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Comment by darthvoldemort | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a startup where the CEO reverted the unlimited PTO because one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately. We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company's generosity.

When I worked at Uber engineering which had unlimited PTO, I took between 6-8 weeks of PTO every year. Most years was at least 6, but one year I took 8. No one batted an eye. I think it all depends on company culture or maybe team culture.

I would never work for a company that denied me a PTO day, even if it was a single day. I would never irresponsibly take PTO but I would also make sure that I took at least 4 weeks off per year no matter what. The secret is taking 1 week off per quarter, and then another 2 weeks off during Christmas. That automatically brings you up to 6 weeks.

But make no mistake, unlimited vacation is a way to keep PTO off the books as a liability. In California you cannot lose PTO that you have accrued. They can stop accrual however once you reach a certain level. Once you max out on accrual, you are giving the company money, which is stupid so it's important to consistently take PTO.

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Hang on, I’m in danger of understanding something.

If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?

If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take any and leave after 2 years, what do you get?

Edit: Thanks. Yikes. Unlimited PTO actually seems worse than a specified allowance from where I sit.

nothing, that's part of the motivation for companies to offer it.

> If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take any and leave after 2 years, what do you get?

In all the "unlimited PTO" jobs I've had, nothing.

You get nothing because you've accrued nothing.

Nothing. That's why they don't have to keep it on their books.

It depends on if your company capped how much you could accrue. However much you accrued should be paid out.

Nothing.

> If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?

Even in this case, it depends where you live and sometimes what your contract says. California requires it, but most states don't.

Yep in California PTO and vacation get paid out. They can not do use it or lose it. They can cap how much of PTO and vacation you can have at one time. Sick time does not need to be paid out. The whole scam of unlimited PTO is so they do not have to pay out when you leave. Then can not roll over your PTO or vacation at the end of year but if they do that, they have you pay you out.

Seems pretty cynical. Isn’t this trick easily defeated by taking regular PTO instead of hoarding it?

California companies and work culture largely discourages taking PTO, so it tends to accrue.

Really depends on the company and in big companies it depends on your team. My very first job out college had vacation and sick time. You could take your vacation at any time no questions asked. It was really nice but they paid less than everybody else. But the work life balance was much better. You saw a lot of people with families come and work there and take paycut. It was interesting seemed work well for them.

Yes you never want to hit your cap. At some of my older jobs people would be like oh crap I gotta take two weeks off starting next week. I much rather have defined PTO. My last role and current role are "unlimited PTO" I take about 4-5 weeks off with out issue. But you are taking a risk for sure going to company with "unlimited PTO".

At a company I worked at in St. Louis I was pairing with the owner on the PTO system when we noticed I was at the cap that day... we were using my data as the test. He made me go home right then and there. We implemented the system emailing HR when people were nearing the cap so we could make sure people didn't work too much and lose vacation.

I can give a comparison to Germany. Here at least 25 days PTO a year are mandatory for each full time job. Anything below that is illegal, most companies offer around 30. Sick days don't count into that. Even if you're on a planned 2week vacation and get sick for three of those days, those three days can't be subtracted from your annual PTO days. You have to get a confirmation document from your doctor though, which is of course free. If you don't take your PTO, it will be transferred to the next year, but most companies try to avoid that. You can usually decide if you take those days within the first three months of the next year, or they have to pay you out. You are usually not free to choose when you take your PTO and it's normal to only take one or two weeks around holidays like Easter or Christmas and the rest for individual occasions.

That's exactly why so many companies are enacting "unlimited" policies.

What they do is say "It's unlimited, but if you take more than 4 weeks it has to be approved" or something and then that way they can cap you like they did before but also not pay you out if you leave because wink wink it's "unlimited".

Yep as a business owner it's a great way to get out of paying PTO.

These are all just the slow crawl of American businesses towards irrelevance.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your business isn't doing well.

This reminds me of "unlimited" cell phone plans where you can use as much data as you like, but at some point the data gets slower and slower.

Skype iirc used to have an "unlimited" talk time capped at some ten thousand minutes as fair use.

I am pretty sure even today if you have a phone call on Google voice that goes over two hours or so, your call will drop. I like it better this way because I can call back immediately after being disconnected.

I'm ok with that. I'm still on an old data plan that throttles me after I got the limit for high speed data. But they don't hide that limit or my usage, and it's really cheap.

