[HN Gopher] Atlassian fired me while I was taking care of my wif...
___________________________________________________________________
Atlassian fired me while I was taking care of my wife who is
fighting cancer
Author : mparnisari
Score : 763 points
Date : 2021-09-16 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shitlassian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (shitlassian.com)
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Is it true that engineers with children are less likely to get
| a promotion?
|
| > It was a silly question, I sure that this behavior exists in
| Atlassian, but nobody likes to talk about that. In Atlassian it's
| no surprise and my manager said "yes, it's true". Just like that,
| exposing the company to liability.
|
| If there's a casual relationship there after correcting for
| confounding factors, that's obviously bad. If there's a
| retrospective correlation found, it's not clear that's bad. Brand
| new grads tend not to have children. Early in career promotions
| tend to come more quickly and with more certainty. From this, I'd
| _expect_ promotions of lead software engineers to be less
| frequent than entry-level SWEs and for the former group to also
| (and irrelevantly) be more likely to have children.
| denverkarma wrote:
| I'm sorry I can't speak to details as this is all very personal
| for the folks involved, but I know all the people involved in
| this story and can tell you this is not a very fair account of
| what happened. It was a long-running and very difficult situation
| for everyone involved.
| wisty wrote:
| I immediately get skeptical when I hear "because" being used
| for something that is not clearly a proximate cause.
| civilized wrote:
| In other posts you seem quite willing to disclose very specific
| details of the situation, like what leave the person in
| question did and didn't take. But you're not telling us the
| details that supposedly constitute Atlassian's side of the
| story. Isn't that interesting?
|
| Maybe Atlassian's side of the story doesn't actually look so
| good for Atlassian.
| strange_things wrote:
| hello Atlassian PR employee. we believe you
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| From a 2018 account with 400 karma?
| mikestew wrote:
| Yes, the five month old account with a whopping 67 karma is
| questioning another account's legitimacy. You'll be needing
| a knife for cutting through that irony.
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| They aren't necessarily implying it's a sockpuppet, but
| that they currently represent Atlassian PR.
| mikestew wrote:
| It's obvious what the implication is, yes. It's also not
| the charitable interpretation that the HN guidelines
| suggest. Especially when using one's five-month-old
| account to talk smack to people one has never met, let
| alone know where they work.
| denverkarma wrote:
| Believe what you want. I no longer work at Atlassian, and I
| had my own frustrations with the company. There are
| definitely some internal struggles, and specific teams under
| a lot of pressure, and if you get caught in one of those
| situations it sucks. The specific team this person was on is
| under a lot of pressure, and this person is not the only
| person who quit over it.
|
| But the person who wrote this article did not give an
| accurate portrayal of the entire situation.
| hmottestad wrote:
| The unlimited PTO thing? Is it true that Atlassian calls it
| unlimited but there is no way to even get a European standard 5
| weeks a year?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No it's not true at all. I recently left Atlassian after
| working there 4 years. 3-5 weeks felt like the average PTO my
| coworkers would take. It was an easy-going system.
|
| I don't know if OP had a particularly bad manager as that
| happens in any large company, but no one I worked with ever
| brought up any issues.
| hmottestad wrote:
| Anyone take more than 5 weeks? Like say taking the entire
| summer off to match what their kids get from school (10-11
| weeks)?
| denverkarma wrote:
| My experience was that Atlassian was very generous with PTO,
| but it's true there was no accrual. I was encouraged to take
| 20-30 days off per year, and I did, and I never got pushback.
| My experience was that nearly everyone took 4-5 weeks off per
| year, and those that did not were often encouraged to take
| more PTO.
|
| There was an entitlement for 6 weeks paternity leave and 6
| months maternity leave, which is very good for the US.
|
| But there is no accrual. I know that some people there had a
| really hard time with the idea of "unlimited" and felt that
| they could't use their time off if they didn't know how much
| they "really" had. The truth was you really had as much as
| your manager said, but this sucked for managers because
| occasionally someone would abuse it and try to just work 3
| days a week, so they tried to give guidance. The standard
| guidance was "we want you to take at least 20 days off, and
| you should be fine up to 30, if it's more than that we might
| start saying no."
|
| The person who wrote this post did not, and still does not,
| understand that this guidance is not the same as accrued
| vacation.
| [deleted]
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I was fired from a small dev shop in Boston six years ago while
| grieving a miscarriage. The founder had his favorite employee
| fire me while he conveniently ducked out.
|
| I don't wish harm on most people and I _definitely_ would not
| wish the experience of miscarriage on anyone, but I'd like to
| punch him in the mouth.
|
| I have a healthy 5-y.o. boy now but that memory still stings.
| [deleted]
| _xerces_ wrote:
| OP might have a valid point, but the childish way he chose to
| share his message and the poor English aren't going to help when
| it comes to finding future employment.
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| A lot of negative sentiment for unlimited PTO here. I had
| unlimited PTO at one of my previous jobs (Intercom), and my boss
| was very clear about how much felt like too much, but still
| encouraged me to take plenty. I took 30 days off one year and
| nobody batted an eye. It's an overly cynical viewpoint to say
| that all unlimited PTO policies are bad/meant to fuck over
| employees, because some management chains really _do_ want people
| to lead fulfilling lives.
| _hilro wrote:
| My future company is going to offer unlimited wages..
|
| But obviously it's going to have to be manager approved. And
| obviously the manager has a budget. And obviously I don't care
| if the manager screws you because he starts to dislike you. Or
| because somebody in HR/higher up doesn't like you.
|
| But none of that is my concern - I'm great; I give unlimited
| wages to workers! Never mind there's no contract with a firm
| guaranteed figure.
|
| Think of the earning potential!
|
| UNLIMITED!!!*
|
| *Terms and conditions apply but the terms and conditions re too
| long and take away from the headline so just check them out on
| our website at <404>
| stevebmark wrote:
| I'm not impressed by this hit piece. Maybe it's because I'm
| already jaded that "unlimited PTO" never really means that at
| companies, especially if it's only manager approved PTO. Offering
| medical leave where you keep your benefits seems reasonable to me
| (if not preferred? I don't see how this would qualify for PTO.
| Taking medical leave is something I see regularly, even at
| companies with "unlimited" PTO). Not being promoted while you're
| not working seems reasonable to me. This person is clearly very
| angry, to the point where they're trying to find any way to hit
| at Atlassian, like "there's favoritism," which is true of 99% of
| companies. I think the try-to-hit-from-every-angle result of the
| anger works against them in their main point that they were
| mislead into thinking they could use PTO to care for a loved one.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah agreed - the emails they show also have bad grammar and
| misspellings too along with the general writing.
|
| It's basically understood that unlimited PTO means untracked
| and within some reasonable amount - if you were at an At Will
| company in the US they don't owe you much. Obviously you can't
| just take 3 years off of 'unlimited PTO' so it's hard to claim
| you truly believe it's limitless imo.
|
| Expecting a promo when you're not working and expecting to be
| able to just take infinite vacation (even when dealing with
| tragedy) is just not realistic. There are other options
| (medical leave, extended leave, etc.) - some companies will go
| out of their way to be kind, but I wouldn't have that as my
| expectation.
|
| This kind of rant doesn't look great either - my take away is
| this person was probably just difficult in general, there may
| have been other reasons they were not promoted.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _my take away is this person was probably just difficult in
| general, there may have been other reasons they were not
| promoted._
|
| My general impression is that it's the difficult people who
| use terms like "toxic" to describe those they clash with. His
| "Interesting fact 1" is also a red flag. Dirty words in some
| internal memo? I'm scandalized!
|
| I don't like Atlassian for their slow software, but I'm sure
| it's a fine company to work for.
| redonyo wrote:
| It's in the company values - "Open company, no bullshit"
| and "Don't fuck the customer". When you know the company is
| Australian it makes more sense.
| babycake wrote:
| What a weird perspective this is. There is a man whose wife is
| dying. He needs support from his employer because that's what's
| paying the bills for the food, shelter, and medical bills that
| pile up while he's taking care of her. He's put in all his time
| and effort into helping the company succeed, now he's asking
| for some leeway when shit hit the fan for him.
|
| It's so pedantic to then point to these random rules, which are
| specifically designed to screw the employee over, and then say
| 'welp, those are the rules, too bad'. It also goes against the
| company mantra, of putting your health before the company (as
| he states in the article).
|
| The guy in the article even stated:
|
| > - No, it's not even a question, because you won't be using it
| as a vacation, right? Technically you won't be on PTO, so take
| a medical leave.
|
| > It sounds very touching, but I didn't recognize the trick
| here. They wanted me to use my medical leave, because they
| didn't want to pay for the PTO I earned.
|
| The point here is that the company didn't want to pay the guy
| for his hard-earned PTO. They pulled out all the stops to avoid
| paying him. They instead wanted to give him unpaid medical time
| off. Then they said they couldn't approve PTO because they
| didn't have enough office coverage, yet his boss took a month
| off.
|
| So why can't he use his PTO? That's his money, his wife is
| dying, and his mental and physical health is at an all time
| low. Let him use his damn PTO.
| darkerside wrote:
| Doesn't sound like he had much PTO anyway. Why wouldn't he
| just take leave? If he wanted to take PTO and then dip into
| leave when it runs out, there may be legal reasons you can't
| do that.
| greg5green wrote:
| They did take leave -- evidenced by the language about not
| being able to extend the leave by using PTO in the email
| from their manager.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Sounds like he had unlimited PTO and had hardly used any of
| it to me.
| awa wrote:
| Because PTO needs to be approved by the manager which they
| weren't ready to do.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| He didn't say his wife was dying. Colon cancer is not
| automatically fatal. The problem is that these are always one
| sided stories and it's impossible to get the full
| picture...how can you even begin to adjudicate this by
| assuming his claims are true?
| 3minus1 wrote:
| Does anyone know the "points" system he's talking about? I'm
| surprised a senior engineer would have easily measurable chunks
| of work to complete. That sounds more like jr. engineer, but
| maybe Atlassian is really good at estimating LOE.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'm from Europe, and would be in general agreement that US work
| culture is harsh in many ways. Also, it's entirely believable
| that companies present themselves as better than they really are.
| Further, I sympathize with the author's difficult personal
| situation.
|
| With that out of the way, I generally find the article absurd.
|
| First, and this is probably my age, I continue to be surprised by
| how low the bar is these days for angry employees to expose dirt
| on the public internet. In this case it seems to be anonymous,
| but I personally still live by the code that you keep this stuff
| private. None of the claims made seem to warrant such aggressive
| and counterproductive action, and drawing noses on founder's
| faces makes the entire thing look incredibly childish.
|
| Also, when you call your manager "Rio, with his manager being
| Sean", I hope those are pseudonyms. But they're not, since the
| names are directly in the company's response, so there goes your
| anonymity.
