Is unlimited PTO actually a bad deal?

It sounds great, but you almost always end up taking less PTO.

There are studies out that when offered "unlimited PTO", employees tend to take time off much less. There's also those times at the end of the year where "use it or lose it" comes into play, so employers remove that issue by offering unlimited PTO.

FWIW, I had unlimited at my previous employer, and I accrue 6 hours per pay period with my current employer. I take PTO much more regularly now than when I did with unlimited PTO.

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And if I’m not accruing PTO in the “bank” I don’t see any time or financial benefit at years end for not going on vacation

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It only benefits companies unless you manage to use more vacation than you would otherwise.

Taking 5 weeks of vacation that you've accrued is a right and most people will take it. Taking 5 weeks when there is unlimited and your coworkers are only taking 2-3 weeks all year suddenly seems like you're taking advantage of the policy. Shame on you.

If you don't care about that and take a week every other month, or a few weeks a couple times during a not busy season, it's great. The truth is most people don't do that and feel guilty about it. And then when they do leave, there is no vacation payout. Again, a win for the company.

I don't have it but I think I'd end up taking less time off feeling guilty that I was abusing it. I think I'd rather have a set number of days.

Sounds like a great idea but people always end up taking less time than they would with an allotted amount of PTO. Plus, employers can get rid of you without paying out your accrued vacation.

It's a gimmick. In my opinion, companies do this so that they are the definers of "unlimited".

2-3 weeks written in an offer per year is defined and you can't get told you're taking too much PTO if you use their written definition.

"Unlimited"=You took two weeks off for vacation and we feel that's way too much...you should be honored to work 16 hour days for us and never want to take PTO. You're fired.

That, and almost every academic study on this topic has shown that employees at companies with unlimited PTO actually feel pressured to not and do take less time off.

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It sounds great, but you almost always end up taking less PTO.

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This would be my assumption.

At my work, we can only carry 1 week into the following year, and we can't cash out. So, we're guaranteed that we can use the rest of our PTO during the year. If you work somewhere that doesn't have any set PTO hours/days you aren't guaranteed that you can take any of it.

My BIL took a job with this PTO situation recently and I just told him to take like 3 weeks spread throughout the year.

My company has unlimited PTO and I fricking love it.

I was off a week in January, a week in March, and I’m off this week.

I also have a week coming up in May, 2 weeks for my birthday in August.

I don’t think I could ever go back to accruing PTO

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The state does this, it's one of the few perks of having a state job.

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When I worked for LSU we had 2 options. I don't remember the exact specifics of option 2, but it was something like this:

Option 1: you accrue 16 hours per month, but you have a cap of 176 total hours, you can't accrue any hours after you hit the cap

Option 2: you accrue 8 hours per month, but you don't have a cap on the number of hours you can accrue

I took option 1 and once I made it to my cap of 176 hours, I just took 2 days off every month without using any PTO

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At my work, we can only carry 1 week into the following year, and we can't cash out

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We can cash out a week twice per year and I can carry over 350 hrs. I'm well over the cap right now too.