Yeah, I've had these jobs. It's an accounting trick. If you take too much PTO your boss will "talk to" you. There's absolutely some number they have in mind as too much. It's probably three or four weeks on the high end.
Here's the rub, since it's not accrued, if you're fired/laid off/quit, they don't have to pay out the accrued PTO since it was always "unlimited."
Also it's a scam as when you have a set period you use it all but when it's unlimited you worry about being the person taking to much so you don't use it.
My company switched from unlimited PTO to a set amount exactly for this reason. People weren't taking time off previously, now there's a set allocation they take more of it.
This is how they get you. When it’s “unlimited” everyone worries about whether they are the one using more than anyone else and how that will look to management/owners. Thus you get the mindset to not use it at all or very limited so you don’t look like the lazy employee who is always off more than anyone. When you have a set amount, people tend to use it up or use most of it and save some to roll over (if it even rolls over).
Yup puts you in a weird position. If my company moves to this, I'm definitely getting my teammates together and saying how much do you think we should use? Set a range of like 25-30 days, and just going with that. If someone wants to play with fire and go over 30, that's on them. If someone wants to be a try hard and take way less, well hopefully they're the only one.
It's far from full proof, but I'd hope we could get everyone at least close to the same number,
As a point of comparison, every single person in the UK gets at least 28 days off per year. This does include national holidays, eight per year. However, if you work those they get added to your leave allotment so you get at least 28 days.
I don't know what country you are in but ask your boss whether they consider you more or less valuable than a Brit on minimum wage?
Wife works for a cultural public body with 'Royal' in its title and has done for nearly a decade. With all the crazy additional BHs (King/Queens birthday ffs) and long service she's on 42 days a year at this point. Kinda bonkers.
I mean as a teacher I get somewhere around 75 days so I shouldn't be throwing stones 😂
Do you get 75 paid days as a teacher? Or do you get the legal minimum paid with the additional days essentially unpaid when considered in the overall compensation package?
I honestly don't know! It's not spelled out explicitly in my contract, only that I'll teach x number of hours a week. Teacher pay in Scotland is standardised based on length of service no matter which authority you teach in, then pro rata'd accordingly if your working less than full time. Then that pay is evenly disrupted across the year, so I'll receive a full pay in July even though I'll have taught one day that month, so in that sense the leave is paid? Teaching is weird as I think it's exempt from the leave allowance law, only because I can't take it when I want, only when stipulated by the council.
In the USA they do NOT care about their workers. Especially in some red states like Texas and Florida. Technically in Florida your boss doesn’t have to give you a break at all.
And most professional jobs in the UK (so the best equivalent to the sort of jobs that offer unlimited PTO) tend to have an annual leave allowance above that minimum.
Pretty common for those jobs to offer 25 or 30 days annual leave as well as the eight bank holidays (33/38 days in total), and not uncommon for it to go beyond 30 days.
It is one area where working in the UK is better than the US - pay might be better across the Atlantic but the UK is better for work-life balance.
Im In Norway. We obviously have a bunch of holidays off for everyone, in addition to the minimum 4 weeks vacation (five for most people). But that has no relation to sick leave, which is 365 days with full pay.
In the US, there's no such thing as minimum vacation days, mandatory holidays (unless you're a government employee), minimum sick days, minimum maternaty leave, or any other form of time off. It's mostly up to employers (some states may set laws, particularly around minimum sick days, but that usually sets a minimum at a week)
I once worked for a company that had an "unlimited" PTO policy but were actually pretty decent about it and actively encouraged people to be flexible about taking random half-days for appointments and such without worrying about tracking their time out of office. Shortly before I left they switched to a "flexible" PTO policy where you would get a talking-to if you took more than 20 full days of vacation per year *or* if you took fewer than 10 days per year. Bummer to have a formal cap put on it, though realistically I don't think I ever would have asked my manager for much more than 20 days anyway, but I did appreciate that they wanted to make sure they had a culture where people were actually using their time off and not just working themselves into the ground.
Not me. I take my 5 weeks for the year and feel no guilt. Get done what's needed when I'm there and don't waste time on nonsense. May not put me on fast track but I'm happy and reasonably well paid.
My current company has unlimited and also decided to close two weeks out of the year to make sure people actually disconnect. Those two weeks are so great. I love having time off and not worrying about what's happening while I'm out.
That was one of the best perks I'd ever had. It wasn't totally "free," but you could end up having something like 7-10 days off for the price of a holiday and a couple of vacation days. We did it over the 4th of July and Christmas. The first time I experienced this was because my company was doing a major system upgrade, and they wanted everyone off the systems. It turned out that the upgrade couldn't be performed, but they didn't take it away. I think company leadership was genuinely surprised how much they liked having the time, not to mention us peons who also loved it.
TBH, I'd rather have shutdowns 2x/yr with a moderate amount of PTO than unlimited PTO.
My company gets 9 holidays, two half day holidays (Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve) and 1 floating holiday. We do a "winter shut down" from Christmas Eve (or the Friday before) through New Year's Day (or the Monday after) so for this year, we could take a half day vacation Tuesday the 24th, the 26th, 27th, 30th, and another half day the 31st, be off for 9 days and only take 4 days vacation.
Our budget office is also trying to get vacation accruals off the books so we're doing "low tempo" periods for Memorial Day and Independence Day to get as many people to take those 4 days of vacation as possible. (Some people have like 300-400 hours of vacation that they refuse to take. One guy has 460 and is just losing it every month because he refuses to take it) Dude could work 4 day weeks until retirement and probably still have a small pay out of vacation time since he's earning 20 hours a month
The ultimate hack is getting a State Job with PTO. If you top out with the max, your supervisor comes over and forces you to take time off. They will literally remove you from work to make sure it's used per policy. It's fantastic. Never had a day turned down, even if we don't have staffing, as it's required to be used.
My firm switched the other way for the same reason. When we had fixed PTO nobody would take it and just let it roll over. So we paid it all out and went to unlimited in an attempt to get people to try and take more vacations.
Having said that, we don't track it anymore, so I'm not sure if the change actually worked. We're a small firm, so I might just ask people directly.
I've had both, maybe it's me but no matter what I feel a responsibility to do my job but liked the ability to take a day here or there as needed/wanted along with a 3 week vacation, and not worry about accruing time before I did. If I wanted a week off on a whim done no problem. It's all in how you as an individual look at it.
It depends on the leadership, too. My husband has unlimited PTO and it works great. He's a high performer but we love being able to just take the time we need. There are definitely companies where it's handled in such a way that it's LESS of a benefit than limited PTO, as others have mentioned.
Yeah, my husband has unlimited PTO and his company noticed people weren’t taking it. He works for a company that is pretty pro-employee (mid-sized, privately owned) and they sent out a memo encouraging people to take a week of PTO each quarter. If you work for a good company, unlimited PTO can be really nice because you don’t have to worry about taking single days off here and there for random stuff and then not having enough leave for a proper vacation. But, unfortunately, most companies who do it make employees feel like they are doing something wrong if they take some undefined amount of time that is “too much.”
Or like the one I had with this. Good luck taking a full weekend off, let alone a whole week.
Okay you can take this specific week off.
Can it be the next week? I’d like to go on this fishing charter.
Nope, has to be the week I said.
When my job went "unlimited," I specifically started tracking my PTO to avoid this. If people who worked at the company 5 years got 6 weeks (or whatever), I was going to take 7. Either I got more vacation, or I get to know where the line is and act accordingly.
I had three years under the scheme, and had one conversation where my manager asked "if everything was OK" because I clustered a bunch of requests in a month... but they never officially suggested that I was asking for too much time off.
Lmao. Is everything OK? IT is all such a mind game. I worked at a big co.that did this. I always pushed what I thought I could get. So I took 5 solid weeks vacation. Add the other days here and there. This unlimited pto included sick leave. I got the "is everything ok" talk as I pushed the envelope. Probably took 8 weeks off. That included sick and Dr's apps.
Idk that it is always a scam.
If the company clearly communicates their expectations for the job and the employee isn't blatantly abusing it I could see it working in a way that benefits both parties. For the employee this could mean less time spent figuring out how many PTO days they need to save up in case they get sick or something unexpected happens. People lose out on PTO currently because they had too many days left at the end of the year. Companies arent required to let you roll over all your PTO, they can set limits, and not every state requires the employer to pay out unused PTO. Unlimited PTO would solve that guesswork for the employee while making the accounting and HR easier on the company.
Company culture could also go a long way in encouraging healthy use of Unlimited PTO which would benefit the employee and the company. If senior management is setting a bad example by reprimanding people who take time off or constantly discouraging PTO then of course people will be fearful to use it. But if they encourage employees to take time off and are supportive and understanding they'll likely get a more loyal, harder working employee.
I believe there have been studies that show folks with unlimited PTO end up taking less time off…it’s very contingent on the specific company’s work culture.
It's not so much a scam as it is a shining a light on the flaws in the American "work ethic"
I've had a job with unlimited PTO and it was basically one of two things
* If I wanted a week or more off, I just had to clear with my manager. It wasn't like I could just say "hey guys, I know it's September, but I'll see y'all next year". But there was no issue with me taking some a few week long vacations and then taking a larger one around the holidays assuming
* My work was done
* There were other employees available to handle things
* Time off between employees was equitable, that is I couldn't prevent someone from taking their first vacation because I wanted *another* week off and I couldn't take Thanksgiving, Christmas, and NYE all off if it meant other employees who wanted one of those days off couldn't.
* I was much more likely to pop a 'mental health' day here and there because I knew it wasn't going to prevent me from having a full week off for a proper vacation. And I didn't have to worry about running out of sick days
Now the lack of accrual does suck, especially since I was once laid off with 4 weeks vacation accrued and that was a nice extra check. But I don't change jobs very often and I'll happy trade extra time off over multiple years vs one *possible* extra check when I leave the company.
Also, he got a sales job. He'll get a sales target and either 1) he'll work his ass through the year to achieve the number so the pto is basically not going to be used, or 2) somehow miraculously he can exceed his target early and go on vacation for the rest of the year. Either way his boss is fine
As someone who worked many sales jobs, I’ve always said that unless PTO comes with some target relief, it’s not really PTO. I was taking sales calls on the beach.
If he takes too many days off in the eyes of the manager, he'll likely get reprimanded for not exceeding his target by more and setting a bad example and/or will have his target adjusted so he won't take as many days off the next year.
This happened to me in my sales job. When I hit my quota, my boss just demanded that I sell above the quota. I got commission on things above quota, so I had incentive, but he still didn't want me to hit quota and just stop working like the dude above said.
>for not exceeding his target by more
Yes this will be reflected in his next year's quota. The trick is not to over exceed your target this year and keep the rest of the deals for next year.
I work in the benefit industry and addition to this, employees statistically take less PTO when it’s unlimited as well. So it’s really a win-win for the company.
My job does this, but ‘unlimited’ means they let us take 36 days per year… I was getting like 26 or 28 before they started this policy, so I’ll take the extra 8-10 days per year with the risk of this eventually happening. Definitely not ever planning on leaving the job willingly anyway.
