds like make believe land.

And if it's not an actual, usable, guaranteed policy that doesn't negatively impact your career... then why are we deluding ourselves and creating a policy vs culture mismatch?

Agree completely.

Years ago, when I was first married (like several months after getting married), my husband needed surgery. The surgeon thought it might be pancreatic cancer.

The board gave me all the time I needed, no questions. And, the day of the surgery, a colleague from work spent the day at the hospital with me. A free day from the board and director.

Now it's true that I worked every day husband was in the hospital - I mean, he was sleeping most of the time so why not work? But they knew I would work since that's what I did. I delivered for years.

I was incredibly grateful they allowed me to take the time. Am still grateful. But I was also in a position where I could take an unpaid leave or quit. Neither optimal, but family comes first.

Would the organization have done the same for other staff? I don't think so. I had been there the longest and busted my ass for them, loving the work every single day.

Coincidentally, I quit a consulting job that wouldn't give me (unpaid) time off to be with my mother through surgery for pancreatic cancer (positive outcome, so far).

Had saved enough that finances permitted, and I still feel great about the decision.

Having gone from limited PTO to unlimited really helped me realize that I'm a hoarder. When PTO is limited, I rarely take it, but when I had unlimited I was much more liberal about actually using it. I went from average 1-2 weeks per year to 5-6, mostly by taking random days here and there, ducking out early to have a fun afternoon with the kiddo, etc.

I don't understand unlimited PTO. I mean, why not just take every Friday off, then? There is almost never a point at where where there's no work to be done; it's never going to be a case of "as long as you get your work done, you can take time off"... because there's no such thing as "done", just "prioritized".

If you can be competitive with peers and get enough done to continue progressing in your career with every Friday off, why not? The limit for me has always been my own productivity (and availability for meetings), and I think at a certain role level it's a reasonable expectation that you be measured in outcomes and not time spent at desk.

There are still expectations on the amount or level of work to be done. If you're meeting those and not blocking others, there's no reason one couldn't take more time off.

It's certainly a tricky thing to sort out, though. As you noted, "abuse" is possible, but defining what constitutes abuse is nearly impossible.

You call it "hoarder", I'd call it "low risk tolerance".

I'm sort of the same. I never had unlimited PTO, but I tend to save my time off for cases where I actually need it. Saved my bacon a bunch of times, before I started working remotely, with teams/companies that don't mind me taking off half a day to run some important errands, as long as my total work hours add up to the correct number each month.

GP is the opposite. He figures out how to use all his allocated time when he didn't bother to before.

Reminds me of the story in Freaknomics of a Daycare that instituted a late fee. After the fee was instituted, the number of parents being late went up!

Sounds like a situation where you go from feeling like an asshole to the daycare employees to utilizing service that you paid for.

That is exactly the conclusion they drew.

Exactly. I haven't seen it as much now I'm in the U.S., but when I worked in Australia, it was very common for your 2 weeks of paid sick leave to be seen as "vacation". Most people who had sick leave left come December, were suddenly sick for a few days before the end of the year.

The sickie is an Australian tradition.

Depends on your role / age / situation.

When I was younger and working more junior roles and moving from role to role every year or 2 (generally headhunted) there was a use it or loose it mentality. You wouldn’t take the day off the moment you had a sniffle / didn’t feel 100%.

However once your older, have kids and are at the role for more then a few years, that sick leave is often “banked” for when the kids come down with whatever is going around the schoolyard this week

My first job had advertised flexible work timings - you can come and go as you like, as long as you put in 8 hours.

Once I joined, I was told flexi-time means you can come anytime before 9 am and leave anytime after 6 pm.

lol

I worked at a bigco that implemented 12 weeks of maternity/paternity leave. A good friend was the first person to take paternity leave, he helped his wife with the new baby and their 3 other children.

His director was furious that he took the paternity leave. He started getting bad reviews and was sandbagged when he tried to switch departments. After he left the bigco, another director told him why he got the treatment he did.

