<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ericmay</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;exactly&lt;/i&gt; why so many companies are enacting &amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot; policies.&lt;p&gt;What they do is say &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s unlimited, but if you take more than 4 weeks it has to be approved&amp;quot; or something and then that way they can cap you like they did before but also not pay you out if you leave because &lt;i&gt;wink wink&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot;.</text><parent_chain><item><author>lostlogin</author><text>Hang on, I’m in danger of understanding something.&lt;p&gt;If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?&lt;p&gt;If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take any and leave after 2 years, what do you get?&lt;p&gt;Edit: Thanks. Yikes. Unlimited PTO actually seems worse than a specified allowance from where I sit.</text></item><item><author>darthvoldemort</author><text>I worked at a startup where the CEO reverted the unlimited PTO because one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately. We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company&amp;#x27;s generosity.&lt;p&gt;When I worked at Uber engineering which had unlimited PTO, I took between 6-8 weeks of PTO every year. Most years was at least 6, but one year I took 8. No one batted an eye. I think it all depends on company culture or maybe team culture.&lt;p&gt;I would never work for a company that denied me a PTO day, even if it was a single day. I would never irresponsibly take PTO but I would also make sure that I took at least 4 weeks off per year no matter what. The secret is taking 1 week off per quarter, and then another 2 weeks off during Christmas. That automatically brings you up to 6 weeks.&lt;p&gt;But make no mistake, unlimited vacation is a way to keep PTO off the books as a liability. In California you cannot lose PTO that you have accrued. They can stop accrual however once you reach a certain level. Once you max out on accrual, you are giving the company money, which is stupid so it&amp;#x27;s important to consistently take PTO.</text></item><item><author>jaeming</author><text>I worked at a company that had unlimted PTO when suddenly one day they revoked the policy because they said some people were abusing it. The new policy was still very generous (6 weeks PTO per year) so no one complained. Fast forward a year later and we were hearing things from executives and managers like, &amp;quot;you know you don&amp;#x27;t have to use all you&amp;#x27;re PTO, right?&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;d ask, oh, it will rollover to next year? The reply: &amp;quot;No, it won&amp;#x27;t. But that&amp;#x27;s really the wrong way to think about it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So it turns out people were taking much more time off now than when PTO was unlimited. They started denying request and making up trivial rules, like 2&amp;#x2F;3 of your team must be available at any time (regardless of the team size), oh, and those rules weren&amp;#x27;t in the official policy. Good luck trying to get specifics in writing.&lt;p&gt;Eventually they changed back to an unlimited policy but secretly told managers they should start denying requests after x number of days have been used. I think it was five weeks, which again is still generous but it bothers me because the intent is to hide that number in hopes that people will use less. I also get no tracking for how many days I&amp;#x27;ve already taken unless I go through my requests and count the approved ones myself.&lt;p&gt;The unlimited policy is definitely a scam at many companies. Most of my team has been denied requests for reasons that don&amp;#x27;t exist in the written policy, like, &amp;quot;you recently had PTO already.&amp;quot; Honestly I&amp;#x27;d rather have a policy that only allowed 3 or 4 weeks with a minimum mandatory that each employee is required to take at least two weeks off per year.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Atlassian fired me while I was taking care of my wife who is fighting cancer</title><url>https://shitlassian.com/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>eli</author><text>&amp;gt; If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?&lt;p&gt;Even in this case, it depends where you live and sometimes what your contract says. California requires it, but most states don&amp;#x27;t.</text><parent_chain><item><author>lostlogin</author><text>Hang on, I’m in danger of understanding something.&lt;p&gt;If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?&lt;p&gt;If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take any and leave after 2 years, what do you get?&lt;p&gt;Edit: Thanks. Yikes. Unlimited PTO actually seems worse than a specified allowance from where I sit.</text></item><item><author>darthvoldemort</author><text>I worked at a startup where the CEO reverted the unlimited PTO because one asshole engineer took 2 months off paid leave and then came back and quit immediately. We were angry at the engineer, not the CEO, because it was clear what he was doing was taking advantage of the company&amp;#x27;s generosity.&lt;p&gt;When I worked at Uber engineering which had unlimited PTO, I took between 6-8 weeks of PTO every year. Most years was at least 6, but one year I took 8. No one batted an eye. I think it all depends on company culture or maybe team culture.&lt;p&gt;I would never work for a company that denied me a PTO day, even if it was a single day. I would never irresponsibly take PTO but I would also make sure that I took at least 4 weeks off per year no matter what. The secret is taking 1 week off per quarter, and then another 2 weeks off during Christmas. That automatically brings you up to 6 weeks.&lt;p&gt;But make no mistake, unlimited vacation is a way to keep PTO off the books as a liability. In California you cannot lose PTO that you have accrued. They can stop accrual however once you reach a certain level. Once you max out on accrual, you are giving the company money, which is stupid so it&amp;#x27;s important to consistently take PTO.</text></item><item><author>jaeming</author><text>I worked at a company that had unlimted PTO when suddenly one day they revoked the policy because they said some people were abusing it. The new policy was still very generous (6 weeks PTO per year) so no one complained. Fast forward a year later and we were hearing things from executives and managers like, &amp;quot;you know you don&amp;#x27;t have to use all you&amp;#x27;re PTO, right?&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;d ask, oh, it will rollover to next year? The reply: &amp;quot;No, it won&amp;#x27;t. But that&amp;#x27;s really the wrong way to think about it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So it turns out people were taking much more time off now than when PTO was unlimited. They started denying request and making up trivial rules, like 2&amp;#x2F;3 of your team must be available at any time (regardless of the team size), oh, and those rules weren&amp;#x27;t in the official policy. Good luck trying to get specifics in writing.&lt;p&gt;Eventually they changed back to an unlimited policy but secretly told managers they should start denying requests after x number of days have been used. I think it was five weeks, which again is still generous but it bothers me because the intent is to hide that number in hopes that people will use less. I also get no tracking for how many days I&amp;#x27;ve already taken unless I go through my requests and count the approved ones myself.&lt;p&gt;The unlimited policy is definitely a scam at many companies. Most of my team has been denied requests for reasons that don&amp;#x27;t exist in the written policy, like, &amp;quot;you recently had PTO already.&amp;quot; Honestly I&amp;#x27;d rather have a policy that only allowed 3 or 4 weeks with a minimum mandatory that each employee is required to take at least two weeks off per year.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Atlassian fired me while I was taking care of my wife who is fighting cancer</title><url>https://shitlassian.com/</url></story>