Microsoft Says It Will Give US Workers Unlimited Time Off | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Says It Will Give US Workers Unlimited Time Off

bloomberg.com

34 pointsmfiguiere41 comments

While great in theory, the devil is in the details.

So far, every company I've worked for has an "unlimited" PTO policy. In practice, it means that folks end up taking little/no PTO, or folks end up abusing the policy with extensive breaks for personal travel, etc. (I 100% support taking vacations and carving out time for personal projects and family stuff... I just kinda look askance at the idea of taking the equivalent of a 1-month sabbatical only 6 months after joining a company.)

What I'd love to see is Unlimited PTO with a mandatory minimum. Even for the most die-hard workaholics, having some time away from work stuff is important. For everyone else, a PTO mandate would make taking personal time just another part of their work responsibilities.

I worked at Dropbox for a couple of years, and it was functionally unlimited. I took two weeks off just a month in to help my wife recover from surgery. My org had a guideline of taking at least one week off per quarter, targeting six weeks per year. I took six weeks off in a year, plus plenty of half-days and single days off.

I recognize Dropbox is the exception to this rule, though. My new employer gives seven weeks, and requires that you take at least four.

I fail to see how taking as much time as you want off with unlimited time off is abuse? If you don’t want people to take half the year off, set a limit on it.

"Unlimited PTO" is a mind game.

If you explicitly state "You get 6 weeks of PTO per year", the average amount of PTO taken per employee will likely be close to that 6 weeks.

If you give "unlimited" PTO, then people will likely only take 2-3 weeks a year because they'll be afraid to be seen as abusing the policy.

At the company I'm at, we have unlimited PTO, and we also have two "quiet weeks" where you're essentially FORCED to take it. The first is usually the first week of August, and the second is between Christmas and New Years.

The week between Christmas and NY is fine, but having the other week being forced to be in the beginning of August kind of sucks, tbh. I don't take normally take vacations between mid-June and mid-August because that's prime tourism season and everything is crowded and more expensive, not to mention loud kids everywhere. Of course, I understand they chose that week because some employees are parents and that allows them to take a vacation while the kids are out of school.

Still, I think it'd be better if the early-August company shutdown was changed to a policy that required people to take at least 1 full week off at least once per year.

It would avoid the situation of me taking a week off in September and having management go "You just had a week off a month ago!". Not that that's happened, but I do wonder if they're thinking it.

> Not that that's happened, but I do wonder if they're thinking it.

So the actual issue is that you are assuming that other people are thinking something negative about you?

Yeah, basically.

But that's the story of my life, really.

I'm just going to leave this here: https://lifehacker.com/why-unlimited-vacation-days-is-a-scam...

"A study by Namely found that employees with unlimited PTO took an average of 13 vacation days, compared to 15 days for their fixed PTO counterparts. Why would this be? Without clear guidance on what’s acceptable, most workers end up taking off less time to avoid appearing lazy or otherwise be seen as abusing the policy."

This is why I hate unlimited PTO. To my workaholic former boss, abusing PTO meant taking anything beyond a week at Christmas and a day off on a federal holiday. For a more reasonable boss it might mean 4 weeks off a year, or it might mean 8 or it might mean 16. May as well ask people to take unlimited salary but don't abuse it.

I like your mandatory minimum idea if it very close to whatever the company views as the reasonable maximum.

I completely agree. If companies really thought PTO was important, they would enforce a minimum PTO policy. You MUST take off 3 weeks a year. (or whatever). If you don't take it by the end of the year, they remove your card/network access.

The sole reason companies have “unlimited time off” is to save them money, by not having to cover your earned timed off.

That’s it.

There is no magical “the company is on my side” nonsense.

Yup this is exactly why when we set our benefits package, even though we are big about work life balance, I insisted we track PTO and give people a finite amount.

Because I worked at a place with “unlimited” vacation and nobody ever took any. And when I left, since there wasn’t any PTO granted, there was nothing to pay out.

I don’t want to stiff my staff that way.

Unlimited time off is a scam to not pay employees accrued PTO when they leave since nothing is "accrued".

How is it a scam if it's a clearly stated policy?

If it's a valuable option to you, you'll be more likely to seek employment with companies offering it. If you feel like you're losing value due to the lack of accrual, you won't. And if you're already at a company that makes the change? There are other jobs.

It's a scam because it promises something in theory that doesn't materialise in reality. Usually to the employees detriment

It is a scam in that the name is intended to mislead. "Unlimited PTO" is not actually unlimited. If it were called "un accrued pto" it would be more accurate.

Because the only reason it exists is to be able to circumvent pto laws: you meet the legal minimums because it’s “unlimited”, but you don’t have to pay out the accrued vacation time when they leave, despite logically the accrued vacation time should be their entire time working for you, as all the time could have actually been paid time off.

