One year ago I returned to work at a large'ish SV company that, in my absence, was acquired and in this transition was converted from "PTO accrued at an annual

One year ago I returned to work at a large'ish SV company that, in my absence, was acquired and in this transition was converted from "PTO accrued at an annual rate that increased with seniority" to "unlimited vacation [as long as your manager agrees]". It didn't take much thinking to realize that "unlimited vacation [as long as your manager agrees]" is purely a way to screw the employee (who regresses to the mean of however much time they tend to habitually take off per year (having subconsciously ignored that they won't be repaid in cash for those lost hours of time off when they leave their company), but now additionally "has to beg" for time off rather than the time off being something they've earned) while also removing the liability of the accum'd PTO they owe employees from their books. The claimed justification that "tracking PTO is an added accounting cost" rings totally hollow: all employers I've worked for in my 20 year career had automated systems in place to track this info; in my current gig I'm still required to enter my hours worked per project every week into the same old automated system (into which I used to also enter PTO consumption), so it's not like they lack the systems to track this information with minimal effort/overhead. As another comment mentioned: this and "open office" go hand in hand: IMO the employers all get together (AEA? etc) and learn about the extra-normal practices of the "edgier" employers, select those that save the employer $$$ (regardless of consequence to employees), and adopt = normalize them (while marketing them internally as modernity incarnate: "this new system is SO MUCH BETTER than the way things used to be back in the bad old days; don't you agree?").