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Micro-retirement
Micro-retirement
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I was working in a European branch of a SF based private company. It's a company that tries really hard to have good optics everywhere, from being listed as PBC down to "support and inclusion" talks.
US employees officially had "unlimited" vacation days, European had 25. Plus the company has a practice of giving an extra Friday off once a month, plus few days for Christmas break plus one year there was a week of summer break.
That year with a summer break employees in Europe got over 40 days of vacation. 35..37 without it. Plus bank holidays and sick leaves.
I was freaking out after learning that US employees with the unlimited time off were getting under 20. Whenever an employee was using more than 15 vacation days a year, they were presented with an inquiring interview from their manager trying to figure out why they need so much rest.
US has no work culture, it's exploitation.
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Unlimited PTO is an accounting dodge because PTO shows up as a liability on the books if it is defined, because if they liquidate the business they need to pay it out in lieu. And number doesn’t go up.
Which is why they also don’t allow carry-over in most cases.
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Not unless you do it the right way, i.e. the way it is done in Europe. It is basically mandatory to take vacation days every year up to a specific number. Unlimited PTO makes it so you get extra. I also have a policy of a burnout vacation - if I notice you are burned out you get sent to a mandatory paid vacation. You get to refuse once, as a hangover excuse or "I'm fine, really". But it I notice it again after refusal, you get a choice. Either you go to vacation, or you get fired. It doesn't go into a tally of "I need to talk to this guy, he took 80 days off this year", I treat it as if they'd worked. Oh, and 100% paid sick leave instead of a percentage, all they need is to talk to their doctor and they put in that they are sick in the system.
The agreement about time off is you get the 25 mandated by the law, anytime, without any request beforehand, as long as it won't make the sun explode. Instead of people requesting time off, I request time "on", if I need to work with them, have them in a meeting or train someone.
My "off the contract" ask to them is "I'll try to treat you as fair as I can, and ask you to do the same in return". I did get screwed over by an employee once, but so far I can still maintain this policy
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Agreed.
The way I think it should be is:
- mandatory 25 days of vacation, plus statutory holidays
- mandatory vacation is subtracted from any performance targets (i.e. it is accounted for in business planning and not offloaded to the employee)
- vacation beyond that is unlimited, but may impact your performance
- major anniversary events within the company grant paid leave of absences
To the last point - I don’t recall which company it was - I have seen one where after a certain period of service your granted a 3 or 6 month leave of absence to go do something else. Travel the world, get really deep into Japanese joinery, or build a new version of DNS. I think that’s something that is healthy for humans.
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That sounds so nice, especially as someone whose career encourages cycling of effort levels in its nature
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A company telling you you've got unlimited off days is actually really bad because it means they will just engage in this judging practise.
If they tell you you've got 25 days then that's great you know how many days you've got, if it's unlimited they start being argumentative around day 10. So in reality people with unlimited time off actually end up with fewer days.
Working for a European company is great, currently I'm being told that I need to take 2 weeks off, in addition to the holiday I've already booked off.
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Also you don't get paid out for "unlimited PTO" when you leave. I have something like 45 days of PTO saved up, and if/when I leave my company, I will be paid for those 45 unused days along with any other severance package that is included. Unlimited PTO is a trap.
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194 comments