> Honestly I'd rather have a policy that only allowed 3 or 4 weeks with a minimum mandatory that each employee is required to take at least two weeks off per year.

In Germany, your idea is the law. You get at least 5 weeks of vacation per year and you have to take at least 2 continous weeks off.

nope in germany the law is 24 work days and if you have more than 12 days off per year it's preferably! advised to allow 12 or work days contiguously (but it's not a hard requirement it only comes into play if an employee wants to take it like that) (people below 18 have different rules) also the employer is required to tell if days off will decay and force them to take them.

and work rules are always in favor of the employee so it can be extended but never reduced in a contract.

Yeah, 24 work days, which is roughly 5 weeks (with weekends) . But the other part is not fully correct. Yes, the law is pro-employee, and you have the _right_ to take 2 weeks of continous vacation (12 free days). But you are also _required_ to do so when possible:

> Kann der Urlaub aus diesen Gründen nicht zusammenhängend gewährt werden, und hat der Arbeitnehmer Anspruch auf Urlaub von mehr als zwölf Werktagen, so muß einer der Urlaubsteile mindestens zwölf aufeinanderfolgende Werktage umfassen.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/burlg/__7.html

I was really surprised when I first learned from my manager that it's a two-way law (right and obligation). But then again it is really a pro-employee law, basically forcing you to rest from your work.

It's a candidates' market right now, especially for developers. If my holiday got denied for a trivial reason (or no reason) I would just walk out the door.

The trick is to negotiate unlimited compensation along with unlimited PTO.

Oh wait

Just give me a credit card. I will spend money on things I want, as long as it's within reason. Such a workable system!

I think unlimited PTO policies only make sense with a minimum. The minimum in Australian law is 4 weeks. When I worked in Singapore I also got 4 weeks even though the labor law in Singapore technically only mandates 4 weeks.

When I work with unlimited PTO firms I will just make my intention clear from the start which is to take 4 weeks. Plus the two weeks of sick leave I am entitled to if I get sick. So max I use 6 weeks. But my sick leave accrues. LIke when I left a company I had 6 weeks of sick leave left unused and not paid, which is fine.

My last workplace had "unlimited vacation" policy which in reality was a no-vacation policy. Everyone was constantly stressed and on the edge of burning out - would not recommend.

I assumed unlimited PTO was BS and then I got a job that offered it and confirmed.

In my industry/level 4-5 weeks PTO is pretty standard, with maybe 1 week allowed to carryover to say Q1 or maybe Q2 of following year. I almost certainly take slightly less average PTO now with "unlimited" than when I simply had that 4-5 week allotment.

With a fixed allotment it is an entitlement you feel free to use. With unlimited managers get into psychological games of trying to shame you out of taking it. Even if you are strong and don't give in, many of your team isn't. A lot of studies have shown "unlimited PTO" is actually used less than the standard allotment for the industry/level studied. I certainly have to wrangle almost every request. Very few people take 2 solid weeks consecutive either.

> So it turns out people were taking much more time off now than when PTO was unlimited.

Is that surprising? I've had 'unlimited' (there must be a better way of saying that: obviously it has 'fair usage') for a couple of years, not counting but I'm pretty sure I've taken less than statutory.

Previous place was seven days over statutory and up to five would roll; fewer than statutory requirement taken would be paid in lieu (by law), obviously I took enough to use it all or roll some over - why let a couple of days go to waste? But when there's just no numbers on anything... if I don't have something to do I don't take it. (That's probably unrelatable for anyone with children, or a spouse who is taking holiday, that makes sense and I'm not knocking it!)

"Not explicitly stated"?

Well that's a slightly pessimistic angle on it. Thinking about it my offer letter might've said something more like 'you decide', which is a bit more correct than 'unlimited' without the ominous threat of an undisclosed limit.

Perhaps I should have actually 'decided' and written something down if only for myself!

