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Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

Am I missing something? I thought it was illegal to not pay out accrued PTO. (If it isn't, it certainly should be.)

Many states actually don't require to pay out PTO, but it is wide industry practice and it is the law in California. If they aren't paying PTO, even if legal, that's ridiculous, because as others have said, PTO is interpreted as a form of compensation which could be interpreted as your employer not paying you.

Yep, it’s not like that PTO expense isnt an easy thing to calculate into your companies finances.

This is clearly a business trying to extend their runway ever so slightly at the expense of the employee.

Yeah everywhere I worked even HR said outright that they had to pay PTO.

Some companies I worked at did regular "shutdowns" to get PTO off the books as it showed as a sort of expense they would have to pay.

Maybe BuzzFeed was playing some weird word games and it wasn't PTO... but was?

A friend works for a company that does similar for holidays. You don't get regular holidays off on weekdays, you get them the last two weeks of the year. In order to minimize interruptions during the year. Most are encouraged to take all their vacation time during the same month in the summer time.

Nope, not in WA. Left a job with 3 months of PTO due to 80-90hr work weeks. Never saw a bit of it but was still the right call in the long run.

This statement is absolutely bonkers to me. I've never had more than 2 weeks accrued, and often go into the negatives. I would go postal if I took so little vacation that I was able to accrue 3 months worth. I'd have to have, and I'm not exaggerating, a million dollar salary to forego vacation like that.

Oh yeah, don't mistake my glib tone I experienced major burnout and won't touch that subset of the industry with a 10ft pole.

When you're working 6-7 days a week at 80 hours+ there's really not room for any vacation.

Different people are different. I have a coworker who has some ridiculous amount of PTO like that accrued. He just doesn't care that much about taking vacations for some odd reason, and likes to go to work and be "productive".

I'm with you; I don't let that much PTO accrue, as I need time off.

Can't wait to get my unlimited PTO paid out!

One of the reasons why "unlimited PTO" is a bit of a scam.

Never been in this situation but couldn't you just take off a few months with unlimited vacation or even a few years.

You are pretty much guaranteed to get let go if you tried to do this without having a very good reason and a very understanding boss. Even though it is called "unlimited" that doesn't mean you actually get to take unlimited vacation.

So, it’s like “unlimited” Internet data plans.

The term my employer is using is "unaccrued".

Productivity is productivity. If you take so much time off that you aren't getting anything done, you're going to be fired.

See, the problem is you're interpreting words like "unlimited" by their dictionary definition.

I've personally had a good experience so far with "unlimited PTO". I've been working at a company with that policy for a year now, and I've never had an issue taking as much time off as I need for vacations, personal days, etc. It helps that my supervisors are pretty cool about it.

>It helps that my supervisors are pretty cool about it.

This is why I prefer actual accrued PTO policies. I should not even have to consider whether or not my supervisor cares that I take a day off. It should just be agreed upon that I am able to take x time under x circumstances on day 1 of my employment. Worrying whether or not my supervisor is cool with is just tastes too much like relying on the largess of some benevolent overlord.

Just take a couple weeks off before you put in your two weeks. Obviously doesn't work if you get laid off though.

Not the case in Ohio at least. They don't have to pay any PTO. Often, good employers will pay a portion as a good will gesture if you follow their notice procedures. (Prior employer paid half.)

I think it's only mandatory in California.

California, Illinois, Montana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Rhode Island.

I have seen corporate officers pursued successfully for unpaid PTO after corporate insolvency in Illinois.

Side note: This is why “unlimited vacation” is a bit quirky as a benefit. Ask what the minimum is, because that’s what is going to be paid out when you seperate.

My understanding is that California and maybe Nebraska also prohibit use it or lose it policies—although they do allow AFAIK limiting accrual to some maximum number of days

> although they do allow AFAIK limiting accrual to some maximum number of days

How is that not “use it or lose it”?

Really the default assumption should be that the employee desires to use his/her PTO and if they were unable to do so that situation would be a failure on the companies part (not having enough coverage, over promised a schedule, etc) and any PTO that failed to roll over should be paid out.

In my view that puts the incentives in the right places, firms that are unwilling to abide by those clear rules are likely trying to game the PTO system anyway and are committing a variety of fraud when they hire someone under those false terms.

Legal in California: You earn 2 vacation days per month, to a max of 24. Hired in January, never use PTO, by December you have 24 days banked. In January you fail to earn PTO because you hit the cap. Total balance at end of January: 24 days banked.

Illegal in California: You earn 2 vacation days per month, and they are "use it or lose it." Hired in January, by December you have 24 days banked and never use them. The next January, your existing PTO balance is set to 0 and you are not compensated for the unused days. Balance at end of January: 2 days banked.

The legal distinction is that your employer can decide not to give you PTO for any arbitrary reason (there is no legal requirement to give any at all), but they cannot take back PTO that has already been paid out.

I'd still call this "use it or lose it", just a less harsh version than a yearly reset to zero.

I've never heard of anywhere doing this sort of yearly zero-reset anyway. Wouldn't this make it literally impossible to use the vacation earned during the last pay period of the year?

Typically the yearly reset is for awarded (as opposed to earned) PTO. e.g. On Jan 1 you reset, but back to 15 days, and you have the rest of the year to use it. I'm guessing this is also legal in California because PTO is not earned in this model.

Speaking from experience. The PTO is given up-front. (Say by quarter.) There may be a grace period into the next calendar before the previous year's PTO is zeroed out. And you can potentially, by policy, go negative.

It's not uncommon for companies to have some variant of this.

I agree that it's not all that different from accrual caps in practice but does need a little more management to avoid losing time.

ADDED: Accrual caps are also typically more along the lines of vacation earned over 18-24 months in my experience.

The article says they're paying out PTO in California because it's required by law. My guess is the severance is to compensate employees in states where it's not required. They could decide to pay out PTO and take away the severance, which would likely be worse for most of them.

I guess they've missed the big picture that the company is bleeding money so fast that they had to lay off 15% of their workforce.

Severance is to get people to sign exit agreements. They’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re going to have people agree not to sue them and potentially other things (like clawbacks for criticizing the company publicly).

Colorado as well: https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/finance_etc/2015/09/...

Fantastic news. Only 42 states to go.

according to this article, only in California (where they did pay out PTO). This was a surprise to me.

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