Ask HN: How much of unlimited PTO do you use?

When in doubt, if some corporate executive wants to do it, 99% of the time it's to absolutely fuck you over as hard as possible. Corporate leadership at most companies in the U.S. are parasitic insects existing solely to suck the blood out of the company until their next spawning cycle when they sprout wings and fly off looking for another victim. Never doubt it.

It shouldn't be on you to organize cover. At any level, the level above should have considered this. You can't be a single point of failure - well except for small startups perhaps.

And agree with the other comments that unlimited PTO is a way to reduce PTO or the liability to have to pay for your PTO should you leave / get sacked.

When you are going on vacation you can pick somebody in your team as the to-go person and communicate that fact to them, to your manager, and add that information to your automated "out of the office" emails.

If management doesn't have the people to handle their employees taking the leave that they're entitled to, __that's not your problem__. Your responsibility is to announce your planned absence in advance, write and distribute any hand-off materials required as your planned absence approaches, and then take your leave at the announced time.

I understand that in some Bay Area companies the rate is now 25%

I'm a lead _and_ I manage infrastructure. If you're a lead and your team can't handle you being out for a week then you need to spend more time leading and less time doing. Being out for longer requires active planning.

Unlimited PTO is mostly a scam. PTO had a real monetary value as part of a compensation package. Many companies will pay it out in cash when you leave. If PTO is “unlimited “ it basically means the company has decided to not compensate you with PTO. Since no one is “owed” PTO everyone starts treating it like something they don’t deserve and the company develops a culture of not taking time off.

Of course a company’s leadership could still strongly encourage time off in an “unlimited “ situation, but the easiest way to do that is to actually compensate people with PTO!

Here in Germany the minimal number of vacation days that have to be granted (by law) is 20 days, but it's rare to have that few days in knowledge worker positions.

Unless you're the CTO you should not really worry too much about a vacation replacement, isn't this your bosses responsibility?

Btw don't burn out by not taking vacation. Life is short. You will regret this when you get older.

Most people in my company do about the same. Some take more, or structure it more compactly, a couple take less.

As for infrastructure and team leads, that comes down to people and process. With standard processes and checklists that everyone's familiar with (and as much automated as possible), and with people frequently communicating and reviewing and discussing stuff, then if someone's out other people should be able to step in and pick up what they would normally do. And with the right people, they will.

That said, I definitely still have the mindset of "I'll save all of my ammo for the final boss" which is dumb because it's unlimted.

Mostly I just figure I'll think about using it next week and then it gets easy to push back.

I suppose if I hated my job, or it wasn't fulfilling and needed the escape, it would be a different story mind you.

That said, I know there are some supposed to be some studies floating around that people with unlimited PTO tend to take less leave.

I also have to take a day off almost monthly for medical treatments. At a standard US job, I’d probably end up with 3 days of total annual PTO leftover, and I’d probably have to save the “sick days” (which don’t stick around too easily with my health issues).

At my current job, it only works because they’re not preventing us from taking the time (for now).

Here is a serie of fun facts about paid time off in many parts of europe, and specifically in France where I'm at, that can help you see the issues :

One, we have a defined number of days, and in fact everytime you see it mentionned it is in weeks. There is no competition, official or unofficial or in you head, or in your manager's head come promotion time about who took more or less.

Two, we have a defined "holiday period" covering several months, where employee are encouraged to take their holiday, and HAVE to take their main holiday (at least 12 continuous working days, so excluding sundays and saturdays), so there is no issue of "it's not the right time" etc etc ... The employer retain a final say in granting holidays and which order people go (to avoid complete service disruption etc ...) but again, any refusal especially in the main holiday period must be justified BY THE EMPLOYER. PS: this is what causes the funny "the whole of France is not working in August" thing.

Three, your days off can only be "pushed back" one year, after that you lose them, so you're very encouraged to take them and not accumulate them years after years, and there is a clear value being shown to you of "you lost X days worth Y €" instead of a vague "you could have".

Four, if you leave the company (either on your own decision or being fired) they need to pay them to you, and it's the biggest expense when ending someone's contract, so employer have a big incentive to keep employee's available day count low, the way to do that being make them go on their holiday.

Five, if the employee doesn't take his holiday during the year, and ends up having a mental breakdown or whatever, it is considered the employer's fault, you are supposed to make sure your employee take their holiday, and yes you can force them to take their holiday in a two year period at the most.

The entire system is built around the knowledge that if you simply say "people can", then you make it a competition between them in front of the boss, so instead we make the ones who don't take holidays a problem.

Now, as a company owner, at first it's scary (oh shit, we're small scale and some employees are going to leave for three weeks, how will the company ever function), but you quickly learn happy people plan to rejoin their job and want it to be not stressfull, so they plan their work in advance, they ask their collegues to handle what calls or emails or whatever need to be done when away, etc ... You essentially never have that issue.

And then you learn the best trick ever to handle stress at work : free, employer sanctionned day off are the employee's equivalent of turning it off and on again. Sometime it's a "you can take a couple day off" and let them decide, sometime it's "you know, take the end of the week ... no it's not a question, don't be there tomorrow" so again force their hand to be off, and you get a much better environnement of work.

Your first impressions as an employer is that holidays are sort of a gift, or a regulation or whatever. If you pay attention, you quickly learn holidays are not a gift, they're a way for your employee to just ... fucking function properly ? Be liberal with it, you don't need to lose sight of work that need to be done, and if you treat your employee as humans you quickly see that they understand that too.

Sorry for the much longer than planned comment.

It’s annoying, because under the previous system if I worked a weekend or public holiday, I’d get an extra concrete day to use. Now I don’t.

So by law in Ireland I have to take minimum 20 days PTO, and interestingly, there’s a little known rule that says I’ve to take 2 weeks off in a row as part of that.

Which I never twigged until recently when comparing the employee handbook to employment laws for fun. This rule is a blessing and a curse tbh.

This year so far I have taken about two actual days off, and I usually work on public holidays because I simply forget when they are.