I find "unlimited PTO" enough of a warning signal that I think "not explicitly stated" is an excellent description of what it gives you. And, yes, at least one former workplace switched us from "25 days, plus Bank Holidays" to "unlimited PTO".

With pretty much everyone in my team complaining that we preferred an explicit limit than a nebulous non-explicit managerial capriciousness.

I think unlimited PTO is an absurd policy to begin with. Why would you allow that? If people take a reasonable amount of days, then why not just have a generous policy like 6 weeks. If some people abuse how are you going to deal with them? Fire them? No, because you had the unlimited policy...

> Fast forward a year later and we were hearing things from executives and managers like, "you know you don't have to use all you're PTO, right?".

Funny, they might as well suggest that you don't have to take entire salary you agreed on.

As an employee at a dot com I despised unlimited PTO. I would rarely take PTO, working through all major holidays etc while others took months off.

The hardest working most dedicated people will get punished by an unlimited PTO policy.

As an employer I offer 20 days/year base +1 day for each year of service. Our official policy is to only allow 10 days to roll over to encourage people to take vacation. We monitor people's vacation and work with them to schedule time off.

The hardest working most dedicated people dont realize they need time off so we make them take the time off.

Right, it seems relatively simple to calculate someone's salary to also include additional 5 weeks of pay per year so that if you have to pay it out it was already budgeted. Alternatively, you could do it in such a way that every two weeks you get paid for 11 days worth of work and all time off is unpaid. Essentially you are getting 26 paid vacation days and you can use them or keep the extra money. It seems like a win-win. Known costs that are over time and extra money for employees or extra time off for employees.

Part of the problem is that California doesn't let companies have use it or lose it policies. Companies need to pay out unused at the end of the year.

And employees don't like accrual cap policies (i.e. stop earning after you hit some figure) that don't let them bank some amount over their annual accrual.

The problem is that unlimited PTO is a loophole that companies use to avoid paying earned benefits. California’s regulations on this are poor because they don’t account for this, not because they’re a bad idea.

I always been baffle by that.

My last job switch, 6 month ago, I explicitly asked to apply that calculation on my shinny new yearly salary. To go from 2 weeks off to say.. 5. ( I really means 6 … )

I got 2.5 and a lesson on budgeted HR cost and resource availability. At least there was a response.

The funnier is : I had to care for a family member too. I took 3 weeks already and they just routinely approved the unpay part of it.

> The unlimited policy is definitely a scam at many companies.

It is so they don't have to pay you for your unused vacation when you leave. It's a financial trick.

Yeah, it makes their books look better as well. No PTO in the liabilities column

I don’t like Japan’s default number of days off, but I do like their policy, which is that it is up to the employee when they take time off. The only situation in which a manager could reject it is if it would materially affect the company.

In larger companies that’s obviously never the case for any individual person.

Of course, that’s not quite how people use it, but the law as written is very nice.

American overcorrection is bizare. Years ago I recall hearing regularly that many Americans had no annual leave at all, or the ones who did would get fired if they took it. Now it's the other extreme of unlimited, paid time off?

Just have 4 weeks a year of rolling annual leave and be done with it! These absurd extremes serve nobody.

Accrued PTO can become a major liability for companies as it is wages that must be paid out at some point in the future. That is probably the main/only reason that companies offer 'unlimited' PTO since it doesn't carry over at year end and zeroes out when an employee leaves the company.

I worked at a place that, until a few years ago, allowed unlimited PTO rollover. You were allowed x days a year on a sliding scale that increased with tenure, but you could roll over all of it if you chose. This was also the kind of shop where some folks had been working there for 20 years, and had worked their way up from the shop floor to upper management. There were people that retired there with 2000-3000 hours of PTO banked, which of course paid out at their current rate. The were doing everything they could to switch peeps to a capped rollover plan.

