Unlimited PTO is crazy to me. It takes the principles of spelled-out employment terms and throws them in the trash.
The "flexible hours" policy was bad enough at my last job. Wildly varying interpretations between different managers and department heads under the same roof.
My last job implemented an unlimited PTO policy. In 2020, I took about 7 days off, and worked at least 20 days on weekends. With the increased responsibilities, there just wasn’t any time that was good to leave… until I left for good. It was definitely a factor in my current burnout.
The funny thing was before the VCs bought the company, I had two weeks but in practice could ask the CTO for as much time as I wanted. But unlimited PTO functionally meant negative days off, because performance would decrease when you left. Setting a minimum PTO might help.
Yeah, if I ever start a company, mandatory vacation will be a thing. If you don't use up your 4 weeks of vacation before Thanksgiving, don't come to work for the rest of the year. Don't worry, there will still be work when you get back.
Another thing I like are company holidays. When nobody is working, there is no email / code reviews / Slack to miss. That's a real vacation!
There's industries where mandatory vacations (or "Required Absence") are a thing - in finance it's not unusual to be required to take at least one two-week block each year. It helps reduce bus-factor (if you can't afford to lose this person for two weeks, he's a risk), and helps prevent embezzlement because most schemes require constant baby-sitting.
That'd be awesome, personally. I'd fail to use my 4 weeks every year, and always get December off, which is probably the most requested month for vacations.
If you want that policy to have teeth, maybe end the "year" on a month that few people want vacations, like February. (I'll pull that out of my arse, but it's less than December, I'm sure.)
That would cause them to actually schedule their vacation when they can use it and enjoy it, instead of sitting at home for a month with nothing to do when it crept up on them.
It really does need to come from leadership. The last 2 places I've worked had basically no work after Thanksgiving and much of leadership did take off basically entire month of December.
Also we recently started having an occasionally Friday that everyone takes off same time. You don't have too but to make it easier that people who are often quite busy have an opportunity to not feel like things are getting behind. Over 90% participation(100+ people) in our group mental health day.
This is how it has to be implemented in EU countries, so in general it appears to be (in Ireland, at least) the statutory 20 days + whatever.
People have told me that they've taken up to 8 weeks. But I've never ended up working at any of those companies so it's hard to know if that's true or not.
"unlimited PTO" is a scam in most cases. I interviewed with one of these companies a few years ago and told them that from my freelance experience 8 weeks per year is the sweet spot for me. The manager got really quiet and the interview ended quickly.
I now have a contract with fixed 4 weeks off and everybody takes their time. The people I know who have "unlimited PTO" mostly take off less time. I have never heard of anybody taking way more than 4 weeks.
It's basically the same unbalance as some companies having flexible working hours which means you are expected to work overtime during crunch time but when things are slow you are still expected to put in at least 40.
There's a lot of companies in the world where "vacation" is offered, but the managers will many times terminate those who take it. All it takes is for one or two employees to be terminated after just getting back from a vacation to send a message to the rest of the employees.
The right to use benefits has to be enforced by the CEO. If people aren't using their vacations (and effectively losing them), then that sets the culture off on the wrong foot from the start.
Some companies I've been at swung in the opposite direction and I was really greatful for it.
E.g. At Microsoft you have a max amount of vacation days that you can accrue before they start expiring, and managers get dinged whenever their directs have expiring vacation days.
The result: Managers would encourage taking vacation
Yes, I absolutely agree with that, and that takes leadership to prioritize your employee's benefits at the same level of deliverables.
It's easier to think that employee vacations are worthless as a manager since it doesn't actually contribute to any direct profit. But if you're an employee, and that was a selling point of joining the company, it certainly sucks when the promise of vacation could never be materialized -- because work was apparently too important.
I disagree. Either you know what's going on in your directs, or you don't know. If you don't know, you shouldn't be a manager, nor should you enjoy the salary premium that a manager gets.
There's a different school of thought on negotiating tactics that says you definitely should be the first to offer a number, because it anchors the negotiations.
I can see both to be honest. Especially if you don't 'know what you're worth' in a given market, letting them make the first move at last has a chance that they won't offer you 50k for something hey are prepared to pay 250k for. Potentially they will start off with 150k and you're gonna be happy with it, because you undervalued yourself at 100k. Luckily you didn't say that but took the 150k offered!
If you know you're worth at least 150k, asking for 200k can anchor the negotiations in your direction as long as you don't overshoot what they were prepared to offer by too much (which might just kill the negotiations altogether). You might just walk away with 180k and you feel good because you got 30k more than you thought you might get and they feel good because they got you 'cheaper'.
I have no way of knowing which strategy actually works out better, as its hard to do a controlled experiment here :) Also you probably have incomplete market information and it might be hard to know how incomplete it is.
Flexibility is a multiplier to the existing work environment. Flexible work hours and unlimited PTO make an already good environment better, and make bad environments miserable. Rigid rules for when you're working and when you aren't working is a great defense if your management is going to push you to work as much as they can so you should be wary when job hunting if they are "flexible", but flexiblity can be great too.
It's really great - when it works. I have worked at two companies with this policy - only in one of them I took (rather could take) 4-5weeks off every year.
The "flexible hours" policy was bad enough at my last job. Wildly varying interpretations between different managers and department heads under the same roof.