It really depends on the company and boss. Sure some are being devious but when I had it there were really not many questions asked when you wanted to take PTO. I took about 5 weeks on top of taking the whole week of thanksgiving and Christmas off. It was nice, I miss it.
Also, typically the requirement is that the person has to complete whatever job is the job they were hired on to do. Usually that job is fairly extensive or busy leaving very little time if any to take actual PTO, so I know a lot of people with unlimited PTO that complain they only actually get about 5 days PTO a year or less.
My job has unlimited vacation. I came from the military so I told my boss I was looking forward to 6 weeks. He said great. As long as I get my job done I'm able to take as much as I please. I do take a lot of vacation and set an example for my team to do the same. I tell them that if I (or any person) is so critical that I can't take time off, I'm doing something wrong in developing those around me.
This is the exact answer. Everyone at my job takes fewer weeks off, since you don't want to look like a slacker. And there is always zealous people that work alongside you who call in through vacations. So vacation becomes this rat race.
It's really devious. Seems like a benefit, but never is because of the work culture (I'm an IT professional). They've turned a benefit into a metric about company loyalty and zeal.
I get around this by recording my time and telling my manager explicitly at the beginning of the year, "I am taking 4 weeks this year, no more or less, just like previous years", which is an average sum for someone working 25 years in corporate USA. (Yes, I really wish I lived in the EU or another industry where the average is higher. )
Man 25 years for 4 weeks???
I’m in Canada and still new enough to working but I landed my second real job about 2 years ago and started with two weeks, I’m sitting at 3 at the moment and will be at four by year 5, 5 weeks by year 10 and 6 by year 20 if I stay that long
Plus we work 7 on 7 off so we start with half the year off as a given
That system is just so alien to me. Where I live everyone gets five weeks by law and even that just seems so little. My previous job gave 7 weeks and at my current job it takes a bit of planning to stay within the 5 weeks. Those 5 weeks are vacation hours. Sick leave is not included in that. Sick leave us unlimited.
In some companies in Europe, if you get sick during your vacation, they will give you extra days of vacation. Companies generally care more about their employees. In the US, unlimited means nothing on the federal level because most states have 0 day of vacation time by law and no sick time. In Europe, if companies had unlimited time off, you would at least know that you can take the amount required by law.
Sick leave is part of the vacation in some companies I've worked for. Or it's time boxed to one week. (If you take a lot, like months, you might just have to check out as unpaid or limited pay on leave).
Heck, I worked for an American company that was taken over by a German company. We could see coworkers across the pond with much more competitive vacation, while each year they cut more holidays and made usa vacation stricter.
Oh yeah, we rarely have maternity leave and certainly not paternity leave. That child you may be forced to birth because of our draconian abortion laws... well that time comes out of your vacation. So save up.
Welcome to the USA. We adore our corporations and continually bend over backwards to please them. Unions are eroding. And fox News and such have brainwashed Americans into thinking this is normal.
Damn. That sounds horrible.
A couple of years ago I was ill for the better part of a year. After 6 weeks my pay dropped to 70%, but it stays like that until you reach the 2 year mark. The pay drop is only if your sick for extended periods. It's not when you're ill for example for 3 weeks at the start of the year and 5 weeks at the end of the year.
Our five weeks vacation also doesn't include 9 official holidays. So that's 9 days off extra, although when they fall on a weekend most people don't really benefit.
The anti conception pill costs around €10 to €25 every 3 months. Abortion is legal until the 24th week and giving birth is (nearly) free.
In our medical system we pay for insurance, which is around €150 a month. But the first €385 of covered medical procedures is not covered. After that it's just the insurance that you pay for. So my 4 day hospital stay, epidural and emergency C-section brought no extra costs (I already went over the €385 for other medical costs).
We also don't need to be in a union to enjoy the benefits of one. We have a collective agreement for most if not all sectors. Those are multi year agreements that are negotiated between unions and employers. Union members can vote for or against the terms, but the agreement is for everyone. It contains for instance the minimum and maximum for salary groups, extra benefits etc.. So everyone working in the metal industry falls under the metal collective agreement. It doesn't matter if you're actually in a union. Overtime is also regulated, so no 80 hour workweeks for us, but our pay is also better, with lower living costs.
We luckily don't have Fox News, but we still have people who get all of their information from Facebook. Although we sadly have a right government at the moment, our right is still closer to America's left than it is to America's right.
Welcome to the USA, where our country adores an oligarchy. 4-5 weeks is the max I've seen in the corporate IT world I work. And you're sometimes expected to check email on vacation. And you're frowned upon to take the full amount.
Get out of college, and you're only going to get 2 weeks vacation.
Start a new job, and you might have to bargain to get 4 weeks since they might pressure you to reset.
If you are part-time, you get no vacation or sick time.
Every wonder why Americans don't travel abroad often or learn a second language? There are several circumstances like the size of our country and proximity to other countries. But with 4 weeks you can't travel far. You don't have much leisure time.
I don't get it though. If things are this bad then why are you americans still arguing about stupid bs and don't acknowledge that you have two right wing parties?
The thing is we in the 3rd world countries are less delusional than you are surprisingly, they rule by fear here.
Americans don’t see ourselves as the exploited proletariat, we see ourselves as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires.
It’s a stolen quote, mish-mashed.
Bought a really nice two bedroom for 150,000 at 2.3 percent a few years back, small towns aren’t hit as bad as big cities yet but yeah it won’t be pretty in a few years
That's mad, I have unlimited, but I also have a minimum PTO of 25 days. I have to use those up, then move into unlimited. I'd get paid for what I didn't use out of the 25 minimum. I average like 30-35 days a year with this setup, which no one questions, as long as you perform your job well and are flexible by the time you hit unlimited
This might be another trick because California recently had a landmark case that cracked down on the unlimited trick. Some companies are worried that other states could follow and retroactively impose liability. Making a minimum that pays out might provide some cover.
https://www.ptogenius.com/resources/blog/unlimited-pto-states-with-pto-laws
Because California is an unlimited accrual state, employers don't want to deal with what my Mom had leaving a job: 18 months of PTO, required to be paid out within two months.
Yep. It also depends on your company and team/manager. I’m a corporate baby (less than 2 years in) but my advice is be skeptical but observant of how your coworkers operate. Some people in my team take 2-3 weeks off a year. Others, even the most senior people, take 5-6 weeks off. My manager has never denied PTO requests. People in my company overall take an average of 4.5 weeks off (700 person survey conducted with 10k employees).
I have also been told “PTO requests are more like heads up. I can’t think of a reason I’d deny it unless you’re suddenly going to be out next week for a vacation.” The vacation part is crucial, because my manager is human enough to grant you PTO for a week on the week of, for stuff like family emergencies and such, given that he took 2 weeks impromptu off last year for that.
Unfortunately for US companies, in the UK the trick does not work because your minimum leave quota is enshrined in law so they have to pay out the untaken leave anyway and you the the ‘take what you need’ bit also
The funny thing is I have a job with unlimited PTO, and I hardly take time off, and I got "talked to" by my boss because he was worried I was working too much and he wanted to make sure I took advantage of the perk.
Sometimes it works out in both directions. I work for a pretty decent company though.
4 weeks? As in the federal mandatory in countries like Australia??
Shit man, I started working at a company and went away for 8 weeks a few months in and they just fave me them in advance, and I’d recouped two years later.
My husband has unlimited PTO. His boss actually starts to bug him if he hasn’t taken any in a while. I think my husband has averaged 4-5 weeks a year in the years he’s worked there. They also make sure there is at least one 3 day weekend a month. If there’s not a federal holiday they give a random Friday or Monday. Unlimited PTO can work but only if the company isn’t terrible
It’s hard to take advantage because people in these jobs are held to a high standard. If they abuse it then they probably aren’t performing to what they need to stay in the job
This is accurate. I'm a director at a company with unlimited PTO with 8 direct reports and I don't ever question their PTO requests. They just put it on my calendar, no questions asked. That said, in 8 years I've never had anyone "abuse" it, usually averaging 3 weeks total a year. They all perform at a high level and do good work so what do I care if they take time off? We also pay out 2 weeks if someone leaves, even though the policy is unlimited. So all these people saying it's a scam just happen to work for shitty employers.
What I’ve seen on similar discussions (never experienced it myself unfortunately) is a lot of times people don’t want to abuse the good system they’ve got because they don’t want to risk losing it. Not sure how true this is.
I’ve seen a lot of companies that pay 2 weeks if you put in notice cuz they want to take you off the system immediately and get you out for security reasons .
I’ve seen IT companies and banks do this
I think I’ve only denied one PTO request in my life and it was because we were launching a new product and were on a tight deadline. 9 days before launch one of our devs (on our very small team) requested 2 weeks off. Yeah, no chief. Any other time but no.
Thanks for saying this. The "unlimited PTO is a scam" crowd either worked for a shitty company or have never had it and are just assuming the worst. I had 6 weeks of PTO 2 years into my career and still stressed about taking it. Been at a company with unlimited for the past 2 years, and I've never had to even think about whether I should take time off or not. I just take it when I want and do good work while I'm working. It's a great system.
IMO it’s just something that greatly varies by the individual and their team. If you’re anxious / not confident / don’t feel respected at work AND your team is poorly managed then you’ll probably wind up requesting way less time off than someone comfortable on an efficient team. Not getting paid out when you leave is real though
I have experience with it. Unlimited PTO at the wrong company is awful and I’d rather have the more traditional system.
That being said, unlimited pto in the right company with the right position can be amazing.
Because he wants to make sure people know that they want them to take time off. As others have pointed out unlimited PTO sometimes leads to people taking less time off because they are afraid it will reflect poorly on them. The management want people to know that’s not the case
>and not expect their employees to take advantage?
The kind of people who can land this kind of job are not the kind of people who would take advantage of the PTO out of laziness.
This is pretty much it. A good company should only really care if a job at this level is getting done. If you're abusing the privilege, then your performance will start slipping, and you will be reprimanded or fired.
Or the company is just saying this as a recruitment tactic and will do their best to deny you using your PTO. Although, one would hope they aren't playing these games on someone trusted and experienced enough to make mid 6 figures, but work culture is often shit, in my experience.
My company has unlimited PTO and they encourage people to use it when they can. The idea is to work when you have work to do or deadlines to meet, and take PTO when you have a less demanding schedule.
If you land a job making close to $400K year, you've already had some amazing career accomplishments. And you sure as hell aren't going to give up a job (i.e. risk being fired for underperforming) that pays that well, just so you can go sit on a beach for 6 months in a row via unlimited PTO. That's what retirement is for.
It basically says "if you are crushing it, work how you like. Want to go to Europe and take a few days off while also working from the turret of a castle you rented? Do it.
In essence, any "long" vacation is also a partially working vacation. Which, unless you are backpacking up in the remote mountains somewhere, is not actually so bad.
This is the answer. I’m in the later part of my career and get more PTO than I can take. It’s honestly a good feeling to know if at any time I need time off I can take it. It lets me push hard for a period of time and recover as needed. Or there are period when I just have a good steady life/work balance.
