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Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

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Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#211

Post by [deleted] »

codegeek wrote: post #76
arsan87 wrote: post #42

At my workplace we were hyped up for a special announcement during a company meeting. this is after, literally, years of layoffs, offshoring, cut after cut to benefits, and restructurings. Morale is incredibly low. The big announcement is they are giving everyone one extra day off around a national holiday as a reward. We already have "unlimited" PTO but of course can't really use it. So their reward is letting us us…

Because of these shitty corporate companies that don't give a shit about their employees, the well is now poisoned for companies that do care especially smaller ones. Employees don't want to give their best anymore because they are burnt elsewhere and they become unemployable at smaller companies. It is a sad state of affairs.

[deleted]

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#212

Post by b0rtb0rt »

compiler-guy wrote: post #105
tavavex wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. What is 'unlimited' PTO? And if it's so unlimited, why can't you use any of it? I've only had jobs with very specifically defined PTO that had no ambiguity in whether I could ever use it.

"Unlimited PTO" is a fiction created by accountants that sounds good on paper. When you need or want time off, you work it out with your manager. No debate about how many days you have left this year, or how many you have accumulated. It's undefined and technically you are supposed to work together and away you go. Accountants like it because guaranteed time-off is a liability that appears on the company's books as a…

at my “unlimited PTO” company i just put time off on the calendar when im planning to be out and management deals with it, i don’t ask for permission. i try to be fairly reasonable about the time im taking and no one has ever questioned it or pushed back

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#213

Post by overfeed »

b0rtb0rt wrote: post #212
compiler-guy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unlimited PTO" is a fiction created by accountants that sounds good on paper. When you need or want time off, you work it out with your manager. No debate about how many days you have left this year, or how many you have accumulated. It's undefined and technically you are supposed to work together and away you go. Accountants like it because guaranteed time-off is a liability that appears on the company's books as a…

at my “unlimited PTO” company i just put time off on the calendar when im planning to be out and management deals with it, i don’t ask for permission. i try to be fairly reasonable about the time im taking and no one has ever questioned it or pushed back

> i try to be fairly reasonable about the time im taking and no one has ever questioned it or pushed back

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"

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#215

Post by cyanydeez »

compiler-guy wrote: post #105
tavavex wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. What is 'unlimited' PTO? And if it's so unlimited, why can't you use any of it? I've only had jobs with very specifically defined PTO that had no ambiguity in whether I could ever use it.

"Unlimited PTO" is a fiction created by accountants that sounds good on paper. When you need or want time off, you work it out with your manager. No debate about how many days you have left this year, or how many you have accumulated. It's undefined and technically you are supposed to work together and away you go. Accountants like it because guaranteed time-off is a liability that appears on the company's books as a…

I pointed out to my boss' boss when they switched to unlimited PTO that they were effectively downgrading my salary and benefits by ~2k$

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#216

Post by BoiledCabbage »

superfrank wrote: post #207
cortesoft wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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 la…

> 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 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…

So "unlimited" for you is literally one week more than 5 weeks tech companies cap at?

Why not take 10 weeks or 12 weeks? If it's unlimited?

And how many other employees are only taking half of what they would be taking because they feel silently pressured to - and do all of those missing weeks make up for the single extra week you're taking?

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#217

Post by jvanderbot »

deathanatos wrote: post #204
jvanderbot wrote: post #69

If I can just hold at this role for 6 more years, I'm happy. I chased promotions for a decade and regretted all but the first two, which brought me to this level. There's a larger issue with that though: At some point, successful engineers _need_ to become examples or leaders if we are to continue exponential growth. If you are happy discontinuing exponential growth, then that's fine.

> There's a larger issue with that though: At some point, successful engineers _need_ to become examples or leaders Why? Why should I become an example, or a leader? To be blunt: why do companies think I should do that additional work, without additional pay?

Well they may think you should do extra work without extra pay, but you shouldn't think that.

If you want to grow the company, (and all companies want to grow), or new companies want to start, we gotta train new people. That means you, too. Knowledge transfer and good culture is how the industry changes for the better. Otherwise it's all the pointy haired ones exploiting useful idiots.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#218

Post by deterministic »

arsan87 wrote: post #42

At my workplace we were hyped up for a special announcement during a company meeting. this is after, literally, years of layoffs, offshoring, cut after cut to benefits, and restructurings. Morale is incredibly low. The big announcement is they are giving everyone one extra day off around a national holiday as a reward. We already have "unlimited" PTO but of course can't really use it. So their reward is letting us us…

"The whipping will continue until morale improves"

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#219

Post by musicale »

danaris wrote: post #196
jandrewrogers wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to manage discretionary PTO. The problem has almost never been people taking too much but taking too little. 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…

> The problem has almost never been people taking too much but taking too little. 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 muc…

Does anyone else remember the people bragging about how they "work" two "full-time" jobs remotely?

I wondered how real those stories were, but that is probably what companies are thinking everyone is like.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#220

Post by musicale »

ryandrake wrote: post #155
compiler-guy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shift from the tem "Unlimited PTO" to "Discretionary PTO" has happened because early proponents realized it wasn't really unlimited, and they didn't want workers to think that way. But the "unlimited" term is still used to sell it, and still often appears in informal recruiting conversations. It's just so slimy.

Reminds me of "Unlimited data" plans from ISPs, which are actually limited, but they just don't want to tell you about them. Anytime something is marketed as unlimited, it's not.

"Well it's not a deceptive trade practice because no rational person would take such a hyperbolic or outlandish claim literally - much like 'best ISP in the UNIVERSE!' or advertisements suggesting that beer will make you fit and attractive."
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