Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

Salesforce has "unlimited PTO", which is what it is. I'm not a fan of such a policy and depending on team, it is probably better than Amazon's 10 days of PTO.

Acquisitions (depending on how they are handle) go through a period of autonomy and then absorption. Saw this when I was with MSFT and Skype.

Honestly this post sounds a bit whiny and lacking reality in how acquisitions go about.

View on HN

> Honestly this post sounds a bit whiny and lacking reality in how acquisitions go about.

I think you’re reading more into the post than is actually there. It’s three sentences written in a pretty matter-of-fact voice, giving context on the old policy and management’s messaging on the new one. As someone following the labor side of the tech industry, I found it to be an interesting data point.

The post was about a benefit being taken away. The acquisition is multiple years into being done. It’s what happens in acquisitions.

My God Amazon's PTO policy is terrible. I made the assumption that it would be quite good, but even an O&G company I used to work for had better than that.

Is anything about Amazon good except for the pay and the reputation?

I don't consider the reputation a positive.

Jesus 10 days PTO? That seems unbelievably stingy.

Amazon's vacation policy -- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/pto-overview-us

MSFT at least started at 3 weeks.

Per this document, AMZN is 3 weeks after your first year of employment.

True, but surviving that first year. Also - vacation and tenure in industry is often disconnected. I have and know others that have negotiated time off as a benefit when at small companies.

I think with Amazon, there is the added element of taking time and team expectations. I have not worked there, just from friend's experience.

Wow. In Australia the legislated minimum is 20. plus 11 or so public holidays.

12 in ACT, lazy buggers.

That's literally half of the legal minimum here in the Netherlands. I keep being surprised at how people in the US allow themselves to be worked to death.

Wanting to retain a benefit you had for years is whiny? What are the execs giving up in exchange for asking their employees to work harder? Way to punch down, dude.

They have that if you’re SMTS (L7) and above. You can actually use it, but you have to have a good manager and advocate for yourself to take the benefit that is in your job description, otherwise it’s just a nice benefit on paper and probably saves the company money.

That was the policy several years ago but was changed in 2019 to include at least all salaried roles in the engineering org, and I believe across TMP.

Keep in mind that a lot of Slack’s employees —- especially early ones —- are Canadian, and Canadians don’t get unlimited PTO (by law, I think). So they are being told when they should be using some of their PTO days.

Canadian here. There is no law against unlimited PTO. There are laws about statutory minimums however.

Personally, I think most of the "western world" has a more healthy idea of PTO than the US. Some companies here are better than the norm, but a lot are not really great.

Couldn't these employees then all just take PTO around that time with the same arrangement?

Unless it's specifically a period where operations wind down, don't companies try to stagger leave?

Even Slack previously had shifts where people would be on-call or actively monitoring as necessary. PTO isn't closely tracked within the company (usually) so I'd wager there's nothing stopping this from happening as usual, unless somebody has already used 4+ weeks of PTO in the year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com