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Comment by jasondrowley | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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?

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."

Yeah, basically.

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

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.

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