Until your last paragraph, I believed what you were saying.

I think it's perfectly possible for one person to be on their org's good side and another to walk into every single branch of a hostile bureaucracy. Especially in large companies, which Atlassian certainly is now. I've seen that in action, side by side, even within the same team.

Neither invalidates the other, because a large company is perfectly capable of both at the same time.

> Until your last paragraph, I believed what you were saying.

I have no connection to Atlassian, but I've been "forced" to take time off, which I neither needed nor wanted. If I'm working a lot it means I'm enjoying it.

I have also taken quite a bit of PTO when needed by the way; I'm not afraid of doing so. But I don't really like the "one size fits all model" when it comes to this kind of stuff.

I have also been forded to take some vacation. It was late in the summer, and I think my boss started to feel that HR might be coming down on him if he let me work all summer :)

You and me both. Prime example of astroturfing.

> I personally have a larger frustration with there being too much time off as I actually enjoy the work I do

Can't you just not take the time off? If it's mandatory I'm sure you could still work while "off". Honestly I have an extremely hard time relating to this sentence.

Where I am we do require people to take vacations, usually if they are going to hit their PTO accrual cap (ie, they really have not been taking vacations).

accrued leave is a liability that a company doesn't want too much of.

For people leaving, accrued leave is something that the person could ask to be paid out in cash, or they can take the leave prior to quitting.

As an org grow larger and larger, they'd need to prepare for these to crunch together - and thus, by forcing leave, they can cap the amount of reserves (cash, and people to take over) they need. It's understandable, but of course, frustrates the employee.

> I’m a current P5 SWE at Atlassian and whilst I agree that going from P5 to P6 tends to be difficult

Which... is fine? It should get harder and harder to climb the ladder the farther you climb, because -- especially as an individual contributor -- it's hard to increase your impact on the company more and more as you climb. And on the flip side, I see plenty of people getting promoted before they are really ready, and become ineffective -- and worse, counter-effective -- in their new role. Then they either languish, get fired, or get fed up and quit. Or worse, they stick around and make things more difficult for everyone else.

So Atlassian actually has 30 days of PTO instead of unlimited, yeah?

Or those "no question asked" is unpaid time off? But then it wouldn't make send because if you already have unlimited PTO why would anyone take unpaid TO.

Aren't these up to the manager to approve?

A different manager can make a completely different experience in a single company. A rule of thumb when things blow out of proportion is that the manager is quite likely to have been a catalyst.