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Comment by sgk284 | Hacker News Reader

I'm assuming this is only an issue because your company probably has an "unlimited" vacation policy. I'm also assuming you're in the United States.

In any traditional salaried role with a fixed amount of PTO an employee is paid out for any remaining PTO when they leave. "Unlimited" policies are a mess, for among many other reasons, because they allow companies to skimp out on paying time earned.

There is nothing unethical about what the employee did. They earned that time and/or value, and were compensated for it in the only way the company allowed them to be compensated for it. If the company wants a different set of incentives then they should change their vacation policy to a real one.

Your CEO, on the other hand, absolutely acted in an inappropriate way and, assuming they continue not to pay the employee, is acting illegally. Not all startups are like this but it is admittedly amateur hour at most of them.

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This annotated be emphasized enough. Unlimited vacation time is a fraud and leads to employees taking less vacation days. Peer-pressure is insanely strong and employees directly, compare their performance to others.

That is not always the case. My last job had unlimited PTO and some of us took 20+ days per year.

20 days does not seem like an extravagant ammount

Around here anything above 15 is a lot.

Yeah, anytime I take more than 10 days off in a year, I know that I'm pushing above the average. And that counts days around the holidays too. Every year I plan to take one vacation in the summer for a long weekend, or a full 5 days off in a row if I can.

What is around here? I ask as a (outside of DC non govt) worker with plenty of days (23-24 not including any holiday)~. Might want to avoid that area :)

This is so sad 20+ days is considered great for unlimited PTO??

20+ days is nothing to write home about with unlimited PTO. Many jobs in Europe have anywhere between 21-25 (or even 28) paid vacation days per year. As a standard. I'd imagine in order to justify unlimited PTO you would have to be able to take at least 30-40 days per year without any issues.

Funny, most places in Europe the law requires at least 20 days, some places it's even 25 or more.

I have unlimited and I am taking 35 days off this year. Not including the 9 days paid holidays I get. I took around 30 last year and had 10 paid holidays. My previous company gave us 24 days PTO, no paid holidays (we could choose which holidays we wanted to take off but we'd have to use PTO). At that company I consistently took off 30+ days total.

I am in the US, both are US companies. I could not handle having less than 40 days off a year and make it clear before hiring that I am going to take plenty of time off. Yes I am productive, no I do not work long hours (~35 a week at both places)

Impressive. What area/industry are you in that you can find accommodations like this?

Developer for 2 relatively small Saas apps (< 50k users). Not in remotely the same industry as each other. One privately held, one not. I don’t think it’s industry specific or particularly common, but I’ve had a couple of job offers and seen/heard of other places with comparable benefits. A lot of it is company culture and negotiation. If a company already provides 28 days and you interview well, you can likely get that increased.

PTO payout is state by state and I’d bet pretty unusual, but California and Massachusetts have it.

27 states + D.C. treat earned PTO as wages that must be paid out (one or two states do allow employment agreements to opt-out of this).[1]

Even when working in non-required states, I've always had an employer pay out (e.g. at Microsoft in WA).

[1] https://www.workplacefairness.org/vacation-pay

I’ve always had employers pay out PTO in WA except for my last one, but they did give me some severance ... but I know they don’t pay it out as a rule.

I’ve heard that in the retail sector it is somewhat common not to pay out. That to me is akin to stealing: the employee earned those hours and the employer is refusing to pay.

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