Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericbarrett | Hacker News Reader

Does it draw your vacation time? Mandatory vacations (especially around Christmas) were started in the early 2000s among Bay Area tech companies in order to reduce collective accrued PTO, reducing liability on the balance sheet—had nothing to do with worker health. Although that regime is certainly preferable to so-called "unlimited" PTO.

View on HN

At Adobe, we have unlimited flexible PTO. In my personal experience I have never heard of PTO being turned down by a manager.

Unlimited PTO means they don’t have to pay out anything. It’s effectively 0 on the balance sheet.

Doesn’t the “P” mean paid?

PTO can also mean Personal Time Off. e.g. contractors usually aren't paid during their time off.

I've also worked at places that didn't pay out accrued time when you left.

if you leave your job, the company has to pay for your unused vacation days as part of your severance if you have a set number of vacation days.

In that case just take PTO before handing in your notice.

Incidentally, I just helped a family member work around the process of quitting his job and moving to a new one.

Their contract basically states:

1. PTO can't be paid out at the end of employment

2. PTO can't be used to quit the job

3. PTO can't be used _the entire last month_ of your employment with them

Which is nuts

If that is based on calendar month, and not rolling 30-day period, then quit at the beginning of the month

Unlimited PTO is a money-saving tactic for businesses. Traditional unused PTO is paid out upon resignation, but flex unlimited PTO has no such requirement.

Unlimited PTO would be great - if combined with worker protections so that you couldn't get fired for actually taking time off.

By which I mean real time. Like a month or more.

I'm working a total of 7 nonconsecutive days in the next 30. Does that count?

EDIT: Might be less. I forgot to count some other holidays.

Where do you work and do they allow telecommuting? (I assume you're being paid regularly over those 30 days)

Like I said earlier in the thread, Adobe. Currently we're fully remote, with a plan to go 50/50 hybrid when offices reopen. There is a process to apply for fully remote but you need to live within a reasonable distance of an office and "digital nomad" lifesytles won't be available. I have do a few coworkers who were fully remote pre-pandemic but that was generally the exception.

A friend works at Oracle and they have unlimited PTO and in December, their CEO announced you could do full time remote or hybrid.

But unlimited PTO + you can't get fired for taking it means you aren't obligated to show up for work ever.

If unlimited PTO wasn't just an accounting (and psychological) trick to screw workers out of accumulated vacation time, this might concern me. If they want limited PTO, that's fine. It should just be spelled out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com