Another technique that is employed to reduce the $ value of accrued PTO hours of lifers is the 'donate PTO feel-good' plan where people can donate PTO hours to colleagues that are on medical leave and running out of PTO hours. Since the people with massive PTO accruals are usually upper management (who are 'always working' as they never have to clock in and out) and the recipients are not, the company gets to pay out the PTO hour at a much lower wage.

Yes, they introduced that too, after one of the larger natural disasters took a few regional stores and offices offline for a while. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was the real reason but you’re exactly right. Tooth-and-nail capitalist focus on reducing expenses while couched in the language of we’re-all-in-this-together virtue.

It wears on the soul to carry the necessary cynicism of modern life with us.

Sounds like that company has (had?) a serious management culture problem. Without giving anything away, was it a large well-known company, a large obscure company, a small well-known company, etc.? Curious about what kind of company creates such an environment.

At FAANG the PTOs roll over (but there's a maximum cap, usually 1 full year of saving PTOs) + when you leave the company they convert to cash based off your hourly salary.

There was a great money stuff by Matt Levine where he talked about bankers doing vacation arb, where they would not take any vacation early, work through a few promotions, and then get paid out the vacation when they left at the higher hourly rate.

Every time I see a job listing with Unlimited PTO, theres always some accompanying verbiage that makes it sound a lot like that unlimited PTO will be unavailable.

This is exactly why I won't work at a place with unlimited PTO. Sounds great in theory, but in practice theory and practice aren't the same!

My company has unlimited PTO for being sick. If sick for more than 3 days (consecutively or probably within some time) you are required to provide documentation to HR of the sickness.

A (young, vaccinated) colleague caught COVID and was out for weeks, with multiple urgent care and one ER visit (quickly discharged; urgent care thought he might have had a stroke).

As far as I can tell he’s had no problems with the company after providing the medical evidence that he was, in fact, sick during that time.

OP’s story sounds terrible and the company completely toxic. I don’t defend it at all. However, in the US, nationally taking time off to care to others is not what paid sick leave is typically intended for. (In Washington State, where I live, the Family Care Act allows employees to use any form of paid leave provided by their employer to care for sick family [1]; I don’t know how many states have passed a similar laws.)

Taking leave to care for a sick family member is typically a different kind of leave. In the US, the Family and Medical Leave Act (known as FMLA) entitles eligible employees to 3 months per year to, among other things, care for a seriously ill spouse, or treat a serious illness of their own. FMLA leave is completely unpaid but your job is protected during and after that time, and there’s insurance you can buy to maintain your income when on FMLA.

It is illegal for an employer to deny a request for FMLA if you are eligible for it, or to retaliate for taking it [2]. If you are eligible for FMLA and request it or are retaliated against by termination, that sounds like a lawsuit that would be easy to win, as well as getting the company in trouble with the Department of Labor.

But who would want to work at a company with such toxic behavior from management and HR? I’m glad this was exposed, assuming that it’s true. (You never know who is lying and has a hidden agenda or axe to grind that they are not disclosing.)

Good companies offer paid leave for the same activities that FMLA requires unpaid leave, such as Amazon’s 6 months of paid leave for birth mothers and 3 for other new parents. My current employer is offering 30 days of paid leave for taking care of family members who have serious illnesses like COVID and I’m confident based on what I’ve seen so far that they’ll honor it.

There’s no “unlimited vacation” at Facebook or Amazon and I’m glad for that. My management chains at both companies have always encouraged taking vacation, and set an example by doing it themselves. Facebook even allows you to have a negative vacation balance, and I haven’t seen people need permission for taking their vacation at either company, though it would probably be wise to do so if you were playing an important role in a vital company activity that would be happening during your vacation (such as the launch of a major product you worked on, or periodic performance reviews if you’re a manager or have an important role in them). I typically entered my vacation into the system after taking it at Amazon, and would let my manager/peers know only if I was planning to be gone and unreachable for an extended period. (At Facebook there’s a good system for notifying people who want to/need to know when you will be out of the office, which also sets up the equivalent of out of office emails for their predominant form of internal communication, which is via Workplace.com (basically Facebook for Work, and an overall excellent product that I would recommend [3]); so at FB I’d enter it in advance because of those integrations, but unless I was performing a crucial job function at a crucial time, I wouldn’t expect to need to ask for permission, so much as notify my manager of my plans.

