Unlimited Vacation

[Dougfirtree]

Got any openings...?

When large companies make this decision it is usually done as a cost saving measure to avoid paying out accrued PTO when people leave or get laid off. Recently saw some articles about a company with around 20k US employees expected to save $36M a year by adopting to a "flexible time off" policy. Restrictiveness will vary based on company culture/expectations.


I get 7 weeks of PTO and 9 paid holidays, it takes some planning to get work done and also take all of my time off.

 

[zpooch]

This is a very true statement!

Hard to make up for 26 Fridays

 

[A207X2]

It works well in practice. My company has been doing it for at least as long as I've been here (8 years). You and your manager work it out, and that's that. I don't know if I've taken more or less vacation time than I would have, but I do know that I took as much as I needed.

 

[westbranch]

Got any openings...?

Yes we do. Looking for accountants/CPAs.

 

[Dougfirtree]

Yes we do. Looking for accountants/CPAs.

I knew I should have been an accountant!

 

[Dave N]

I get 5 weeks of vacation and 50 hours of "personal" time, plus the holidays. Anything not used is paid out the following year. Took me 20 years to get the 5 weeks, but I can't complain about THAT part of my job. That's pretty much what's keeping me there right now instead of taking my retirement and finding something closer to home.

 

[homers]

I used to get 24 days PTO, then we went "unlimited". We can take upto 160 hours/year with first level supervisor approval. Most start to question anything above 120 hours. If you want to take more than 160 hours it requires 2 levels of approval. Implication is maybe there is not enough work and the company could do with a few fewer employees. Never said out load, but it hangs out there. But the main reason, as stated before, is it save the company a ton of money but not having to account for accrued hours of PTO on the books.

The thing is always rubs the more senior people the wrong way because it doesn't matter if you have 1 year or 30 years of seniority. So, for the newer employee it's probably better because they get 3-4 weeks instead of 2.

 

[Fj605]

My last employer did this. Their attitude was more generally "if you're work is done, there's no reason to be in the office." It worked for some better than others. Non-operations people tended to be gone more and everything would grind to a halt until they returned. I worked in the drilling group so we were constantly in contact with rigs and vendors. Unless someone was leaving the country or attending a booze fest, we'd typically cover our own stuff while out. I definitely took more days off for hunting and holidays. I also didn't work past noon on Fridays or whenever the Rockies had a day game.

 

[dcopas78]

I'm at 4 weeks vacation, accrue 125 hours sick time per year maxing out at 2200 hours total, get 11 national holidays per year, plus a few gift days. I can also build up comp time, which I do. I usually use around 100 hours comp per year. It is definitely a benefit of being a public employee.

 

[shrapnel]

Yesterday I went hunting, today I’m going hunting again and tomorrow through the weekend I’m going to go hunting again. I was hunting and fishing since September first and will continue until I go to Arizona for Thanksgiving, then come back in time for the shoulder season for more elk hunting with one already in the freezer.

When I think about it, I have 7 days a week pto, I still need more. It is a curse to live in Montana...

 

[44hunter45]

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion​

---

A proverb coined by the twentieth-century British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson, known as Parkinson's Law. It points out that people usually take all the time allotted (and frequently more) to accomplish any task.

I'm living this. As my corporation has made more and more staff cuts, it has become more difficult cover the workload. The work/life balance is nothing more than a poster on the wall.

 

[GrantK]

I have an unlimited time-off policy with the expectation that my workload needs to be handled, as long as I can log on or call in occasionally and handle issues that come up I've never been told to tone it down, I usually take a minimum of 6 weeks off, plus 3/4 day weekends a couple of times a month, honestly, it is probably the main reason I continue to work where I do. it took a little while to figure out where the edge of the envelope was, once that is dialed in it's pretty easy to know when I need to be around and when I can be out and it doesn't matter to anyone. one big thing that eased the problems when I'm out is I am very upfront with my foremen that I will be out of the office as much as I possibly can, call if it's an emergency and I'll get it taken care of but don't expect me to fix little day to day stuff that should be handled at the field level.

 

[Zach]

My last company had unlimited PTO. Upside for them is no time on the books to account for with money.
Previous to the conversion to unlimited, you started with 3 weeks vacation, 1 week sick. I'd say I used about the same amount of time off.
My time off was pending coverage by my peers and making all the arrangements to have your work covered by peers.
Downside is if you don't take time off or if you leave/let go they don't owe you a dime.

 

[cedahm]

My last company had unlimited PTO. Upside for them is no time on the books to account for with money.
...

Downside is if you don't take time off or if you leave/let go they don't owe you a dime.

Whatever is said - the two things above are the facts of the case.

Unlimited has been bandied about by my firm recently - the liability is enormous, particularly in professional services where average salaries are high and far more people lose PTO due to the carryover rules than actually take their full allotment. For the employee, it's a bad-to-neutral deal in most cases.

 

[winmag]

My company (a large financial services firm) essentially gives unlimited PTO (6 weeks vacation + 2 weeks holidays). But if you took it all you wouldn't meet your client service hours requirement for the year unless you work 50-60 hours a week when not on PTO.

The bizarre thing is that the culture is such that no one takes it all, not even close (well except me...). My interpretation is they're only paying me to work 10 months out of the year, so I'm just screwing myself if I work more. I could leave and make more at a competitor, or stay and hunt for 6-8 weeks a year. At the moment I just hunt a lot, we'll see if my priorities change in the future.

 

[HSi-ESi]

I think it really depends on the company and your line of work. In my case, a small group (4 people) worked for a large corporation for 15-25 years (depending on the person) - and we had a very specific product in tech. The large corp was bleeding profit off of us and we were struggling keeping investment in our product. Over the course of a few years - we were able to purchase the product from the large corp and setup our own shop.

When we did, we did move to an unlimited PTO policy. We're unique in that we have only hired a few people that didn't work for the large corp - and all of us were used to defined PTO. It's definitely a point of discussion when we are looking to hire someone new.

I have found that I need to schedule my PTO in advance and communicate it more to my customers than the company. The company part is easy (email saying I'm going to be out for this time frame). I can't relate to the scalability of this yet as we're trying to navigate that.

I will say, that with the portability of my work - my schedule is always varied. As long as I can connect to the internet - I'm good to go. So if I go somewhere "on vacation" - I might have some calls / emails / etc. But I don't have big deliverables scheduled during a vacation - which goes to the customer communication portion. I've hiked or parked up on a ridge to get cell coverage to handle a conference call - or answer emails (just through a cellular hotspot) mid week on a hunt. A call might be at 5 AM or 10 PM - depending on where the customers reside. So it's not an 8-5 gig. You have to be able to work in your own down-time - otherwise you'll burnout.

 

[homers]

Unlimited also removes seniority, meaning the person just hired at his first job, can take the same amount as the person with 30 years experience.

 

[winmag]

Unlimited also removes seniority, meaning the person just hired at his first job, can take the same amount as the person with 30 years experience.

We all know Boomer's don't take any vacation, so the amount of vacation they receive is irrelevant.