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Comment by jrjarrett | Hacker News Reader

  How much annual / personal / sick / parental / unpaid leave is available?

This is a great question; when I have searched for jobs, it's one of the more important benefits to me.

Sadly, however, I've found most places have gone to "PTO" -- combining time off for illness and vacation into one bank -- how have others successfully negotiated an appropriate level of time off?

(Context: For a very long time, I worked for companies where sick time was essentially a non-issue; it was essentially unlimited, with appropriate rules around requiring a doctor's explanation or having to switch to short-term disability after a protracted period, but the occasional day or two to recover from a cold and not spread virus to the whole company without having to choose between that and visiting family.)

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I just tell them how much time off I'll need during salary negotiations. I know you offer two weeks PTO and 3 weeks after 5 year, 4 weeks after 10 years etc. But I'm not restarting my PTO every time I switch companies. So I will come in with PTO equal to my experience at a minimum.

Has this approach actually worked for you? In all places I have worked, PTO is a non-negotiable, other than "I already have this vacation/trip lined up for two months from now and require the time off," which is okayed even if it's outside of their normal new-hire policy.

Yes, I negotiated an extra week at my current job and my last one.

PTO is nothing special. It’s just another benefit you can place a monetary amount on. If they won’t give you more than two weeks paid time off and they will let you take unpaid time off, add the amount that week of unpaid time off is worth to your required salary - of course take into account that PTO is a non taxed benefit.

I feel the same way about 401K matching.

Ok, but how can you value 401K tax benefits? It seems complicated.

Simple.

For nice round numbers. Say you’re making $140K (above the social security maximum to make the calculations slightly simpler).

A 5% match is $7000. But since it is an untaxed employee benefit and if I think I can already max out my 401K plan, I would have to take into account the 24% Federal 6% state (GA), and 1.4% Medicare tax - 31.4%

That means I would need to negotiate at least 7000/.686 = $10,204 extra.

Employer contributions are tax deferred, not untaxed. Assuming you don't trigger penalties, you'll pay ordinary income on that down the line. I wouldn't expect to retire into a 0% tax bracket, especially if you're maxing the employee contribution.

Many companies offer Roth as an option for a 401K and will put your match into it. So they would be completely untaxed.

You can put the employee contribution into Roth, but the employer contribution is almost certainly going into traditional; I don't believe there is a provision for employer match into Roth.

(Working on the link)

https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/retirement-plans-faqs-o...

Today I Learned.....

And if I had kept reading the link I found (but didn't post)

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/are-roth-401...

Unlike the employee's contribution, however, the employer's contribution is placed into a traditional 401(k) plan, and it is taxable upon withdrawal. The employee's into a Roth 401(k). Therefore, many employers have found the additional administrative demands of offering the Roth 401(k) outweigh the benefits to their employees and do not often offer one. This is the reason for the perception, or misconception, that employers cannot provide a match to Roth 401(k) employee contributions, when in reality, they are simply not providing the option for the plan at all due to the administrative hassle.

While true, one doesn't normally have a tax rate that high when they withdraw from their 401ks, so their taxes will probably be less.

Capital gains are untaxed in a 401k.

Depends on the person and how they handle their finances.

> Capital gains are untaxed in a 401k.

Capital gains are taxed as ordinary income when withdrawn from the 401k. The timing is better (since you're not taxed on sale, you can rebalance at will), but the rates are worse than a taxable account.

I'm just saying, if you count employer 401k match in your all-in comp figure, it doesn't make sense to treat it as untaxed; it will be taxed, the rate might be less, but it might not be that much less.

yeah sure but depending on the company it's easier to take PTO than UPTO. People expect you to take all your PTO generally. That's not always true if it's unpaid.

I know, and I said and they will let you take unpaid time off

> PTO is a non taxed benefit.

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but income from PTO/vacation/sick leave is taxed the same as any other income.

If you make 140400 a year and are getting 2 weeks of vacation. You are making $2700 a week. If you took another week off of unpaid time off. You will lose $2700 for that year.

If they gave you an extra week of vacation. Your taxes wouldn’t change. If instead they gave you an extra $2700 in salary and you took a week off of unpaid time off, you have to pay 24% in Federal taxes on that income + 1.45% in Medicare (you are already over the social security maximum).

You would need to make $3621 more just to start breaking even ($2700/(1 - .24 - .0145)). But even then you are paying taxes on the extra 3621-2700. I’m sure there is some formula to break even but I would just ask for an extra $4000 and call it a day.

Assuming you CAN take unpaid time off, and not have that penalize you.

From my original post...

....and they will let you take unpaid time off....

What you're saying is that your net income after taxes is less than your gross income. Of course that is true, and the exact numbers will vary for every individual. Naturally you should always take the difference between gross and net into account in any financial decisions.

That wasn't what I was addressing, I was only commenting on this: "PTO is a non taxed benefit."

Someone could misinterpret that and think "I pay taxes on my salary, but PTO is not taxed."

But the money you're paid for PTO is salary. If you have accrued PTO and leave a company, when you get your final check you will find that the PTO payout is taxed as ordinary income, just like all of your other paychecks. And while you are at a company, the income you receive from any PTO days is also taxed as ordinary income, no different from a day that you actually work.

That was the only issue I wanted to clarify.

I agree it is terrible to reset the seniority clock after 10 years! I found it very difficult to negotiate this as well, but if you're hiring a senior position do you expect applicants to be happy about losing 1-2 weeks vacation time??

It's worked for me by treating this as a given (given that I will be working for them, I will be at least maintaining the PTO that I had at my previous company) and by offering alternatives for HR. Sometimes companies have personal time that is separate from PTO. You often won't get this time paid out to you if you quit and still have hours but since I plan on using it all every year that's not a big problem. Some companies can give you extra floating holidays or other types of time off to make up the difference.

You usually only have to resort to that if the HR system is inflexible and someone is making a big deal about it. A blanket statement that we don't do that, can't do that and won't think about doing that is usually a bad sign.

It's a bit sad though. In many countries you don't have to ask this because there're legally enforced minimums.

You generally have to offer the same benefits to everyone in a company (at least in MA). The easiest way to do that is to offer "PTO" as a bucket to everyone. The new "cool" way to do it is to have "unlimited PTO" ... which I have pretty mixed feelings about.

Unlimited PTO means you're at the mercy of the company, pretty much. I am lucky to work for a company with unlimited PTO where most people take 4-6 weeks off per year. Other places are far less lucky.

It would be nice to have a written expectation, but that kind of defeats the purpose!

I work for a place that has "unlimited PTO" and must say I'm not a fan. You have employees like me who fear taking off too much getting yelled at by HR to take more time off (but how much more??). And on the flipside the higher ups make snide remarks about people who take 20+ days off. From my understanding unlimited is code for in the high teens.

I wonder if you have operations in Europe.

Standard here in Spain is 30 days off (including weekends and bank holidays). Most companies just offer 22 working days. I worked for one that offered 24.

No we are just a local office in the US.

I don't work for a company with an unlimited time off policy, but I've read (and agree) that the best middle ground is unlimited PTO with an enforced minimum.

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