I have someone who we lured to the team by offering 4 weeks off in the first 2 months of his employment so he could do a pre-planned trip. Didn't require any special approvals because it's just an SOP.
I have someone who regularly takes 2-3 days off every month, because he works in concentrated bursts of energy, then needs to decompress.
And of course, I have one person who NEVER takes time off, because they always have so much to do and are afraid to let a ball drop. This leads to overwhelm, and a ball drops anyhow. So I need to force them to take time off.
As with all things, it's not just the mechanism, but the environment that mechanism exists within. It needs to be deployed alongside strong accountability mechanisms - planning, goaling, 1:1s, team health assessments, and performance reviews - otherwise it can be abused, or it can be hard to say 'no' to a request, or it can be hard to know when people aren't taking time they need.
But if you've done that, it's an incredible tool.
"Unlimited PTO" is PR-style spin on the loss of that compensation; you're being fleeced by your employer.
When you leave a company with PTO where you worked your ass off and never took any vacation, you're cut a check for that unused PTO.
When you leave a company with "unlimited PTO" after doing the same, you get nothing.
Edit: according to some comments, this is state-specific. The above applies to CA.
In most cases it is dependent on the managers approval as well so it rarely ever (again, anecdotally based on my experiences) results in more PTO that you would have had and often results in less.
It also creates a bit of a situation internally where people feel guilty or are shamed (sometimes even by other peers not managers) for using too much.
On the flip side, at least you don't have that "I don't want to use my PTO incase there is an emergency" and "I'll go in sick to avoid using a sick day" effect.
On this note though...
> of working at a company without formal time off tracking.
No company doesn't have formal tracking. They are most certainly tracking it closely. There just isn't a defined ceiling in the system.
Disclaimer: I'm a bit biased since it bit me. My employer switched to unlimited PTO without warning and previously had all the vacation days accrue on Jan 1st (and no carry-over) so literally if I left Dec 31st I would have gotten paid out 4 weeks (since I barely took any time off this year) but I left after the policy took effect so I didn't get paid anything. So I'm a bit bitter.
The open-ended nature of “unlimited” makes me think it really means “guilt-based” time off, skewing to less time than I might take if it was included in a contract.
Have only recently started considering employed work again after many years of freelance and contract work and it’s made me really cold on the idea simply because it smells of more of the bullquick I wanted to get away from in the first place.
I should note that I'm definitely right-of-the-bell-curve on this. I very intentionally decided to enjoy the perk. My employer was cool about it, but I suspect it's because my productivity is also above average.
I should also mention that I think this long vacation time does wonders for my productivity on the job, and that most Americans I've encountered under-estimate both the extent to which disconnecting from work is important, and how long it takes to truly disconnect.
In sum, I think unlimited PTO can be an incredible perk, but you have to pay very careful attention to the company culture, and be prepared to leave if it's not what you expected.
With traditional PTO accrual, employees get a payout of all unused PTO when they leave the company. It's expensive for the employer, and they also have to carry all of that PTO on their balance-sheet as a liability.
Under unlimited PTO, most employees take the same amount of vacation as they do under traditional PTO. So no difference there. But when the employee leaves, the employer doesn't have to pay out the remaining PTO balance.
Also: it's only unlimited until it isn't. You can hit invisible/unofficial limits without knowing it.
* you can take enough time off by yourself, and
* your team is doing the same/is not resentful, and
* your signifiant other is also ok with it
then it's pretty great.
Kids ill? Day off. Have a big trip planned to far away? You can now stay longer, and don't need to sacrifice e.g. Thanksgiving or Christmas. Moving house? Days off. Etc.
Anecdotally, productivity is up on teams I've been on with DTO. Everyone is just more rested, relaxed, and ready.
PTO is one of those things where, to misuse the quote, 'good fences make good neighbors.' A reasonable set of requirements and limits can reduce the guesswork, preserve relationships, and make it so people actually use their PTO.
It puts the discussion of time off between a person and their manager. This can be good for those that have a good working professional relationship with their good professional manager. This can be contentious for people that barely get along with their manager and some people may end up never taking time off leading to a build up of stress, burn-out, risk of people snapping and potentially ending up in the news. I believe that could be a financial liability as well.
My manager kept saying I could take time off whenever I wanted to, but the hurried pace of the team left me feeling like that wasn't really true.
