> protected by law (no bullshit "unlimited vacation" policy can take it away).
I've worked at two places who had this policy and it was remarkable how many people just burned themselves out by NOT taking a single day of vacation. There was always pressure from management to NOT take vacation, then you add in pressure from your co-workers to continually work late, push to get projects done on time, all at the cost of your sanity and physical well being.
My thought has always been if you're going to join a company who has an "unlimited vacation" policy, it's probably a good indication there's an expectation you're going to work yourself into the ground, then burn out and will need an extended amount of time to get yourself right.
If a company champions this policy during an interview, it's a huge red flag for me.
I viewed this as a red flag too until I landed at a company where the unlimited vacation policy was sincere. It was actually a great experience.
At risk of sounding like a management consultant, it was very much a matter of corporate culture. People at upper levels took vacation regularly and actively encouraged their reports to do so. One-on-ones often included asking about recent and planned time off, and "none, none" produced real pressure to use the policy. The lack of set days did save money when people left, which probably helped it stick around, but I think the initial adoption of 'unlimited' instead of some generous allowance was basically just a matter of not wanting to formally track vacation time. (One other significant point, especially for tech: there wasn't an expectation of having grand plans, and people who weren't taking time off would even be reminded that they didn't need any "good reason" to do so. I've definitely heard of places where taking a month off to hike the Andes is fine, but taking two days to catch up on sleep and errands is frowned on.)
I still don't take "unlimited vacation" seriously when I see companies advertise it; I'd want an account of the real policy, minimally from Glassdoor reviews or preferably from an employee I knew. But I almost never see US companies advertise 20+ days of paid vacation as a starting allowance, so if the goal is to maximize time off I suspect searching for 'real' unlimited might still be the best bet.
This is weird to me, because I work at a UPTO company and most of my co-workers take at least 3-4 weeks off a year of vacation time and they don't have to worry about it cutting into their sick leave. Whereas, I've worked at other companies and you may start at 15 days PTO and it's one bucket for sick time and vacation.
I've definitely heard horror stories about UPTO meaning "no time off", especially in crunch-happy industries where requests are simply denied. But people criticizing UPTO seem to describe it as an all around bad deal compared to allotted PTO.
Meanwhile, I mostly see companies (even successful, generous-benefits ones) offering extremely restrictive PTO. "Two weeks PTO for all uses, and you gain one extra day every few years" isn't an appealing offer in the slightest. I've definitely watched friends with graduate degrees and many years at one company try to decide whether to work sick or give up pay.
That doesn't make UPTO a reliable offering, but I'm not convinced that it's worse on average than the levels of set PTO on offer in the US.
I've worked at two places who had this policy and it was remarkable how many people just burned themselves out by NOT taking a single day of vacation. There was always pressure from management to NOT take vacation, then you add in pressure from your co-workers to continually work late, push to get projects done on time, all at the cost of your sanity and physical well being.
My thought has always been if you're going to join a company who has an "unlimited vacation" policy, it's probably a good indication there's an expectation you're going to work yourself into the ground, then burn out and will need an extended amount of time to get yourself right.
If a company champions this policy during an interview, it's a huge red flag for me.