7 ms·

Unlimited PTO has the downside of having no minimum that lets you go and push back against managers who do not want you to take it/haven't set things up so you

• sneak 5y ago
  Unlimited PTO is always a passive-aggressive lie. Companies that start out the relationship with dishonesty are bad places to work.
  • Florin_Andrei 5y ago
    Yup. It becomes a negotiation, and the company by definition has orders of magnitude more negotiating power (arm-wrestling, etc) than you do. But hey, "freedom", yay!
    • munk-a 5y ago
      This is the unfortunate truth of a lot of US labour laws and why I prefer it up here in Canada. I know with certainty that my coworkers (even university coops!) have access to good healthcare and have provincially mandated vacation time. I work hard in my position and carry a fair amount of responsibility that I've accrued over the years - but I don't want any of my coworkers, no matter how junior and no matter how short their stay at this company may be, to struggle to live a healthy life.
  • chemeng 5y ago
    It's a cost savings measure for CA companies to avoid having to hold employee's earned vacation hours as a liability to be paid out if they are unused when the employee separates. This is also why they cannot set a minimum, as that would indicate an amount of earned vacation per year. To be clear, this is still very disingenuous and I believe companies should stop the practice.
    • WorldMaker 5y ago
      It is a loophole in labor laws that CA's legislature especially should close because it is against the spirit/intent of the laws that vacation time should be an asset owed to the employee as part of total compensation, not a whim to be managed (removed without recompense) by the employer.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    There are some companies where it seems legitimate, especially larger ones. I hear that at Indeed for example it is very legitimate. The problem in smaller ones is not so much that it is a deliberate lie, but rather a promise the business cannot keep as the bus factor for lots of roles is 1.
    • sneak 5y ago
      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.
      • MattGaiser 5y ago
        Fair. I agree that it is not truly unlimited.
      • drstewart 5y ago
        >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?
        • sneak 5y ago
          > 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?
        • RHSeeger 5y ago
          Then it's not unlimited, it's flexible.
        • tomcorrigan 5y ago
          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.
  • acidbaseextract 5y ago
    I am a small business owner with unlimited PTO. It's not a passive aggressive lie. I want people to take time off. I just can't have large outstanding liabilities associated with accrued PTO.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • hmottestad 5y ago
      Do employees take out more than the regular 5 weeks a year that most people in Europe do?
    • withinboredom 5y ago
      I worked somewhere where this was the case. A guy went on a two week vacation and called in every two weeks to extend it: for four months. Genius. After that, it was still unlimited, but after three weeks, it was unpaid.
    • munk-a 5y ago
      Can't you just force vacation time payout annually to avoid large liabilities? I've worked in places like that and it's usually received pretty well - there isn't any expectation of accruing half a year of vacation over several years of employment anymore - at least not in younger (under forty) folks.
      • ghaff 5y ago
        Any company I've worked at with an accrual vacation system has typically had an accrual max, i.e. your vacation doesn't go away but you stop accumulating more when it hits the cap which is usually something like 1.5x annual accrual.
        • munk-a 5y ago
          That's a good way to avoid the situation where employees need to take vacations as unpaid time in january but they still end up hitting the same issue in June (or whenever the cap kicks in). So if you accrued up to the max at one of these places would the additional time you would accrue just get immediately paid out? Or was no vacation time earned?
  • yupper32 5y ago
    The people I know with "Unlimited" PTO all take more than my 5 weeks of limited PTO. Lie or not, it's still better.
    • RHSeeger 5y ago
      > it's still better. It _can_ still be better. Or it can be worse, as in the OP's situation.
      • yupper32 5y ago
        So... bad companies are going to be bad companies. Unlimited PTO has nothing to do with it.
        • mrtweetyhack 5y ago
          Unlimited PTO are used to sucker people into the job
  • lghh 5y ago
    I have unlimited PTO and have for quite a while and love it. We are encouraged to take off at least 5 days a quarter / 20 days a year in addition to our holidays (which are flexible given culture, personal preference, etc). We don't count sick days or appointment time towards that. We can take off more, and frequently do, we just have to tell someone we're doing it. We frequently are put on "nicely forced" vacations if our manager notices we have not taken off in a while. You'll usually get a message from your manager like "hey, schedule some time off in the next month, it's been a bit since you've been off". This doesn't include parental leave as well, which is pretty solid compared to other places I've been.
• AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  It is first and foremost a cost saving measure for the company as it is a simple policy to create and enforce, in my experience, and it avoids payouts for accrued PTO when terminating employees in some cases.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    At least at my company, they still do all the tracking of it. Not sure they are really simplifying admin.
    • vkou 5y ago
      It isn't meant to simplify admin, it's meant to prevent the company from having to pay out someone who worked for six years without taking a single vacation day, when they get fired/quit/die. It's also why many companies hate carrying vacation days over - they don't want someone to save up three months of vacation that they earned at a low wage from getting promoted, and then receiving it in cash when they quit at a higher wage. Given the choice, an employer will always prefer to keep payroll costs predictable.
      • 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
        > It's also why many companies hate carrying vacation days over - they don't want someone to save up three months of vacation that they earned at a low wage from getting promoted, and then receiving it in cash when they quit at a higher wage. This can be a nasty carrying cost for companies. I worked at a place that went from the standard accrual of vacation to "a minimum of 20 days/year, no carry-over." To keep employees from engaging in open rebellion, they had to offer two tiers: either 1) you agreed to the new plan and gave your accrued time back, or 2) you keep your accrued time to date, received no more, and could join the new plan only when your vacation time balance hit zero. The new employees, including me, quickly picked option one. The long-timers all picked option two, sat on their time, and cashed out when they went to other jobs.