And it's obvious there are limits in there somewhere. I probably couldn't take off every Friday, or take off a week every month. Where's the line? The uncertainty is what killed me.
Leveraging unlimited PTO confidently requires being adept at understanding the social situation around you - how will your team and manager feel if you keep requesting more and more time off?
I wound up taking as little time as I could because I couldn't tell what I was entitled to. I took my cue of what I could do from the people around me, and they weren't taking PTO very often.
I felt better in workplaces where the PTO rules are clear. It makes me feel entitled to take a given amount of time off, and gives me the confidence to request what I need without worrying about whether it's within the unspecified bounds of appropriateness.
There's also the scam of not having to pay people who leave the company for their unused PTO.
Personally, I refuse to take jobs without a set amount of PTO, unless there is some other huge benefit to make up for that. During negotiations I press hard for as much guaranteed PTO as I can. Currently working 4-days a week. That's a lot better than some vague promise of no limits.
Defined PTO is easy to turn into "use it or lose it" which effectively forces people to take time off, which is a major issue in the US - people need to take their allotted time! The best system would be one where once you hit "lose it" you start getting cash instead, but that would cause other weird incentives.
You then have managers that are flexible with your defined PTO, and let you "go negative" a certain amount. As long as people don't abuse it, it works well. Some companies "dump" your year's allotment of PTO on Jan 1 so you can work it down instead, same idea.
If employees were actually utilizing unlimited DTO the company would switch back to accrued PTO. I've seen this happen with an explicit claim that employees were "abusing" the generosity of the company. Said company later switched back to DTO to force employees a few years later to burn down their accrued PTO balances.
What it means to me: - Teams and expectations are oriented such that randomly needing to do things during the day is fine
- You don't ask to take PTO. You inform people when you will be unavailable. With some notice. But there's no approval process.
I haven't seen people abuse this; it's not like people take 8 weeks off randomly in the middle of a release. I guess they could.
In our case, it worked exactly like PTO anywhere else. We still had to request long stretches of time off (say more than a couple of days), and our manager could still deny the request. In other words it wasn't "everybody does whatever they want and takes vacation all the time," which seems to be a common fear people have about it. As far as I know, most people used common sense, and most requests were granted.
It was really great for one offs, like taking my car in for service, handling family emergencies, unexpected problems around the house, etc.
Having said all that, I'd be skeptical about unlimited PTO at a very small company. Bigger companies will have procedures in place to make sure things are handled fairly, with HR keeping an eye on how PTO is actually being used, investigating if certain teams never take PTO, etc.
I suppose the ideal would be to work for a place that gives you something like 6-8 weeks fixed PTO, but I don't know too many places doing that.
The USA-standard 2 weeks PTO a year is often dismissed as wildly insufficient by people in more civilized places. This new "PTO only when your manager feels like it" policy is even worse, which is saying something.
Personally, in the last couple decades, I've only worked at one place that tracked PTO. They pinched pennies everywhere, drove their people hard, and had predictable results -- people would come into the office sick because they'd used their balance that month; people would leave early because they were burned out. It's fucking archaic.
I go to India at least for 4 weeks in a year, sometimes longer. The typical 20 day PTO limit means I'm out of travel budget, have to do off the books deals with my manager, or dance with HR to get unpaid time off.
Since 2015, I instantly decline any job offer that doesn't have unlimited/flexible/discretionary time off. It's doubly useful: when the company has grown bigger, and hired middle managers who don't approve requests, it's time to switch teams/companies. I view it as a leading indicator of the culture changing. From my perspective, I've always been reasonable (I usually take 6 weeks off, and the max I've ever taken is 8).
If it's a tiny startup with a unique social culture, where everyone is radically open with each other about how they're feeling, then undefined PTO might be fine. But in general, being vague about things like this can to lead to anxiety and resentment.
Also, simply having the policy may harm your reputation among job applicants, as it reeks of PR and mind games.
I've worked at places where it was hard to take a day or two off, and I've worked other places where it was easy to take 3 weeks off a couple of times per year.
We also have a silly time every year where the pto is about to reset, and suddenly everyone is taking multiple days off in the same month. I mean i guess they pick a less busy month for it to reset, but it just seems like it would be better if everyone picked a random month to go on vacation instead.
Of course it's not always the case; my current gig has unlimited PTO and doesn't seem like assholes if you take it. It can be nice, but it has been co-opted by shitty startups to save money and drain their employees.
