The Catfish said:

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At a large O&G company I worked for it was:

New hire (college): 2 weeks
5 years: 3 weeks
10 years: 4 weeks
20 years: 5 weeks
30+ years: 6 weeks

Experienced hires were credited for their prior work experience for related/relevant work so they would start with vacation equivalent to their years of experience.

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bagger05 said:

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Unlimited PTO is such a crock. Lazy leadership and management.

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Ranger1743 said:

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For federal employees it's

2.6 weeks from 0-3 years
3.9 weeks from 3-15 years
5.2 weeks 15 years+

Decimals since it's based on hours, not days.

Everyone gets 2.6 weeks sick per year on top of that.

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Sims said:

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bagger05 said:

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Dr. Horrible said:

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bagger05 said:

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Unlimited PTO is such a crock. Lazy leadership and management.

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My new job has "unlimited" PTO, and love it so far... Less stress and worrying about do I have enough days for X or Y... Or do I have to use vacation because something went sideways at the house. Just talk to my boss and tell him when I'll be out, work together to make sure everything is covered, make sure the "ship can still sail".

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Here's my beef.

Unlimited PTO is not actually a thing. There is some amount of time that you can request off where the answer is no.

Intuitively, everyone understands this. You can't take off the entire year of 2025 and still get paid. Every "unlimited PTO" policy that I've ever seen is governed by a set of unwritten rules that actually look a lot like a normal vacation policy. And instead of writing down these unwritten rules and giving it to you in your offer letter, you get to spend a year or two feeling anxious about taking time off while you figure out what the boundaries are.

So why not write it down? I think the answer is usually for some balance sheet reason or "everyone else is doing it so we have to as well." Not "we love our employees."


The root cause of almost all dissatisfaction at work is a lack of clarity and alignment on expectations. Unlimited PTO policies make one of the most important things about your comp/benefits package confusing by design.

My friends with unlimited PTO don't take as much time off as people with well-designed vacation policies. Or if they do, they're not REALLY on vacation - they're working a lot less but at the beach. And they often feel guilty about being gone.


Another observation of friends with unlimited PTO -- the employer does have an unstated expectation of what's an appropriate amount of time to be off. If you try to take more than that, your manager will address it with you. If you take less than that, they're fine with it.


I'm 100% pro-flexibility for stuff like you described for exempt employees. Plumber coming to the house, dog needs to go to the vet, long lunch with your college buddy that's in town, came down with a stomach bug... coordinate with your manager.

But for vacation time, I like the policy of give people a lot every year and use it or lose it.

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So why not write it down? I think the answer is usually for some balance sheet reason or "everyone else is doing it so we have to as well." Not "we love our employees."

The rest is convenient messaging and all of the examples and observations you give are accurate but the reason why companies do this is absolutely as it relates to the balance sheet liability accrued time off creates.

There are two diff liabilities in question:

1) As employees bank PTO, more than just having to record how many hours/days they have to take off, companies have to additionally expense the cost of that PTO as it is earned. This impacts current earnings negatively. That amount of money spread over thousands of employees is a material expense.

2) When employees use banked PTO as a golden parachute when they separate from the job. Oh, you're firing me? Well, you're gonna have to cut me a check for $42,000 because I have 3 months of vacation booked. I'm not saying it's wrong, I've done it...but the company doesn't enjoy writing huge checks to separate from an employee.

Now the move to unlimited PTO means both of those two items are moot as 1) there is no accrued PTO to expense in the current period as it is expensed when the employee actually takes the time off and 2) there is no banked amount of PTO to which an employer is obligated to pay to the separating employee.

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