Keep in mind that a lot of Slack’s employees —- especially early ones —- are Canadian, and Canadians don’t get unlimited PTO (by law, I think). So they are being told when they should be using some of their PTO days.
Could be that not having a set number of days avoids the payout, as I believe is the case in the US. Another charitable interpretation of their comment might be “Unlimited PTO is at odds with Canadian law, so potentially could be illegal.“
Even Slack previously had shifts where people would be on-call or actively monitoring as necessary. PTO isn't closely tracked within the company (usually) so I'd wager there's nothing stopping this from happening as usual, unless somebody has already used 4+ weeks of PTO in the year.
Why is it abuse if I use my PTO? The whole point of PTO is that the company is agreeing to give you 10 days worth of slack. So obviously it shouldn't be a problem if you use that 10 days of slack. Are you telling me that the company is lying about the benefits it provides, and that it doesn't actually provide 10 days of sick leave? What else are they lying about?
Yeah it's pretty foreign here in Canada, too. A Silicon Valley import. Prospective employer (US-ian) seems to be doing this, though. But it remains to be seen what they'll do for an offer to a Canadian. Guess I'll find out.
Before I quit Google I had 5 weeks PTO + a whole pile of unpaid "flex" days if I wanted them. It could get hard to use all 5 weeks sometimes.
The tech company I currently work for has unlimited PTO. I've never had an issue, even once, when I said I'm going to take XYZ days off and have gotten pushback. It probably happens but I haven't seen it.
The workplace policy has been in effect for many years, and was until recently an advertised perk of working for Slack. It allowed all employees access to free paid time off from 24th until the New Year (some employees like incident responders would take shifts, but even Customer Experience (their support team) ran skeleton shifts). Today they have announced this policy has ended as a result of the economy as well as making the workplace more equitable (as Salesforce employees could not access this benefit).
Well, that's the other thing. I'm in Ontario, and I'm not even 100% sure on the legality of "unlimited PTO" here.
Presumably it's basically, legally, no contractual paid PTO but then they let you take PTO anyways? Because if they put N days in writing, well, then it's just the same as always. A liability on their books, etc.
The only place I've heard of that went to unlimited that sounded serious about it was a non-profit (non-tech) where the execs said: we going to unlimited PTO, but we are going to enforce PTO minimums if you don't take PTO (you will be taking time off each year, either you will schedule it or the company will). They combined the move with creating some company-wide long weekends that augment already long weekends (eg. add a Friday or Tuesday to the July 4th holiday to make it a 4-day closure).
It's the "unlimited PTO" scam - tech companies figured out a loophole that lets them give their employees zero days of guaranteed PTO, doesn't require them to pay out for unused PTO days when an employee leaves, and is technically legal for meeting the minimum PTO laws in the US.
Unlimited PTO means you're at the mercy of the company, pretty much. I am lucky to work for a company with unlimited PTO where most people take 4-6 weeks off per year. Other places are far less lucky.
I’ve seen the ambiguity in “unlimited PTO” as well. At $job we’re starting to talk about “mandatory minimum PTO” instead. Everyone’s required to take at least one contiguous week every quarter, and hopefully more besides.
At other gigs I’ve seen the same things you fear, where “unlimited” means “as little as possible.”
I’ve worked at a company with unlimited PTO since 2012.
It was the founder’s preference, as was allowing us all to work from home, because he didn’t want to babysit adults who all agreed to work towards a goal.
It’s never felt like a trap. Employees absolutely take a week+ off work, multiple times a year, and I’ve never heard of anyone ever being reprimanded.
The same founder also continued to pay an employee who was struggling with life in general, encouraging them to take off for a couple weeks and when they were ready, chat about whether they’d continue to work here.
There certainly can be scammy, predatory “unlimited PTO” policies, and maybe my experience is the exception, but I definitely prefer it over having to submit paperwork any time I have to miss working hours to take my kid to doctor, or just to take half a day to with the family on a Friday afternoon.
Unlimited PTO is more an American thing in my experience. And is never really unlimited as you will be judged when using it. In Europe it's common with 5+ weeks of vacation, which is also often mandatory by law to take.
I once worked at an organization that had a “take what you need” policy, but refused to make it any clearer than that. I never knew what that really meant.
My spouse’s company has an officially unlimited PTO policy. In their experience, they’ve only ever been spoken to for not taking enough, and %%Current Management%% has spoken on the record about expecting employees to take a minimum of weeks off per year.
Unlimited PTO seems to be squarely in the YMMV arena. I am sure some organizations have used it as a bait and switch hook, but I do not think it’s generally a scam.
On top of that, there are roles in FAANG companies and Silicon Valley that give ~5 weeks PTO. For example, Facebook historically has had a fairly good PTO policy in the US, and for the past several years gives at least 23 days (plus there's the whole extra month off every 5 years). I heard that as a result of that, Google had to increase their PTO in recent years.
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