|
| "In Atlassian you're disposable"
|
| Yes, it's called employment. Every employee in every company is
| disposable. This isn't an excuse to treat you badly, but
| disposable you are. Live with that expectation, instead of
| thinking they're your friends or family. They're not. Likewise,
| employers are disposable.
|
| "Long-term it turned out to be a good move, since I received no
| promotion or salary increase in 2.5 years"
|
| "It has been 2+ years at Atlassian and I am still stuck in the
| same role"
|
| Again, I must be getting old. Do people expect a yearly promotion
| these days? The above to me sounds like extreme impatience.
|
| Further, it's unreasonable to expect unlimited promotion
| opportunities. If the "salary house" in a team of 10 allows for 3
| seniors, it means not everybody can be promoted to senior.
| Promotions are part of a distribution and have caps, that's not
| unreasonable, it's common sense.
|
| As to HOW the selection is made on whom gets promoted, agreed
| that this can be a messy and sometimes unfair process. Indeed,
| personal factors may be at play and there's the roll of the dice
| regarding whether managers like you. that point is fair, yet
| highly common in business, and hard to solve.
|
| In this case, a very hard claim is made that you can't get a
| promotion when you have children, whilst the evidence to support
| this conclusion is thin, and based on a single exaggerated case.
|
| As for approving/denying any type of leave, the situation he
| describes does sound very harsh. In general though, even in work
| cultures far more generous with leave days, managers still
| needing to approve/decline them is common. A decline should mean
| postponement, not that you can never take the days. Honestly, I'm
| having a hard time making sense of this particular claim. There
| seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on both sides.
|
| "There's a lot of favoritism in the company"
|
| Get used to it. This is how the human species works. It doesn't
| mean you have to kiss up like a weasel, but unfortunate as it is,
| managing your visibility and selling yourself is part of any
| professional work life.
|
| Take this simple yet brutal life lesson from this old man: your
| job is to make your manager look good, as well as to not make
| them look bad. That's the job.
|
| "Wellbeing and COVID"
|
| Indeed, companies do not care about your well being. Stop having
| this expectation. If they could downsize a team, automate your
| job or offshore it, they will. If this would lead to personal
| catastrophe, nobody cares. This is the nature of business.
|
| Employees aren't much better. They easily switch employer and
| will definitely not help out when the business is going under,
| they run instead.
|
| There's no loyalty in commerce.
|
| "Employment law violations"
|
| Another confusing claim. A single qualified candidate is
| interviewed and the manager wants to do more, to get a bigger
| sample set. Likely with the idea to pick the best from the
| subset. What absurd law would be violated here? Seems like plain
| common sense.
|
| Anyway, I'll end it here. It seems to me like the author is
| dealing with a lot of personal trauma, so the piece should be
| read with that in mind.
| [deleted]
| olingern wrote:
| This exact scenario happened to me two months ago sans cancer and
| a wife. OP has my sympathy since my situation was not as
| challenging.
|
| Unlimited PTO is a joke and you will be penalized or fired for
| exercising the "benefit"
| vnchr wrote:
| I've never said no to a PTO request on my team since we adopted
| Unlimited PTO, but now I'm finding out that it's been abused
| elsewhere and actually constitutes a red flag. I wonder if our
| company should revert to traditional PTO so that prospective
| candidates don't avoid applying.
| olingern wrote:
| Unlimited PTO is widely adopted because companies now know
| that people statistically take less PTO and the less ethical
| of those companies would like to exploit that.
|
| I would rather work for a company that gives a generous
| amount so that I can work within the parameters / not feel
| guilty. It also allows me to put a total value on a offer as
| well.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| As a general rule of thumb:
|
| Be very wary of unlimited sick days. I've worked at companies
| with and without unlimited sick days, and in practice, I've
| found:
|
| - companies with limited sick days are still willing to negotiate
| "going into debt" if something goes wrong
|
| - companies with unlimited sick days can make it a constant fight
| to justify time off
|
| I've definitely been at companies in the latter category that
| didn't make it a fight, but the risk is if they choose to make it
| a fight, you have no hard numbers to fall back on to say you're
| being treated fairly or unfairly.
| hartator wrote:
| I never got the unlimited PTO policy. Can't you immediately go in
| vacation with no end after being hired? Obviously not, so why
| lying instead of just clearly laying out policies?
| zshift wrote:
| I don't understand why the author didn't take medical leave.
| That's exactly what this is for. You get reduced pay while on
| leave, though you can work with the company to see if they can
| fulfill a portion of that. My current employer covers 30%, while
| short-term covers 60%. 90% pay to be able to completely
| disconnect from work for several months is absolutely worth it.
|
| It does sound like communication with the manager was poor,
| though. The manager should have been more empathetic to their
| situation (depends heavily on how comfortable the employee was
| with giving out this information).
| greg5green wrote:
| They did take leave -- it's in that managers communications
| about how you cannot roll from leave directly into PTO.
| mgd_uk wrote:
| I've worked at Atlassian for more than 4 years. I don't recognize
| this portrait at all. I and everyone around me have had plenty of
| time off when needed, with very little push back. Atlassian does
| way more than is required for our wellbeing, and is genuinely the
| best company I've worked for.
|
| Lots of people around me have taken time of for sickness, to look
| after family, for parental leave, or just because they need a
| break - everything from a day to multiple months - and I've seen
| nothing other than support for them from others at every level.
|
| This person clearly had a bad experience, and I'm sorry for them.
| But it's by no means typical at Atlassian.
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| While the veracity of this is hard to determine, these sort of
| actions don't surprise me. If you have some of this evidence in
| writing, a lawyer might be a good place to start.
|
| However, what really stood out to me was the design, or lack of
| it. The childish paint.exe job on the hero image doesn't help
| either. It really reads like a scrawled out screed of grievances,
| being aired without much forethought.
|
| IANAL, but my understanding in the jurisdiction in which I live
| is that having this sort of stuff up can actually make your case
| harder! Refine the message and make it much more clear and
| logical.
|
| In my opinion, you should take this down and contact a lawyer.
| mparnisari wrote:
| This is not mine. I just found the link on Twitter.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Same thoughts. And the title. This will lead to a defamation
| case and end up even worse than it is now.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| For the author this isn't the best way, a lawyer and some
| settlement + NDA would have been. But for the community it's
| good that he choose to publish it and allow others to see
| this perspective.
|
| Not sure whether Atlassian would want to sue, that could
| become yet another example of the Streisand effect...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Not sure whether Atlassian would want to sue, that could
| become yet another example of the Streisand effect...
|
| Assuming the author speaks truth. If the story has holes,
| not taking an action by Atlassian sounds like a bad
| precedent.
| sneak wrote:
| If people don't speak out about bad conditions in the
| workplace, it will get swept quietly under the rug. With this,
| the information is out there for people to make their own
| judgements about it.
|
| I'm glad they drew the dicknoses, it makes it memorable.
|
| Legal recourse is only one avenue; a settlement usually
| involves hushing up. That's incompatible with warning others.
| throwdecro wrote:
| I agree. There's value in people getting angry enough that
| they prefer to attack as hard as they can, instead of getting
| the best outcome for themselves.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| It really depends on what they want to accomplish. Perhaps
| given the choice of (1) publicly exposing the company and
| causing them reputational harm, and (2) in X years time getting
| a Y$ settlement and having to sign an NDA saying they cannot
| speak ill of the company in return, they prefer 1. They don't
| seem to be trying to go the lawsuit way and they don't mention
| it in their post.
| clemailacct1 wrote:
| > However, what really stood out to me was the design, or lack
| of it. The childish paint.exe job on the hero image doesn't
| help either. It really reads like a scrawled out screed of
| grievances, being aired without much forethought.
|
| Can you _blame_ the guy?
|
| Im not some emotionless robot - I would be absolutely furious
| if I was peddled lies from my employer and be treated this way
| too.
|
| This notion that we need to rise above things at all times is
| just silly. The man has a lot on his plate and has every right
| to scribble on two Atlassian peoples image.
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| >Can you blame the guy?
|
| IDK if you're trying to get a message out, doing things like
| that is extremely self-sabotaging to the message.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| I mean, his wife has cancer, and he's being fucked with.
| It's easy to say from a distance that one should deal with
| everything in a calm, rational manner.
| doovd wrote:
| Sure, easy for a bystander to make this assessment.
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| Correct. It's a good assessment and I stand by it.
| exikyut wrote:
| One of the pennies that's been dropping for me recently is that
| extreme duress can provoke a mindset/belief that the capacity
| is not available to fulfill a particular global set of role(s),
| position(s), task(s), etc (in this case spanning
| worker/workplace-politician/father/husband/carer/human being).
| This "over-duress" seems to manifest as a sort of fundamental
| loss of core equilibrium that leaves an existential vacuum in
| its wake (maybe a bit like the mental spoon counter going
| negative), and if pushed far enough (circumstances hit the sour
| spot just right), I've noticed this can involuntarily be
| expressed to others in a somewhat irrational/illogical, clingy,
| needy, and unfortunately sometimes cringy way.
|
| While I don't think this particular case is as extreme as the
| end-state suggested by the trajectory described above, I find
| it interesting that the OP of the domain has the execution to
| put a domain and webpage together, and has published info that
| describes a situation that, in theory, is still redeemable...
| although now that this been published I do definitely think
| that it's a given that there's not very much this person can do
| to recover their professional relationship and retain their job
| with everyone keeping a straight face when they theoretically
| next come in to work. (Cue guaranteed awkward conversation the
| moment they get in...)
|
| I definitely get "just leave already, or hire a lawyer" vibes
| from this, but it's clear this person is at 101% emotional
| saturation and don't have the attention span for that, sadly.
| It is an _excellent_ philosophical question as to whether this
| means this person 's overall mental competence should be taken
| into question - if I'm ruthlessly honest, that's the
| instinctive response I have to this sort of thing, yet it's
| also entirely inappropriate in just about every realistic and
| non-realistic context I can think of. Yet it's what my brain
| reaches for every time. Uncanny valley is stupid sometimes.
|
| So I guess the caveat emptor for businesses here is, sometimes
| people will find themselves between rocks and hard places and
| try to get out of them by taking you up on claims that would
| reasonably be immediately disregarded as fashionable puffery
| ("unlimited PTO" is very obviously impossible).
| darkerside wrote:
| This person obviously doesn't care about the money. They are
| understandably bitter and angry and lashing out. Not sure
| what else to say about it. Feels a little voyeuristic just to
| have read it.
| gringoDan wrote:
| Unlimited PTO is terrible for employees.
|
| Companies implement this policy so that they don't need to pay
| out unused vacation days when an employee quits (which is
| required by law in many locales).
|
| Further, people take less time off with unlimited PTO than with a
| fixed number of days. [1] Psychologically, this makes sense -
| with a fixed number of PTO days you feel entitled to take time
| off. With "unlimited PTO" you don't know where the boundaries
| are. At a former job, I had a good manager who asked HR for some
| guidance on "unlimited PTO" and shared it with our team.