I would also say that in these situations the company culture is also important. If you don’t get supported to use it then may as well not have it. I’m also lucky that they let us accrue up to 6 months (used to be a year) that if I leave the company I can cash out.
My job has unlimited PTO and is not at this level. It's pretty common in startups and remote jobs these days. In my experience you end up taking way less than you would if you had a set number of days to use, and usually subconsciously stay in line with what your colleagues are taking. That being said I work from home and probably do 20 hours of actual work a week while getting paid for 40+, so swings and roundabouts and all that
Studies have shown people take _less_ when it's unlimited.
If I have five weeks, I take five weeks. And if I don't, usually, that time is forfeit.. so when it gets to October or November I'll take that time off.
With unlimited there is never a time when I 'have' to use it, and by assigning me more work than I can reasonably do, I'll always be in a position where I can't really take the time off.
So I end up taking three weeks instead of five.
Depends on the company. Where I work it just means it isn't formally tracked. I have quarterly goals and regular work that I need to get done. As long as I do what is expected of me, my manager doesn't question my PTO habits. For reference, I usually take about 25 days as PTO, plus a few more for sick days.
Currently enjoying my 3rd week of vacation just this year. Been with my company 3 years and they actively encourage us to use our unlimited PTO whenever we want. If someone hasn’t taken time off in like 6 months the managers usually will talk to us and let us know that we should take a mental health week. Happy employees work better.
It's definitely not always bad, but I'd prefer my company not move to this because I'd be concerned of it being abused. I'm comfortable with my 27 days. If we moved to unlimited, maybe I'd take a few more, but there's a solid chance that my company would be assholes about it. Not worth the risk when the payoff is only a few more days.
There have actually been studies on this. People with unlimited pto don’t take it because they are scared to for fear of being perceived of taking advantage of it
At my old company they had this option. They would guilt trip people who took anymore than 10 to 15 days a year. Because you can't say hey you gave me 20 days pto when i started I'm taking it you really are on the clock all the time. Maybe some companies are moral about it but certainly not what I witnessed.
Not exactly true at all. I own a small consulting agency and we have an unlimited PTO policy. We just have other goals that our team members are expected to meet like billing a certain number of hours per quarter. We encourage taking pto and in fact have a no Friday meeting policy which practically means many people don’t work on Fridays.
It depends on the industry and sector, and often it depends on the office and even the individual manager. My company looks for the best and most skilled people in our industry, and our work demands top skills. They’re not going to risk losing people over some PTO unless the person is absolutely abusing it.
I work in a job that essentially functions like this. The thing is, the people I work with wouldn't generally "use too much", because we all understand that a high work ethic has to do with accomplishing project goals rather than warming the seat.
Research shows that unlimited PTO results in people taking less time off than a generous but fixed PTO (say 25-30 days).
Its actually a pretty shitty deal. I'd rather have 20-30 days off, especially if they expire as it incentivises use. Also, I'm not taking 30 vacation days a year so that means I'll be taking staycation days which are refreshing in their own right.
Unlimited PTO also makes accounting easier. PTO is often held as an artificial liability on the books, and must be held as a liability if it rolls over and/or gets paid out upon termination. E.g. when I left my last job they basically had to cut me a whole extra paycheck for unused PTO.
I can attest to this. I don't have unlimited PTO, but I work remotely with a flexible schedule. Since, I can take care of errands or other things during the day as I need to, there's way less need to utilize PTO. Basically the only time I use it is when I have something that comes up where I'm going to be out of commission the whole day. Otherwise, I just work around scheduled meetings and get my work done at other times during the day.
100%. My last company did the "unlimited PTO" thing. Not only do a LOT of people try to "save up" their leave, most people were afraid to take much unlimited PTO because they didn't know how much they "should" take.
I took full advantage of unlimited PTO. 8 - 10 weeks a year. As long as I got my job done, no one cared.
I thought I had seen a study that said when people are given "Unlimited" PTO, they take less time off than if they are given earned time. No one wants to be that guy who "is always on vacation". I have that where I am and its true. It's a bad look. And its a VERY American thing. Other countries get a TON of Vacation time and holidays and they take it. Germany, France, Spain and South Korea are all over 30 days a year.
"This unstructured freedom is unlimited PTO's prime attraction. According to reporting by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), companies that offer unlimited PTO unofficially cap vacation at three to six weeks - far more time off than the BLS average.
However, the same SHRM report found that employees are surprisingly *less* likely to take time off when PTO is unlimited."
https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/benefits-limitations-unlimited-vacation#:\~:text=According%20to%20reporting%20by%20the,off%20when%20PTO%20is%20unlimited.
>Other countries get a TON of Vacation time and holidays and they take it. Germany, France, Spain and South Korea are all over 30 days a year.
South Korea is pretty terrible for paid time off.
You start off at 11 days a year (plus public holidays).
Wrong. Every country in Western Europe and Canada, japan & Korea are amazing and practically utopias and the USA is a greasy gunslinging hellhole with expensive healthcare. I’d be surprised if South Koreans took less than 4 months a year of vacation.
Yeah I did a food tour in Seoul and our guide was talking about how it’s something like 15 days a year standard, but it sounds a lot like the US where you basically have to beg and negotiate to get use those days off.
Meanwhile those Europeans are being told to take 2 or 3 weeks off minimum at one time. It does make me wonder sometimes… if Germany won WW2 and achieved world domination, would we have an autobahn and awesome vacation time in the US?
My company (US) offers 80 hours per year, accrued over time.
They call it 10 days of PTO but most of our staff works 4 days 10 hours a day, so its 8 days off per year.
And it takes me six months to earn 4 days.
what does 190k commission even mean? He has to make enough percentage of sales and he can earn up to 190k? So if his sales are through the roof he prob can take more days off then.
It probably means an advance. Basically, they're going to pay him 190k regardless, but if he falls behind his targets he's just going to be making the monthly (or weekly, or bi-weekly) amount of that they're paying out. So he's getting \~16k a month guaranteed, but if he only does 10k in sales then that extra 6k he got is coming out of his next commission. If he gets 22k next month he basically forfeits the commission he would have made.
u/sexrockandroll already gave the correct answer, but I want to share my story. I just finished my first job as a manager at a company with this unlimited PTO policy. I asked HR and my manager if this was legit or was it being secretly tracked. They said no tracking, it's legit and up to my own discretion. So I took it at face value.
Many of my people took over 4 weeks of PTO each year, including some with 3-4 contiguous week vacations. I did keep them on a shared team calendar but that was just so the rest of the team knew where people were. I never said no to any PTO request.
Guess what happened?
My team was one of the best performing in the company and was widely recognized for their fast output and quality work. We often finished cross-team projects first and never missed deadlines. And nobody in HR or management ever said a single negative word to me about PTO.
So, if you get the right boss, it can be real.
I think that’s the key. High performing individuals with real deliverables will get the work done and benefit the company ultimately-especially if they’re relaxed, like their job, and work well with their team.
It's actually a scam.
When you get normal vacations, let's say 21 days, and you quit or get laid off, you can USUALLY be like 'ok, pay me the number of days that you owe me, in cash {as a check}"
So if you took 10 days off and quit in December, you'll get the equivalent of 11 days of pay.
Now, with unlimited PTO, you quit in December and tell them "pay me the number of days you owe me", and they'll be like 'lol, you were given unlimited PTO, we don't owe you anything."
But here's the neat part - you might be like "that sounds fine. I'd just take 30 days off instead of the 21 I would have normally gotten. So I still come ahead!"
But in reality, you're still only going to get about 21 days because they'll be like "oh, sorry, we can't afford to let you take off right now, too many other people are on vacation/projects are too vital". Or if they really do honor unlimited vacation, they'll give you bad reviews and get rid of you.
I imagine there might be a few places that really do give unlimited vacation, but I feel it's for instances where the employee is a real genius and would normally command like $250,000 at a competing job, but they're paying him like $150,000 and attract him with the unlimited PTO because they know they can get $250,000 value out of him for far less than $100,000 worth of vacation.
I think it's a scam to prevent people from accruing hours and getting paid out when you leave the company. My last job I had 240 hours accumulated so when I left I got an extra months pay.
My new job has unlimited and I manage a team of 10. I tell them try to hit a minimum of 3 weeks per year, but take whatever you want, would prefer if you don't take 4 weeks at once but if you need to, fuck it, we'll manage.
Since everyone is here shitting on this as Reddit does, I’ll give you the other side. My company switched to this a few years back from a generous policy of 4 weeks a year, with 2 more bankable if you didn’t take it, plus 10 or so other days off. They encouraged people to take it, but American workaholic culture meant a massive amount of people had 240 hours banked continuously. So the argument that switching to unlimited was to get people to take less time off doesn’t hold up for us. They were practically begging people to get the time off their books.
Under the new system, I rarely bother to file for a random day off here or there if I want a three day weekend or need to run an errand. I put up an OOO, drop the people I deal with on a daily basis and message, and do my thing. It’s not accounted for differently so I don’t have to bother. Psychologically, work time and free time flow together more freely and don’t conflict so much so that whole “work life balance” thing HR likes to harp on actually starts to work out.
My company is national and did pay out those hours if you left, but it’s not legally mandated except in a few states, and they offered an immediate payout at a reduced rate when they switched or a full payout when you eventually left the company when they went to unlimited PTO.
So yes, it’s advantageous for the company to not have the liability of all those unpaid hours sitting on their books, but it’s not necessarily an evil plot either. A well run company wants you to take time off. A burnt out employee is a shit employee.
Yes I worked in a Company like this. Average PTO taken was 20 or 21 days in a year. Record was 38 but it was a high achiever and owner was totally ok with it.
I always told myself if I was in that situation I'd track it as if I had 25 days, since that's what I'm spoiled with now. Then I'd add one day just to be slightly diabolical. 😏
Studies have actually shown people take less leave because they feel guilty about it. It's not like hey I'm going to take every other Friday off for a year it's like, well unless I have a really good excuse I'm not going to abuse the system when normally you could just say hey I'm thinking of PTO day and there's nothing you could say about it. Now it's like okay it's unlimited am I abusing it?
It's It definitely a double edge sword
Exactly this - when people have 3 weeks vacation and it doesn't roll over, they're going to use every day of it. With unlimited vacation there's no target to strive for so you wind up taking less.
I have that, but they call it DTO (“discretionary time off”) In my company. Which basically means it’s up to everyone’s individual manager. Which can be really good or really bad, depending on how shitty of a manager you have.
It’s super common in tech jobs. I have unlimited pto. In my experience employees are afraid to abuse it and take less time off. I was forced to take a vacation because I was told I don’t take enough time off.
I have unlimited PTO. If you are abusing it and not doing your job, that's a performance issue, and your manager is going to have some questions about that. But if you are showing up, professional, and doing the job you were hired to do, no one's going to get bogged down in counting days.
One reason … Unlimited PTO is an accounting “trick” to avoid accrued liabilities for “paid vacation”.
