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Comment by macksd | Hacker News Reader

This is a good idea. I've had two employers with "unlimited PTO". One of them explicitly set an expectation that I was expected to take at least 4 weeks per year. And it wasn't in writing, but everyone was told this, so there's "witnesses" which is better than nothing. This actually worked really well, and everyone seemed to take an appropriate amount of time, but no one was explicitly keeping track or expecting you to fill out paperwork just to take a break.

Another employer said you needed to talk to your manager and justify time off with regards to results, and the timing of your break, relative to releases, etc. In this scenario I hardly took any time off, but folks who clearly didn't care about their manager took SO MUCH. Learn from me, though: they never gave me the promotion I was chasing anyway.

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One of them explicitly set an expectation that I was expected to take at least 4 weeks per year.

That's interesting. In my state, you are owed accrued unused vacation time on your departure. One of the biggest reasons for going "unlimited PTO" is that there's no accrual, therefore they owe you nothing.

Does explicitly saying "4 weeks" put them back in the hook for that, or does saying "expect" get them back off the hook again?

> One of the biggest reasons for going "unlimited PTO" is that there's no accrual, therefore they owe you nothing.

IMO that's the only reason for employers to offer "unlimited PTO" schemes.

> Does explicitly saying "4 weeks" put them back in the hook for that, or does saying "expect" get them back off the hook again?

Hmm, at my most recent employer, I heard passdown from my manager that "the man above" (VP) had "guided" that 5 weeks was the ceiling for "unlimited" and that TPTB would look askance at anyone taking more. But this was all "off the record".

> unlimited > up to 5 weeks

This seems surreal to me, given that here (Germany) that is just above the legal minimum and every decent job gives 25-30 days. If someone offered "unlimited" here, I'd expect at least 40-50 days to be acceptable.

Legal minimum for salaried work in Canada is 2 weeks I believe, and I doubt there's a minimum at all in the US.

Google Canada capped us out at 5 weeks and that was after years of lobbying. But we could take copious unpaid time, and we were well paid, so.

I got 40 last year. talking with people, I understood that this is an acceptable amount. on the high side, but acceptable.

>> One of the biggest reasons for going "unlimited PTO" is that there's no accrual, therefore they owe you nothing. > IMO that's the only reason for employers to offer "unlimited PTO" schemes.

I think that's generally true, but at my company (which is a very small startup of about a dozen people) we have unlimited PTO because we just really don't want to bother with tracking it.

Yeah, that’s a lie people tell themselves. If someone was gone for 2 months, suddenly someone would start counting and tracking. But nobody does because of course, it’s not truly unlimited.

I have had two separate unlimited PTO jobs where I was gone on an extended vacation for ~2 months and no one batted an eye. The time off was discussed beforehand of course, I didn’t just not show up one day. But I got no complaints from anyone about it, just people asking to see photos from my trip.

Pretty sure I'm not lying to myself, thanks.

IMO that's the only reason for employers to offer "unlimited PTO" schemes.

A lot of companies also have continual headaches about requests for unused time to roll over into the next fiscal year. So not only is the accrual a problem in regards to terminated employees but it's a debt on the books that has to be tracked and serviced.

My fun story about that is the large company I worked for a couple of decades ago - they still had a policy that allowed you to bank up to a year's worth of vacation time. After a few employees decided to retire a year early by taking a 52-week vacation and then retiring, the whole policy was trashed.

Imagine having a coworker retire and you can't fill the headcount for an entire year because they're still an active employee.

They could fill the headcount. It’s another dumb policy that prevent them from filling it.

Works needs to be done and there’s no one to do it, the fact you can’t hire is a problem.

> you can't fill the headcount for an entire year

Why couldn't you?

Because, as mentioned above, this was an old-school company. Departments had budgets, and your labor budget was fixed and pretty much determined how many people you could have.

That retiree on 'vacation' was drawing a paycheck and was still part of your yearly budget. Asking for a replacement meant increasing the budget by that extra person's salary, and that was a bureaucratic problem.

Oh, and here's the fun conclusion to the story I forgot to mention. When the policy was cancelled and rollover was taken away, every employee got paid a one-time lump sum for their accrued rollover time. Some people got 30-40 weeks of pay in a single check. And that launched many employees into a higher tax bracket for that year. Lots of fun all around.

Where I am, only five days roll over, and PTO is accrued over a year. I think that if I were to quit in January, I would get a very small payout for my un-used PTO days.

I would much rather work somewhere with unlimited PTO, and not have to nickel-and-dime my vacation time. (Although, yes, this assumes that I'm lucky enough to work at a place that doesn't abuse the unlimited PTO promise.)

Frankly, over my 20 year career, I've learned the best way to get promotions is to switch jobs.

The hook strategy works great in the beginning of a career.

My experience later on is once you want Director or VP level roles at a noteworthy company, prospective employers are only keen to hire you at whatever level you've actually achieved. The jump from Senior Engineer to Tech Lead is orders of magnitude easier, totally doable by bailing to the next gig.

Absolutely agreed. There is generally no way to get your current company to understand your worth to them. You're in the "friend zone" with your employer.

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