| Unsurprisingly, HR had an unwritten policy for the number of days
| you could take off before you had to get PTO approval at the VP
| level.
|
| [1] https://blog.namely.com/unlimited-vacation-policy
| 01100011 wrote:
| This. Unlimited PTO is kind of a scam. Then again, I think most
| experienced devs know this. Come on, would a company really
| offer you _unlimited_ PTO? No.
|
| That said, I feel like I do have quite a lot of PTO and I feel
| free to take it. Having that confidence requires having an
| employer that gives you feedback on your performance and
| knowing that you've 'earned' the time off.
|
| Even at companies with fixed PTO, there are still times when
| you just know taking the time off would be career suicide.
| Taking time off near a planned release date is just insulting
| to other team members.
|
| There's a story I keep going back to that I think is useful
| here. Way back, 20 years ago, working for a newly acquired
| division of WindRiver, we had an informal policy where you just
| got your work done and could come and go as you pleased. A
| couple of young, new engineers weren't comfortable with the
| informal policy and asked for clarification during a company
| meeting with upper management. Of course the official answer
| was that you got X days off and it required managerial approval
| and blah blah blah. Fortunately middle-management continued to
| look the other way and allowed the informal system to continue.
| Sometimes there are unwritten rules in business. These are,
| unfortunately, often unfair for new engineers and under-
| represented groups who don't feel secure enough in their
| positions to take advantage of them. I'm not sure how I feel
| about that. On the one hand, I like the quid-pro-quo system but
| I do understand that some people, especially engineers, have
| trouble with vagueness.
| popinman322 wrote:
| The problem is that informal policies can be bastardized by
| individual managers. Relying on rapport and good will doesn't
| work with narcissists (an extreme case) or people with
| different values (more mundane), for instance. And different
| values are common in most workplaces-- almost everyone has a
| slightly different answer for how much leave is too much.
| xwdv wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. If you're willing to exploit
| unlimited PTO then it can be a better deal for the employee,
| you just have to get over your feelings about taking time off.
| luckylion wrote:
| And if you exploit it, you'll get fired. And if you're so
| valuable to them that they don't care, they'd be flexible on
| limited PTO as well, and just give you extremely generous
| limits.
| bserge wrote:
| Is there really unlimited _anything_? There 's always some
| hidden or not so hidden fair use rule.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Interviewed with Atlassian in 2010 or so. They were building
| their cloud. Built on Openvz. Pre-docker chroot. I had a lot of
| experience with all the tech they wanted to use. Halfway through
| the interview they even offered to migrate me to Sidney.
|
| Until I said I had kids.
|
| Best interview I ever did. Never heard from them again.
|
| Dodged a bullet.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>- Can I take some of my PTO, I should have plenty, to take care
| of my wife? - I said.
|
| - No, it's not even a question, because you won't be using it as
| a vacation, right? Technically you won't be on PTO, so take a
| medical leave.
|
| How is the reply to this anything other than "it's none of your
| fucking business what I do on my PTO?"
| kqr wrote:
| "Unlimited sick days"
|
| What's the alternative to this? Does disease normally obey
| corporate policy in the U.S.?
| sauwan wrote:
| Authorized absence (without pay)
| ggambetta wrote:
| With everyone saying unlimited PTO is a joke, my experience is
| the opposite. I used to work at Improbable [0], which had (and
| still has) an unlimited holiday policy. I regularly took 5 or 6
| weeks off per year, never had a single problem with that.
| Managers would actually _encourage_ people to take time off if
| they weren 't taking enough. Now at Google we have a very
| generous PTO policy, but I do miss not having to do time off
| arithmetic to see if I can spend one more week back home for
| Christmas.
|
| [0] http://improbable.io
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I just mentally x-ed out Atlassian from my list of companies I
| would consider working for. It's courageous of this person to
| post this and not take the severance.
| seibelj wrote:
| It might help others, but for your own sake I would take it down
| and hire a lawyer. It sounds like you are under a ton of stress.
| Having this up might make finding a new job difficult. Good luck
| and I hope your wife recovers.
| donohoe wrote:
| Site does not belong to OP
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28555853
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| I know somebody who has been navigating Atlassian's PTO policy.
| For what it's worth, their manager and team have been very
| accommodating, notwithstanding the extremely unclear policies.
|
| That being said, unlimited PTO is a scam. Nothing more to it.
|
| Imagine if your bank didn't keep track of your account balance,
| instead offering "unlimited" withdrawals. Then, whenever they
| feel like you have withdrawn "too much", they terminate your
| account. Nobody would sign up for that! Unlimited PTO is no
| different - it's a way to take advantage of the power imbalance
| between employer and employee, nothing more.
| rmk wrote:
| Unlimited PTO appears to be a bone of contention here. The simple
| fact is that "unlimited" PTO is never unlimited in practice, and
| there's the all-important caveat of "subject to management
| approval" even with unlimited PTO. Unlimited PTO is simply a way
| for the company to get away with no money paid out to you at
| separation from the company. In that sense, it really is a scam
| that can entrap the unwary and the naive.
|
| The other fact of life is that HR is there to protect the
| company, not the individual employee, when there is a problem.
| The priority for HR is to eliminate, reduce or limit company
| exposure to liability from noncompliance with employment law. A
| secondary objective is to be the eyes and ears of the company
| (via exit interviews, complaints from disgruntled employees,
| etc.). As with any job function, HR can also fail at this task
| (the Susan Rigetti case at Uber), sometimes in spectacular ways.
| If you are in an adversarial situation with the company, be
| _very_ careful about HR and document every single dealing with
| them. Seek independent legal counsel, and walk away from a bad
| employment situation before you even need to seek out such
| support.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Is this specific to Atlassian? It sounds like most US employment
| horror stories. Shit employment rights, lack of PTO, shitty
| managers, etc.
|
| Obviously it's bad, but this just sounds like US corporate
| culture to me. 99% sure you wouldn't see the same horror stories
| from an EU Atlassian office purely because worker rights are
| better, you legally have more paid time off and the "unlimited
| vacation" bait doesn't exist.
| howeyc wrote:
| > I've been working two years without promotion, bad Atlassain.
|
| > I went on PTO and another worker took over and important
| project. This coworker did a fantastic job on a project with high
| visibility. They got promoted, not me.
|
| The reason you took PTO doesn't really matter, work either got
| done by you or it didn't. The one the that did the work got
| promoted, pikachu face meme.
|
| Yes, the wife's diagnoses sucks a lot, and you should probably
| get PTO in some way, but the promotion points are just weird.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| I'll accept that what the author posted is the truth. Atlassian
| did not give him what he wanted or needed. And now this battle is
| public, he will never get anything else from them. The proverbial
| glove has been thrown down and they will fight you on all fronts.
|
| To everyone else, If this happens to you, I implore you to get
| legal counsel ASAP, and keep it quiet. Find out all your options
| and strike a quiet deal with your employer. That is the best
| you'll ever get.
|
| Almost any large company has much deeper pockets than you do and
| their reputation is more valuable that their ethics. You'll
| rarely win in the court of public opinion and you'll probably
| never get hired anywhere again. I say this even if you were 100%
| in the right.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| So basically, it sounds like you want people to shut up, take
| what the bosses give, and you want the entire industry to
| blacklist people for speaking out against abuse.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| No. I do not want people to "shut up and take what bosses
| give". I want people to negotiate in the best possible manner
| to get the best personal outcome. We do this all the time
| with salary negotiation.
|
| IMHO, the actions taken by the author, while possibly noble,
| did nothing to further the benefit of his wife while
| potentially risking his future employment opportunities. I
| genuinely want he and his wife to have the best outcome and I
| just don't see how his actions achieve this goal - in both
| the short term and the long.
|
| I would have asked for unpaid time off and for Atlassian to
| continue to pay my medical insurance. That would be a deal
| which I think could have been reached.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They reached a deal where the employee got unlimited
| unpaided time off. He was fired.
|
| The risk of you becoming so popular that hr will remember
| your name and blacklist you everywhere is lower then you
| think.
|
| Speaking out is freeing and healing. That may be part.
| user5994461 wrote:
| >>> I would have asked for unpaid time off and for
| Atlassian to continue to pay my medical insurance. That
| would be a deal which I think could have been reached.
|
| The author was fired if you believe the title of the post,
| so it's way past asking for time off or insurance coverage.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > Find out all your options and strike a quiet deal with your
| employer. That is the best you'll ever get.
|
| All I see here is "cower and whimper like a kicked dog, roll
| over on your back and present your belly".
| reginold wrote:
| I like this summary. Bend over for your overlords, and sell
| out the commons.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think that's a pretty uncharitable interpretation.
| "Strength" does not have to mean "post a mostly-
| unsubstantiated rant on a website". To me, strength is
| quietly gathering evidence and consulting with a lawyer to
| make your case, and then hitting them hard -- in court --
| when you are ready.
|
| Given the choice the offer made, the more likely outcome here
| is that Atlassian will give him nothing, and he'll suffer
| some hard-to-detect discrimination from other companies for
| the rest of his career. To use your analogy, he walked into a
| room full of sword-wielding wolves, stuck out his belly, and
| said "cut me, I dare you"... after which they said "sure",
| and disemboweled him.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Alternatively, you can see it as
|
| - (Quiet, Lawyer) Watch your target carefully and, when the
| opportunity presents itself, go for the throat
|
| vs
|
| - (Publicly Yell) Bark loudly at your target with your teeth
| shown, so that everyone sees you, and the have no choice but
| to treat you like a rabid dog and put you down.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| Sun Tsu would agree with you.
| slownews45 wrote:
| It's called not being an idiot.
|
| I've known people who transition to get a great new job, then
| pursue a pretty clean case (quietly) against their old
| company - often with pretty good results.
|
| This demonstrates you have power of choice in your destiny
| (the opposite of cowering and whimpering) and it's
| practically much easier to job search while employed. And
| I've seen old managers let go, not because of the case per se
| but because they were losing staff.
|
| This type of thing? There is going to be some sympathy for
| their manager having to manage someone like this (who does
| not sound very professional).
|
| The case is also easy after you leave. You don't need the
| money as you have a new job, you don't need to keep your
| (old) job - you've already left. So it's simple, so and so
| kept trying to get one room for both of us while travelling,
| here are their nasty text messages, work environment was not
| healthy, would prefer not to litigate the issue. Done. Now
| you are really set.
| usui wrote:
| This is a little harsh. I think it's very situational and
| depends mostly on whether you feel better about blowing the
| whistle and helping others or getting some beneficial
| concession from the company whether monetary or not. In this
| case, the aforementioned author's wife has _cancer_ and seems
| to feel some kind of moral obligation to disclose this to
| others.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Reserving your firepower for negotiation is the opposite of
| folding your hand.
