Why unlimited vacation is bad
ft.com
ft.com
Which was the precise intent of the policy from the very start.
Unlimited PTO doesn’t accrue and hence does not show on the books.
That IMHO is the primary benefit to the companies.
If people saw the loss of guaranteed benefits to something entirely in the companies benefit, I heard nothing.
HR sold it like we were gaining something.
The people who gained the most were managers without specific output. Imagine you accrue enough portfolios, and now your set.
Like a decent, healthy, civilized company. That doesn't try to mess with its employees heads (quite so blatantly and needlessly).
It winds up being cheaper for them to offer Unlimited Days* because then they don't pay out un-taken days.
* Subject to manager approval of course. I strongly suspect there is still a target number of days allowed for each employee based on their place in the org, and requests for days past that number will usually be denied unless there are extenuating circumstances.
I worked for a firm that gave 30 days of PTO a year (in addition to holidays and whatnot). They budgeted it as an expense and planned accordingly.
It would be interesting to see what "unlimited" vacation giving firms budget and plan for as a liability.
If the goal is high employee morale, then they should budget and plan a very high amount. If the goal is to "benefit signal" to pretend they have good benefits, then they will only budget a low amount.
For consultants, %. Billable will dictate your unlimited PTO. for widget making, quotas will work. For project assignments, expect tighter deadlines.
Company culture will dictate usage and accounting gets to remove the liability.
“Unlimited” (=non-accruable) PTO isn’t a liability, that’s (from the firm’s perspective) the whole point of using it.
So? They should factor that in as a business expense, like your regular pay.
If you take no vacation days and end up getting paid 100% of them, it should be accounted, and if you do take some days, then the company can have that money.
If there's some other can ncrete metric, infinite PTO just means whoever already has their privileged position.
Prior to this, they had seniority up to 20 days based on number of year.
This was absolutely about removing liability from their books. And sold purely as a "look how ESG we are"
If employees took just as many days off with unlimited vacation time, it would still be a win, because those days don't accrue.
How about 6 weeks of yearly PTO (paid out at the end of the year if you don't use it) along with some amount of optional unpaid?
Obviously there are limits. There have to be. I’d rather know what those limits are up front.
So it’s not unlimited, but recruiters won’t tell you the nuance.. you find out when you read the handbook and talk to your manager on day 1. But why take leave anyway, I watched someone get hired, literally do nothing, and it took 7 months for the company to let them go
If they were "literally" doing nothing, like not even joining meetings or logging in, they could be fired within a week. What you mean is they weren't writing code to the velocity and standard that was expected. Maybe that falls on you for not helping them onboard?
If they have a problem with me devouring literally every slice of bacon they have, then they can remove my fat ass from the premises at their leisure. Hope they brought a forklift.
Anytime you see "unlimited", you can be sure that it's just marketing nonsense.
https://www.adama-platform.com/2023/04/15/going-hard.html is the first blog post in a series.
ended up taking this week off because i really need to make sure i'm at least taking off the minimum given. this is precisely why we changed our policy. i would've taken more off if i had a baseline of what normal employees took off but most people didn't really.