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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

I dislike the wording. Clearly it's not 'unlimited', if you stay away for a year or four, they'll kick you out. It's 'unlimited' in the way that some 'flat rates' come with strings attached that make them very much not a flat rate because they'll just cut of the service if you cross some threshold.

Since Microsoft is a commercial entity, my assumption is that they've studied the policy's effects and found that many people will take fewer than 4 weeks if you ask them to "take whatever you need and what you feel is fair", so employees will feel that they've gotten a generous gift while Microsoft will make more profits.

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I've seen cynical takes on unlimited PTO, where in practice nobody took time off for fear of falling behind. Then I've seen organizations that really tried to instill a value around taking time off regularly.

BUT, at the margins, at a relatively non-cynical company I was aware of one person who did their job well, but took more PTO than some vague sense of what was "reasonable" and this person was indeed penalized, despite there being no apparent mark on their performance.

I wonder why there isn't a move to offer a relatively generous PTO packages, say 6 weeks, with the option to receive up to half back as a bonus cash payment if they elected to not take all 6 weeks. That way you establish a sane baseline, but allow people who need R&R to take it without fear of reprisal.

Because companies don’t actually give a shit about employee happiness? That’s my guess. I’m not saying this angrily, either. It’s business, all decisions are a means to an end.

I really like the idea, though. I would love to get an extra paycheck at the end of the year.

I think every company likes not having the liability of PTO hanging on the balance books, and most companies quietly enjoy the reduction in average PTO taken. For the outlier users of PTO, they'd better be firebreathers, or I suspect they are PIPed out.

BUT, we were in a somewhat competitive labor market up until very recently, and likely will be again some day. A generous PTO policy grounded in explicit policy would absolutely be something I'd weigh heavily in a competitive market for labor.

Similarly, I know people who don't take their owed vacation and build up to the "max" and wind up having to take several weeks off at a time or lose it. In a job without accrued vacation, they simply don't even earn it in the first place, and don't get paid out for it if they are let go.

Cynical me thinks this is a precursor to layoffs in order to get the debt off the books and not pay out anyone that gets "downsized" in the end.

Everyone who currently has a carryover balance is getting paid out, so I don't see how that would help costs during a layoff unless that layoff is 6+ months out.

Personally I carry a balance of close to 4 weeks (my current max accrual) as an extra cushion for job-changes or a rainy day and they will pay me out for it. I'll stick that in my emergency fund and it will serve the same function.

Layoffs could just be 6+ months out. While management is often short-sighted, I don't think we can just dismiss this possiblity.

And they don't need to pay out unused time at end of employment.

So as long as they take more than 4 weeks on top of the annual 4 weeks a year over their whole employment, they'll end up better off, even if their last day that year was Dec 31.

When a company I previously worked at went "unlimited vacation" and effectively tossed all accrued vacation time, a coworker started taking literally every Friday off as PTO to make up for the vacation time that was dumped. Having a 4-day 32hr week might be better than vacation in some ways.

And yet, people don't tend to do that because they fear being stack-ranked by their number of days off.

I mean don't get me wrong, if my employer were to go unlimited PTO, I would absolutely use it to the max I could (perhaps take Fridays off in addition to a month long vacation each year), but I'm also sure that I would get fired for it.

In the case of situations like those, do contracts with unlimited PTO have a clause with "you cannot fire X employee for being too much on vacation"? Speaking from a place of complete and utter ignorance.

Most of these contracts will have a clause requiring approval of holiday request by your manager.

Ok, that makes sense. So it's not Unlimited PTO "at will", it's "discretionary PTO according to your negotiation skills with your manager".

Generally the manager's hands are tied to by monthly HR reports. Any employee taking an excessive amount of holidays will be flagged up and the manager will have to justify such decisions.

Do US-based Microsoft employees even have employment contracts? Washington is an 'at will' employment state.

The concept of at will employment baffles me as a European, especially since healthcare is also tied up into it. Good point, I forgot that was a thing at all.

All states except sort of Montana are "at Will".

Wish this term would die since it's basically meaningless when nearly all of the country has it

To be fair, in the internal email they described it as 'discretionary pto'.

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