| otikik wrote:
| That is probably what I would do. But only because I avoid
| confrontation, sometimes to my disadvantage.
|
| I admire what this guy is doing.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| So let 'em cover it up?
|
| Fuck that noise.
|
| They're already well-known as a crappy company.
| cowpig wrote:
| Imploring others to benefit themselves at the expense of
| everyone else is a strange pattern I see a lot on these forums.
|
| It's clearly not in your (or any of our) interests to do this,
| as the obfuscation perpetuates these problems. So what is the
| motivation behind this kind of post?
| [deleted]
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| It's lashing out. Sour grapes. Procrastination. The
| perception of doing something to address a problem but the
| problem is: the action isn't the correct one, these words are
| not directed at the right people.
|
| This should have been a letter from his lawyer to his ex-
| employer, probably HR.
| syshum wrote:
| >>You'll rarely win in the court of public opinion
|
| I think this is wrong... Likely you could win in public
| opinion. It will not matter much though because
|
| >>you'll probably never get hired anywhere again.
|
| This is likely true. Winning in Public Opinion will not amount
| to much when you are homeless and hungry
|
| >>I implore you to get legal counsel ASAP, and keep it quiet.
| Find out all your options
|
| Which will likely amount of little to nothing... Even if you
| sue likely the legal fees will eat up much of the award. As
| with most legal battles the only people that win is the
| lawyers.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Regarding getting hired again, I went through something very
| similar to what he did (except my employer was highly
| supportive, so I had nothing complain about online) and I
| can't blame him for writing this.
|
| He may have disqualified himself from employers looking for
| single 20-somethings with a complete devotion to work, but
| there are managers in the world who are going to understand
| what he and his wife have gone through. Especially after this
| last year, we're going to have to understand that some of our
| coworkers have publicly expressed their pain before.
|
| Perhaps a future employer will include a non-disparagement
| clause but I'd be surprised if he didn't find a new role that
| was better suited to his new life circumstances.
| User23 wrote:
| > I implore you to get legal counsel ASAP, and keep it quiet
|
| If you're a white male the lawyer will politely tell you no
| thanks because you'll never get punitive damages. Why does that
| matter you ask? Well ordinarily wrongful termination is only
| subject to actual damages. So if you get another job in a month
| you can get at most one month's pay in damages. But wait it
| gets better! If you can't find another job because you're not
| able to perform those job duties, say because you're caring for
| a sick loved one, then the court will deem that your actual
| damages are zero. Obviously no lawyer wants even a great shot
| at winning 30% of nothing on contingency.
|
| The only exception would be if you're in a jurisdiction with
| juries that are exceptionally sympathetic to the plights of
| white men and will vote for punitive damages large enough to
| make it worth a lawyer's time.
|
| In any event the consult is free so by all means talk to a
| lawyer, but realistically you'll get better results by just
| asking nicely for a separation package.
| babycake wrote:
| Employers have deep pockets. They'll win over your legal
| counsel by dragging it out for years, making you bankrupt.
|
| At least by exposing it publicly, the company is now forced to
| address the issue in front of... well everyone. And, other
| people can see if they've been screwed over as well. After
| decades and decades of employees trying to resolve matters
| internally and quietly, and just getting retribution, does
| anyone actually think being quiet is still the way to go?
|
| I mean, that's how #metoo got started, by going public and
| getting people together to push back on corporate BS. Same
| applies here, and for all corporate issues.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Companies in general don't care about winning. They just care
| about costs as well as focus. What would they gain in return
| for years of legal bills?
| babycake wrote:
| They get to continue suppressing current and future
| employees.
|
| Here's a perfect illustration: You know that recent article
| that came out about Google not paying their temp employees
| fairly? Well were you aware of that problem before that
| article came out? If not, apparently full time Google
| employees weren't either and are now organizing to fix
| that.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/15/google-
| un...
|
| It's win-win for employees to go public.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Every time I read these google employees are going on
| strike / organizing I which they would describe HOW MANY
| actual google employees are ACTUALLY going on strike and
| organizing or whatever.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _the company is now forced to address the issue in front
| of... well everyone._
|
| No they don't. They'll just release a statement saying "to
| protect employee privacy, we don't comment on any employee's
| situation, but we will say that we are committed to treating
| our employees well and blah blah blah". It'll blow over after
| a few months, and everyone will forget it.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I've never sued an employer, but I have commenced legal
| action against my deep-pocketed landlord (they were a
| developer and didn't feel like following the eviction &
| compensation laws for doing a rental apartment to condo
| conversion). I won, without even needing a lawyer.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| You can talk to a lawyer or a HR professional and not make it
| a battle with your employer (or even known by them). You'll
| just get perspective and learn if your position is valid or
| not. Better to know the law and your options before you
| negotiate. Had the writer know what was legally owed to him,
| he may have taken a more productive path.
| reginold wrote:
| Doesn't #metoo prove the system is pretty badly broken?
|
| Maybe for people of privilege this plan works. But it's at
| the expense of others without.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| Good point. I think #meetoo showed that internal
| corporate oversight failed miserably for women. A lot of
| women were done wrong by many companies and I'm glad
| their struggle became known and I'm glad things have
| changed (but still more change is needed).
|
| This situation is a dispute over compensation (PTO), not
| an accusation of abuse. I stand by my premise that the
| best way to help his wife would be to further negotiate
| with Atlassian for unpaid time off w/med benefits or
| something similar.
| buffington wrote:
| I've been in a similar situation as that described by the
| author, and went shopping for lawyers.
|
| The four lawyers who would even talk to me basically said this:
|
| Even if you have documentation, there's nothing stopping a
| company from producing an "HR file" that shows they tried to
| correct an employee's course, and the employee failed to meet
| expectations.
|
| There are laws in some states where, if you ask, a company is
| required to send you all documentation they have about your
| employment. So I did, and was shocked at how out of sync their
| records were with reality.
|
| What their records showed was a belligerent, reluctant, and
| untalented employee, one who was given many many warnings.
|
| Which is not what my actual experience. I was routinely praised
| by my manager for exceeding expectations, had great
| relationships with everyone I worked with, could prove that my
| contributions made the company 3x more than they paid me, etc,
| etc.
|
| But when struck with pancreatitis, they let me go. While I was
| in the hospital. Their reason: I didn't request the time off.
| As if that's a thing you do when you nearly die and are saved
| by emergency surgery.
|
| TL;DR - it's easy to say "lawyer up", but in reality, much
| harder to fight than you think, even when you lawyer up.
|
| The good news is I work for a company that doesn't just
| encourage people to use unlimited PTO, they will frequently pay
| for vacations for people who go above and beyond. Like, 5 star
| resort, airfare included for 10 days for up to 4 people.
|
| When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, they said "do what you
| need to do", as I was his only caregiver. Feeling a bit
| cautious given past experiences I went on FMLA so that, should
| things go bad, at least I'd taken the correct legal steps.
| After being away for two months, when I got back they said "we
| have unlimited PTO, so we let you use 5 days of FMLA just so
| it's official, but paid the rest. Welcome back." So, in a way,
| the first company described did me a favor, since I wouldn't be
| at my current company had they not fired me.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Thanks for this and wow.
|
| To save other foreigners, googling tells me:
|
| 1) FMLA: The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides
| certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job
| protected leave per year.
|
| 2) PTO is paid time off.
| buffington wrote:
| I forgot to mention: the company that fired me did offer a
| severance package, though if I'd accepted it, I would have
| needed to agree to never talk about the circumstances of my
| leaving the company.
|
| It was worth every penny I didn't get by telling them I
| wouldn't sign the severance agreement.
| _moof wrote:
| My favorite term in these agreements is the one forbidding
| you from even _mentioning the existence of the agreement._
| munk-a wrote:
| If you've never signed an NDA that prevents you from
| speaking about the parties involved in another NDA you
| haven't lived!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| How does this work? Can an NDA prohibit you from talking
| about itself, or does it have to be structured in a
| cycle, with one NDA protecting "future NDA", and the next
| NDA protecting "the last NDA"?
| _moof wrote:
| The one I've seen prohibited talking about itself, except
| with a lawyer.
| munk-a wrote:
| There is always an NDA you can talk about - but that NDA
| could consist solely of the contents "All agreements
| signed while employed with so-and-so are confidential" -
| which restricts even your ability to discuss the parties
| of other NDAs.
| qzw wrote:
| Interesting experiences, but without the names of the
| companies (or at least what they rhyme with), what can we
| actually learn from your story? There's a shit company and
| a great company out there, and good for you for ending up
| at the good one. But this just reads like a form of humble
| brag.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You didn't name them. You could have shared and accepted.
| georgiecasey wrote:
| > You'll rarely win in the court of public opinion and you'll
| probably never get hired anywhere again
|
| I thoroughly disagree with both these points.
| 41209 wrote:
| Sometimes standing up for what is right is more important.
|
| Considering this company directly interfered with his ability
| to care for his wife, it makes sense for him to write this.
|
| It's worth remembering humans are not entirely rational. The
| most rational thing would be for him to of simply quit when
| they weren't treating him right.
|
| I've done that a few times. And it's worked very well for me.
| pasabagi wrote:
| > strike a quiet deal with your employer.
|
| I guess the question is, is it the worst your employer will
| ever get? Sometimes, if you want to win, the opponent just has
| to lose _more_. It might not be a good strategy for improving
| your own life, but it might be a good strategy for doing as
| much damage as possible to the organization that has wronged
| you.
|
| Personally, I generally feel that life is too short. But I
| think the more belligerent approach is probably better for
| society in general. If everybody went full Michael Kohlhaas
| when wronged, the world would be a much better place, and
| people that do so should be commended.
| kelnos wrote:
| Based on what the author has written, I'm just not feeling
| particularly strongly here. He has a bunch of unsubstantiated
| claims, plus some screenshots from Blind (which I don't
| consider representative or reliable).
|
| If I take what is written at face value, and assume it's
| true, I think it's pretty bad, but unfortunately not that
| remarkable or unusual. Unless he's holding back some damning
| evidence of actual law-breaking, I don't really see how
| Atlassian will be all that hurt by this.
|
| I already wouldn't want to work for Atlassian because I think
| Jira and Confluence are the some of the worst products I have
| to use, and working on those would probably drive me to
| drink. Reading an unsubstantiated, biased account of their
| employment practices (practices which may not be "practices"
| but more an unfortunate one-off edge case) doesn't really
| move the needle much for me.
| softveda wrote:
| In Australia where Atlassian is headquartered there is a govt
| body names Fair Work Australia where you can complain if you
| believe your workplace rights are violated. They will try to
| work with the company and can take them to a quasi judicial
| body called Fair Work Commission. Next step up is Federal
| Courts.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| And now tell us, how would the rest of us know how working for
| X it's like? Should we just rely on their HR marketing?
|
| By keeping it quiet, the company would be simply getting away
| with their unjust practices and unprofessional management.
