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Comment by samatman | Hacker News Reader

A bit of a tangent, but I don't consider "unlimited time off" a perk, at least not automatically.

A guaranteed amount of time off means the company has to pay me for unused vacation if and when I depart. So for those of you who are offered unlimited time off, get a guaranteed and generous minimum, in writing.

After all, if it's unlimited, they shouldn't mind putting "a minimum of four weeks a year" in writing, should they? If they won't, they're probably going to shame you into working all the time and then won't pay you for the vacation you didn't take.

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Where I work, we are given a generous amount of annual leave, and it's great. It ensures that you can essentially take a holiday whenever you want, and I find myself with days left towards the end of the year. The company also hardly refuses time off requests.

Compare that to the startup I used to work which had an "unlimited time off" perk, it was always a struggle to get actual time off, we were always rushing to get things done, or it was a difficult time, or another engineer was already on leave, it caused more stress than anything else.

I'm all for just giving a generous amount of annual leave, in my contract, with remaining days paid out.

I completely agree with you. It is a ploy to keep accrued vacation pay off the books and keep capital efficiency high. You obviously can't take 100% vacation time, so it's not unlimited.

It's nice not to stress about PTO balances, though.

Exactly.

> You obviously can't take 100% vacation time, so it's not unlimited.

This is the part that gets me. Everyone knows that it is limited, you just don't know what the limit is until you hit it.

If vacation were truly unlimited, sure, it would be a perk. Absent that, knowing what the limit is is a perk.

Companies where vacation time is close to zero will also say they have "unlimited." Always ask the interviewers how much vacation time they took specifically. In my experience they'll try to tell you how "someone" took 4 months of vacation but then omit the fact that no one else has taken more than 4 days and median is 0.

> A guaranteed amount of time off means the company has to pay me for unused vacation if and when I depart.

This must be a California thing. It's not generally true in most states.

And in a lot of companies, even when they specify an amount, it is a "recommended" amount. My company, for example, says 3 weeks, and many managers follow this religiously. But when you read the actual rules, it says that 3 weeks is the guideline, and not a promise. This is also used as an argument against giving 4 weeks: "3 weeks is just a guideline. You can work out more if the manager agrees."

Yeah, and most companies only let you accrue a certain number of hours of time off, typically somewhere between 100-200 hours from what I've seen. Once you hit that limit you simply don't get any more time off. Your boss won't let you take a vacation until next month? Too bad, sucks to be you.

Thankfully the way my current company handles this is about as good as you can get - they cash out balances that are too high a couple times a year at prespecified dates.

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