[sakarisson]

I'm glad that you're happy with the system, but I'm not satisfied with your comment. In my personal experience, people with "unlimited vacation" tend to take less overall vacation than I do, on a mandatory vacation time per year.

> (you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks, but otherwise working)

Unless "I'd like to take a 5-week vacation" isn't enough explanation in itself, it clearly isn't working. An employee shouldn't have to justify _why_ they want to go on vacation.

[xedrac]

I dislike unlimited/untracked/open (whatever buzzword) PTO. I feel like I have to beg for time off, so I end up taking very little and burning out. Even when I'm sick, I feel like I have to justify why I cannot work. I guess it's better than the places that only give you two weeks vacation/sick leave. I'm having some serious Europe envy right now. They seem to take vacation time seriously.

[xmprt]

In my experience, the conversation goes like this:

Me: I'd like to take a 5-week vacation

Manager: Why?

Me: I haven't taken a long vacation in about year.

Manager: Sure thing. Approved.

This is what happens and it's better than dealing with accrued PTO where I have to keep track of the days off. I'm sure companies are doing this because they've done the math and see that on average people take less time off with UTO. But if you have a good team and good managers then it isn't difficult to take time off.

Additionally, in the accrued PTO case, if you end up taking 5 weeks straight with absolutely no justification and your manager isn't good then there's probably a chance at retaliation. In either case, it depends on your relation with your manager.

I do agree that mandatory vacation is probably the best however, it's extremely rare in America which is where the unlimited vacation trend has started.

[dx034]

But do you get a reminder if you don't take holiday? In most of Europe, companies don't only have to offer a minimum of 4-5 weeks PTO per year, they also have to make sure employees take at least the majority of their vacation days.

[bethling]

I've been at only one company where "unlimited PTO" was really treated close to that way. There were offices in San Francisco and Paris, and the CEO was French (and based in the US).

The US office had untracked PTO, and from the get-go he would let the Americans know that the French office had around 7 weeks time off, and that they'd use it, so they should as well.

He took essentially the month of August off, which did help establish that 4 week vacations were "normal".

[qwerty456127]

> help establish that 4 week vacations were "normal".

I (an European) always took this as granter yet considered it crazy people have as little as just a single month of vacation a year. It's been just recently I found out this isn't even the case in the USA where people normally have just 2 weeks. This scared the heck out of me. Why even live at all if all you have to live is 2 weeks a year and you have to sell the remaining 50 weeks of your life time yearly? I would rather commit suicide.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Because anything better would be SOCIALISM!! /s

In America, our government and media are all controlled by corporations, so there's a massive propaganda machine that tells the population they need to be workaholics if they want a chance to be wealthy.

Also, employees have no leverage. You can't decline a job because they only offer 2 weeks PTO when everyone else also only offers 2 weeks.

People that push for a culture shift for more PTO are shouted down as being lazy, and the propaganda machine screams about how bad small businesses would be hurt. The machine LOVES to talk about small businesses, and people fall for it.