|
| If it's clear that the company cannot see that they are doing
| something wrong... you'd be keeping it quiet to get exactly
| what from them?
| sjtindell wrote:
| I agree with both you and the above commenter. Perhaps it is
| optimal to keep quiet for yourself, but optimal for the group
| if none of us keep quiet. A tough problem.
| barneygale wrote:
| I really don't see the point of existing unless we try to
| make the world a better place. Props to OP for posting
| this.
| bserge wrote:
| Keep quiet on your real identity and use the anonymity of
| the Internet to share everything.
|
| Just be careful so it can't be traced back to you. That can
| be pretty limiting, but it's better than nothing.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| His first duty is to his family, so he should have done
| anything within the bounds of morality to get as much
| time/money/aid for his wife. That's why I say take the path
| of privacy to get a settlement.
|
| Also, this isn't an issue of a company doing something
| illegal or immoral. We are not talking slave labor or dumping
| toxic chemicals. This is an argument over compensation levels
| and therefore I don't think he owes the world his story for
| the cost of making himself a pariah.
| franciscop wrote:
| Somehow since it wasn't mentioned in the article and me
| being European, I didn't even think about money as a
| relevant factor in the whole debacle, only about the time
| involved and needed to be with the family. I cannot imagine
| being in the same situation, and besides the horrible bad
| situation, having to worry about going bankrupt.
| MrDresden wrote:
| I am a EU based software dev, who is currently going
| through a cancer diagnosis & treatment of a partner (her
| second one in as many years).
|
| Knowing that I have legally mandated sick leave with pay
| that covers me for some time has helped immensely while
| going through this ordeal. Not to mention all healthcare
| costs taken care of by the state (rather than via some
| weird golden handcuff scheme with my employer).
|
| I simply can not imagine how vadly workers in the US are
| exposed when the unexpected happens (and it does,
| unexpectedly).
| [deleted]
| helloguillecl wrote:
| Oh I think we read different articles. This is about
| deception that company used to sell themselves as better
| places to work than they actually are.
|
| Knowingly missrepresenting the working condition is exactly
| that: immoral.
|
| INAL but is see no way this would damage his legal
| leverage... actually the opposite.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _INAL but is see no way this would damage his legal
| leverage... actually the opposite._
|
| IANAL either, but I imagine posting this gives an opening
| for Atlassian to sue for slander and ruin the author by
| taking forever to debate minutiae of every sentence in
| the article - whereas if the author went after Atlassian
| directly, the case would be only about what the company
| did or did not do to them personally.
| adolph wrote:
| _"I'm not f---ing around with this, and I'm not
| continuing to play games," Avenatti told Nike reps,
| according to court papers. "You guys know enough now to
| know you've got a serious problem. And it's worth more in
| exposure to me to just blow the lid on this thing. A few
| million dollars doesn't move the needle for me."_
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michael-avenatti-
| guilty...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > Avenatti was arrested in March, about 15 minutes after
| tweeting that he had scheduled a press conference to
| "disclose a major high school/college basketball scandal
| perpetrated by @Nike."
|
| That's one quick police response. Regardless of the
| merits of the case, I'm scared of the headline itself.
| bragr wrote:
| They don't work that fast. It is more likely he found out
| they were on the way to arrest him and announced that as
| a way to get ahead of the news.
| [deleted]
| fullstackwife wrote:
| It's better to not extrapolate it on entire company (a dozen
| of offices, thousands of employees worldwide, different
| policies per continent or country).
| errantspark wrote:
| This person is giving advice from the PoV of an individual
| comfortable with playing zero sum or even negative sum games
| as long as they are able to continue winning.
|
| Don't be like this, don't corrode the commons for personal
| gain. By not speaking out you are endorsing a harmful
| asymmetry, make no mistake about your personal responsibility
| for perpetuating hostile norms.
| outworlder wrote:
| I would normally agree _IF_ the person didn't already have
| to deal with his wife's cancer. Under the US health system
| no less.
|
| Some other reason? Meh, it's just a job. But getting thrown
| into distress, financial or otherwise, warrants looking out
| for oneself (and family) first.
|
| Choose your battles.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| The more the collective situation worsen, the worst all
| individual cases go. You're advocating a vicious cycle,
| or I can't see a possible equilibrium.
| jsf01 wrote:
| On anonymous review sites like Glassdoor. Companies care
| about their reputation on there yet employees who post are
| fairly protected by anonymity.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| I have done this for a company who was knowingly making
| materially false information to investors. The company
| merely asked glassdoor to remove it, and they did. It's
| probably not worth the liability to glassdoor to have
| reviews that actually show material deficiencies in a
| company, like lying about benefits.
|
| I've also done this on yelp when I was working as a
| contractor when I should have been an employee. The company
| informed yelp I was an employee, so my review was removed
| (yelp only has a policy employees cannot leave reviews,
| they had no such policy for independent contractors at the
| time I left the review). This was doubly insulting because
| I tried to inform yelp the entire reason I left a review
| was because I _should_ have been an employee and not a
| contractor, and yelp informed me I was actually an employee
| so I could not use their platform!
|
| I also disagree about it being a career ender to publicly
| reveal serious dishonesty in your employer. The company I
| work for now usually laughs when I talk about all the shit
| I've been through and spoken of ( I worked for two very
| dishonest companies, out of the dozen or so I've been
| with). If you work for honest people, then they have a
| vested interest in the dishonest being exposed (its good
| for their business).
| ohazi wrote:
| You can _inform_ the company (through your lawyer) that their
| options are a settlement with you in exchange for keeping
| quiet, or public airing of dirty laundry. The company can
| then decide if the settlement amount is worth the PR hit.
|
| You don't do this out of the goodness of your heart to inform
| other people how bad the company is, you do this purely to
| maximize the probability of receiving any sort of
| compensation from the company. Most people (?) would only
| consider this route if they genuinely feel that the company
| has egregiously wronged them, because it's a big, low-
| probability-of-success pain, and airing dirty laundry is
| easier and often more cathartic.
|
| If you have already decided that informing other people is
| more important to you than a settlement (or have concluded
| that the effort is not worth your while), then fine, you've
| made a different decision, and perhaps the commons are better
| as a result. But if you decide to air the dirty laundry,
| you'll usually lose the ability to change your mind later.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| >You inform the company (through your lawyer) that their
| options are a settlement with you in exchange for keeping
| quiet, or public airing of dirty laundry
|
| That sounds like blackmail/extortion. I'm not a lawyer, but
| the first amendment should protect you pretty well from
| merely making truthful accusations, but once you threaten
| money in exchange for not making them it could be construed
| as a very serious crime.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Also not a lawyer, but isn't it relatively common for
| someone to get a payday on condition of not making
| something public?
| jaywalk wrote:
| Absolutely. But you're not getting that payday through a
| threat (extortion) you're getting it through a mutual
| agreement.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| That doesn't strike me as a very clear distinction. If
| you negotiate for more money in return for remaining
| silent, is that blackmail?
| jaywalk wrote:
| No, it's a negotiation at that point. I'm not a lawyer,
| but I'm fairly certain that the difference lies in
| whether or not you make a demand. If you simply say "I'm
| going public with this info on X date" and leave it at
| that, it's not extortion. If the other party decides they
| want to pay you to not do that, it's on them and you can
| negotiate from there because they made the offer. If you
| say "I'm going public with this info on X date unless you
| pay me" it's extortion.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| I'm not sure it works like that. You may get away with
| it, assuming the lawyer never reveals your intent, but
| this sounds a lot like the "security" extortion rackets
| of the mob:
|
| "Hey thought you should know, my 'security' company is
| currently for hire for businesses around town. We heard
| through the underground grapevine that a lot of folks may
| lose some product in their bodegas next month. Anyway,
| nice to introduce you to my 'security' business -- have a
| great month!"
|
| If you revealed that your true intent was blackmail, and
| that's what this is, to your lawyer or anyone else then I
| imagine the intent in combination with the act is enough
| to nail you.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Yeah, no lawyer worth their license would ever do this.
| lhorie wrote:
| Are you just expressing cynicism or are you actually
| interested? If the latter, you can just talk to insiders.
|
| I had a somewhat curious personal experience at Uber. I went
| to interview there circa 2016/2017 and got an offer but had
| to wait for a visa to come out. In the meantime, the Susan
| Fowler scandal exploded. The hiring manager reached out to me
| out of his own accord to express his own outrage and how he'd
| absolutely not tolerate toxic behavior within his area of
| reach, and that many others within the company shared that
| feeling.
|
| Turns out he was right: the team I eventually joined was
| fantastic and indeed there was a very large part of the
| company that was deeply troubled (and often quite vocal!)
| about the growing accounts of harassment and injustices.
| Driven by pressure to get the house in order, this eventually
| culminated in hundreds of separate investigations, and
| various degrees of corrective actions (including firing
| several perpetrators)
|
| Since then, I've heard my share of complaints about higher
| ups as well (being in a role that involves quite a bit of
| cross-department communication), so it's not like it's all
| rainbows and roses, but my main point is that if you ask the
| average joe in a company, they're often happy to be
| straightforward with you.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| Funny that you mention Susan Fowler, because she acted the
| same way for the commons.
|
| I'd be probably not be speaking about toxic behaviour with
| a hiring manager, during a high-stake hiring process. Maybe
| you wouldn't have either if it wasn't for her
| whistleblowing.
| lhorie wrote:
| Yes, to be clear, I hugely respect people like Fowler and
| others who come forth from vulnerable positions to shed
| light into problems. IMHO, the cleaning house at Uber was
| largely thanks to her.
|
| FWIW, I'm involved with hiring and have on occasion been
| asked by candidates about company culture (and in one
| case, specifically about the Fowler case). I try to be as
| candid and transparent as possible with these sorts of
| topics, because that just seems like the natural thing to
| do.
| ISL wrote:
| For truly egregious conduct, one can avail themselves of the
| state attorney-general. They have resources and tools that
| every company must respect. At least in Washington State,
| there are also mandated exceptions to all company's non-
| disclosure agreements for this purpose (I am not a lawyer,
| this is not legal advice).
|
| GP's statement has a lot of merit. Going on the attack
| against a well-resourced opponent should only be considered
| after long and deliberate consultation with legal counsel.
| Even if you don't involve an attorney, your opponent
| may/will. Attorneys are expensive and proceedings may take
| far longer than someone who believes themselves to be in the
| right may expect.
|
| The system is imperfect, but it abstracts conflict to a
| higher and more-deliberate plane than bludgeoning one another
| with sticks or urging a mob to pick up torches.
| mc32 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Employers want to keep things as quiet as possible and will
| settle and stay out of court even if your chances are very slim
| because a one time payout is cheaper than gathering evidence,
| assembling lawyers, sapping admin time, etc. Unless you go big
| and then they will take you to court and most likely you'll
| lose because you don't have lawyers on retainer nor the bank.
