I’ve never experienced it but the somewhat obvious trick is that it turns into a race to the bottom, where if you want to outperform your peers (or even meet the expectations of the company), the number of days off you freely decided to take turns into a KPI.
So, people take even less days off when they are made free to take any amount.
It’s why in Italy, for example, you can not refuse to go to holiday.
I have unlimited and I’ve seen a few people take 2 weeks off consecutively. So it seems like the company is pretty flexible and doesn’t put artificial limitations on it. That said, I’m pretty sure even a month off wouldn’t fix the damage that’s been done to my brain from years stacked upon years of redlining it to write code and solve problems. I find as I get older I need more time off to truly disconnect.
By making it “unlimited” they don’t need to pay you out of you don’t use all of PTO days.
If you use it more than they think you’ve earned you get terminated.
Employees end up afraid of taking their PTO days and typically end up taking even less time off than if they knew there was a expectation of 3 weeks or whatever.
Is that really a thing? I’ve seen it in a few job offers but I have trouble understanding how it works…
As I understand it you can take as many days as you want and it works on the company’s trust, but that system sounds really toxic to me, isn’t it?
Edit: I’m European with almost 7 weeks off a year for context
I’ve never experienced it but the somewhat obvious trick is that it turns into a race to the bottom, where if you want to outperform your peers (or even meet the expectations of the company), the number of days off you freely decided to take turns into a KPI.
So, people take even less days off when they are made free to take any amount.
It’s why in Italy, for example, you can not refuse to go to holiday.
I have unlimited and I’ve seen a few people take 2 weeks off consecutively. So it seems like the company is pretty flexible and doesn’t put artificial limitations on it. That said, I’m pretty sure even a month off wouldn’t fix the damage that’s been done to my brain from years stacked upon years of redlining it to write code and solve problems. I find as I get older I need more time off to truly disconnect.
It’s a lie.
By making it “unlimited” they don’t need to pay you out of you don’t use all of PTO days.
If you use it more than they think you’ve earned you get terminated.
Employees end up afraid of taking their PTO days and typically end up taking even less time off than if they knew there was a expectation of 3 weeks or whatever.
I don’t think payout is a factor for salaried positions