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Comment by josephmosby | Hacker News Reader

At best, the primary reasons companies do unlimited PTO is that it's just not worth it to invest in official rules and some sort of tracking system. Just say "take what you need" and move on.

But at worst, companies don't pay attention to the psychological impact.

If you're a manager or leader in this sort of environment, I suggest telling your teams something like "I consider 4-6 weeks of PTO to be a healthy amount. You should take somewhere around that. If you need to take more, I'd appreciate it if we talked about that. And if you still feel pressure to take less, let's talk about that too so I can help you feel more comfortable."

taking no PTO isn't mentally healthy. I've never felt like we got "more done" over the course of a year because no one took PTO. Eventually it was just burnt out employees grinding through the days.

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> the primary reasons companies do unlimited PTO is that it's just not worth it to invest in official rules and some sort of tracking system.

One of the reasons that this can be so much of a problem is that a lot of states treat the PTO as essentially a liability to the company. It's something that needs to be paid out to an employee leaving (barring being fired for cause or other situations where it'd be forfeit). I've worked in a number of start-ups or early companies that ran with unlimited pto for this reason alone since it makes the balance sheets easier to deal with when reporting to investors because now there's not this extra lingering liability that can be difficult to deal with if things go awry.

The pressure to take less almost certainly is another benefit to those early companies but it's not the one that I've heard being primarily discussed for keeping the unlimited PTO like that.

This needs to be upvoted.

I’ve worked at a company with unlimited PTO since 2012.

It was the founder’s preference, as was allowing us all to work from home, because he didn’t want to babysit adults who all agreed to work towards a goal.

It’s never felt like a trap. Employees absolutely take a week+ off work, multiple times a year, and I’ve never heard of anyone ever being reprimanded.

The same founder also continued to pay an employee who was struggling with life in general, encouraging them to take off for a couple weeks and when they were ready, chat about whether they’d continue to work here.

There certainly can be scammy, predatory “unlimited PTO” policies, and maybe my experience is the exception, but I definitely prefer it over having to submit paperwork any time I have to miss working hours to take my kid to doctor, or just to take half a day to with the family on a Friday afternoon.

I’d love to work at that company. I feel like this is highly dependent on company culture because so far it feels like a scam.

This is correct.

Best case: unlimited/flexible PTO policy simply reflects a company taking the attitude of "you are a responsible adult and we trust you," and skipping the need for a cumbersome tracking system.

Worst case: constant pressure + an unclear PTO policy induces workers to take less vacation than the norm.

No, that's not correct, read the top rated post above yours. It's not about responsibility, it's about accounting rules.

Oh, that's a good point. I had missed that.

There is another sort of worst case (company's perspective): An employee thinks they need to rebuild their house and needs to do it all by hand, hence will be on leave for the next six months. Or, say, wants to explore Europe backpacking and hence needs break for the next two months.

With unlimited PTO the biggest challenge is to define (both ways) what qualifies for a good reason to go on a leave.

I have enjoyed unlimited PTO wherever I had. But I tried to have my own benchmark of about four weeks in a year. Of course, there have been times when I needed more, and it was fine. There have been times when I didn't need four weeks either, and I was okay with that too!

Most companies do it because they don’t want to pay out the cash for employees who don’t take their PTO. That’s the only reason to make it unlimited.

I am in the fantastic situation of working for a company that recently transitioned to no payouts on separation (state law allows) with a staunch no unlimited PTO because of our customer demands. PTO has now become something of a sham.

I had unlimited PTO (they called it DTO, for discretionary time off, to make it clear what it actually was). When I was interviewing I told my manager that I had 6 weeks at my old job and asked if he saw any issues with that. He said no, and sure enough I never had a issue taking time off. Definitely not always a scam, but also definitely a good idea to be explicit about what's reasonable.

Shortly after leaving that job for one that did have limited PTO, both my mother and sister had some health issues (they are both doing better now), and I found myself looking at my PTO balance when deciding if I take time off for this or that, and I really missed the cognitive freedom that came with "unlimited".

The psychological effect is probably a feature not a bug

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