|
| Then, even if you win, now you're persona non grata for most HR
| departments because typically only particular personalities
| will take on a company and the chances of you being
| unpredictable are calculated to have gone up. So make sure it's
| a retirement payout as your chances for employment went down.
|
| So, unless it's something egregious and utterly wrong, take
| your losses and walk away with a quiet settlement.
| babycake wrote:
| And that's why tech needs a union. You'll always lose as an
| employee, on your own.
| kelnos wrote:
| Agreed. There will be plenty of time to rant after legal
| options have been explored and allowed to take their course,
| assuming you're not forced to sign a non-disparagement
| agreement in order to get what you want.
|
| It's not right, but that's just how things are.
| user5994461 wrote:
| The non-disparatement agreement doesn't apply to
| whisteblowing[1] and is null is forced[2].
|
| [1] all confidentiality restrictions are void when
| whisteblowing, you better verify that your case can qualify
| for whistleblowering in your jurisdiction.
|
| [2] for some definitions of forced, as in not allowed to
| leave the room until you signed the agreement presented in
| front of you.
| reginold wrote:
| Upvoting because I think it's important to talk about this, not
| because I agree.
|
| Appreciate everyone else's responses around this being a dark
| pattern where "pad publicity" gets paid off.
|
| Is there a role for more anonymity on the internet?
| twirlock wrote:
| >i am a giant pussy
| paxys wrote:
| You are assuming he actually has a case. None of the
| accusations make sense if you read into it for more than a
| second.
|
| Atlassian discriminates against parents - by not promoting
| someone right after they get back from a long parental leave.
|
| Atlassian discriminates in hiring - because a candidate the
| author liked didn't get picked one time.
|
| Atlassian discriminates on PTO - because the author was denied
| vacation time right after he got back from medical leave.
|
| If you go to a lawyer they will ask for one solid, verifiable
| claim, not a dozen vague accusations or angry childish rants.
| ununoctium87 wrote:
| +1000
|
| This article should be read with a huge grain of salt.
|
| They forget to mention (or I missed) the 30 odd days of "no
| questions asked" special leave we got over the past 2 years.
|
| They also don't mention how, by policy, small leave
| applications are approved, no questions asked.
|
| I'm a current P5 SWE at Atlassian and whilst I agree that
| going from P5 to P6 tends to be difficult, I can't say I've
| observed any of the other aspects mentioned in this post.
|
| I personally have a larger frustration with there being too
| much time off as I actually enjoy the work I do
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I'm a current P5 SWE at Atlassian and whilst I agree
| that going from P5 to P6 tends to be difficult_
|
| Which... is fine? It _should_ get harder and harder to
| climb the ladder the farther you climb, because --
| especially as an individual contributor -- it 's hard to
| increase your impact on the company more and more as you
| climb. And on the flip side, I see plenty of people getting
| promoted before they are really ready, and become
| ineffective -- and worse, counter-effective -- in their new
| role. Then they either languish, get fired, or get fed up
| and quit. Or worse, they stick around and make things more
| difficult for everyone else.
| wetmore wrote:
| > I personally have a larger frustration with there being
| too much time off as I actually enjoy the work I do
|
| Can't you just not take the time off? If it's mandatory I'm
| sure you could still work while "off". Honestly I have an
| extremely hard time relating to this sentence.
| danw1979 wrote:
| Until your last paragraph, I believed what you were saying.
| genewitch wrote:
| You and me both. Prime example of astroturfing.
| user5994461 wrote:
| Aren't these up to the manager to approve?
|
| A different manager can make a completely different
| experience in a single company. A rule of thumb when things
| blow out of proportion is that the manager is quite likely
| to have been a catalyst.
| user5994461 wrote:
| The PTO is unclear in my opinion. There may be something
| depending on what's written in the contract and what
| jurisdiction he is in.
|
| There's way too little information to judge. He said that he
| was fired but no more details on that. There should have been
| a conversation and a termination letter at the very least.
| Thetawaves wrote:
| Not approving more than 10 days in 1.5 years given the
| circumstances is inexcusable.
| sshine wrote:
| Having to argue and persuade to get time off, rather than
| having a fixed protocol, is simply a red flag also.
| greg5green wrote:
| >Not approving more than 10 days in 1.5 years given the
| circumstances is inexcusable
|
| Atlassian should have been more flexible given the
| circumstances (and maybe they were! The author didn't
| mention the leave of absence they took, but it's mentioned
| in their manager's email denying them taking "Vacay Your
| Way" right after getting back from a leave), but asking for
| 2 months of PTO all at once is a lot different than taking
| 9 weeks over 1.5 years. The author did not say they were
| denied taking any more than 10 days of PTO over that 1.5
| years, they were pissed because they felt they were
| "accruing it" when they were, in fact, not.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| My exact impression too. The article set off some alarm bells
| in me - it feels tad too lightweight on actual evidence of
| misconduct, and too rich repetitively making the same
| emotional points. Could be explained entirely by the author
| writing it in justifiable anger. Or it could be because
| they're trying to blow a few situations out of proportion.
|
| I've seen plenty of posts like this landing on HN over the
| years, and it's not always a given the accused party is in
| the wrong. While my first instinct is obviously to believe
| the author, I'm withholding judgement until more details are
| clear.
|
| EDIT:
|
| I keep in mind an old HN drama about AirBnB, I'll try to look
| up details and edit them in - but what I remember to this day
| is, there was an angry post vilifying AirBnB, the commenters
| believed it fully and became very angry. As I recall, pg
| himself jumped in to defend AirBnB, only to be booed out. I
| also recall being convinced the company is strongly in the
| wrong. Then it turned out the situation was entirely
| opposite, AirBnB was in the right. I felt really stupid for
| jumping the gun, not waiting for full story to come out.
|
| (And then, of course, AirBnB turned out to be a socially
| destructive company, so I don't like them anyway - but for
| different, and better thought out reasons.)
|
| EDIT2: The AirBnB story I refer to happened in 2011, when a
| blogger described an extremely bad experience with AirBnB,
| causing one hell of a shitstorm in general startup sphere
| (with plenty of big names and news outlets getting involved).
| There was way too much written about this on HN for me to
| find what was the resolution now - skimming quickly I'm no
| longer sure which side was proven to be guilty of what. But I
| do recall the feeling of first being so sure in outrage, and
| then ashamed after discovering the story is _way_ more
| complicated than what it seemed at first.
| gorwell wrote:
| If you watch for it, you'll notice that pattern is common
| with discrimination claims. It's self destructive too because
| it prevents self analysis and improvement if you believe you
| didn't get a promotion or whatever because of discrimination.
| Then the cycle repeats.
| reginold wrote:
| Playing the zero sum game, yes.
|
| Upvoting because I think it's important to talk about this, not
| because I agree.
|
| Appreciate everyone else's responses around this being a dark
| pattern where "pad publicity" gets paid off.
|
| Is there a role for more anonymity on the internet?
| reginold wrote:
| Playing the zero sum game, yes.
|
| Upvoting because I think it's important to talk about this, not
| because I agree.
|
| Appreciate everyone else's responses around this being a dark
| pattern where "bad publicity" gets paid off.
|
| How do we incentivize companies to hire people like this? How
| do as I founder say "I want people like this so that our
| company is strong, not weak like Shitlassian?"
|
| Is there a role for more anonymity on the internet?
| kelnos wrote:
| I think smaller companies might value this sort of thing, but
| once a company gets large enough to have a big HR department
| where recruiting reports to HR, people like this get
| automatically filtered out before anyone with more principles
| might see them.
| chana_masala wrote:
| I've been waiting for almost three weeks for their internal
| recruiters to schedule an on-site. Each time I follow up they are
| "working on it." I've given up especially given their general
| reputation
| hkt wrote:
| Tech workers need unions. Most have benificent funds to support
| people through hardship too.
|
| UK: https://utaw.tech/about USA: lots here
| https://organize.fyi/#tech Aus: https://www.cwu.org.au/
| slownews45 wrote:
| Goodness. Susan Fowler - you read her reflection on working at
| Uber (she left, found a different position). Hard not to be 100%
| in her corner. At least for me!
|
| This though - what? Are all software engineers like this guy?
| He's been there pretty recently 2019.
|
| The whole thing with having a family / kids and atlassian is now
| facing a class action?
|
| When I was young I slept in a HAMMOCK while working at the
| office. I now have a family. And yes, it is harder to get
| promoted, simply because I have less interest in working 90 hour
| work weeks! The guy took parental leave during his career growth
| (and was only there a bit before). I mean, your job is kept for
| you, but you are also looking to get promoted while not there?
|
| Unlimited PTO is garbage. It means in consultation with your
| bosses and subject to their continued happiness and needs of
| company you can take time off. Reality is you get unequal usage -
| it's actually not FAIR, the nice person is to scared, the abuser
| abuses it until they run the risk of getting fired. Just do
| normal PTO plans folks so folks KNOW they have a right to their
| 4-6 weeks! I think unlimited PTO is the worst thing. This is not
| an atlassian thing though.
|
| Hard to believe there is not more to this story just given the
| style of this guys writing.
|
| My own piece of advice? Quit and get a better job. These
| companies don't deserve you. Why waste time on them? Every time
| I've done that (once) it was the best decision I made (ever). And
| if you think all managers are crap, become a consultant.
| m0ck wrote:
| >When I was young I slept in a HAMMOCK while working at the
| office. I now have a family. And yes, it is harder to get
| promoted, simply because I have less interest in working 90
| hour work weeks!
|
| Honestly, that sounds awful. As an European I am always amazed
| at this American mentality. I would never ever work more than
| 40 hours a week as an employee. Even that I consider too much
| for a healthy life and I aim at ~30 hours a week. I would never
| agreed to be called in the middle of the night, because there
| is a production outage in a company I don't own. I would never
| lose a good night sleep over such company. I will put in my
| hours for the salary we have agreed on and that's it, I don't
| care. Americans have been collectively brainwashed into
| thinking that the corporations give a shit about them and that
| the success of the corporation is also the success of its
| employees. Especially in our field, given the shortage of
| qualified engineers, why should I care? You don't want me, you
| won't promote me? Fine, I will talk to the next recruiter in
| the long line that is pilling up in my inbox.
| slownews45 wrote:
| This is uniquely american for sure. I've slept with a pager
| next to me, and wouldn't even go more than 5 minutes from my
| computer if on call. That said, it is a bit uniquely american
| to get paid the way folks do in some cases. And when you are
| young and working with friends, yeah, you do it here.
|
| But this idea that it's illegal to promote someone working
| that kind of crazy number of hours instead of the guy who is
| gone on parental leave? I'm not sure about that. My
| understanding was your job had to preserved while on leave
| (fair), but not that you had to be promoted at same rate.
| smabie wrote:
| You wouldn't work 41 hours a week if it netted you an extra
| mil a year?
|
| People work longer hours because they either enjoy it or they
| think it'll net them more money or both.