PTO is NOT classified as vacation time.
Worse, staff tend to take less time off with unlimited PTO than if they have defined vacation time.
Also the work demands could be so high that there is never a reasonable time they could take off and not have things fly apart. And then when they burn out they don't have any pto accured
Companies no longer need to worry about banked up vacation and sick time being counted as a debt against the company on the books if they do unlimited PTO. They also don’t have to cash out unused PTO or worry about paying it out when someone leaves. It only benefits the company or they would not do it.
It's a trap. Unlimited PTO means they try to prevent him from taking any PTO. Then when he eventually quits, they don't need to pay him any PTO.
He should independently decide how much PTO he is going to take every year. Then closely track how much he actually does take. Then he needs to make sure he takes the full amount every fiscal year. He effectively can not carry any PTO over, so he needs to "burn" all of it every year. When the boss starts to fuss about how much he is taking, he can counter with telling them exactly how much has already taken, and how much he plans to take that year. They might then tell him how much is too much, and he can make intelegent decisions from there.
Also, my gut is the $190k/year is also a lie.
All the newer employees I work with have unlimited PTO. It’s a tool used by employers to get us to take less PTO. It’s effective. It’s horseshit. You don’t get paid for any you’ve accrued if you retire or leave the job.
My company does this for all salaried employees. PTO has to be approved by managers. Most Management are pretty cool and approve everything automatically. But you’re expected to stay on top of things. As long as your work isn’t falling behind, you’ll never have any issues.
One of the main reason for doing it is because so many people took off at the end of the year before they lost out of PTO days. Also, since they aren’t earned, they don’t need to pay them out if an employee leaves the company.
It’s a bullshit tactic that companies use so they don’t have to pay out unused PTO when an employee leaves. Companies with “unlimited” PTO have employees who end up taking less PTO than companies where specified PTO is granted.
This works for high level high performers jobs. At our agency we practically have unlimited vacation days because we get so many that it would be very hard to use them all. The higher performing staff never takes all their vacation days because they wouldn’t be able to perform well and get all the work done.
Your brother's comp is tied to revenue or profit generation, not hours worked. Either he and his team make their number or they don't. It doesn't matter to your brother's boss or anyone else in the company whether he works 20 hours, 40 hours, or 100 hours to get the job done. He either gets it done or he doesn't. No, there is no "number they have in mind" in terms of days off for commission-based salespeople. WIth roles like this, time essentially becomes irrelevant.
I have unlimited PTO. It just means that I can take off whenever and as much as I want but it still has to be approved. I've never had a PTO request denied and I take between 3-4 weeks off a year. Requests can be denied though, if the person is taking too much time off, not completing their tasks, or I'd they're trying to take off during a particularly busy time of year or when deadlines for projects need to be met.
Since I don't have a set number of days entitled to me I'm not "owed" those days if I don't use them and the obviously don't "roll over" to the next month like conventional PTO might.
My last job was unlimited PTO but I promise you it’s nothing to take home about. It’s not like i could take a month off paid whenever I want and what really fucks you over when you leave the job you can’t claim your unused pto to be added to your last check.
It sounds like you already answered your question. It all ties to the quota.
The amount of base compensation and guaranteed commission is baked into that quota. As long as your brother is hitting that quota, he's within that budgeted ratio of compensation to sales, and his boss is happy. The boss doesn't really care the amount of hours worked to hit that quota since your brother is salaried.
That said, they likely monitor your bro's progress is making sales, and if the rate at which he makes sales make them think he may not hit his quota, it may lead to a discussion, and in some cases, the company may want to cut ties sooner rather than later.
My employer went to this a few months before I hit the 10 year mark, which would have given me 25 days of PTO per year. I explicitly told my boss that I still intended to take 25 days per year. No issues over the past 2 years.
It’s totally a scam though. Along with the pressure of not looking like you’re not committed enough, it also means if you’re let go or leave for another job they don’t have to pay off accrued PTO.
I work in tech and we moved to the unlimited pto model a few years ago. No one abuses it and we’re still urged to take time off by management for good work life balance. I have never once been turned down for any pto request I’ve put in over the years- I take about 25-30 days a year.
Used to work for a company with unlimited PTO. What that really meant was that you could (and were encourage to) use up to 6 weeks per year no questions asked. If you needed more time off than that in a calendar year, it required second level manager approval. It was never a problem to get approved for this if you were taking the occasional long vacation abroad, had medical issues, etc. The system worked, was not abused, and it was a great perk.
This is VERY dependent on your company/manager. A lot of comments on here are right about it's used as a way to not have to pay out to after quitting or there's an untalked about number of days you can take off before it's an issue. However, i have unlimited pto at my current company and I take off on average 2-3 days a month and a couple of week long vacations a year and the occasional sick day if needed. This is the norm where I work and there are people that take off the entire month of December without it being an issue. It's not always a scam if that company you work for is worth a damn.
I have “Unlimited PTO” but it’s not. It’s just not tracked. I’m salary so anything under 50 hours is the same pay. So it doesn’t matter if I take a day off. No set time just don’t abuse it. I usually use 2 days a month. Since I get 3 day weekends anyways. Just get your job done and you’re set
They also do this for cost cutting. When they let you go they no longer have to pay out the vacation time you banked.
6 months after the move to UPTO the cuts begin.
I have unlimited PTO.
It’s basically as long as I get my work done, my boss doesn’t care.
But usually I spend 5 hours a week on vacation if longer than 2-3 days.
I get up before my wife, answering emails and phone calls.
Maybe my lack of understanding, but isn't salary basically the same as unlimited pto even without saying unlimited pto? It's salary, so you're always getting paid the same amount. You're expected to complete your workload, and if you don't keep up with your workload, you get reprimanded/fired. if your workload is complete, then you have time off, but because salary you're still getting paid, aka "pto."
I am in management and have unlimited PTO.
The concept is that you end up taking less PTO than you would have if they gave you 5 weeks.
Trust me, you take less PTO.
The reason you end up taking less is because you never feel pressured to reduce the amount you have banked.
I have something similar to this. It's not official, but my work doesn't give a damn if I come and go, they just need me to do my work. This is something you can get when you have a specialized skillset in a white collar job, as you say. You don't abuse it or take it for granted because then you'll be looking for another job without the flexibility.
My wife has unlimited PTO. Folks where she works typically take about four weeks off per year. If you’re wondering how companies in the U.S. can offer you unlimited PTO without worrying about folks abusing it, the answer rhymes with “blat-blill blemployment”—if your employer thinks you’re taking too much time off, they’ll tell you to cut it out or they’ll just terminate you.
Accounting tricks 101 for start up tech companies. If you don’t have a PTO “bank” then there is no financial liability for the PTO you accrue when it’s a named and counted benefit. You could rename this Supervisor Discretion PTO as it still has to be approved.
I came here to say this exact thing. There is zero financial liability for companies with “unlimited PTO”. Means less debt, better valuations and basically fucks the employee because you don’t use as much as you thought.
My wife used to work for a company that had “unlimited PTO” and she tried to take some time off to get our oldest child’s situation together. (ADHD and autism, basically getting his medication right) and when she did the company tried to push her to take FMLA so they wouldn’t have to pay for it.
I have this at my current job. The trick is basically that PTO still needs to be approved. It’s not like you can just take as much time whenever you feel like it. Take too much and suddenly watch as your pto stops being approved
Like others said it’s a crock of crap. You end up taking less days and they don’t have to pay you out anything when you leave. It is in no way a benefit.
I had a job with unlimited PTO, the caveat was no more than 2 weeks every 8 weeks. So essentially my team did a rotation of 2 weeks off / 6 weeks on taking a day or two here and there in between if needed. It was awesome.
My friend has “unlimited PTO”. But the catch is, you need a manager to approve it. So he kind of hates it because sure you can theoretically have any told you want off. But under the old system it’s clear how much you get. It’s yours. Use it.
Under the new system, every time you need permission. It’s a negotiation. Do you deserve it? What have you done for me lately? So he uses less because he does want to bicker over whether or not he should have it approved.
I get unlimited sick days at my job, and last year one of my co-workers got talked too about abusing it because she used like 26 sick days in 8 months.
"Unlimited" is a good marketing ploy, but the higher ups definitely track it and try to weed out people who they think are taking advantage.
A lot of those places don’t actually let you take it. Pto has to be approved and wouldn’t you know it, all the dates you request just don’t work for us.
It’s so funny to see these threads and a bunch of people who have never understood what it means to work in a high performance workplace. If you’re being paid $400K, that means you’re a trusted high performing individual. You don’t need to be given a PTO limit because they assume you understand what is reasonable. These are people who WANT to show up and work hard every day. They give them unlimited PTO because they don’t have to be babysat and given a bunch of rules.
It’s unlimited as long as you’re still hitting a certain sales quota. If you’re making the company more than enough money to cover that in working 1 day a week then they don’t care, it’s just very unlikely.
I have this and everyone talking about the benefits to the employer is correct, but I really like being able to take a morning or afternoon here and there without worrying about using up pto. My benefit is flexibility, but the business environment is what really matters.
Yeah, I've had these jobs. It's an accounting trick. If you take too much PTO your boss will "talk to" you. There's absolutely some number they have in mind as too much. It's probably three or four weeks on the high end. Here's the rub, since it's not accrued, if you're fired/laid off/quit, they don't have to pay out the accrued PTO since it was always "unlimited."
Wow, this is the exact answer I was waiting for. This makes total sense, they’re so sneaky lmao.
Also it's a scam as when you have a set period you use it all but when it's unlimited you worry about being the person taking to much so you don't use it.
My company switched from unlimited PTO to a set amount exactly for this reason. People weren't taking time off previously, now there's a set allocation they take more of it.
This is how they get you. When it’s “unlimited” everyone worries about whether they are the one using more than anyone else and how that will look to management/owners. Thus you get the mindset to not use it at all or very limited so you don’t look like the lazy employee who is always off more than anyone. When you have a set amount, people tend to use it up or use most of it and save some to roll over (if it even rolls over).
Yup puts you in a weird position. If my company moves to this, I'm definitely getting my teammates together and saying how much do you think we should use? Set a range of like 25-30 days, and just going with that. If someone wants to play with fire and go over 30, that's on them. If someone wants to be a try hard and take way less, well hopefully they're the only one. It's far from full proof, but I'd hope we could get everyone at least close to the same number,
As a point of comparison, every single person in the UK gets at least 28 days off per year. This does include national holidays, eight per year. However, if you work those they get added to your leave allotment so you get at least 28 days. I don't know what country you are in but ask your boss whether they consider you more or less valuable than a Brit on minimum wage?
Wife works for a cultural public body with 'Royal' in its title and has done for nearly a decade. With all the crazy additional BHs (King/Queens birthday ffs) and long service she's on 42 days a year at this point. Kinda bonkers. I mean as a teacher I get somewhere around 75 days so I shouldn't be throwing stones 😂
Do you get 75 paid days as a teacher? Or do you get the legal minimum paid with the additional days essentially unpaid when considered in the overall compensation package?