6 weeks is 30 days off 8 weeks is 40 days off Every Friday for a full year is 52 days, but in practice less since there are a few typically Friday holidays. Would a manager be ok with someone having a policy of taking every Friday (or Monday) off for a year? Would they be ok with taking off all but 8 Fridays? This would be acceptable (generally, barring regularly scheduled meetings) in most companies I've seen where people get 8 weeks of vacation due to seniority.
- it turns an explicit allowance/limit into an implicit one which is a negative imo
- it's mostly American, it's rare in countries that have reasonable legal requirements for time off (like 4-5 weeks a year)
I have concluded that the best setup is:
- The company gives a generous (for the US) but limited number of PTO days
- Most of the company is in a state where it's ok for PTO to _not_ roll over, and the culture then normalizes using all of your PTO every year
- Ideally you work from a state where PTO _must_ be rolled over and unused days are paid out
They are still writing down how much time off you take, even if they're not writing it down where you can see. But that doesn't mean anyone reads those numbers.
Take some vacation. It'll prevent burnout, so it'll be good on net for your productivity.
If they really do fire you for taking vacation, well, unemployment is kind of like unpaid vacation, so at least take some paid vacation first.
This seems to work extremely well.
Sucks for people who tracked PTO religiously before though.
If you're content to coast at your current position, it's great because you'll take advantage of it to the extent that you can.
FWIW, I see this as a net negative (as an IC), it creates unnecessary stress.
If you were senior enough to get 6 weeks of vacation a year, would you trust your manager to take in your seniority when it comes to taking time off? Or would he look at his spreadsheet and say, "Meh, you need to not take so much time off."
From an upper management perspective, it prevents you from dealing with accruals, approvals, tracking systems that go along with it, differentiating sick time, running out to see about something with the family, etc. It's not a policy you put in place if you're planning to micromanage people's time off.
And with all that off the brain plate, you focus on the actual business goals.
but i've definitely heard of places that did it very wrong.
- Fixed allowance, which included sick time in the bucket, but you could sell time back each December
Shortly after I joined HR decided to just merge the 5 days of sick time, and whatever the vacation allotment was and tell people they have one big bucket. eg. 25 days a year. Nice idea. In reality everyone came in sick didn't want to touch that time. It was easy to watch colds and flu spread through teams then across the floor. It was brutal for productivity. No remote work at the time didn't help there either.
But, at the end of each year you could sell unused days back to the company (I think it was in blocks of 5). This was a really nice feature, prevented rolling over time, and was paid out in early Dec, so a good time to get a bonus of sorts. Given I was on-call and accrued a lot of comp time, I could typically sell back 10 days and just get an extra pay check each year, while still taking vacation.
- Unlimited
Never felt this was a PR scam or any sort of malice, but it did make it necessary to encourage people to take time. In the end I set a minimum number of days for my teams and tracked it, encouraging people to take off time.
This comes down to hugely cultural issues, and whether the leadership can make it clear that time off is necessary and expected.
This is definitely my favorite situation, as long as it's genuinely there to encourage employee well being, and people are judged on delivery and impact, and not on time off. ie. if you do a good job, take off the time you want without being micromanaged for it.
No, you don't get paid out though when you leave, which is a bummer.
- Regular fixed with no sale, and no sick day cap.
Going from unlimited to a standard fixed amount was oddly jarring, suddenly having to worry about counting days off, considering more when and how much vacation to plan for. In reality I've never really needed much extra time, but just having to consider it feels odd after years of constantly encouraging people to just take more time, and never worrying about counting days myself.
Encouraging people to be out/remote when sick is a huge improvement over job 1 too. People can be remote or off, and not feel there's a negative impact on their vacation time.
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Something I've not seen mentioned here as well is that at several finance jobs I've had I've been required to take 2 weeks mandatory leave each year. This is a compliance rule impacting people with the ability to impact books and records, or edit trading and account data. Employees are required to be out of the office and not transacting business for 2 consecutive weeks. It's a silly idea that if you're cooking the books that'll come to light if you're out for two weeks. I've seen this implemented in different ways at different firms with different limits, but it's all the same idea.
Especially for junior employees with limited vacation days being mandated to take two weeks at once can feel pretty harsh and limiting.
Its basically code for "zero time off" for the little people and multi month holidays for management.
Of course, it doesnt have to be like this, it shouldnt be like this ... but people are going to do what they do best.