|
| If you don't care about that that's fine, but to call
| everyone brainwashed is ridiculous. When the difference
| between working a little and working a lot is the difference
| between 6 figures and 7 figures of comp, you bet your ass
| that many will choose the latter.
| efnx wrote:
| I was working at Formation.ai in SF when my wife was diagnosed
| with stage 3b breast cancer. Formation had an "unlimited PTO"
| policy and didn't even bat an eye at letting me take all the time
| I needed to care for my wife and family during that extremely
| difficult time. I still had some responsibilities but they were
| not time sensitive and rather minimal. The company never asked
| for any formal count of my time off or anything like that. It was
| simply "oh my gosh, we are so sorry - you take all the time you
| need and if there's anything else we can help with just let us
| know."
|
| I'm very, very thankful that I happened to be working for them
| when all of this happened - I was very lucky.
| xrd wrote:
| "Unlimited PTO" is the worst thing in the world. It was super
| confusing to my wife who thought I should just take vacation as
| much as possible. And, it is just an accounting trick to avoid
| paying out accumulated PTO when you leave. Seeing "unlimited PTO"
| as a perk will make me skip applying for a job.
|
| This guy has sacrificed a lot to do this. It's probably not going
| to go well for him, and the impact to Atlassian will be minimal.
| He probably will be dragged into court and this will make his
| life so much worse. I bet he signed something saying he would
| need to have this fight under arbitration, and is now in
| violation of his contract. Atlassian holds all the cards here,
| sadly.
|
| Probably the only happy outcome for him is if some politician
| (perhaps a anti-tech anti-monopolist politician) could take up
| his case. I was subject to something similar when my youngest
| daughter got sick eventually leading to my termination, and the
| company holds all the cards and the laws don't prevent them from
| screwing their employees. I do think we should have laws that
| protect employees and that could happen through legal changes.
| bragr wrote:
| It depends on the company. I worked at a place with unlimited
| PTO where taking time off was encouraged and people typically
| took 3+ weeks a year. It was great being able to take long well
| deserved vacation without worrying you wouldn't have the days
| to cover getting sick or a family emergency.
|
| tl;dr unlimited PTO can be great, just make sure to ask lots of
| follow up questions about culture.
| V-eHGsd_ wrote:
| the most surprising thing about this story to me is that the
| domain shitlassian.com was available.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| Am I the only one who feels the entire work relationship and
| promotion process at Atlassian is a Kafkaesque nightmare? You
| have to earn X number of various statistics so that you can then
| be considered for promotion and they even go to the trouble if
| creating all these employment tiers.
|
| Are all big tech companies like this? It sounds like a miserable
| experience. "Blimey, I'm 10 code points short to be promoted from
| a level 3 widget engineer to a class F level 1 junior vice
| president manager. Maybe I can convert 50 of my code points that
| I've earned into management points. Also, the employee rulebook
| also says that I can roll a D20 and add any untaken holidays and
| if it's above 30 I'll get into the shortlist for next year."
|
| Who comes up with all this ridiculous gamified hierarchy? Maybe
| I'm just naive as I never worked in these BigCos...
| denverkarma wrote:
| The promo process there is a mess for sure. They were trying to
| fix the issue of having different offices all around the world,
| and that people's standards in different markets were - well -
| different. But the effort to create globally a standardized
| promotion process meant it became very hard to get promoted,
| and as a manager it sucked when you had people on your team who
| absolutely deserved it but got stuck in the process and had to
| wait 1-2 years more than they should have, or leave in order to
| get a vertical move.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| _Interesting fact 1: Atlassian is the only company that has words
| "shit" and "fuck" in their core values._
|
| This is a deliberately misleading statement. And not verifiable
| as a fact. When someone makes a deliberately misleading statement
| it's difficult to believe _anything_ they then say.
| aliswe wrote:
| I dont get it. Are you trying to shift the pain on to someone
| else? It wont work. Leave this dead end and focus on something
| constructive.
|
| People are living in poverty in horrible situations in other
| countries, perhaps try to find a way to help them? For example.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Unlimited PTO has the downside of having no minimum that lets you
| go and push back against managers who do not want you to take
| it/haven't set things up so you can actually use it.
|
| I work for a company with unlimited PTO. However, if you are in a
| relatively niche role, it is hard to use as you block people when
| away. A couple colleagues have quit over it.
| trhway wrote:
| In accounting/finance terms the "unlimited" PTO equals 0 PTO,
| and this is why business loves it. Thus you don't earn it, and
| instead it is just like a bonus given [or mostly not] at the
| whims of the manager. The Atlassian HR response is a wonderful
| mix of the "more flexibility" BS and the true harsh reality of
| the "unlimited PTO" scam https://s3.us-
| west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/...
|
| Next thing is "unlimited" health insurance where your medical
| bills are paid [or not] at your manager approval :)
| hmottestad wrote:
| Most of Europe has 5 weeks of holidays. Funny how unlimited PTO
| in the US isn't even close to the very limited time off we get
| in Europe.
|
| Unlimited PTO should average 20 weeks a year to deserve to be
| called unlimited.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| You get more than 10% of your time off for work and that's
| "limited" to you? You expect your employer to pay you for not
| working 40% of the year?! Insanity.
| remus wrote:
| > You expect your employer to pay you for not working 40%
| of the year?! Insanity.
|
| Insanity is saying "You have unlimited PTO", when actually
| it's a very normal 20 days / year or whatever. Unlimited
| !=20 days. Just say you have 20 days leave and then it's
| clear to everyone involved.
| sjtindell wrote:
| To be honest, I think this is quickly becoming an outdated
| way of thinking that favors the business. There is room in
| our current model to respect that businesses, and the
| people who found and run them, have a bottom line and also
| need to grow. But there is also a lot of room for workers
| to be treated much more humanely than they are today. Why
| not try to give people 10%, 20%, or more of their time off?
| A major goal should be humans living their best lives, not
| just businesses achieving the highest valuation or dollar
| profit possible. And that is not the current paradigm. Even
| in Tech, where workers probably have some of the best
| bargaining power of any sector, most of the humane
| treatment is lip service. A more worker centric model is an
| inevitability - more time off, less hours per day, and less
| days per week worked. It's already happening.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > You expect your employer to pay you for not working 40%
| of the year?!
|
| No, but I expect if they won't that they do not call it
| "unlimited".
| gambiting wrote:
| How is that insane? It's just a perk of the job.
|
| And yes I agree with OP - 25 days of guaranteed PTO a year
| is pretty limited and nothing that special.
| [deleted]
| jakeinspace wrote:
| 1. I wouldn't call that necessarily insane, depending on
| the specifics of the work contract. 2. I think the
| objection to using the word "unlimited" is correct. The
| only way I can imagine a truly unlimited PTO policy working
| is if there were concrete performance metrics that I was
| expected to meet to retain my job. And if I manage to get a
| year's worth done on January 2nd, I can take off the rest
| of the year.
| kzrdude wrote:
| IMO payment is not needed, but I'd be happier in a world
| with 20 weeks of vacation per year.
| quesera wrote:
| That's called consulting. :)
|
| It's not for everyone, but it's _very_ flexible.
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| That's priced in. It's just fair that there is a mandatory
| amount for everyone and that's the baseline.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| It's not fair for people that don't want that and would
| rather work more for more compensation.
| [deleted]
| repomies69 wrote:
| I don't know about insanity, in Europe it is very clear
| what the contract and law says, and it is very simple.
| People usually have the holidays around the same time of
| the year. Then again the salaries are much, much lower than
| (some parts) of the US. You could see it as a tradeoff.
|
| However it varies from country to country but in my
| understanding the difference to US is drastic.
| jdlyga wrote:
| Europe has some of the highest amount of vacation time in the
| world. It is not "very limited". Of course we would all like
| to take more though. Here's a map of each country's minimum
| mandatory vacation time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o
| f_minimum_annual_leave_b...
| hmottestad wrote:
| A 5GB data plan is very limited when compared to an
| unlimited one.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| FWIW, I've had unlimited PTO since the start of my career and
| I've definitely averaged somewhere between 5-6 weeks every
| year.
|
| I think it's still a huge perk comparative to other options
| in America; companies that don't give unlimited typically
| just give 2 weeks, and you have to work your way up from
| there via the career ladder.
| easton_s wrote:
| 20 weeks of 52 week year? Even my liberal American brain
| can't seem make that work.
|
| We have uPTO and never had a manager say no. But still only
| have taken 12 days this year. We are so brain washed here in
| the US.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Even at a company that encourages it, unlimited pto was
| stressful. How much are others taking? Have I earned this?
|
| On the bad end, I quit a company that wanted me to take a
| report to task for using too much unlimited pto (3 weeks in a
| year)
| the-dude wrote:
| > wanted me to take a report to task
|
| What does this mean?
| cftm wrote:
| Someone who reports to the poster took three weeks off and
| the powers that be wanted the poster to have a "talk" with
| that person.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It means to talk to them in a stern way about something
| they did wrong.
|
| https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/take%20to%20task
| the-dude wrote:
| I didn't even get the 'report' part. Thanks all.
| [deleted]
| mikestew wrote:
| Parent is a lead/manager of some sort, and they were
| directed to verbally discipline a person who "reports" to
| them (IOW, works under parent commenter's org).
| fencepost wrote:
| Grandparent post was in management, higher management
| wanted one of his reports disciplined for using the
| unlimited time off (in an amount that's not uncommon for
| anyone in management or with 5+ years at the company to
| have as vacation)
| sneak wrote:
| Unlimited PTO is always a passive-aggressive lie.
|
| Companies that start out the relationship with dishonesty are
| bad places to work.
| acidbaseextract wrote:
| I am a small business owner with unlimited PTO. It's not a
| passive aggressive lie. I want people to take time off. I
| just can't have large outstanding liabilities associated with
| accrued PTO.
| [deleted]
| hmottestad wrote:
| Do employees take out more than the regular 5 weeks a year
| that most people in Europe do?
| withinboredom wrote:
| I worked somewhere where this was the case. A guy went on a
| two week vacation and called in every two weeks to extend
| it: for four months. Genius. After that, it was still
| unlimited, but after three weeks, it was unpaid.
| munk-a wrote:
| Can't you just force vacation time payout annually to avoid
| large liabilities? I've worked in places like that and it's
| usually received pretty well - there isn't any expectation
| of accruing half a year of vacation over several years of
| employment anymore - at least not in younger (under forty)
| folks.
| ghaff wrote:
| Any company I've worked at with an accrual vacation
| system has typically had an accrual max, i.e. your
| vacation doesn't go away but you stop accumulating more
| when it hits the cap which is usually something like 1.5x
| annual accrual.
| munk-a wrote:
| That's a good way to avoid the situation where employees
| need to take vacations as unpaid time in january but they
| still end up hitting the same issue in June (or whenever
| the cap kicks in). So if you accrued up to the max at one
| of these places would the additional time you would
| accrue just get immediately paid out? Or was no vacation
| time earned?