I don't want to pay for unlimited data, and I don't want to lose data after hitting a cap.

Everyone is ok with being sold something that they understand, most people are not ok with being sold something that screams "UNLIMITED" and then uses fine print to limit your seemingly unlimited plan.

Maybe the plans you're describing could spin the feature as "throttled for your pleasure" or some such. I'm sure there are marketing people that can come up with a positive way to spin it that isn't a borderline falsehood.

If I throttle your car to 5mph, is the distance it travels unlimited?

Bandwidth is the same, if you set a speed limit, you are also setting a distance limit.

Only if you're maxing out all the time. I had a plan with a similar sort of thing, even after using up all my "fast" data I had enough bandwidth for regular browsing and streaming music.

Those plans are much better than plans that are strict cap and then no data, which are better than no limits but if you use more than your quota it costs a ton and by the way the usage information is delayed at least 7 days.

I do remember seeing the plans that said unlimited (tiny print slow after 30Gb) and that's misleading... better to put the 30gb in big letters, but I just want like 1 or 2 gb fast... Just switched to a hard capped plan cause it was half the price though and a higher cap and I haven't hit the cap in a long time.

The difference is that they are very reasonably up-front about "first X GB at 4G speeds" where the PTO thing is going to have a shrowd of mysteries and unwritten limits.

Sounds like this is just a lawsuit away from not being a thing anymore.

All the former employee would have to do is to illustrate that the 4 weeks was enshrined in policy somehow, then boom.

Companies would just react by adjusting their HR rules to comply with the court decision. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Unless a union is involved, firms do not enact policies that make them less money. Unlimited PTO removes a liability.

If there are specific policies that demarcate how an employee uses PTO to the degree specified in this blog post, I would argue that the firm does not have "unlimited PTO" and in fact accrues a vacation balance.

Awaiting the class action in CA.

As just one example, a few years ago our company changed parental leave to 4 months from 6 weeks. Is that making them the same or more money?

I think companies do things like Unlimited PTO because although it may mean some people take more leave than before, other people take the same or less and there's no liability, so it may net out roughly the same but sounds better to new hires.

I don't think every company is extremely cynical as you're suggesting. As others here have mentioned, it depends where you work - we don't bat an eyelid if people are using 4-6 weeks plus holidays, in fact we check to make sure people are actually using their PTO.

Can you name this company? They sound like good people.

Some states don't require the payout and companies there will not unless posted like in the employee manual.

Some stats do and that is where this could be ducking worker rights.

Yep, you figured it out. Preset PTO must be paid out (at least by CA laws), "unlimited PTO" pays bupkis if you don't use it. If the workforce routinely under-utilizes the PTO (which is easily achieved both culturally and managerially) the whole scam is pretty clear.

> one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately. We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company's generosity.

I don't understand why you're mad at someone for using a benefit he's entitled to?

Unlimited PTO means you should never have to work if you don't want to. Otherwise it's not unlimited.

If there's a limit just state it upfront.

"In many organizations, there is an unhealthy emphasis on process and not much freedom. These organizations didn’t start that way, but the python of process squeezed harder every time something went wrong. Specifically, many organizations have freedom and responsibility when they are small. Everyone knows each other, and everyone picks up the trash. As they grow, however, the business gets more complex, and sometimes the average talent and passion level goes down. As the informal, smooth-running organization starts to break down, pockets of chaos emerge, and the general outcry is to “grow up” and add traditional management and process to reduce the chaos. As rules and procedures proliferate, the value system evolves into rule following (i.e. that is how you get rewarded). If this standard management approach is done well, then the company becomes very efficient at its business model — the system is dummy-proofed, and creative thinkers are told to stop questioning the status quo. This kind of organization is very specialized and well adapted to its business model. Eventually, however, over 10 to 100 years, the business model inevitably has to change, and most of these companies are unable to adapt." [1]

[1] https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

This is so well-written. Now I want to work at Netflix!

Well, this is kinda like complimentary condiments or whatever. Technically you are allowed to abuse it to the wazoo, but in practice it just means "Take a reasonable amount, we're not stingy". There obviously is an unspoken "we're all grown ups here" type of social contract in these sorts of things. Abusing it is going to come at the cost of the commons, and in the GP's case it did cost them the perk, so being angry at the abuser seems justified.

