I used to work for a second tier management consulting company (one that specializes in high profile bankruptcies), and they had the “unlimited PTO” scheme, although it was couched more as “We don’t track PTO days as a company; that’s between you and your manager.”
In practice what it meant was that if we were on an engagement, don’t even think about it, unless it was a very long term engagement. And even then, they had no scruples about calling you up during your vacation days, or on the day after Thanksgiving, or Christmas Eve, or whenever, if our asshole clients had questions, or wanted something. If you were between engagements, they kind of didn’t give a shit what you did, other than be available at a moment’s notice for paying engagements- as in telling us at 4 pm “You need to be in City X tomorrow morning at Client Y” .
In terms of vacations, it meant that we had little control over when/how much vacation we could take, unless it was pre-planned, “big ticket” type vacations where they could plan around it, and even then they weren’t exactly wild about you taking more than a couple of weeks of vacation in the spring/summer, and a few days at Christmas/Thanksgiving.
The flip side is that I was able to walk into my boss’ office in mid-summer and say “I’m taking from December 22nd through January 14th off for Xmas and my honeymoon” and not catch a bunch of BS about not having enough PTO to take 3 straight weeks off after only working there for 2 years
So yeah, it’s a smoke and mirrors thing. Unlike the company I once worked for with untracked sick time; that was a surprisingly nice policy. Although I rarely take off sick, it was nice to know that if I needed to, I could take a week off for sickness without having to dip into vacation time or be unpaid or whatever.
Also, when you hear about a company giving “unimited PTO”, check to make sure it’s an accurate report. A few years ago it was reported somewhere that IBM gave unlimited PTO, and that was COMPLETELY untrue.
Nope, it doesn’t mean that - “PTO” means that there are not separate buckets for vacation, sick leave, personal leave etc . “Unlimited PTO” means there’s no particular amount of time an employee is entitled to - and in my opinion, it’s a misnomer. Because I do not believe there is any employer that offers “unlimited paid time off”. At best, there are companies with what I call “Amex PTO” - there’s a limit alright, but you don’t know what it is until you get to it. I know a company that provides X weeks vacation per year- but “unlimited” sick leave. And they have actually paid people who were out sick for as long as a year - but other people only got a month before they were terminated. And there’s no way to know in advance whether you will get a year or a month.
Exactly. Vacation gets treated like an additional special benefit instead of a contracted part of your total compensation for working. When an employee has to request special allowance instead of cashing in what time is already contractually theirs, then it puts up a psychological barrier.
Managers also will now plan their yearly staffing coverage and budgets under the assumptions of full employment without scheduling in the vacation absences. Suddenly, asking for vacation turns into ‘hurting the team’ because you are no longer ‘carrying your weight’ when the rest of the team is working full time…
I worked for 20 years at a large company that supposedly offered unlimited sick leave. In reality this meant that you’d get a lecture from your manager if you took even a couple of sick days in a year. And, with contagious people coming to work, there was more sickness all around.
You might think the policy was good for people with serious extended illnesses. But no, these people were quickly switched to short-term disability (reduced pay).
I also worked for a company that offered unlimited sick leave, and it was great. Nobody abused it because it was a great company to work for. You didn’t have to hoard your days worrying what would happen if your kid was sick. Of course for an extended illness you’d go on to short-term or long-term disability.
I always worked for companies with no set sick leave budget, and I never heard of anyone using sick leave to take an extra day off which seems to happen when you are entitled to a certain amount.
At AT&T at least you were protected from being laid off when out on disability. Someone who worked for me survived a layoff thanks to this.
I think for really high-end jobs, “Unlimited PTO” is a real thing. For example, if you are a C-level executive, you’re judged by results, not how many hours you are in the office. Realistically, though, those people tend to be on call all the time everywhere.
For most people, though, I agree it’s a trick and a bad deal.
My job had no set sick days until required to by a state law change. The policy was “if you’re sick, stay home and rest.” I think the policy worked well, and no one has ever hassled me over taking a sick day or five. I think company culture matters here a lot. If I’m sick but not that sick, I’ll work from home. I am healthy enough to think and type, and not coming in to the office keeps the sickness from spreading.
I think combining vacation and sick days is a bad idea, because it provides a strong incentive for someone to come to work sick because they’re trying to ration their days off and then gets other people sick.
