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by jerf
3818 days ago
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"Today, with a normal PTO accrual system, I find myself very aware that a day of vacation costs me $500 in lost paid out PTO." If you have a cap on how much you can accrue, which is pretty typical [1], that's not true. Once you hit the cap, you'd still lose the days; thus, they are a sunk cost. The only days that cost you are any days that would be paid out at the end of your employment, and even that really only matters if you're going to roll from one job into another in less than the number of days you were paid out at the end, otherwise it's still just a rearrangement of a constant number of paid days and unpaid days. Good news: You probably don't need to conceive of paid vacation days as being "changed" against you. Not wasting your limited PTO remains a concern, of course, but as with so many other things "unlimited" isn't truly on the table either, so.... [1]: I hear tell of rumors that accrued vacation time is somehow taxed at year's end in the US, but I've never quite heard someone lay out the accounting and tax details. If you know them I'd be interested to hear it. |
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It's not a sunk cost at all. It's only a sunk cost once you hit the cap.
In the current SF engineering culture the average tenure at a company is around 18 months. Most caps are about the same timeframe.
Leaving and cashing out PTO is a very common occurrence. Getting acquired also results in PTO being cashed out.
>The only days that cost you are any days that would be paid out at the end of your employment, and even that really only matters if you're going to roll from one job into another in less than the number of days you were paid out at the end, otherwise it's still just a rearrangement of a constant number of paid days and unpaid days.
The paid out PTO is a "sunk windfall". Every day you choose not to work between jobs costs you regardless of whether you had any PTO paid out.