One of my co-workers a few years ago decided to go to Japan for 3 months, but that didn't fly with my company and it ended up being mostly an unpaid sabbatical (despite the unlimited PTO policy). 3 months later, the guy extended his stay and let us know he wasn't coming back. There were no hard rules anywhere in sight, but the way this played out seems perfectly reasonable to me.

> There obviously is an unspoken "we're all grown ups here" type of social contract in these sorts of things.

It's absolutely not grown-up behavior to remove terms from an explicit business contract (employment agreement) and move them to an implicit, unwritten "I know it when I see it" social contract.

Obviously there's some actual limit that your platonic grownup has in mind, between 2 weeks and 40 weeks of PTO per year. Just write it down.

Some people are just missing that part of their development that helps them to intuitively grasp what counts as abuse when there are no clear written rules. You can't just ask them to be reasonable. I worked for a company that ordered free dinner for folks who stayed late. No limit to what you can eat, but if you're feeling a little hungry, grab a slice of pizza! Well, sure enough a few people ruined it for everyone by taking armfuls of pizza home with them, enough to feed 10 people. I'm talking multiple whole pizza pies, boxes and all, straight to their cars. "It was for employees, and there were no written restrictions" was the justification. So, that perk ended.

It's interesting how inconsistent and asymmetric these intuitive limits seem to be. Pushing employees to work extra hours, easily $X000 in time? Perfectly acceptable. Abusive JIRA-powered micromanagement? That's just how it is. But $60 worth of pizza!? How could a reasonable person possible justify that?

> Some people are just missing that part of their development that helps them to intuitively grasp what counts as abuse when there are no clear written rules.

I think the guy who quit after two months' leave knew perfectly well it was abuse; he just didn't care. Or maybe he felt slighted by the company in some way (unfair resolution of a conflict, promotion denied, underpaid, whatever) and this was his way of getting even with them.

How can it be abuse? If 2 months leave is part of package then surely it's up to them how they use it. You wouldn't criticize them for using all the money they get paid would you?

The problem isn’t taking two months off. It’s taking a large chunk of time off, then immediately quitting.

That means the team was down an engineer for basically an entire quarter, without notice. That wrecks schedules and causes headaches for your coworkers who now have to figure out how to make up for the lost time or figure out what work to cut from the schedule.

So it is an HR problem. They need to extend the cancelation periods in contracts..

No, HR doesn’t schedule work or features. It’s practically impossible to pad timelines for the case where an engineer decides to effectively pad their two weeks notice by an additional six weeks except for large companies like Google.

I would find not having defined benefits extremely uncomfortable.

Saying that you have unlimited paid leave when that is obviously untrue and leaves the policy open for abuse by both employee and employer. I'm sure the example stating that less leave was taken when it was "unlimited" was because people understood that there were limits but didn't know what the limit was and didn't want to trigger management. Once things are defined, of course people will think that it's ok to take the maximum leave allowed.

Consider that your employment contract doesn’t even specify how much work you will get done. Isn’t that a much more extreme degree of freedom than number of days of PTO? It’s between you and your manager to figure out what your expected amount of output is. Given that, isn’t PTO just one of many factors in that ongoing negotiation?

> Some people are just missing that part of their development that helps them to intuitively grasp what counts as abuse when there are no clear written rules.

2 months is clearly abuse, but I'm worried my CEO or HR will have a far less generous definition of abuse. I'm already reading a thread about 4-6 week vacations where I get at most 2 weeks.

Yes, xkcd had a great comic on the toxic attitude of abusing the ambiguity of a gentlemen's agreement:

https://xkcd.com/1499/

It's not, because people won't easily benefit from taking unlimited condiments, while they would easily benefit from real unlimited holidays.

Holidays should come with some limits, eg. no more than X weeks per year, like it was in the past.

I get it, the government made a stupid rule (forcing PTO accrual in the contract between employer and employee) and companies were creative enough to find a solution to bypass that rule and made it sound attractive on a job ad. In an ideal world we would just have an explicit upfront amount and no government interference.