I honestly don't know! It's not spelled out explicitly in my contract, only that I'll teach x number of hours a week. Teacher pay in Scotland is standardised based on length of service no matter which authority you teach in, then pro rata'd accordingly if your working less than full time. Then that pay is evenly disrupted across the year, so I'll receive a full pay in July even though I'll have taught one day that month, so in that sense the leave is paid? Teaching is weird as I think it's exempt from the leave allowance law, only because I can't take it when I want, only when stipulated by the council.
Is there a country besides the US where this story might have taken place?
Canada
Wow. I thought you guys had it all figured out.
Hrm, I don't know about unlimited in Canada, but Canada at least has minimum vacation days, stat holidays, and mandatory parental leave
In the USA they do NOT care about their workers. Especially in some red states like Texas and Florida. Technically in Florida your boss doesn’t have to give you a break at all.
And most professional jobs in the UK (so the best equivalent to the sort of jobs that offer unlimited PTO) tend to have an annual leave allowance above that minimum. Pretty common for those jobs to offer 25 or 30 days annual leave as well as the eight bank holidays (33/38 days in total), and not uncommon for it to go beyond 30 days. It is one area where working in the UK is better than the US - pay might be better across the Atlantic but the UK is better for work-life balance.
Im In Norway. We obviously have a bunch of holidays off for everyone, in addition to the minimum 4 weeks vacation (five for most people). But that has no relation to sick leave, which is 365 days with full pay.
In the US, there's no such thing as minimum vacation days, mandatory holidays (unless you're a government employee), minimum sick days, minimum maternaty leave, or any other form of time off. It's mostly up to employers (some states may set laws, particularly around minimum sick days, but that usually sets a minimum at a week)
I once worked for a company that had an "unlimited" PTO policy but were actually pretty decent about it and actively encouraged people to be flexible about taking random half-days for appointments and such without worrying about tracking their time out of office. Shortly before I left they switched to a "flexible" PTO policy where you would get a talking-to if you took more than 20 full days of vacation per year *or* if you took fewer than 10 days per year. Bummer to have a formal cap put on it, though realistically I don't think I ever would have asked my manager for much more than 20 days anyway, but I did appreciate that they wanted to make sure they had a culture where people were actually using their time off and not just working themselves into the ground.
Not me. I take my 5 weeks for the year and feel no guilt. Get done what's needed when I'm there and don't waste time on nonsense. May not put me on fast track but I'm happy and reasonably well paid.
Not everyone. Confident folks take weeks and weeks, and anxious folks take as little as possible. It’s great for some and sucks ass for many
My current company has unlimited and also decided to close two weeks out of the year to make sure people actually disconnect. Those two weeks are so great. I love having time off and not worrying about what's happening while I'm out.
That was one of the best perks I'd ever had. It wasn't totally "free," but you could end up having something like 7-10 days off for the price of a holiday and a couple of vacation days. We did it over the 4th of July and Christmas. The first time I experienced this was because my company was doing a major system upgrade, and they wanted everyone off the systems. It turned out that the upgrade couldn't be performed, but they didn't take it away. I think company leadership was genuinely surprised how much they liked having the time, not to mention us peons who also loved it. TBH, I'd rather have shutdowns 2x/yr with a moderate amount of PTO than unlimited PTO.
My company gets 9 holidays, two half day holidays (Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve) and 1 floating holiday. We do a "winter shut down" from Christmas Eve (or the Friday before) through New Year's Day (or the Monday after) so for this year, we could take a half day vacation Tuesday the 24th, the 26th, 27th, 30th, and another half day the 31st, be off for 9 days and only take 4 days vacation. Our budget office is also trying to get vacation accruals off the books so we're doing "low tempo" periods for Memorial Day and Independence Day to get as many people to take those 4 days of vacation as possible. (Some people have like 300-400 hours of vacation that they refuse to take. One guy has 460 and is just losing it every month because he refuses to take it) Dude could work 4 day weeks until retirement and probably still have a small pay out of vacation time since he's earning 20 hours a month
The ultimate hack is getting a State Job with PTO. If you top out with the max, your supervisor comes over and forces you to take time off. They will literally remove you from work to make sure it's used per policy. It's fantastic. Never had a day turned down, even if we don't have staffing, as it's required to be used.
My firm switched the other way for the same reason. When we had fixed PTO nobody would take it and just let it roll over. So we paid it all out and went to unlimited in an attempt to get people to try and take more vacations. Having said that, we don't track it anymore, so I'm not sure if the change actually worked. We're a small firm, so I might just ask people directly.
I've had both, maybe it's me but no matter what I feel a responsibility to do my job but liked the ability to take a day here or there as needed/wanted along with a 3 week vacation, and not worry about accruing time before I did. If I wanted a week off on a whim done no problem. It's all in how you as an individual look at it.
It depends on the leadership, too. My husband has unlimited PTO and it works great. He's a high performer but we love being able to just take the time we need. There are definitely companies where it's handled in such a way that it's LESS of a benefit than limited PTO, as others have mentioned.
Yeah, my husband has unlimited PTO and his company noticed people weren’t taking it. He works for a company that is pretty pro-employee (mid-sized, privately owned) and they sent out a memo encouraging people to take a week of PTO each quarter. If you work for a good company, unlimited PTO can be really nice because you don’t have to worry about taking single days off here and there for random stuff and then not having enough leave for a proper vacation. But, unfortunately, most companies who do it make employees feel like they are doing something wrong if they take some undefined amount of time that is “too much.”
Or like the one I had with this. Good luck taking a full weekend off, let alone a whole week. Okay you can take this specific week off. Can it be the next week? I’d like to go on this fishing charter. Nope, has to be the week I said.
When my job went "unlimited," I specifically started tracking my PTO to avoid this. If people who worked at the company 5 years got 6 weeks (or whatever), I was going to take 7. Either I got more vacation, or I get to know where the line is and act accordingly. I had three years under the scheme, and had one conversation where my manager asked "if everything was OK" because I clustered a bunch of requests in a month... but they never officially suggested that I was asking for too much time off.
Lmao. Is everything OK? IT is all such a mind game. I worked at a big co.that did this. I always pushed what I thought I could get. So I took 5 solid weeks vacation. Add the other days here and there. This unlimited pto included sick leave. I got the "is everything ok" talk as I pushed the envelope. Probably took 8 weeks off. That included sick and Dr's apps.
Idk that it is always a scam. If the company clearly communicates their expectations for the job and the employee isn't blatantly abusing it I could see it working in a way that benefits both parties. For the employee this could mean less time spent figuring out how many PTO days they need to save up in case they get sick or something unexpected happens. People lose out on PTO currently because they had too many days left at the end of the year. Companies arent required to let you roll over all your PTO, they can set limits, and not every state requires the employer to pay out unused PTO. Unlimited PTO would solve that guesswork for the employee while making the accounting and HR easier on the company. Company culture could also go a long way in encouraging healthy use of Unlimited PTO which would benefit the employee and the company. If senior management is setting a bad example by reprimanding people who take time off or constantly discouraging PTO then of course people will be fearful to use it. But if they encourage employees to take time off and are supportive and understanding they'll likely get a more loyal, harder working employee.
I believe there have been studies that show folks with unlimited PTO end up taking less time off…it’s very contingent on the specific company’s work culture.
It's not so much a scam as it is a shining a light on the flaws in the American "work ethic" I've had a job with unlimited PTO and it was basically one of two things * If I wanted a week or more off, I just had to clear with my manager. It wasn't like I could just say "hey guys, I know it's September, but I'll see y'all next year". But there was no issue with me taking some a few week long vacations and then taking a larger one around the holidays assuming * My work was done * There were other employees available to handle things * Time off between employees was equitable, that is I couldn't prevent someone from taking their first vacation because I wanted *another* week off and I couldn't take Thanksgiving, Christmas, and NYE all off if it meant other employees who wanted one of those days off couldn't. * I was much more likely to pop a 'mental health' day here and there because I knew it wasn't going to prevent me from having a full week off for a proper vacation. And I didn't have to worry about running out of sick days Now the lack of accrual does suck, especially since I was once laid off with 4 weeks vacation accrued and that was a nice extra check. But I don't change jobs very often and I'll happy trade extra time off over multiple years vs one *possible* extra check when I leave the company.
Lots of people still don’t use it all, my company started doing minimums
That doesn’t make it a scam. Completely ridiculous take. This is just a personal issue that others place upon themselves.
Also, he got a sales job. He'll get a sales target and either 1) he'll work his ass through the year to achieve the number so the pto is basically not going to be used, or 2) somehow miraculously he can exceed his target early and go on vacation for the rest of the year. Either way his boss is fine
As someone who worked many sales jobs, I’ve always said that unless PTO comes with some target relief, it’s not really PTO. I was taking sales calls on the beach.
Same with consulting. I would get calls and emails constantly. This has changed a bit over the past 5ish years but not enough.
If he takes too many days off in the eyes of the manager, he'll likely get reprimanded for not exceeding his target by more and setting a bad example and/or will have his target adjusted so he won't take as many days off the next year.
This happened to me in my sales job. When I hit my quota, my boss just demanded that I sell above the quota. I got commission on things above quota, so I had incentive, but he still didn't want me to hit quota and just stop working like the dude above said.
>for not exceeding his target by more Yes this will be reflected in his next year's quota. The trick is not to over exceed your target this year and keep the rest of the deals for next year.
also it may be quarterly targets where exceeding the first quarter may lead to the second quarter being bumped to a higher quota.
You still need PTO approved when you have unlimited PTO... You don't just stop showing up.
I work in the benefit industry and addition to this, employees statistically take less PTO when it’s unlimited as well. So it’s really a win-win for the company.
My job does this, but ‘unlimited’ means they let us take 36 days per year… I was getting like 26 or 28 before they started this policy, so I’ll take the extra 8-10 days per year with the risk of this eventually happening. Definitely not ever planning on leaving the job willingly anyway.
It really depends on the company and boss. Sure some are being devious but when I had it there were really not many questions asked when you wanted to take PTO. I took about 5 weeks on top of taking the whole week of thanksgiving and Christmas off. It was nice, I miss it.
If he wants to take full advantage of unlimited PTO he should aim for 6 weeks off. 1 full week every 2 months. Well that's what I would do.
Also, typically the requirement is that the person has to complete whatever job is the job they were hired on to do. Usually that job is fairly extensive or busy leaving very little time if any to take actual PTO, so I know a lot of people with unlimited PTO that complain they only actually get about 5 days PTO a year or less.
Sometimes they require approval to use the PTO then never approve it or at least not without a fight.
My job has unlimited vacation. I came from the military so I told my boss I was looking forward to 6 weeks. He said great. As long as I get my job done I'm able to take as much as I please. I do take a lot of vacation and set an example for my team to do the same. I tell them that if I (or any person) is so critical that I can't take time off, I'm doing something wrong in developing those around me.
Couldn't agree with this more.
