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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

This is especially true if the company uses "unlimited"/not-tracked/etc. time. Otherwise, unless you know someone at the place (and even then it can vary by group), you're left with making assumptions about norms that may not be accurate.

Personally, I've never not used all my PTO in a given year and would consider being unable to do so a show stopper.

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I've heard the "unlimited PTO" policy referred to jokingly as the "no PTO policy" at some shops.

Most companies are great about it though and encourage PTO.

I once asked hr from a position advertising "unlimited PTO" what was the average of PTO days in the team. She panicked a little bit

Great question.

Unlimited just means they don’t have to pay out when you quit or get laid off, doesn’t it?

Yes, but it also doesn't give any indication of norms around the amount of time off people take.

Expectations may differ from how much time is in a traditional PTO bank but at least in general, it's OK to take accrued time off barring special circumstances.

I worked at a place that gave us 2 weeks and then took an act of Congress and months of social engineering to take even a day.

We got bought out and the new overlords announced they were going to give us five weeks of vacation. There was actual laughter in the room. We can't even use 2 weeks, what's 5 gonna do for us?

In Norway you're required by law to take four weeks and a day vacation every year. Almost everyone has five weeks vacation time in total. Both you and your employer can demand that three of those are continuous during summer, and most of the country shuts down three weeks in July.

Wonder what did you guys produce that required all hands on deck at all time non-stop?

We really need a new standard. Unlimited PTO Min 20 days/year. If you don’t put a number then it’s assumed to be 0

In Australia it is 4 weeks minimum (and 10 days for sick/carers leave). The leave accumulates if you don't take and have to be paid out as per your finally pay if you leave the company. Since it is a liability on balance sheet most companies will demand you to take leave if you have accumulated over 20 days. You can also ask to cash out any leave more than 20 days.

I live in a state where that's not required, so it doesn't happen anyways. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When I put in my two-weeks at my last job, my boss said that if I can get all my work transferred in only a couple days (I did, since I basically had almost no work, hence my search for a new job), then I could just fill the rest of my two-week notice time with my remaining PTO. No reason to spend two weeks pretending to work at my computer.

Yeap, PTO is a liability on the books and unlimited PTO is a way to get rid of it.

Bingo.

I really like the policy of "minimum mandatory time off" some companies have. That makes a big statement about where their priorities are in terms of care for their employees' well-being.

The company I'm at effectively has that as part of their unlimited PTO policy, though the timing is company-mandated, being the first week of August and the week between Christmas and New Years, which is a week so many people are likely to take off anyways, it just makes things easier to make everyone take it off.

Going into the week off in August, I wasn't sure how seriously they took it, but sure enough, I didn't get a single e-mail that week other than weekly reports from automated tools. I even checked Slack that Friday, and there wasn't a single message except for the channel where people post pictures of fun stuff they do over the weekend.

It was pretty nice.

I pretty much hate policies that require you to take PTO at specific times. They're almost never the times I would choose to take on my own and are often at times it's difficult to combine into a longer trip.

Having everybody take the time off can be good, but it doesn't achieve the goal of making sure all processes can go as usual while any individual isn't there, as mentioned in your peer comment about banks.

Banks tend to have this policy because there are a lot of ways to steel in ways that you can cover your tracks. But most of those ways require regular effort to cover your tracks, so if you are locked out of the office for at least two weeks someone is likely to notice. Note that this is two continuous business weeks. Nothing happens over Christmas so that doesn't count.

I had a manager who couldn't let anything happen without her input. She went on vacation and participated in everything via Slack for two weeks. Making her disconnect might have helped more people realize how much she was ... "translating" requirements and work status between her reports and other teams.

In many jurisdictions, there's a statutory minimum amount of annual leave; you can take less but then the difference must be paid in lieu. (Versus if you give 30d, 18d is minimum, and employee takes 20d, then you don't have to do anything. Obviously could have a company policy of paying it if you want.)

So, a more cynical take on mandatory time off, and something that absolutely does happen, is that they'd just rather not have the work than have to pay extra for it.

Also common is not rolling over into the next year, so use it or lose it.

The author's company avoids that "unlimited PTO" pitfall in their job listings by describing the benefit as:

> generous time off

That doesn't necessarily mean it's "unlimited". It could be that you get eight weeks and they just don't say so.

I think most people understand that "unlimited" does not mean you can take half the year off. It means there is no hard limit and it is up to a discussion between you and your manager. 8 weeks is pretty generous.

I imagine it's really hard for employers to balance that, though.

A good employer wants employees to take the time off they need without worrying about running out of PTO to do the stuff they want. They don't want an employee to ever have to think "Shit, if I take that day off for a dentist appointment, then I won't have enough PTO for that weeklong trip to Hawaii!"

But if you try to avoid this scenario by being extremely generous and declare an explicit 8-week PTO policy, then you will have people using 6-8 weeks PTO. Even as someone that strongly values work-life balance and PTO, 8 weeks is pretty nuts. If everyone took 8 weeks PTO every year, that would be pretty costly and could significantly impact productivity. 8 weeks is 1/6th of the year! It would cause chaos with people frequently coming in and out of the office.

So I think an unlimited policy sounds good, but expectations have to be set. Personally, I'd like to see it paired with a 10-day MINIMUM policy, with at least one full week off.

I guess to someone in the US, 8 weeks sounds like a lot. But, especially if you consider holidays and sick time, 6-8 weeks total over the course of a year doesn't seem unreasonable. I've been in that range for total nonweekend days off for much of my recent career.

It depends a lot on the company in the US.

If we're including holidays, I've seen plenty of companies that do 4 weeks PTO + 8-9 holidays which is just shy of 6 weeks, and there some that do 5-6 weeks PTO after you've been there for a number of years.

But there are also ones where you basically get no PTO. Presumably (hopefully?) you get paid more money to work at these places, but I've never found them worth investigating.

I don't include holidays in that total.

Yes, at my work the manager made it clear he expects people to take time off -- often getting then to take the minimum is a struggle.

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