> Holidays should come with some limits, eg. no more than X weeks per year, like it was in the past

That's anchoring bias. Unlimited does have some nice properties (e.g. very generous allowances in many cases, and the possibility of spending unaccrued time, for example)

If we're in talking about ideals, I'd just ask for people to be more transparent about what the actual dynamics are: if taking 2 months vacation where everyone else takes 1 week affects metrics tied to promos, then say that upfront so people can make a conscious decision about whether signing up for asshat culture is worth the brand prestige or career trajectory potential or whatever it is that people value.

In a world without "government interference" you wouldn't have leave, you'd work every day of the week, and you'd work 12+ hours a day.

Being paid out leave, and having leave accrued isn't a stupid rule. It's a law that's made in reaction to companies writing an upfront amount of leave into contracts, and never allowing their employees to take that leave.

When you side with no regulation, you side with abusive employers, not for "common sense winning out". People will abuse you as much as they're legally allowed to.

>In a world without "government interference" you wouldn't have leave, you'd work every day of the week, and you'd work 12+ hours a day.

If this were true, none of us would be earning more than the minimum wage.

Roughly 1 in 5 workers do earn just that or very close to it. Easy to forget working in tech. But labor laws aren't just for in-demand techies. They are for everyone, including your cashier.

You are moving the goal posts. The original post said:

>...In a world without "government interference" you wouldn't have leave, you'd work every day of the week, and you'd work 12+ hours a day.

The claim is that without a government rule specifying otherwise, we would be working every day of week for almost all of our working hours. The government does mandate a minimum wage - if the original point was true, we would all be paid at the minimum wage. Your "1 in 5" percentage seems high, but as you point out, most people are paid more than the minimum wage.

Wasn't governments that won the 8 hour workday. It was unions.

Wasn't that the point? They're talking about being mad about someone taking 2 months of PTO off and then talk about how they always take 6-8 weeks cough of PTO with no one batting an eye.

So the reason for being mad is the company and team culture. The first company had a clear unspoken culture that actually using the benefit was off limits.

On that same point, I see a lot of turnover throughout my career and would say about 50% chance someone goes on medical leave and actually comes back to work. We basically start recruiting expecting they’ll not return. It’s obviously correlated with that persons income and ability step out of their employee compensation. But, especially with first time mother’s in their >30. They’ve been saving for it and often hold a key position within the organization by this point in their career. Or perhaps that’s just what I’ve observed at several companies.

Probably because it changed the workload or leave approvals for the remaining staff

Depends on your mental model, some would say the company should be staffed to account for x% on leave, thou account for a person taking 2 months is likely out of reach for smaller companies

> Once you max out on accrual, you are giving the company money, which is stupid so it's important to consistently take PTO.

Early in my career I never took a vacation, so I maxed out. I realized that I'd be losing money by being maxed out, so I worked out a deal with my boss to take every Friday off from May to September that year. Four day work weeks all summer was pretty nice!

Genius. I'm asking to do this tomorrow.

Another option is if you can alternate every other friday and monday you'll get 4 day weekends every other weekend. This can really be refreshing too.

Just be careful. When I went to part time I made the mistake of choosing Monday as one of my days off - most public holidays here are Mondays so I missed out.

Ive explicitly chose wednesday as my day off for that reason.

I'm a FIRE type personality, which means I would like to take the hit now to be better off in the future.

What that meant at my first real job was that even though I would have liked to take time off during the year, I liked the idea of having time off saved up better.

Since we couldn't carry days over, that meant that around the middle of November I told the team, happy holidays, see you all next year.

On January second, my boss told me he would never let me do that again. Which was sort of my first clue that employment conditions could be negotiated on a one by one basis.

I'm not at all a FIRE type person, and don't tend to trust these sort of casual time off in exchange for time worked up front agreements, but I like what you did there. In my area, compabies aren't required to pay tech workers overtime. Thanks EA!

What does FIRE mean?

financial indepenedence, retire early. frontload all your money making and then reach a point where you can statistically expect to die on the day you reach 0 money left.

That second part isn't a requirement. Fire doesn't require you to spend all your money, and indeed, that's generally a bad idea...

yeah, I reached maxout, and switched to taking every Friday off. It was wonderful.

Let me tell you the song of front-lin nurses where summer vacation must be requested in March, time off for March break be put in before the end of January and Christmas/New Years requests must be put in September. Oh, and you have to alternate once every year.

