[denverkarma]

You're correct about unlimited PTO, it's absolutely a mixed bag.

I worked at Atlassian, and my experience was that people were actively encouraged to take between 20-30 days off per year, and that getting vacation was usually a mere formality - telling your manager "hey I'm planning to take the week of so and so off, any issue with that?" I never had vacation or sick time checked, never had any denied, and I very much took advantage of the benefit.

Still, the manager does have to approve it, so I have heard stories about teams that are understaffed declining vacation when they don't have enough people to be on call etc. I don't know how that would work out differently if you did have accrual vacation though... somebody does have to be on-call. It's tough.

[ghaff]

I suspect that the same companies/teams that make it hard to take time under an "unlimited" plan would probably make it equally hard to take the 4 weeks of vacation you'd accrued under a traditional plan.