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".
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.
I don't want to pay for unlimited data, and I don't want to lose data after hitting a cap.
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.
Bandwidth is the same, if you set a speed limit, you are also setting a distance limit.
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.
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.
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.
All the former employee would have to do is to illustrate that the 4 weeks was enshrined in policy somehow, then boom.
Some stats do and that is where this could be ducking worker rights.
These are all just the slow crawl of American businesses towards irrelevance.