I can see a stiffer policy in critical care, (or assembly line) types of jobs that have to be organised to fill the position well in advance to train-in/hire/book via temp agency the workers so they know when you are going/returning so things work well on a continuous basis. Some companies have a full shut down and people get some sort of bonus for scheduling their 2, 3, 4 weeks then. Often line changes/upgrades/model shift etc are done efficiently so the line runs flawlessly at startup. High tech jobs, esp startups often have novel policies that are rarer in the average industry. Lots of interesting points of view in this thread.

I definitely could see health care borrowing ideas from manufacturing for scheduling. LEAN/Six-Sigma has indeed been applied to this world.

However, innovation is sometimes stifled because care providers being compared to assembly-line workers is taboo.

In this case, I applaud the engineer. He called the company's bluff. Though, I believe quitting immediately was a bit too much.

Don't falsely advertise to lure people! Be clear about your vacation policy.

> He called the company's bluff

It wasn't a bluff. Unlimited PTO has never meant taking months off at a time.

I've never met an adult that needed clarification on what unlimited PTO means. Nonsense like this just ruins it for everyone else.

People probably should just have 2 months off a year, I don't see what your problem is. It would be way better for everyone's mental health, this guy was just smart enough to take it, probably in an effort to see if it would help them feel fine about staying at the company afterward.

~320 hours isn't an uncommon amount to bank, I had more than that when I left my first tech job after 2 years. Albeit I didn't just take time off at the end I went the payout route but that's not really an option for unlimited PTO. I also took over a month off at the end of every year at then next job as they had decent total time off but didn't allow it to be rolled over year to year so I wouldn't say taking a month or two off is ridiculous in it's own right either.

Hard to say if it was actually unfair or not given the lack of background details (e.g. were they only there for a couple of months working the minimum needed or where they there for 2 years working heavily) but nothing about what was said so far actually seems unfair. "unlimited pto" should be about flexibility not about trying to silently lower the amount of PTO people take.

My current place now is much smaller and has unlimited PTO. I just act like it is no rollover front loaded and arranged my major blocks throughout the year up front. Throughout the year I'll make additional minor requests for unplanned things. Unfortunately many others don't do this and even though nobody is ever denied very few come close to using how much I get approved on Jan 1 and they'll just leave without it.

This is pedantic, and goes to your point of “never met an adult…”, but what exactly does unlimited PTO mean here if not “whatever you want”? What is the cutoff for what a “responsible adult” does? Is two weeks at a time okay? Is it okay if I do that in June and then August?

I’m not trying to justify a 2 month paid vacation, but this kind of clarification is all up to who’s doing the interpreting. The 60 hour week boss who never takes vacations may think anything beyond National holidays is excessive.

If I want to travel to Brazil I’m not going to spend 38 hours round trip to go for just a week.

Unlimited can also mean erratically occurring. Plenty of 2 job + 2 kid families have sudden 'parent must be at home' times, when families/friends are suddenly not able to fill the instant need. Look at how many people complain how Amazon fired them where a parent had to be absent for such an emergency - they then go from bad to worse in a heartbeat - AND they now have no job at all. I feel enormous compassion for these people, and I can do nothing at all for them.

Taking care of children, much like being sick yourself, is not vacation. Staying home to do so shouldn't reasonably be deducted from your vacation days, regardless of vacation scheme.

True enough, it is a sick day. Sadly US labor relations has been cast into a them versus us scenario - recall the worker riots in US and UK history. This has it's roots in the relics of 'royal rule, kings - god linked etc = workers are to be out down, and of course slavery follows. Japan and Europe treat the workers as partners in an enterprise, US/UK and Canada in the past cast the worker as the enemy who wants to steal the bosses $$ by underworking and overcharging for that work - thus we have Amazon's labor relations - to a degree. Amazon is a middling abuser, however, Amazon is rapidly improving, as we see, when they sit down and think about traditional roles. Of course, labor wants an enemy to rally against. Recall how the UAW steadfastly refused boards seats on the car makers board? I think union management wants an adversary. They do not want to see 100% of all financial and management matters. They would be able, as board members are entitled to, see the details of all costs, wages, benefits etc., so they would know how much an auto-maker can afford in reality. Makes you wonder. This board seat process works very well in Japan and Europe - on occasion the unions see that a manufacturer has a valid need to lower labor costs and the unions agree, and the car makers agree to restore wages after a depression - after all, no-one benefits when the company goes broke.