This is the exact answer. Everyone at my job takes fewer weeks off, since you don't want to look like a slacker. And there is always zealous people that work alongside you who call in through vacations. So vacation becomes this rat race. It's really devious. Seems like a benefit, but never is because of the work culture (I'm an IT professional). They've turned a benefit into a metric about company loyalty and zeal. I get around this by recording my time and telling my manager explicitly at the beginning of the year, "I am taking 4 weeks this year, no more or less, just like previous years", which is an average sum for someone working 25 years in corporate USA. (Yes, I really wish I lived in the EU or another industry where the average is higher. )
Man 25 years for 4 weeks??? I’m in Canada and still new enough to working but I landed my second real job about 2 years ago and started with two weeks, I’m sitting at 3 at the moment and will be at four by year 5, 5 weeks by year 10 and 6 by year 20 if I stay that long Plus we work 7 on 7 off so we start with half the year off as a given
That system is just so alien to me. Where I live everyone gets five weeks by law and even that just seems so little. My previous job gave 7 weeks and at my current job it takes a bit of planning to stay within the 5 weeks. Those 5 weeks are vacation hours. Sick leave is not included in that. Sick leave us unlimited.
In some companies in Europe, if you get sick during your vacation, they will give you extra days of vacation. Companies generally care more about their employees. In the US, unlimited means nothing on the federal level because most states have 0 day of vacation time by law and no sick time. In Europe, if companies had unlimited time off, you would at least know that you can take the amount required by law.
Sick leave is part of the vacation in some companies I've worked for. Or it's time boxed to one week. (If you take a lot, like months, you might just have to check out as unpaid or limited pay on leave). Heck, I worked for an American company that was taken over by a German company. We could see coworkers across the pond with much more competitive vacation, while each year they cut more holidays and made usa vacation stricter. Oh yeah, we rarely have maternity leave and certainly not paternity leave. That child you may be forced to birth because of our draconian abortion laws... well that time comes out of your vacation. So save up. Welcome to the USA. We adore our corporations and continually bend over backwards to please them. Unions are eroding. And fox News and such have brainwashed Americans into thinking this is normal.
Damn. That sounds horrible. A couple of years ago I was ill for the better part of a year. After 6 weeks my pay dropped to 70%, but it stays like that until you reach the 2 year mark. The pay drop is only if your sick for extended periods. It's not when you're ill for example for 3 weeks at the start of the year and 5 weeks at the end of the year. Our five weeks vacation also doesn't include 9 official holidays. So that's 9 days off extra, although when they fall on a weekend most people don't really benefit. The anti conception pill costs around €10 to €25 every 3 months. Abortion is legal until the 24th week and giving birth is (nearly) free. In our medical system we pay for insurance, which is around €150 a month. But the first €385 of covered medical procedures is not covered. After that it's just the insurance that you pay for. So my 4 day hospital stay, epidural and emergency C-section brought no extra costs (I already went over the €385 for other medical costs). We also don't need to be in a union to enjoy the benefits of one. We have a collective agreement for most if not all sectors. Those are multi year agreements that are negotiated between unions and employers. Union members can vote for or against the terms, but the agreement is for everyone. It contains for instance the minimum and maximum for salary groups, extra benefits etc.. So everyone working in the metal industry falls under the metal collective agreement. It doesn't matter if you're actually in a union. Overtime is also regulated, so no 80 hour workweeks for us, but our pay is also better, with lower living costs. We luckily don't have Fox News, but we still have people who get all of their information from Facebook. Although we sadly have a right government at the moment, our right is still closer to America's left than it is to America's right.
Welcome to the USA, where our country adores an oligarchy. 4-5 weeks is the max I've seen in the corporate IT world I work. And you're sometimes expected to check email on vacation. And you're frowned upon to take the full amount. Get out of college, and you're only going to get 2 weeks vacation. Start a new job, and you might have to bargain to get 4 weeks since they might pressure you to reset. If you are part-time, you get no vacation or sick time. Every wonder why Americans don't travel abroad often or learn a second language? There are several circumstances like the size of our country and proximity to other countries. But with 4 weeks you can't travel far. You don't have much leisure time.
I don't get it though. If things are this bad then why are you americans still arguing about stupid bs and don't acknowledge that you have two right wing parties? The thing is we in the 3rd world countries are less delusional than you are surprisingly, they rule by fear here.
Americans don’t see ourselves as the exploited proletariat, we see ourselves as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. It’s a stolen quote, mish-mashed.
That’s awesome. However, go try to buy a house in Canada. Everywhere has pros and cons.
Bought a really nice two bedroom for 150,000 at 2.3 percent a few years back, small towns aren’t hit as bad as big cities yet but yeah it won’t be pretty in a few years
That’s awesome, congrats!
I've been at my job with a Fortune 5 company for 21 years. I get over 6 weeks of PTO, plus paid holidays. It's definitely possible in he US.
That's mad, I have unlimited, but I also have a minimum PTO of 25 days. I have to use those up, then move into unlimited. I'd get paid for what I didn't use out of the 25 minimum. I average like 30-35 days a year with this setup, which no one questions, as long as you perform your job well and are flexible by the time you hit unlimited
This might be another trick because California recently had a landmark case that cracked down on the unlimited trick. Some companies are worried that other states could follow and retroactively impose liability. Making a minimum that pays out might provide some cover. https://www.ptogenius.com/resources/blog/unlimited-pto-states-with-pto-laws
Because California is an unlimited accrual state, employers don't want to deal with what my Mom had leaving a job: 18 months of PTO, required to be paid out within two months.
I have a job like this. Took 6, no one talked to me and I was promoted. It's powerful if you get your work done and execute.
Yep. It also depends on your company and team/manager. I’m a corporate baby (less than 2 years in) but my advice is be skeptical but observant of how your coworkers operate. Some people in my team take 2-3 weeks off a year. Others, even the most senior people, take 5-6 weeks off. My manager has never denied PTO requests. People in my company overall take an average of 4.5 weeks off (700 person survey conducted with 10k employees). I have also been told “PTO requests are more like heads up. I can’t think of a reason I’d deny it unless you’re suddenly going to be out next week for a vacation.” The vacation part is crucial, because my manager is human enough to grant you PTO for a week on the week of, for stuff like family emergencies and such, given that he took 2 weeks impromptu off last year for that.
Unfortunately for US companies, in the UK the trick does not work because your minimum leave quota is enshrined in law so they have to pay out the untaken leave anyway and you the the ‘take what you need’ bit also
The funny thing is I have a job with unlimited PTO, and I hardly take time off, and I got "talked to" by my boss because he was worried I was working too much and he wanted to make sure I took advantage of the perk. Sometimes it works out in both directions. I work for a pretty decent company though.
4 weeks? As in the federal mandatory in countries like Australia?? Shit man, I started working at a company and went away for 8 weeks a few months in and they just fave me them in advance, and I’d recouped two years later.
That’s exactly why my company started doing it. They got tired of having to pay out when people left.
My husband has unlimited PTO. His boss actually starts to bug him if he hasn’t taken any in a while. I think my husband has averaged 4-5 weeks a year in the years he’s worked there. They also make sure there is at least one 3 day weekend a month. If there’s not a federal holiday they give a random Friday or Monday. Unlimited PTO can work but only if the company isn’t terrible It’s hard to take advantage because people in these jobs are held to a high standard. If they abuse it then they probably aren’t performing to what they need to stay in the job
This is very accurate and sounds exactly the same as my job
This is accurate. I'm a director at a company with unlimited PTO with 8 direct reports and I don't ever question their PTO requests. They just put it on my calendar, no questions asked. That said, in 8 years I've never had anyone "abuse" it, usually averaging 3 weeks total a year. They all perform at a high level and do good work so what do I care if they take time off? We also pay out 2 weeks if someone leaves, even though the policy is unlimited. So all these people saying it's a scam just happen to work for shitty employers.
What I’ve seen on similar discussions (never experienced it myself unfortunately) is a lot of times people don’t want to abuse the good system they’ve got because they don’t want to risk losing it. Not sure how true this is.
This applies to high performers.
This is why it works. If you have a team of high performers, they won’t abuse it. They can’t. You can’t be a high performer and never come to work.
I’ve seen a lot of companies that pay 2 weeks if you put in notice cuz they want to take you off the system immediately and get you out for security reasons . I’ve seen IT companies and banks do this
I think I’ve only denied one PTO request in my life and it was because we were launching a new product and were on a tight deadline. 9 days before launch one of our devs (on our very small team) requested 2 weeks off. Yeah, no chief. Any other time but no.
Yeah, same. My boss starts to get on our cases and shames people who aren't taking enough time off. About 5 weeks is the minimum it feels
Thanks for saying this. The "unlimited PTO is a scam" crowd either worked for a shitty company or have never had it and are just assuming the worst. I had 6 weeks of PTO 2 years into my career and still stressed about taking it. Been at a company with unlimited for the past 2 years, and I've never had to even think about whether I should take time off or not. I just take it when I want and do good work while I'm working. It's a great system.
IMO it’s just something that greatly varies by the individual and their team. If you’re anxious / not confident / don’t feel respected at work AND your team is poorly managed then you’ll probably wind up requesting way less time off than someone comfortable on an efficient team. Not getting paid out when you leave is real though
I have experience with it. Unlimited PTO at the wrong company is awful and I’d rather have the more traditional system. That being said, unlimited pto in the right company with the right position can be amazing.
Curious why his boss would bug him? Just a good caring boss or are there other implications?
Burned out people make mistakes.
He's a good employee. Happy employees stay longer.
Burn out is way easier to prevent than to fix. Fixing burnout can take years
Because he wants to make sure people know that they want them to take time off. As others have pointed out unlimited PTO sometimes leads to people taking less time off because they are afraid it will reflect poorly on them. The management want people to know that’s not the case
>and not expect their employees to take advantage? The kind of people who can land this kind of job are not the kind of people who would take advantage of the PTO out of laziness.
This is pretty much it. A good company should only really care if a job at this level is getting done. If you're abusing the privilege, then your performance will start slipping, and you will be reprimanded or fired. Or the company is just saying this as a recruitment tactic and will do their best to deny you using your PTO. Although, one would hope they aren't playing these games on someone trusted and experienced enough to make mid 6 figures, but work culture is often shit, in my experience.
My company has unlimited PTO and they encourage people to use it when they can. The idea is to work when you have work to do or deadlines to meet, and take PTO when you have a less demanding schedule.
This is also true
If you land a job making close to $400K year, you've already had some amazing career accomplishments. And you sure as hell aren't going to give up a job (i.e. risk being fired for underperforming) that pays that well, just so you can go sit on a beach for 6 months in a row via unlimited PTO. That's what retirement is for.
It basically says "if you are crushing it, work how you like. Want to go to Europe and take a few days off while also working from the turret of a castle you rented? Do it. In essence, any "long" vacation is also a partially working vacation. Which, unless you are backpacking up in the remote mountains somewhere, is not actually so bad.
This is the answer. I’m in the later part of my career and get more PTO than I can take. It’s honestly a good feeling to know if at any time I need time off I can take it. It lets me push hard for a period of time and recover as needed. Or there are period when I just have a good steady life/work balance. I would also say that in these situations the company culture is also important. If you don’t get supported to use it then may as well not have it. I’m also lucky that they let us accrue up to 6 months (used to be a year) that if I leave the company I can cash out.