Obviously there isn’t anyone who permits true “unlimited time off” because that would mean you’d have people you pay who wouldn’t come into the office ever.
Ideally what unlimited time off means is "we think you will be able to meet your goals in less than 47-49 weeks without working extra hours. If you can work ahead of schedule, you’ll be able to take more time off. If you spend a bunch of time gossiping or at the company provided gym or reading The Straight Dope at work, you probably won’t get to take more than a week.
In reality what in means for companies is “you can’t take time off without it looking bad unless you are meeting the completely unrealistic objectives we have set for you.” And, of course, if it looks bad, you’ll be top of the RIF list.
And in reality what most people set their expectation at is “I can take two weeks and go to Europe - and still have a week at Christmas, and a few days in the Spring, and a week in the summer, and take a few Fridays off” - and that probably is more time off than even a reasonable company wants you to take off.
After 15 years with AT&T I got 5 weeks, plus 4 personal days, plus a reasonable number of holidays, so it all depends on what you consider reasonable. And pretty much any European would consider your vacation schedule pretty skimpy.
Yes, pretty much any European company would. I had that at the firm I was with for fifteen years as well. But for U.S. based jobs, the standard is two weeks your first year, you only get five weeks after many years of service - you don’t get it the day you graduate from college - and anyone who believes “unlimited PTO” is going to get them a European style vacation schedule - or a fifteen years of service one - when they are just establishing themselves at the company is naive.
That sounds very similar to (if not in fact the same) company I worked at years ago. I did computer forensics, but bankruptcies were also a big practice area.
I had 5 weeks of vacation. But in practice, they used to always call you on weekends or holidays to address some stupid request or another. Sometimes they would call people while they were on vacation because their vacation happened to be in a city where work was happening. I recall at one point, this one a-hole manager had one of his people working a day or so after she gave birth (which I think is illegal).
For the last two years, in the name of “work-life balance”, we’ve all been given a mandatory 2 weeks vacation (with pay) that must be scheduled, and must be taken consecutively. This is in addition to our normal CTO, which is fairly generous. Pretty sweet.
This is awesome, and really should be done everywhere. It should also be on the employees schedule - I worked for a company where everyone had to take between Christmas and New Years off (there was a factory furlough that they extended to everyone) - but since at the time my husband worked an eCommerce job, it really didn’t do me (or all of our non-Christian employees) much good.
I’m also a software developer and we already had a generous PTO schedule and we recently moved to “unlimited PTO” and it is only a joke because it isn’t truly unlimited - above a certain (fairly high but not European-high) limit you need several levels of management approval.
Thus, people try to use all of that limit each year because they feel psychologically entitled to it. I used to think that that backfired on them and caused people to use more time off than under the old system, but now I wonder if they didn’t do that on purpose to encourage people to take more time off.
The only downside is that you can no longer bank your vacation, but getting more than a week more per year is more than worth it. We still kept our former balances, though, and weirdly enough, it will be paid out in cash once we leave the company.
We dont have unlimited PTO at least not yet
We also do not have sick days or holidays either
The PTO you do get, you are highly encouraged not to use.
Some people use it all anyways, but then they dont tend to be here long.
They dont pay out on unused PTO either, for any reasons.
It is . . . everyone gets to schedule their own two weeks (with some teams having a little more flexibility than others; not everyone can take the same time off). I feel very fortunate that I work for a (small) company that treats its employees humanely and generously; not just in flashy, showy hip ways that lack substance, but in slow, methodical, and meaningful ways that we can actually take advantage of to make our lives happier.
Interestingly, and this gets at what Ludovic mentions also, I learned that part of the motivation for this mandatory two weeks vacation (as opposed to some other work/life balance initiative) was that a lot of employees simply don’t take vacation, or a meaningful amount. The idea was “the point of vacation days is to take them, and a lot of people aren’t taking them, so we’re gonna require that you step away from your desk at least once a year”.
No, it doesn’t. I’ve worked in a lot of companies where PTO is put into buckets. Again for the reason, in some states you have to pay out all PTO but if you have PTO sick and PTO vacation and PTO personal the PTO sick for instance, in my state doesn’t have to be paid. Why? Because sick time is a conditional benefit. You don’t get it unless you’re ill.