How many people have you asked what it meant? Because I'd be willing to bet the answers would be all over the place with respect to how many weeks are ok.

I for one won't take an offer that includes "unlimited" PTO because it's a lie, and it means I can't compare the offer to my current job, and an employer offering it has a good chance of being underhanded. If they're not, they should be willing to put a specific number in my contract.

If a company is advertising unlimited PTO as a positive part of their compensation, but intends to give you 10 days in 1.5 years I guess it isn't a bluff...they just think you are stupid. He =outlines how he was told that the expectation was to take 20 days off a year- don't give employees some benchmark unless it is followed. I've definitely worked at companies that publish the average or median taken as a way to guide employees about what the true quantity of "unlimited" is. I agree that most of us understand unlimited PTO a bit better, which is why most of us would never be as honest as he was with his employer. I would definitely counsel anyone in his situation to get whatever PTO approved FIRST, come back for a few days, and then request FMLA straight with HR. Your manager should understand that what you use your "personal" (not "vacation") time off isn't their business. Be cheerfully vague about PTO prior to approval. Before and after any kind of leave, take notes on all conversations with date/time, outlines of subjects and direct quotes. This is actually something all employees (and really managers, but managers already have the company and HR in their corner) should do with any and all one on ones. A manager telling someone they can't approve PTO because they aren't going on a fun vacation but rather staying home with family, and then mis-directing them to take their FMLA before exhausting whatever PTO could have been granted, and then denying them any additional PTO after the FMLA is insane. FMLA is not a Federal Government program to subsidize a private company's PTO expenditures. I would also love to know how this ruins anything anyone. Are fun, vacuousvacations being ruined by people with real problems having a reasonable expectation that unlimited PTO policies would include the sorts of extended/bereavement leaves that used to be offered in separate policies?

> Unlimited PTO has never meant taking months off at a time.

Isn't that exactly what it's supposed to be? To give people an ability to work whenever they feel like working. It's not like the company just wanted to give people few more days of vacation like everyone else. They wanted to "stand out" with unlimited amount.

Not to mention that 2 months vacation is something that can easily happen even under normal circumstances (at least in Europe). If someone gave me "unlimited" amount of vacation I would certainly use more than that.

While I was at HubSpot during the initial rollout of their infamous $30k developer referral program, I remember one person getting a referral, paying out the $30k, and then taking PTO until they quit 90 days later. The developer who was recruited was already set from a previous equity cashout and had effectively retired.

Both programs got dramatically reformed after that, though naturally retrospective profiles of the program give it a much shinier glow.

Strange you can take paid leave during a probation period. I'm guessing no probation?

> took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately

That's absolutely common practice in places where you can accrue PTO without limits. People rest with compensation they earned and then leave re-energized. And that's a good thing.

You either take accrued vacation as a lump sum and take the tax hit or just take time off and get paid as you would.

Yup, have seen similar thing where we hired and SWE and took 2 months off stating he need to take care of sick parents in India. He came back, 2 days later he resigned & joined FAANG.

How is the engineer a asshole for utilizing one of the company perks? It sounds more like they were being underutilized and had management material written all over them.

It's the good old "tragedy of the commons":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Also known as "that's why we can't have good things"... :/

It’s often potentially a slight financial trick as well. At least it can be. Depending on structuring it can a tinnnnnny one time pickup on profitability due to not having a vacation accrual balance sheet liability any more. Aka 1)when you leave no payout, and 2) the one time reversal of that acrual can(*) impact profit. Do the math with payroll at 40% of revenue that can be a ~2.5% one time pickup in profit margins. Slightly less tax adjusted and fully rolled back.

Just saying it could be even more nefarious than you intended to convey :)

> We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company's generosity.

In other words, we tried to scam him on "unlimited" vacation which isn't, but he scammed us back by taking us at our word and treating it as if we weren't actually lying. Indeed, what a jerk.

I personally would hate to lose unlimited vacations, or more specifically what Atlassian provides. I like the freedom of not worrying about how much vacation I have available. It allows me to take random days off or take a long planned vacation.

I wonder what would happen if California just passed a law that called for unlimited PTO to be paid out (using some pretty high implied accrual rate, like 8 weeks a year or something).

