[superfrank]

> But adding all that manager and corporate discretion sets one up for abuse when things go wrong at either the manager or corporate level

I have never worked at a place where I didn't need manager approval for my PTO. That includes places where I had a set PTO balance.

In my experience, having banked PTO days doesn't actually give you any real protection from abuse. A manager can still deny every single PTO request or load you up with so much work that taking any PTO will result in you falling behind. The only difference is that the company then needs to pay you out for those days, which isn't nothing, but it's also not a ton of protection from abuse.

[gambiting]

>>A manager can still deny every single PTO request or load you up with so much work that taking any PTO will result in you falling behind.

I was once on a team where the manager thought he was being tough by really discouraging PTO taking in their team, and it was all great until we got to the end of the year with pretty much everyone on the team still having 20+ days of PTO left. HR just made everyone take the entire december off to use those days up, after that once incident no one had any issues booking PTO the following year.