I also saw this ad, and was amused by one of their perks being "unlimited PTO". The combination of that and "not a lifestyle job" tells you everything you need to know about so-called unlimited time off policies.
Hah, last time I interviewed for a remote job in an American startup with unlimited PTO, I said: you know, I'm from Europe, here we don't have unlimited PTO, but 5 or 6 weeks of vacation are common - so I don't really want unlimited and would be happy with just 5 weeks. Are you OK with that? That was met with a bit of an uncomfortable silence, and then they said that the standard is that everybody takes 2 weeks of vacation once a year plus maybe an occasional day off a couple times a year. Which was exactly what I suspected.
In the previous US startup I worked for, which also had an "unlimited PTO", I checked the company calendar and it was standard to take at most 2-3 weeks of vacation per year. Seeing what I saw, I now consider the unlimited PTO a red flag, as in - somebody is looking for suckers.
Accrued vacation must be carried on the books of a company as a liability until the vacation is taken. So you have two weeks vacation a year, you work a year without taking any vacation, the company has actually paid for 54 weeks for their accounting.
Also, in many American states, accrued vacation must be paid out when you leave the job. So it's not just an imaginary liability.
No, it says that unlimited PTO _can_ be abused, not that it's inherent to the policy.
I'm currently at a company with unlimited PTO, and the way it works in practice here is that people feel free to take random days off without having to count beans, on top of a pretty normal amount of scheduled vacation: I currently have six weeks of vacation on the calendar for the rest of the year (that's more than I would've liked, but I have a few important family things going on overseas). On top of that, I'm taking this Friday off for a visiting friend. This unavoidably means my career will be worse off than if I had an extra couple months of productive work this year, but I'm an adult, capable of making this decision to trade off marginal career success for marginal quality of life improvements.
It's beyond me that some people who don't want to take responsibility for their careers are so desperate to tear down policies that treat employees like adults capable of making their own decisions. It's not like unlimited PTO is being offered to those who are one paycheck away from starvation. Take a normal amount of PTO if you want, take less or more if you want, but don't pretend like this choice being offered is exploitation.
> No, it says that unlimited PTO _can_ be abused, not that it's inherent to the policy.
> I'm currently at a company with unlimited PTO, and the way it works in practice here is that people feel free to take random days off without having to count beans, on top of a pretty normal amount of scheduled vacation: I currently have six weeks of vacation on the calendar for the rest of the year (that's more than I would've liked, but I have a few important family things going on overseas). On top of that, I'm taking this Friday off for a visiting friend. This unavoidably means my career will be worse off than if I had an extra couple months of productive work this year, but I'm an adult, capable of making this decision to trade off marginal career success for marginal quality of life improvements.
> It's beyond me that some people who don't want to take responsibility for their careers are so desperate to tear down policies that treat employees like adults capable of making their own decisions. It's not like unlimited PTO is being offered to those who are one paycheck away from starvation. Take a normal amount of PTO if you want, take less or more if you want, but don't pretend like this choice being offered is exploitation.
I personally dislike the term "unlimited" because it truly is not. If you can't legitimately take a whole year off, don't call it unlimited. I'm sure some who take issue with "unlimited PTO" feel similarly.
Sure, we could call it "flexible PTO" but nomenclature isn't the point. The comment originally was the person wanted a guaranteed 5 weeks, no more, no less. That is "fixed PTO". A high growth startup needs flexibility and thus "flexible PTO" policy helps. Some employees need just 1-2 week. Others 2-3 weeks. Yet other 3-4 weeks. Flexibility helps both employee and employer
I thought the exact same thing about unlimited time off but there is another aspect of unlimited PTO that I hadn't thought of until my current company said they were making the switch. The reasoning that was given for my company is that by switching to unlimited PTO it is going to free up cash and that cash can be used on other parts of the business. Two of the three major office sites for my company are in states that require payout of unused accrued PTO when an employee parts ways with the company. Companies that have offices in states that have the same rule about accrued PTO will have to have a larger cash reserve so that they can pay out to employees when they need to.
Right, but that is a reason that some companies moved to "Unlimited PTO". It isn't accrued and so doesn't get paid out. It saves the company money while typically screwing the employee
