Thread regarding Microsoft Corp. layoffs

You all could just ask your managers right now for 6 weeks pto and see where it goes and comment back.

Perfect example of where the problem is with Unlimited PTO. Prego employee been with the company for years, has a bunch of vacation every year. Going on maternity leave and says "I'm using 6 weeks of my vacation from last year that I saved to add on to my maternity leave". Boss said "Understood, no problem". Then company switches to Unlimited PTO and employee follows up with boss to say when she will be back from leave, boss says "Actually, that's a busy time around here, I don't think you will be able to be out for an extra 6 weeks." Moral is that Unlimited PTO gives your manager the power to say no, earned vacation is just that, it's earned and spending it is your right, not your manager's.

My understanding is that the idea of unlimited PTO is better than a company's implementation of it. Employees will get maybe 2 weeks of approved time off. But if you decide to leave the company, there is no payout for unused vacation.

Some thoughts--keep in mind that it has nothing to do with trust; it has to do with bean counting and how that reflects on your performance.

• I worked in CA for an unlimited PTO tech company a few years ago, and it was a disaster, meaning, we were generally overworked during non-PTO time - typical work day was 10-12 hrs, sometimes weekend too.
• Asking for PTO meant that we had to work during PTO, why? Because that is what our managers did, they were working all the time while on vacation.
• MS wanted to normalize and officialize this unlimited PTO business. Why? Can you really check on all the remote employees and how they use their time? Do you really want to be the leading tech company without adding unlimited PTO to the list of benefits?
• If you really count all the days off we take in the US, in addition to the canonical 2 weeks, and the other ms holidays, it's easily 4 weeks off.

I think Unlimited PTO is not good - you need to agree with your boss and that's the only way it'll work but this is hard to achieve.

You might think 4 weeks is fine, but they might think 2 is better.

But since some CXOs have said that employees can take as much time off as they want, they won't tell you if they think you're taking too much. Instead, they'll put that into your performance reviews and other feedback. For unlimited PTO to work, there needs to be a very high level of trust, which is hard to build and it's not present at Microsoft.