I don't know how it would work in cali, but in the UK I'd pitch at statutory minimum holidays (25 days+bank holidays) OR average time off taken at the company, whichever was higher. I'm sure an employment tribunal would take either.

Slight correction: UK statutory paid leave is 28 days. Bank holidays can be counted as part of the 28, if given as paid leave.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

Every company I've worked at forces you to take your vacation if you hit the accrual cap. Simply preventing you from continuing to accrue seems like a terrible policy.

>I worked at a startup where the CEO reverted the unlimited PTO because one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately.

The CEO made a dumb bet and lost. You can't be mad when you offer unlimited PTO and people use it.

Oh, you can be mad. But you shouldn't be a jerk about it.

> The CEO made a dumb bet and lost. You can't be mad when you offer unlimited PTO and people use it

This is such a dumb take. Unlimited PTO does not mean you take two months off.

I'm tired of everything needing a footnote and qualifications because people like you only understand things in the most superficial sense.

Well what does it mean? the words are pretty plain and clear. I've never worked in a place with a unlimited PTO policy, so I have no idea what it means and would need clarification. Most of us work in technology and understand that in most cases the devil is in the detail.

Yes, the words are pretty plain and clear. You can take as much time off as you want, within reason. There is no cap.

Need a few days off for a break? Go for it. Want to take a two week vacation a few times per year. Approved!

Think you can take two months off and disappear? Nope. Some people were born without a nuance gene and don't understand this distinction.

>Think you can take two months off and disappear? Nope.

Apparently you can, because he did, and it worked.

If by "worked" you mean pissed off everyone and ruined your reputation and career, sure!

If it's your first job, then sure maybe.

I've done something similar, walking off a bad job at the most critical time they needed me. Would you like to know what happened? I used one of my many other references, and within two weeks I had a job for 20% more money making six figures. Your value isn't attached to what some idiot CEO thinks of you.

You made 20% more and broke into six figures. Congrats, you're an average tech employee with baggage. Everyone that remembers you will be a hard no on future interviews.

Congrats I guess.

Thank you! This was many years ago, and I've held several jobs since then, 1000+ miles away from there now. It has not impacted my career the slightest, but thank you for your concern! I don't have some superiority complex against those making a median wage, so your sarcasm really isn't an insult at all. It's quite a good living, and I don't begrudge those making more.

But 2 months off could be a totally reasonable amount? If you worked for 2 years without taking PTO, taking 2 months off to avoid burnout seems like a normal thing to do. Some people prefer to take bigger, longer vacations rather than smaller more frequent ones.

> But 2 months off could be a totally reasonable amount?

Sure. Leave of two months should obviously be coordinated with your leadership, which this person didn't do.

Which makes your comment moot.

>Sure. Leave of two months should obviously be coordinated with your leadership, which this person didn't do.

How do you know that individual wasn't approved for the 2 months? I missed that part of the story. Do you not believe an employee has the right to resign from a job, or are they a slave for a certain period of time after taking a vacation?

> How do you know that individual wasn't approved for the 2 months? I missed that part of the story.

Context clues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_(language_use)

> Do you not believe an employee has the right to resign from a job

Of course. Nobody said any different. Are you confused about the thread you're responding to?

I appreciate your honesty that it is complete conjecture on your part that the 2 months hadn't been coordinated.

If that's what you think context clues means, I can't help you.

By the fact that the two months of PTO didn't result in an immediate "you are fired for not coming to work", I take the position that it was approved PTO, and (thus) coordinated with (some) management. I do not see any context that supports another interpretation.

As my dad has always told me, you have no idea what agreement the other employee had with the company, so never speculate.

See that word "unlimited"?

It it doesn't mean that, why not say "up to 2 months PTO"? If you say "unlimited" and mean "limited", then yes, it needs a footnote, just as if you said "we're going to pay you $200K per year" but then paid only half and said "what, are you crazy? I'd never pay so much as $200K, surely you know I didn't mean this, do I need a footnote over every tiny thing?" No, not every, only in cases where you say one thing, but mean completely different one.

I also worked at Uber as an engineer and could barely take off a few days to visit my family during Christmas. I'm not even Christian but I at least thought that would be a good time. I guess it was very dependent on department.

Of course we got rid of slavery many years ago... We just call it different things now.

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