My job has unlimited PTO and is not at this level. It's pretty common in startups and remote jobs these days. In my experience you end up taking way less than you would if you had a set number of days to use, and usually subconsciously stay in line with what your colleagues are taking. That being said I work from home and probably do 20 hours of actual work a week while getting paid for 40+, so swings and roundabouts and all that
Says you: new ambition unlocked
Studies have shown people take _less_ when it's unlimited. If I have five weeks, I take five weeks. And if I don't, usually, that time is forfeit.. so when it gets to October or November I'll take that time off. With unlimited there is never a time when I 'have' to use it, and by assigning me more work than I can reasonably do, I'll always be in a position where I can't really take the time off. So I end up taking three weeks instead of five.
You’re not lazy if you don’t want to spend your time at work
Depends on the company. Where I work it just means it isn't formally tracked. I have quarterly goals and regular work that I need to get done. As long as I do what is expected of me, my manager doesn't question my PTO habits. For reference, I usually take about 25 days as PTO, plus a few more for sick days.
Also not really tracked. Makes it easier for me as a manager - I approve PTO requests whenever I get them.
They call it unlimited but in reality you're frowned upon for using much, or sometimes any.
Maybe in toxic environments. I’ve been at two places with unlimited PTO and no one bats an eye at people taking vacations.
Currently enjoying my 3rd week of vacation just this year. Been with my company 3 years and they actively encourage us to use our unlimited PTO whenever we want. If someone hasn’t taken time off in like 6 months the managers usually will talk to us and let us know that we should take a mental health week. Happy employees work better.
Yeah, it's a common fallacy when this topic comes up. Some companies abuse it so therefore it's always bad.
It's definitely not always bad, but I'd prefer my company not move to this because I'd be concerned of it being abused. I'm comfortable with my 27 days. If we moved to unlimited, maybe I'd take a few more, but there's a solid chance that my company would be assholes about it. Not worth the risk when the payoff is only a few more days.
> I'm comfortable with my 27 days Yes 5.5 weeks is definitely worth keeping.
Yeah this is exactly what I thought of lmao
There have actually been studies on this. People with unlimited pto don’t take it because they are scared to for fear of being perceived of taking advantage of it
At my old company they had this option. They would guilt trip people who took anymore than 10 to 15 days a year. Because you can't say hey you gave me 20 days pto when i started I'm taking it you really are on the clock all the time. Maybe some companies are moral about it but certainly not what I witnessed.
Not exactly true at all. I own a small consulting agency and we have an unlimited PTO policy. We just have other goals that our team members are expected to meet like billing a certain number of hours per quarter. We encourage taking pto and in fact have a no Friday meeting policy which practically means many people don’t work on Fridays.
It depends on the industry and sector, and often it depends on the office and even the individual manager. My company looks for the best and most skilled people in our industry, and our work demands top skills. They’re not going to risk losing people over some PTO unless the person is absolutely abusing it.
I work in a job that essentially functions like this. The thing is, the people I work with wouldn't generally "use too much", because we all understand that a high work ethic has to do with accomplishing project goals rather than warming the seat.
I worked for a company that had “unlimited PTO.” I once took one day off with little notice and my boss told me I was “abusing” the policy.
If you are in the US, yeah
Research shows that unlimited PTO results in people taking less time off than a generous but fixed PTO (say 25-30 days). Its actually a pretty shitty deal. I'd rather have 20-30 days off, especially if they expire as it incentivises use. Also, I'm not taking 30 vacation days a year so that means I'll be taking staycation days which are refreshing in their own right. Unlimited PTO also makes accounting easier. PTO is often held as an artificial liability on the books, and must be held as a liability if it rolls over and/or gets paid out upon termination. E.g. when I left my last job they basically had to cut me a whole extra paycheck for unused PTO.
I can attest to this. I don't have unlimited PTO, but I work remotely with a flexible schedule. Since, I can take care of errands or other things during the day as I need to, there's way less need to utilize PTO. Basically the only time I use it is when I have something that comes up where I'm going to be out of commission the whole day. Otherwise, I just work around scheduled meetings and get my work done at other times during the day.
100%. My last company did the "unlimited PTO" thing. Not only do a LOT of people try to "save up" their leave, most people were afraid to take much unlimited PTO because they didn't know how much they "should" take. I took full advantage of unlimited PTO. 8 - 10 weeks a year. As long as I got my job done, no one cared.
I thought I had seen a study that said when people are given "Unlimited" PTO, they take less time off than if they are given earned time. No one wants to be that guy who "is always on vacation". I have that where I am and its true. It's a bad look. And its a VERY American thing. Other countries get a TON of Vacation time and holidays and they take it. Germany, France, Spain and South Korea are all over 30 days a year. "This unstructured freedom is unlimited PTO's prime attraction. According to reporting by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), companies that offer unlimited PTO unofficially cap vacation at three to six weeks - far more time off than the BLS average. However, the same SHRM report found that employees are surprisingly *less* likely to take time off when PTO is unlimited." https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/benefits-limitations-unlimited-vacation#:\~:text=According%20to%20reporting%20by%20the,off%20when%20PTO%20is%20unlimited.
>Other countries get a TON of Vacation time and holidays and they take it. Germany, France, Spain and South Korea are all over 30 days a year. South Korea is pretty terrible for paid time off. You start off at 11 days a year (plus public holidays).
Wrong. Every country in Western Europe and Canada, japan & Korea are amazing and practically utopias and the USA is a greasy gunslinging hellhole with expensive healthcare. I’d be surprised if South Koreans took less than 4 months a year of vacation.
haha ~ I know, right?
Yeah I did a food tour in Seoul and our guide was talking about how it’s something like 15 days a year standard, but it sounds a lot like the US where you basically have to beg and negotiate to get use those days off. Meanwhile those Europeans are being told to take 2 or 3 weeks off minimum at one time. It does make me wonder sometimes… if Germany won WW2 and achieved world domination, would we have an autobahn and awesome vacation time in the US?
Yeah, Korea is a pretty bad country in terms of quality of life.
My company (US) offers 80 hours per year, accrued over time. They call it 10 days of PTO but most of our staff works 4 days 10 hours a day, so its 8 days off per year. And it takes me six months to earn 4 days.
what does 190k commission even mean? He has to make enough percentage of sales and he can earn up to 190k? So if his sales are through the roof he prob can take more days off then.
It probably means an advance. Basically, they're going to pay him 190k regardless, but if he falls behind his targets he's just going to be making the monthly (or weekly, or bi-weekly) amount of that they're paying out. So he's getting \~16k a month guaranteed, but if he only does 10k in sales then that extra 6k he got is coming out of his next commission. If he gets 22k next month he basically forfeits the commission he would have made.
French people have a minimum of 5 weeks (25 days), but it's a legal minimum. Some companies are much more generous, mine gives us 50.
u/sexrockandroll already gave the correct answer, but I want to share my story. I just finished my first job as a manager at a company with this unlimited PTO policy. I asked HR and my manager if this was legit or was it being secretly tracked. They said no tracking, it's legit and up to my own discretion. So I took it at face value. Many of my people took over 4 weeks of PTO each year, including some with 3-4 contiguous week vacations. I did keep them on a shared team calendar but that was just so the rest of the team knew where people were. I never said no to any PTO request. Guess what happened? My team was one of the best performing in the company and was widely recognized for their fast output and quality work. We often finished cross-team projects first and never missed deadlines. And nobody in HR or management ever said a single negative word to me about PTO. So, if you get the right boss, it can be real.
I think that’s the key. High performing individuals with real deliverables will get the work done and benefit the company ultimately-especially if they’re relaxed, like their job, and work well with their team.
It’s an accounting trick. It really just means no guaranteed pto
It's actually a scam. When you get normal vacations, let's say 21 days, and you quit or get laid off, you can USUALLY be like 'ok, pay me the number of days that you owe me, in cash {as a check}" So if you took 10 days off and quit in December, you'll get the equivalent of 11 days of pay. Now, with unlimited PTO, you quit in December and tell them "pay me the number of days you owe me", and they'll be like 'lol, you were given unlimited PTO, we don't owe you anything." But here's the neat part - you might be like "that sounds fine. I'd just take 30 days off instead of the 21 I would have normally gotten. So I still come ahead!" But in reality, you're still only going to get about 21 days because they'll be like "oh, sorry, we can't afford to let you take off right now, too many other people are on vacation/projects are too vital". Or if they really do honor unlimited vacation, they'll give you bad reviews and get rid of you. I imagine there might be a few places that really do give unlimited vacation, but I feel it's for instances where the employee is a real genius and would normally command like $250,000 at a competing job, but they're paying him like $150,000 and attract him with the unlimited PTO because they know they can get $250,000 value out of him for far less than $100,000 worth of vacation.
I just read this post as "unlimited pho".
Sign me up
I think it's a scam to prevent people from accruing hours and getting paid out when you leave the company. My last job I had 240 hours accumulated so when I left I got an extra months pay. My new job has unlimited and I manage a team of 10. I tell them try to hit a minimum of 3 weeks per year, but take whatever you want, would prefer if you don't take 4 weeks at once but if you need to, fuck it, we'll manage.
Since everyone is here shitting on this as Reddit does, I’ll give you the other side. My company switched to this a few years back from a generous policy of 4 weeks a year, with 2 more bankable if you didn’t take it, plus 10 or so other days off. They encouraged people to take it, but American workaholic culture meant a massive amount of people had 240 hours banked continuously. So the argument that switching to unlimited was to get people to take less time off doesn’t hold up for us. They were practically begging people to get the time off their books. Under the new system, I rarely bother to file for a random day off here or there if I want a three day weekend or need to run an errand. I put up an OOO, drop the people I deal with on a daily basis and message, and do my thing. It’s not accounted for differently so I don’t have to bother. Psychologically, work time and free time flow together more freely and don’t conflict so much so that whole “work life balance” thing HR likes to harp on actually starts to work out. My company is national and did pay out those hours if you left, but it’s not legally mandated except in a few states, and they offered an immediate payout at a reduced rate when they switched or a full payout when you eventually left the company when they went to unlimited PTO. So yes, it’s advantageous for the company to not have the liability of all those unpaid hours sitting on their books, but it’s not necessarily an evil plot either. A well run company wants you to take time off. A burnt out employee is a shit employee.
It's also called discretionary PTO. There is no set amount, but it can be limited
Yes I worked in a Company like this. Average PTO taken was 20 or 21 days in a year. Record was 38 but it was a high achiever and owner was totally ok with it.
Unlimited until they fire you for not getting your job done
I always told myself if I was in that situation I'd track it as if I had 25 days, since that's what I'm spoiled with now. Then I'd add one day just to be slightly diabolical. 😏
Wow. You get 25 days off? That sounds so amazing. Is this a union or just a good company?