During performance or promotion review committees for employees I’ve participated in, we always tried to adjust fairly for accomplishments per day of work vs. expectations and others, to avoid penalizing people who take full vacation or leave. It’s human nature to want to give a better performance rating to someone who worked hard for a year with minimal vacation, vs. someone who was on leave for half the year and also took vacation, thus having fewer accomplishments total; but the performance committees I’ve seen and participated in always tried to be fair and measure performance adjusted for time worked, and if anything erred toward being generous toward those who had been on long leaves.

> I'd rather have a policy that only allowed 3 or 4 weeks with a minimum mandatory that each employee is required to take at least two weeks off per year.

As a person who was once young, very ambitious, and had no responsibilities or dependents, I would be opposed to requiring that people take so much vacation. When I entered the industry, I wanted to work hard, build things, build a reputation, progress in my career, learn new things, and earn achievements (including one that got me an award and handshake from Jeff Bezos, back when he was CEO at Amazon); I didn’t want to or need to take vacation, and would have preferred higher pay instead. College was largely a 4 year vacation already, except for a few very challenging 400 level CS courses, and during which I had taken several real international vacations with my family. After graduation I was ready to work hard and build my career. The company provided holidays plus an extra day or two were sufficient for me.

What I do wish is that companies were required to pay employees for any paid time off that is offered but not used, as they are required to do when you leave the company, but ironically not if you stay. (By not used I mean such as due to maximum vacation balances or yearly vacation balance resets, as Amazon used to do). Any vacation that would otherwise accrue as vacation balance but doesn’t, due to maximums, should be obliged to be paid as a proportional amount of compensation to the employee; the same if a vacation balance is reset.

I am older now and have responsibilities for people besides myself, and I am aware of the risk of working too hard and burning yourself out, which is why I am glad to have always worked in environments where taking vacation has been encouraged. But for people with few responsibilities that love their job and want to progress in their career as fast as they are able, I do not think those people would be happy with vacation being forced on them. I wouldn’t have been. I do wish that employers were required to compensate employees for any PTO that is offered but not used though. I can understand why some people would not want the law to require this, since it might encourage people to overwork themselves - but we are all adults and some people may be in a situation where they need more money more than they need vacation time; it should be their choice in my opinion.

[1] https://www.lni.wa.gov/agency/outreach/paid-leave-under-the-...

[2] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/77b-fmla-protec...

[3] I don’t know if it has the same degree of integration via bots that Slack has, however, so if that’s important to your workflow then you may want to scrutinize this aspect when evaluating the product; but the capability for them exists and is used extensively internally.

Right, PTO is compensation.

I always make sure I end the year with a zero PTO balance (no rollover) and I make sure that I encourage my employees to do the same.

Depending on the company, that's not great advice. At my company you cannot take PTO until you accrue it, so if you end the year with 0, then you can't take anything for a while until you accumulate enough time.

> like 2/3 of your team must be available at any time (regardless of the team size),

You don’t think this is a reasonable rule??

Here is the problem with these policies. What happens when just 1 person or 2 people have key knowledge?

My company has/had (the people I know with it left) this problem. Things hinged on one person and a team of effectively 1 or even 2 can never go on vacation.

Now, obviously this should be considered a problem too but other problems can make the 2/3 part unworkable.

I think the issue is that it was used as an excuse to deny vacation. It could also lead to everyone being put on teams of 2. Great, now no one can take a vacation by definition.

Not if your team size is two, for example.

My current team is 2 people. Should we never take a break?

No, because for some reason a lot of people take a lot of time off during summer.