I don't know how it will work in Australia. Here leave accrues by law. Min leave here is 20 days but some companies gives more like 20-30 days. When you leave the job all accrued leave has to paid based on the last salary.

“Unlimited time off” is a misnomer. It’s not unlimited, but just not officially monitored. Everyone I know that has this as a policy gets soft guidance on how many days they should be taking. It’s similar to switching from everyone getting a 30 minute timed lunch break to everyone just taking lunch however they see fit. It doesn’t mean that you can take a 3 hour lunch everyday. But you can take your normal lunch, which is some days shorter some days longer. And if it gets in the way of your work then the responsibility is on you and your manager.

From a business perspective, it’s a benefit because it’s one less thing to keep track of, and they don’t have to pay out unused vacation days. But to a worker, especially people focused and busting their butts, it’s a little annoying because it doesn’t feel like the time is earned or actually yours. But it does make vacation planning simpler for sure.

It's even more insidious than the situation you presented.

If a company does not track PTO, it means that the company does not have to pay out accrued PTO to employees exiting the company.

Bingo. It's all about reducing liabilities on the books, while also making employees effectively beg for vacation. I thought I'd like "unlimited" PTO, but in practice, it's been a source of stress.

Same for me. At a job that had unlimited PTO our boss asked who was taking Veteran's Day off. I said I was because why not it is unlimited. He messaged me saying he was a veteran and he wasn't taking the day off. Like ok? We have "unlimited pto" but have to play guessing games if taking federal holidays off is ok?

Yeah, I would also add its still going to be tracked, but now that's pushed on to managers. Come performance review time, this will have an effect.

It’s important to understand: “unlimited time off” and variations is a mechanism companies in the US use to avoid paying earned income, or meeting statutory minimums.

By not having a vacation “balance”, when you leave the company they don’t have to pay out the vacation time you earned while employed by them. It also means that they can reject/delay any vacation plans without worrying about having to pay it becoming expensive to pay it off in future, because again there’s no balance recorded of earned income.

They then work to ensure that you do not/cannot actually use that unlimited vacation time in any way that would imply that it is unlimited.

I worked for Microsoft for many years across azure and office and had (only) 4 managers. Not a single one of them ever cared about vacation time. As long as work was done well and on time my managers never cared about folks reporting vacation time. So from my limited experience, I already had unlimited vacation at Microsoft.

We have this at my workplace. Before it was "entitled to X days per year and can only have Y in the bank" which everyone was loath to waste, i.e. would take time off just to not lose it, and of course the company has all that untaken, unexpired vacation time on the books.

Now it is "flexible PTO" which in practice means, use the same days you would otherwise have used, minus the "take them just to not lose them" days. You still need to be responsible as far as work obligations go, i.e. the boss needs to say OK.

Works fine. On the minus side, I take fewer days off, on the plus side, if the weather is nice and I just want to go for an all-day outing in mid week, and work won't suffer, I just go, without considering the vacation numbers i.e. there's no incentive to save them until just before they expire. I'm not aware of anyone who has used this to take more vaction than they would have had under the old system.

My work also has similar thing. Every calendar month gives the sick & vacation hours. Vacation has soft ceiling of 240 hours (no time frame). Once over 240 hours, Manager's have to devise & suggest a plan to keep the total under limit, which could be an extra day off every month to counter the new accural & some planned days off to bring total near 180.

Microsoft definitely did not use the term 'unlimited' they used the term 'discretionary'.

Pretty cynical of this.

Manager approval needed? Pressure not to take time off. Studies show people use less time off.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-...

Just making sure, but everyone knows by now that "unlimited time off" is a scam, right?

Both ways, or just employer -> employee?

If someone takes 46 weeks off, how should that be handled? Full pay?

If that ever happens anywhere, we'll decide then.

Alright, what about 32 weeks? 24 weeks? 18 weeks?

There has to be a limit somewhere right?

I approve them all. Go have fun.

No manager would approve requests for 46 weeks in the first place so this hypothesis is irrelevant.

OK, what is the limit?

Whatever is up to your manager's discretion, which is no different from the old system.

Question for the folks working in companies like Netflix, NVIDIA, and Adobe with unlimited PTO: How many vacation days do you take per year on average?

If you don't take any vacation, is there a payout at the end of the year? If so, how many weeks? I doubt it is 52.

I've seen a couple companies with unlimited vacation policies only give 3 weeks. That makes things significantly worse than basically every single European country.

JS-free archive link:

https://archive.today/yb8BO

I wonder what happens with the already accrued PTO. I assume that gets paid out at the start of this transition.

Correct, they're paying out all PTO as of Jan 15th, 2023

In SWE managers never really care about time off unless there’s a legitimate reason like a severely impacted team or taking time off at a crunch.

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