        • munk-a 5y ago
• trhway 5y ago
  In accounting/finance terms the "unlimited" PTO equals 0 PTO, and this is why business loves it. Thus you don't earn it, and instead it is just like a bonus given [or mostly not] at the whims of the manager. The Atlassian HR response is a wonderful mix of the "more flexibility" BS and the true harsh reality of the "unlimited PTO" scam https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/bc8423a2-dccf-41e6-b6c3-ea70d01bb7d6/Untitled.png?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAT73L2G45O3KS52Y5%2F20210916%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20210916T200250Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-Signature=cc1a3c7e2808b2a2b708fb9f7b020616efb5f927599f81a64e9b76ea3a3bf8ec&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/... Next thing is "unlimited" health insurance where your medical bills are paid [or not] at your manager approval :)
• hmottestad 5y ago
  Most of Europe has 5 weeks of holidays. Funny how unlimited PTO in the US isn’t even close to the very limited time off we get in Europe. Unlimited PTO should average 20 weeks a year to deserve to be called unlimited.
  • rubyist5eva 5y ago
    You get more than 10% of your time off for work and that's "limited" to you? You expect your employer to pay you for not working 40% of the year?! Insanity.
    • jakeinspace 5y ago
      1. I wouldn't call that necessarily insane, depending on the specifics of the work contract. 2. I think the objection to using the word "unlimited" is correct. The only way I can imagine a truly unlimited PTO policy working is if there were concrete performance metrics that I was expected to meet to retain my job. And if I manage to get a year's worth done on January 2nd, I can take off the rest of the year.
    • Daniel_sk 5y ago
      That’s priced in. It’s just fair that there is a mandatory amount for everyone and that’s the baseline.
      • rubyist5eva 5y ago
        It's not fair for people that don't want that and would rather work more for more compensation.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • repomies69 5y ago
      I don't know about insanity, in Europe it is very clear what the contract and law says, and it is very simple. People usually have the holidays around the same time of the year. Then again the salaries are much, much lower than (some parts) of the US. You could see it as a tradeoff. However it varies from country to country but in my understanding the difference to US is drastic.
• nkingsy 5y ago
  Even at a company that encourages it, unlimited pto was stressful. How much are others taking? Have I earned this? On the bad end, I quit a company that wanted me to take a report to task for using too much unlimited pto (3 weeks in a year)
  • the-dude 5y ago
    > wanted me to take a report to task What does this mean?
    • mikestew 5y ago
      Parent is a lead/manager of some sort, and they were directed to verbally discipline a person who "reports" to them (IOW, works under parent commenter's org).
    • fencepost 5y ago
      Grandparent post was in management, higher management wanted one of his reports disciplined for using the unlimited time off (in an amount that's not uncommon for anyone in management or with 5+ years at the company to have as vacation)
    • cftm 5y ago
      Someone who reports to the poster took three weeks off and the powers that be wanted the poster to have a "talk" with that person.
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      It means to talk to them in a stern way about something they did wrong. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/take%20to%20task https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/take%20to%20task
      • the-dude 5y ago
        I didn't even get the 'report' part. Thanks all.
    • deleted 5y ago
• denverkarma 5y ago
  You're correct about unlimited PTO, it's absolutely a mixed bag. I worked at Atlassian, and my experience was that people were actively encouraged to take between 20-30 days off per year, and that getting vacation was usually a mere formality - telling your manager "hey I'm planning to take the week of so and so off, any issue with that?" I never had vacation or sick time checked, never had any denied, and I very much took advantage of the benefit. Still, the manager does have to approve it, so I have heard stories about teams that are understaffed declining vacation when they don't have enough people to be on call etc. I don't know how that would work out differently if you did have accrual vacation though... somebody does have to be on-call. It's tough.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    I suspect that the same companies/teams that make it hard to take time under an "unlimited" plan would probably make it equally hard to take the 4 weeks of vacation you'd accrued under a traditional plan.
• biztos 5y ago
  If blocking people is the problem, could you not take unlimited PTO in sub-week increments? Plus maybe a couple actual vacations a year near the holidays when people are all blocking each other anyway. Seems like the perfect intersection of policy and need, if you would like to work fewer hours a day or fewer days a week. (Which, ok, maybe isn’t for you.)
• munk-a 5y ago
  Depending on local labour laws this can happen to you even without unlimited PTO. I have a coworker in BC who was denied the ability to exercise their vacation during a three month crunch period - and then the company refused to pay out the hours and disappeared them into the aether - this tends to be legal in a lot of places when labour laws confirm that vacation is at the convenience of the employer (which is totally reasonable) but fail to mandate either vacation carryover or vacation payout - a lot of jurisdictions can allow this sort of grey area and if your company leverages it... Quit Immediately.
• ribosometronome 5y ago
  Having worked at companies that do both, I prefer the explicitly accrued/yearly allotment. There's less of "I'm back in elementary school and need to raise my hand and ask permission to use the bathroom" and more "This is my time, as long as I'm responsible I can use it essentially whenever". And that's with the previous unlimited time company actually being fair with it, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to use with a company that discouraged it.
• gamblor956 5y ago
  At my current and former company, both of which offer unlimited PTO, vacation requests are approved by HR, not your manager. Managers are only allowed to challenge PTO requests if they can demonstrate that the employee is not getting their work done. (For on call employees, managers cannot challenge PTO requested for periods when the employee is not on call.)