[jimmyswimmy]

In the US so health insurance and PTO, then 401k. Hate unlimited vacation, I like owning my time off.

I'm a hardware engineer so remote work isn't very important for me. I don't really want a full lab at my home. Other things are nice but pale in comparison to having good work, good coworkers, good boss, and management I can respect.

[hoagsobject]

>Hate unlimited vacation

In my company it means you can take the time off whenever you want, but we are understaffed, so if you take time off the whole project will be stopped and we won't raise money. But of course you can take vacation as much as you want.

So for the last 2 years I have had max 3 consecutive days off (and only once). I will never buy bs "unlimited PTO" again.

[rjbwork]

Sounds like a problem for management, not you. Go take your vacation and stop being abused and exploited by management.

[hoagsobject]

We are super small company, there is no management. I'm teamlead/backend developer/project manager. If I go, the whole development stops. That's how it is.

But yeah, I started sending my CV already.

[michaelmior]

> Hate unlimited vacation, I like owning my time off.

I'm curious what you mean by "owning" your time off. I wonder if this is moreso a problem with how unlimited vacation is sometimes implemented than the idea of unlimited vacation itself.

[nicoburns]

The problem is that "unlimited vacation" is (obviously) not actually unlimited. All it really means is that you can never be quite sure how much vacation you are entitled to. It will of course depend on the company, but as I understand it, "unlimited vacation" rarely actually means that you get even as much as is legally mandated by most European countries (4-6 weeks a year).

[snide]

If you leave a normal job, you'd be paid your accrued vacation leave. In "unlimited" setups, this gets murky, and normally turns into two weeks. Without a decent ledger, there becomes a stigma to actually using the time. When you "own" that time, it removes the anxiety for both parties.

[Vinnl]

I don't think there's a good way to implement it, unless it's actually unlimited, i.e. you can stay at home for two years while getting paid and it's fine.

If that's not fine, then it's not actually unlimited, and you have to guess where the limit is - so you can't really be guaranteed a certain number of days off.

Though I guess an org could still set a minimum and then call it unlimited, though in practice I expect that that minimum is basically also the maximum.

[sokoloff]

If you have a fixed PTO allocation, in most states and circumstances, you literally "own" that time. If you are fired, that balance must be paid out. In most states, if you quit, that balance must be paid out.

Like GP, I'm strongly opposed to "unlimited PTO" policies. For the few devs and workers that are helped by it, I think there are too many cases where the ambiguity and uncertainty makes people take less PTO than under a fairly generous, spelled-out policy (and there is usually no accrued balance to be paid out if you leave having taken less than the normal amount).

I won't go quite so far as to say I'd quit if my company made the transition, but it is a strong negative if that is on the benefits docket.

[altdataseller]

What constitutes excellent health insurance for you? Is it the company they offer it from? (Ie United healthcare)? How much premiums they pay for?

What do you look for in a 401k?