181–190 of 236 posts
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The entire point is that the employer doesn't care how many days off people take each year. Of course they do. Just they call it "abusing the policy" or "not getting your work done" and don't tell you what the lines you shouldn't cross are.
> Of course they do. Just they call it "abusing the policy" or "not getting your work done" and don't tell you what the lines you shouldn't cross are. I don't know how many times I need to repeat this, but if your company doesn't communicate expectation it's a problem with the company, not with unlimited PTO policies in general.
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They don't, and there's a massive cultural imbalance. Buddy of mine works for a upto company in Portland but his colleague got a talking to for gasp taking 2.5 weeks off in a year. I too work for a up to company but I ALSO have a legally guaranteed minimum 21 days off a year. There's ALWAYS a limit. Try taking a year long holiday and see how that goes. With UPTO the limit is up to your manager.
In an employment "at will" state(Oregon is one), there really is no such thing as a set amount of days. You could get 15 days off and be fired for taking 4 days off in the year. So even if you have a set number of days, your manager can still fire you for taking them. Your manager can fire you or not fire you for any reason. So you could take 30 days off and not get fired if your manager doesn't want to. With "at wil…
For doing something that is specified in the employment agreement? Pretty sure that would fall under fraud/misrepresentation.
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In an employment "at will" state(Oregon is one), there really is no such thing as a set amount of days. You could get 15 days off and be fired for taking 4 days off in the year. So even if you have a set number of days, your manager can still fire you for taking them. Your manager can fire you or not fire you for any reason. So you could take 30 days off and not get fired if your manager doesn't want to. With "at wil…
You could get 15 days off and be fired for taking 4 days off in the year For doing something that is specified in the employment agreement? Pretty sure that would fall under fraud/misrepresentation.
At Mobile Jazz (7 years old now) and Bugfender (4-5 years old now) we always had the rule, that people could choose to work as much as they want and when they went. As long as the output and quality was there. Obviously to achieve high quality output you need to be there at certain times (overlap with other team members) and you need to do a certain amount of hours. The problems we had because of this are almost no-e…
How do employees know when good is good enough? When things get stressful and overwhelming at work, I look to my contractual hours per week and remind myself not to overdo it.
I'm mildly affected with Asperger's. There are many aspects of workplace culture that are obvious to other people, but which I take a long time to clue in regarding. This has included figuring out the reasonable boundaries for unlimited PTO in the past, especially when it required having to "read" my manager to figure out the acceptable timing and quantity of PTO.
My current employer strikes the perfect tone for me: they offer unlimited sick/family leave, but ask that we shoot for approximately N days of actual PTO per year. (Where N is clearly stated.)
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I would expect that paying people for unused vacation would incentivize employees overworking themselves leading to reduced quality of output. In a sense, I expect that it would magnify the existing issues with unlimited PTO. It seems like this would be neither good for employee or employer.
Most companies only let you bank so many pto (Paid Time Off) hours and carry them over year to year. I think this came about because of accounting change where employee hours are considered a liability (Hours/Money owed for nothing in return), but I might be wrong on that. As a result employees can't just bank their vacation hours and get a big payday when they leave. It tends to only take a couple years to get up to…
Which is why employers almost always cap in some form or another; the exact mechanism is partially determined by state law.
I worked for a company once that, during a bad spell, eliminated an accrual cap to encourage people to bank vacation. The result was that a not small number of people who weren't really into taking vacation just let their balances balloon. The company eventually forced people to work down their balances.
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> Of course they do. Just they call it "abusing the policy" or "not getting your work done" and don't tell you what the lines you shouldn't cross are. I don't know how many times I need to repeat this, but if your company doesn't communicate expectation it's a problem with the company, not with unlimited PTO policies in general.
If there's a trend that's affecting the industry as whole, and if most places are abusing that trend, then it's worth looking at the trend to see what's going not. It's not very helpful to say what you're saying when statistics speak otherwise. It's very lazy to say "it's an implementation problem" and is not giving the question enough thought.
I also disagree that my comments haven't been helpful. There's a difference between the concept of "unlimited PTO" and any particular implementation of it, and it's important to know where a problem is coming from. Perhaps there should be regulations around it, but getting rid of it entirely, as suggested elsewhere in this thread, isn't the answer.
We wouldn't ban all cars because one brand is unsafe, so let's not get rid of all unlimited PTO policies just because some companies do it wrong.
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A bit off-topic, but why Lebanon?
Additionally, Lebanon makes me wonder if there's a confounding factor here. Lebanon being a Muslim-majority country, many Lebanese take at least part of Friday off as part of their weekend. Having a standard three-day weekend company-wide might sidestep issues of UK/US workers wanting to meet on Fridays when Lebanese workers are unavailable, and Lebanese workers wanting to meet on Saturdays when UK/US workers are una…
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How do employees know when good is good enough? When things get stressful and overwhelming at work, I look to my contractual hours per week and remind myself not to overdo it.
This is actually the downside of these "you decide" plans and why I absolutely hate "unlimited PTO" policies. Whenever it's up to me I end up taking less vacation than if I just had an allotted amount. People shortchange themselves because they don't want to inconvenience their team. And as an added insult, the company gets out of paying you for unused vacation when you finally burn out.