Accountants like it because guaranteed time-off is a liability that appears on the company's books as a debt, especially in California where the company is required to pay it out when you leave (whether fired or voluntary).
But what happens in practice is no one feels like they are entitled to the time they should be entitled to, and negotiations from the employee side always come from a place of weakness. It's a terrible system.
Undoubtedly someone will respond to this post with just how amazing their manager is and that they have never had a problem. But you know when I have never had a problem taking time off, even a long time off? When I could point to the corporate policy that says I have X days, and I was taking those days.
And now I'm not playing manager roulette on whether or not I have the time, or how kind they are feeling. Or how buddy-buddy we are.
It's one of those things that are great in theory, and terrible in real life.
> Undoubtedly someone will respond to this post with just how amazing their manager is and that they have never had a problem.
That me! Except I don't think it has anything to do with my manager or company.
I've worked 5 different jobs over the last 12 years with 8 or 9 different managers and literally never had an issue with taking the time I want while taking 6-8 weeks of PTO a year. I've hit the point where when I'm looking for a new job unlimited PTO is kind of table stakes.
I manage a few teams now with some people in the US where my company does unlimited PTO and others in Canada where our company cannot give unlimited PTO. Looking at my teams, the amount of PTO people take has almost no correlation to whether they have unlimited PTO or a set number of days. I have US employees who take a ton of PTO and Canadian employees who have burned through their entire balance and then some and I have employees in both places who take essentially none.
I get that if you're in that second group it's preferable to be in a place where you'll get paid out for the days you didn't take, but I'm pretty convinced that unlimited vs set days has almost no bearing on how many PTO days someone will actually take.
If the number of PTO days taken is the same between the groups, isn't it CLEARLY superior from an employee perspective to have a set amount? That way, you get paid out if you leave or are fired.
I know quite a few people who use their PTO as a sort of emergency fund if they are laid off... they will at least get paid that amount to hold them over until the next job.
For me, no. I take more PTO than most companies with limited PTO offer. Most big tech companies offer 20-25 days and I'm taking 30 minimum. I take 6-8 weeks a year and the year I got married, I took 10. A normal year of PTO for me is 2 weeks during the summer for a vacation, a week at Thanksgiving, a week in April or May since my family has multiple birthdays in that window, 2-3 weeks in the Christmas/NYE period, and then random days here and there for the rest of the year.
For my team, for the people on the low end banked PTO is probably better. For the people on the high end they often take more than the allotment for CA employees, so no.
Everyone's experience will be different, but in my career I've always found that unlimited PTO often means no one cares how much PTO you take as long as you're getting your work done. I value that freedom. I know it's not for everyone and I'm not saying that every company should be unlimited PTO, but I just hate this narrative that it's a scam.
But adding all that manager and corporate discretion sets one up for abuse when things go wrong at either the manager or corporate level. For some, I suppose the benefit is worth it--but if "unlimited vs set days has almost no bearing on how many PTO days someone will actually take", then people are giving up a lot of guarantees for very little benefit on their side. Especially the payout when you leave.
I have never worked at a place where I didn't need manager approval for my PTO. That includes places where I had a set PTO balance.
In my experience, having banked PTO days doesn't actually give you any real protection from abuse. A manager can still deny every single PTO request or load you up with so much work that taking any PTO will result in you falling behind. The only difference is that the company then needs to pay you out for those days, which isn't nothing, but it's also not a ton of protection from abuse.
At some companies, the directive from the top to management was to make sure people took at least 3-5 weeks of PTO every year. For legal reasons you can't keep official track of this (it will be imputed as accrual) but managers would actively nudge people to take more PTO.
If you proactively manage it, it works pretty well.
The management culture in the US (other places too, but I'm most familiar with the US) is such that any time the employee (particularly ICs/line employees) wants to spend outside of work is automatically considered suspect.
This is because non-management employees are considered to be inherently lazy and constantly seeking to get as much out of the organization as possible for as little work as possible. And when they do work, they're considered to be incompetent and malicious (requiring constant supervision).
I wondered how real those stories were, but that is probably what companies are thinking everyone is like.
Seems much more likely companies just trying to squeeze employees into taking less PTO.
A somewhat random example:
https://www.higginbotham.com/blog/unlimited-pto-pros-cons/
"Cost efficiency. Traditional PTO policies can result in financial liabilities due to unused vacation payouts when employees leave the company. With unlimited PTO, these liabilities are eliminated. This can be particularly advantageous for companies looking to manage their finances more effectively."
But surely it can't be a significant amount of make sense to implement this kind of police only for this unless the company has insane turnover (so "unpaid" PTO is not paid out as cash). The reduced amount of PTO staff takes must be the main reason.
Unpaid PTO is (assuming that the employee _doesn't_ leave the company) essentially debt in the company books with 0% interest rate.
He was taking roughly a third of his time off.
Fired inside 6 months, and amazed it took this long.
In other words, it is roughly the same way as regular PTO except "unused" PTO doesn't accumulate, and you won't get paid for any unused PTO at the end of your employment - which is the the whole point of "unlimited PTO"
Different people have different temperaments. Unlimited PTO works great for me because I am more likely to actually take time off when I don't have to meter it. When vacation days are limited, they feel scarce and precious, so I avoid using them if at all possible - what if something more important were to come up later in the year, after I'd run out? It's stressful. There are never enough PTO days.
When I don't have to count days or worry about whether I have enough left, I'll just take time off, whenever the occasion arises. Taking all the time I want doesn't actually end up being much more than I'd be allowed if I had to ration it out.
Of course, it’s well in advance, and nearly always avoids big company plans.
