Unlimited PTO is an accounting dodge because PTO shows up as a liability on the books if it is defined, because if they liquidate the business they need to pay it out in lieu. And number doesn’t go up.
Which is why they also don’t allow carry-over in most cases.
Not unless you do it the right way, i.e. the way it is done in Europe. It is basically mandatory to take vacation days every year up to a specific number. Unlimited PTO makes it so you get extra. I also have a policy of a burnout vacation - if I notice you are burned out you get sent to a mandatory paid vacation. You get to refuse once, as a hangover excuse or “I’m fine, really”. But it I notice it again after refusal, you get a choice. Either you go to vacation, or you get fired. It doesn’t go into a tally of “I need to talk to this guy, he took 80 days off this year”, I treat it as if they’d worked. Oh, and 100% paid sick leave instead of a percentage, all they need is to talk to their doctor and they put in that they are sick in the system.
The agreement about time off is you get the 25 mandated by the law, anytime, without any request beforehand, as long as it won’t make the sun explode. Instead of people requesting time off, I request time “on”, if I need to work with them, have them in a meeting or train someone.
My “off the contract” ask to them is “I’ll try to treat you as fair as I can, and ask you to do the same in return”. I did get screwed over by an employee once, but so far I can still maintain this policy
mandatory 25 days of vacation, plus statutory holidays
mandatory vacation is subtracted from any performance targets (i.e. it is accounted for in business planning and not offloaded to the employee)
vacation beyond that is unlimited, but may impact your performance
major anniversary events within the company grant paid leave of absences
To the last point - I don’t recall which company it was - I have seen one where after a certain period of service your granted a 3 or 6 month leave of absence to go do something else. Travel the world, get really deep into Japanese joinery, or build a new version of DNS. I think that’s something that is healthy for humans.
Unlimited PTO is an accounting dodge because PTO shows up as a liability on the books if it is defined, because if they liquidate the business they need to pay it out in lieu. And number doesn’t go up.
Which is why they also don’t allow carry-over in most cases.
Not unless you do it the right way, i.e. the way it is done in Europe. It is basically mandatory to take vacation days every year up to a specific number. Unlimited PTO makes it so you get extra. I also have a policy of a burnout vacation - if I notice you are burned out you get sent to a mandatory paid vacation. You get to refuse once, as a hangover excuse or “I’m fine, really”. But it I notice it again after refusal, you get a choice. Either you go to vacation, or you get fired. It doesn’t go into a tally of “I need to talk to this guy, he took 80 days off this year”, I treat it as if they’d worked. Oh, and 100% paid sick leave instead of a percentage, all they need is to talk to their doctor and they put in that they are sick in the system.
The agreement about time off is you get the 25 mandated by the law, anytime, without any request beforehand, as long as it won’t make the sun explode. Instead of people requesting time off, I request time “on”, if I need to work with them, have them in a meeting or train someone.
My “off the contract” ask to them is “I’ll try to treat you as fair as I can, and ask you to do the same in return”. I did get screwed over by an employee once, but so far I can still maintain this policy
Agreed.
The way I think it should be is:
To the last point - I don’t recall which company it was - I have seen one where after a certain period of service your granted a 3 or 6 month leave of absence to go do something else. Travel the world, get really deep into Japanese joinery, or build a new version of DNS. I think that’s something that is healthy for humans.
That sounds so nice, especially as someone whose career encourages cycling of effort levels in its nature