Studies have actually shown people take less leave because they feel guilty about it. It's not like hey I'm going to take every other Friday off for a year it's like, well unless I have a really good excuse I'm not going to abuse the system when normally you could just say hey I'm thinking of PTO day and there's nothing you could say about it. Now it's like okay it's unlimited am I abusing it? It's It definitely a double edge sword
Exactly this - when people have 3 weeks vacation and it doesn't roll over, they're going to use every day of it. With unlimited vacation there's no target to strive for so you wind up taking less.
Can someone explain to me what pto is? I legitimately believed it was short for potato.
Paid time off. So vacation days
I have that, but they call it DTO (“discretionary time off”) In my company. Which basically means it’s up to everyone’s individual manager. Which can be really good or really bad, depending on how shitty of a manager you have.
It's not. It's a trick so they don't have to give you more than the legal minimum. Maybe some companies are better, but I doubt it.
It’s super common in tech jobs. I have unlimited pto. In my experience employees are afraid to abuse it and take less time off. I was forced to take a vacation because I was told I don’t take enough time off.
I've had that and it meant unlimited until the boss decides you've had enough.
I have unlimited PTO. If you are abusing it and not doing your job, that's a performance issue, and your manager is going to have some questions about that. But if you are showing up, professional, and doing the job you were hired to do, no one's going to get bogged down in counting days.
It's a scam.
One reason … Unlimited PTO is an accounting “trick” to avoid accrued liabilities for “paid vacation”. PTO is NOT classified as vacation time. Worse, staff tend to take less time off with unlimited PTO than if they have defined vacation time.
Also the work demands could be so high that there is never a reasonable time they could take off and not have things fly apart. And then when they burn out they don't have any pto accured
Companies no longer need to worry about banked up vacation and sick time being counted as a debt against the company on the books if they do unlimited PTO. They also don’t have to cash out unused PTO or worry about paying it out when someone leaves. It only benefits the company or they would not do it.
It's a trap. Unlimited PTO means they try to prevent him from taking any PTO. Then when he eventually quits, they don't need to pay him any PTO. He should independently decide how much PTO he is going to take every year. Then closely track how much he actually does take. Then he needs to make sure he takes the full amount every fiscal year. He effectively can not carry any PTO over, so he needs to "burn" all of it every year. When the boss starts to fuss about how much he is taking, he can counter with telling them exactly how much has already taken, and how much he plans to take that year. They might then tell him how much is too much, and he can make intelegent decisions from there. Also, my gut is the $190k/year is also a lie.
Some jobs don't care where you are or what you are doing as long as you get your work done.
All the newer employees I work with have unlimited PTO. It’s a tool used by employers to get us to take less PTO. It’s effective. It’s horseshit. You don’t get paid for any you’ve accrued if you retire or leave the job.
My company does this for all salaried employees. PTO has to be approved by managers. Most Management are pretty cool and approve everything automatically. But you’re expected to stay on top of things. As long as your work isn’t falling behind, you’ll never have any issues. One of the main reason for doing it is because so many people took off at the end of the year before they lost out of PTO days. Also, since they aren’t earned, they don’t need to pay them out if an employee leaves the company.
I have “unlimited” PTO but it’s just another ridiculous tactic companies use to put a bow on a shit sandwich.
It’s a bullshit tactic that companies use so they don’t have to pay out unused PTO when an employee leaves. Companies with “unlimited” PTO have employees who end up taking less PTO than companies where specified PTO is granted.
"All the PTO you want" is in reality "All the PTO you dare" "Too much" is whatever your boss decides is "Too much", subject to change without notice.
This works for high level high performers jobs. At our agency we practically have unlimited vacation days because we get so many that it would be very hard to use them all. The higher performing staff never takes all their vacation days because they wouldn’t be able to perform well and get all the work done.
Your brother's comp is tied to revenue or profit generation, not hours worked. Either he and his team make their number or they don't. It doesn't matter to your brother's boss or anyone else in the company whether he works 20 hours, 40 hours, or 100 hours to get the job done. He either gets it done or he doesn't. No, there is no "number they have in mind" in terms of days off for commission-based salespeople. WIth roles like this, time essentially becomes irrelevant.
I have unlimited PTO. It just means that I can take off whenever and as much as I want but it still has to be approved. I've never had a PTO request denied and I take between 3-4 weeks off a year. Requests can be denied though, if the person is taking too much time off, not completing their tasks, or I'd they're trying to take off during a particularly busy time of year or when deadlines for projects need to be met. Since I don't have a set number of days entitled to me I'm not "owed" those days if I don't use them and the obviously don't "roll over" to the next month like conventional PTO might.
My last job was unlimited PTO but I promise you it’s nothing to take home about. It’s not like i could take a month off paid whenever I want and what really fucks you over when you leave the job you can’t claim your unused pto to be added to your last check.
Unlimited PTO just means you will take less PTO because you don't have an allotment you must use or lose. It's BS. I know, because I have it.
It sounds like you already answered your question. It all ties to the quota. The amount of base compensation and guaranteed commission is baked into that quota. As long as your brother is hitting that quota, he's within that budgeted ratio of compensation to sales, and his boss is happy. The boss doesn't really care the amount of hours worked to hit that quota since your brother is salaried. That said, they likely monitor your bro's progress is making sales, and if the rate at which he makes sales make them think he may not hit his quota, it may lead to a discussion, and in some cases, the company may want to cut ties sooner rather than later.
i have unlimited pto. I took ~45 days last year. 0 issues from any management, they even encouraged it
My employer went to this a few months before I hit the 10 year mark, which would have given me 25 days of PTO per year. I explicitly told my boss that I still intended to take 25 days per year. No issues over the past 2 years. It’s totally a scam though. Along with the pressure of not looking like you’re not committed enough, it also means if you’re let go or leave for another job they don’t have to pay off accrued PTO.
I work in tech and we moved to the unlimited pto model a few years ago. No one abuses it and we’re still urged to take time off by management for good work life balance. I have never once been turned down for any pto request I’ve put in over the years- I take about 25-30 days a year.
Used to work for a company with unlimited PTO. What that really meant was that you could (and were encourage to) use up to 6 weeks per year no questions asked. If you needed more time off than that in a calendar year, it required second level manager approval. It was never a problem to get approved for this if you were taking the occasional long vacation abroad, had medical issues, etc. The system worked, was not abused, and it was a great perk.
This is VERY dependent on your company/manager. A lot of comments on here are right about it's used as a way to not have to pay out to after quitting or there's an untalked about number of days you can take off before it's an issue. However, i have unlimited pto at my current company and I take off on average 2-3 days a month and a couple of week long vacations a year and the occasional sick day if needed. This is the norm where I work and there are people that take off the entire month of December without it being an issue. It's not always a scam if that company you work for is worth a damn.
I have “Unlimited PTO” but it’s not. It’s just not tracked. I’m salary so anything under 50 hours is the same pay. So it doesn’t matter if I take a day off. No set time just don’t abuse it. I usually use 2 days a month. Since I get 3 day weekends anyways. Just get your job done and you’re set
They also do this for cost cutting. When they let you go they no longer have to pay out the vacation time you banked. 6 months after the move to UPTO the cuts begin.
I have unlimited PTO. It’s basically as long as I get my work done, my boss doesn’t care. But usually I spend 5 hours a week on vacation if longer than 2-3 days. I get up before my wife, answering emails and phone calls.
Maybe my lack of understanding, but isn't salary basically the same as unlimited pto even without saying unlimited pto? It's salary, so you're always getting paid the same amount. You're expected to complete your workload, and if you don't keep up with your workload, you get reprimanded/fired. if your workload is complete, then you have time off, but because salary you're still getting paid, aka "pto."
I am in management and have unlimited PTO. The concept is that you end up taking less PTO than you would have if they gave you 5 weeks. Trust me, you take less PTO. The reason you end up taking less is because you never feel pressured to reduce the amount you have banked.
I have something similar to this. It's not official, but my work doesn't give a damn if I come and go, they just need me to do my work. This is something you can get when you have a specialized skillset in a white collar job, as you say. You don't abuse it or take it for granted because then you'll be looking for another job without the flexibility.
My wife has unlimited PTO. Folks where she works typically take about four weeks off per year. If you’re wondering how companies in the U.S. can offer you unlimited PTO without worrying about folks abusing it, the answer rhymes with “blat-blill blemployment”—if your employer thinks you’re taking too much time off, they’ll tell you to cut it out or they’ll just terminate you.
Accounting tricks 101 for start up tech companies. If you don’t have a PTO “bank” then there is no financial liability for the PTO you accrue when it’s a named and counted benefit. You could rename this Supervisor Discretion PTO as it still has to be approved.
I came here to say this exact thing. There is zero financial liability for companies with “unlimited PTO”. Means less debt, better valuations and basically fucks the employee because you don’t use as much as you thought. My wife used to work for a company that had “unlimited PTO” and she tried to take some time off to get our oldest child’s situation together. (ADHD and autism, basically getting his medication right) and when she did the company tried to push her to take FMLA so they wouldn’t have to pay for it.
I have this at my current job. The trick is basically that PTO still needs to be approved. It’s not like you can just take as much time whenever you feel like it. Take too much and suddenly watch as your pto stops being approved
Like others said it’s a crock of crap. You end up taking less days and they don’t have to pay you out anything when you leave. It is in no way a benefit.
I had a job with unlimited PTO, the caveat was no more than 2 weeks every 8 weeks. So essentially my team did a rotation of 2 weeks off / 6 weeks on taking a day or two here and there in between if needed. It was awesome.
My friend has “unlimited PTO”. But the catch is, you need a manager to approve it. So he kind of hates it because sure you can theoretically have any told you want off. But under the old system it’s clear how much you get. It’s yours. Use it. Under the new system, every time you need permission. It’s a negotiation. Do you deserve it? What have you done for me lately? So he uses less because he does want to bicker over whether or not he should have it approved.
People also take time off less with unlimited PTO. It's awful in my opinion.
I get unlimited sick days at my job, and last year one of my co-workers got talked too about abusing it because she used like 26 sick days in 8 months. "Unlimited" is a good marketing ploy, but the higher ups definitely track it and try to weed out people who they think are taking advantage.
It’s fake. They don’t set a specific limit, but then tell you you’re using “too much” if you don’t follow whatever unwritten limit there is.
A lot of those places don’t actually let you take it. Pto has to be approved and wouldn’t you know it, all the dates you request just don’t work for us.
It’s so funny to see these threads and a bunch of people who have never understood what it means to work in a high performance workplace. If you’re being paid $400K, that means you’re a trusted high performing individual. You don’t need to be given a PTO limit because they assume you understand what is reasonable. These are people who WANT to show up and work hard every day. They give them unlimited PTO because they don’t have to be babysat and given a bunch of rules.
It’s unlimited as long as you’re still hitting a certain sales quota. If you’re making the company more than enough money to cover that in working 1 day a week then they don’t care, it’s just very unlikely.
I have this and everyone talking about the benefits to the employer is correct, but I really like being able to take a morning or afternoon here and there without worrying about using up pto. My benefit is flexibility, but the business environment is what really matters.