| ghaff wrote:
| So let's say I earn 4 weeks per year. Don't take any
| vacation year 1 starting Jan 1. Still not taking vacation
| year 2. On July 1, I have 6 weeks in total. At this
| point, assuming a 1.5x accrual cap, I stop accumulating
| until I take some time off, at which point I start
| accruing again up to the same 6 week limit. (So no new
| vacation time is earned until you get below the 6 week
| cap. There's really no relation to the calendar year.)
|
| I believe some places pay out unused while still employed
| but I've never seen this.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Are you okay with people taking off one week every month?
| How about two weeks every month? Is it really unlimited?
| dmurray wrote:
| Why not require your employees to take the time off? You
| could even schedule it for them at the start of the year
| "Bob, you're off the first two weeks of May and last two in
| October" and make it easy for them to reschedule to times
| that suit them, but not to carry over unlimited amounts of
| it.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Do your employees take more time off than they would
| otherwise get with accrued PTO? If yes, then I doubt it's
| the outstanding liability issue you are worried about,
| because you could just set aside revenue for that specific
| purpose, switch to accrued PTO and come out ahead. If your
| employees take less time off than they otherwise would with
| accrued vacation, then it sounds like a shit deal for your
| employees.
| gene91 wrote:
| You can cap the accrual. I'm not a lawyer, but I assume
| it's legal because many big companies have such a policy,
| in California and elsewhere in US.
| yupper32 wrote:
| The people I know with "Unlimited" PTO all take more than my
| 5 weeks of limited PTO.
|
| Lie or not, it's still better.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > it's still better.
|
| It _can_ still be better. Or it can be worse, as in the
| OP's situation.
| yupper32 wrote:
| So... bad companies are going to be bad companies.
|
| Unlimited PTO has nothing to do with it.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| Yup. It becomes a negotiation, and the company by definition
| has orders of magnitude more negotiating power (arm-
| wrestling, etc) than you do.
|
| But hey, "freedom", yay!
| munk-a wrote:
| This is the unfortunate truth of a lot of US labour laws
| and why I prefer it up here in Canada. I know with
| certainty that my coworkers (even university coops!) have
| access to good healthcare and have provincially mandated
| vacation time. I work hard in my position and carry a fair
| amount of responsibility that I've accrued over the years -
| but I don't want any of my coworkers, no matter how junior
| and no matter how short their stay at this company may be,
| to struggle to live a healthy life.
| chemeng wrote:
| It's a cost savings measure for CA companies to avoid having
| to hold employee's earned vacation hours as a liability to be
| paid out if they are unused when the employee separates. This
| is also why they cannot set a minimum, as that would indicate
| an amount of earned vacation per year.
|
| To be clear, this is still very disingenuous and I believe
| companies should stop the practice.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It is a loophole in labor laws that CA's legislature
| especially should close because it is against the
| spirit/intent of the laws that vacation time should be an
| asset owed to the employee as part of total compensation,
| not a whim to be managed (removed without recompense) by
| the employer.
| lghh wrote:
| I have unlimited PTO and have for quite a while and love it.
|
| We are encouraged to take off at least 5 days a quarter / 20
| days a year in addition to our holidays (which are flexible
| given culture, personal preference, etc). We don't count sick
| days or appointment time towards that. We can take off more,
| and frequently do, we just have to tell someone we're doing
| it.
|
| We frequently are put on "nicely forced" vacations if our
| manager notices we have not taken off in a while. You'll
| usually get a message from your manager like "hey, schedule
| some time off in the next month, it's been a bit since you've
| been off".
|
| This doesn't include parental leave as well, which is pretty
| solid compared to other places I've been.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| There are some companies where it seems legitimate,
| especially larger ones. I hear that at Indeed for example it
| is very legitimate. The problem in smaller ones is not so
| much that it is a deliberate lie, but rather a promise the
| business cannot keep as the bus factor for lots of roles is
| 1.
| sneak wrote:
| It's not legitimate, otherwise you'd take 100% paid time
| off, get a second job, and collect two paychecks in
| perpetuity.
|
| It's not unlimited. It's never unlimited. It's always a
| lie.
| lghh wrote:
| Sure, if you approach everything in bad faith then yes
| it's not really "unlimited". That said, calling it
| unlimited is much easier than saying "we offer no set
| number of days, use what you need. you still work here
| though so you can't just not actually ever come to work.
| act in good faith, use good judgement" every time you
| open your mouth about a vacation policy.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Fair. I agree that it is not truly unlimited.
| drstewart wrote:
| >It's not legitimate, otherwise you'd take 100% paid time
| off, get a second job, and collect two paychecks in
| perpetuity.
|
| This is not a great argument. Unlimited just means there
| isn't a pre-defined limit, not that every amount has to
| be approved.
|
| Do you think there's unlimited amounts of money in the
| world? If yes, then by definition it's worthless (also,
| can I have a trillion dollars an hour?). If no, then
| what's the maximum amount of money?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Then it's not unlimited, it's flexible.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Unlimited just means there isn 't a pre-defined limit,
| not that every amount has to be approved._
|
| Do you work for my ISP's marketing department?
| xoa wrote:
| I don't fundamentally disagree with you that yes, of
| course there is always some ultimate limit, nor that it's
| generally done in bad faith as an accounting scam to get
| around legal paid time balance sheet requirements. That
| said, I don't think you're right here:
|
| > _otherwise you 'd take 100% paid time off, get a second
| job, and collect two paychecks in perpetuity_
|
| Even if 100% genuine, "unlimited PTO" in no way implies
| PTO _for any reason_. It 's not incompatible to offer it
| while at the same time having eligibility requirements
| and other continued employment requirements. At the most
| simple it merely means there isn't any set limit. A 25
| year veteran who gets cancer can be treated differently
| then someone who just skives off to go party. The latter
| can just as easily be fired not for exceeding some
| arbitrary PTO limit, but absence from work without a
| listed reason in the contract, defrauding the business
| (if they lie about it), etc.
|
| In practice I don't think "depending on the fuzzy
| discretion and good will of management/HR/whomever" is a
| good practical deal for employees in general vs actual
| hard PTO which translates to money, since at scale the
| incentives for the business just are not normally aligned
| that well and even on the employee side those who abuse
| it will inevitably arise as well further throwing the
| thing into a negative spiral. It wouldn't stun me though
| if someone could find a few real examples of companies
| that had it because they wanted to offer really good sick
| people more time, there are lots of ideas that depend on
| human factors which work very badly on average but well
| in instances.
| denverkarma wrote:
| You're correct about unlimited PTO, it's absolutely a mixed
| bag.
|
| I worked at Atlassian, and my experience was that people were
| actively encouraged to take between 20-30 days off per year,
| and that getting vacation was usually a mere formality -
| telling your manager "hey I'm planning to take the week of so
| and so off, any issue with that?" I never had vacation or sick
| time checked, never had any denied, and I very much took
| advantage of the benefit.
|
| Still, the manager does have to approve it, so I have heard
| stories about teams that are understaffed declining vacation
| when they don't have enough people to be on call etc. I don't
| know how that would work out differently if you did have
| accrual vacation though... somebody does have to be on-call.
| It's tough.
| ghaff wrote:
| I suspect that the same companies/teams that make it hard to
| take time under an "unlimited" plan would probably make it
| equally hard to take the 4 weeks of vacation you'd accrued
| under a traditional plan.
| biztos wrote:
| If blocking people is the problem, could you not take unlimited
| PTO in sub-week increments? Plus maybe a couple actual
| vacations a year near the holidays when people are all blocking
| each other anyway.
|
| Seems like the perfect intersection of policy and need, if you
| would like to work fewer hours a day or fewer days a week.
| (Which, ok, maybe isn't for you.)
| munk-a wrote:
| Depending on local labour laws this can happen to you even
| without unlimited PTO. I have a coworker in BC who was denied
| the ability to exercise their vacation during a three month
| crunch period - and then the company refused to pay out the
| hours and disappeared them into the aether - this tends to be
| legal in a lot of places when labour laws confirm that vacation
| is at the convenience of the employer (which is totally
| reasonable) but fail to mandate either vacation carryover or
| vacation payout - a lot of jurisdictions can allow this sort of
| grey area and if your company leverages it... Quit Immediately.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| It is first and foremost a cost saving measure for the company
| as it is a simple policy to create and enforce, in my
| experience, and it avoids payouts for accrued PTO when
| terminating employees in some cases.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| At least at my company, they still do all the tracking of it.
| Not sure they are really simplifying admin.
| vkou wrote:
| It isn't meant to simplify admin, it's meant to prevent the
| company from having to pay out someone who worked for six
| years without taking a single vacation day, when they get
| fired/quit/die.
|
| It's also why many companies hate carrying vacation days
| over - they don't want someone to save up three months of
| vacation that they earned at a low wage from getting
| promoted, and then receiving it in cash when they quit at a
| higher wage.
|
| Given the choice, an employer will always prefer to keep
| payroll costs predictable.
| mathstuf wrote:
| Heh. $DAYJOB lets us accrue vacation and then get cashed
| out annually for anything over 160 hours (so it is "use
| it or we will cash it out for you"). It pays out at your
| new rate as well (since annual raises are on the same
| schedule). It used to be tied to your work anniversary
| date, but it is now "just after New Year's" for everyone
| to make budgeting easier. I understand why companies hate
| it, but I also like the way I get treated as a human
| rather than a nameless cog in a multi-billion-a-quarter
| monstrosity. I, personally, prefer the "let's be human"
| than "$$$ at all costs" end of the spectrum. Others seem
| to disagree.
|
| As for how it gets used, apparently it's very bimodal and
| "everyone" is either a "keeper" or "flirts with having
| none".
| ghaff wrote:
| I believe in California (and maybe one or two other
| states), you can't do use it or lose it. Though AFAIK,
| you can still cap accrual at some maximum. (i.e. once
| you've given someone a day of vacation you have to pay it
| out if they leave and haven't taken it.)
|
| Personally I don't have a problem with "unlimited PTO"
| _but_ (big but) there really does need to be a culture of
| people taking a reasonable amount which I would define as
| a month or so.
| syshum wrote:
| >>you can't do use it or lose it.
|
| Which is why unlimited was born, because now you never
| "earn" any so you never "lose" any, and thus can never
| accrue any either
| ghaff wrote:
| Right. Not that I personally care much for use it or lose
| it myself. It definitely requires more deliberate
| planning and potentially taking time at suboptimal times
| than an accrual/cap system assuming the cap is set at
| some reasonable level.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| > It's also why many companies hate carrying vacation
| days over - they don't want someone to save up three
| months of vacation that they earned at a low wage from
| getting promoted, and then receiving it in cash when they
| quit at a higher wage.
|
| This can be a nasty carrying cost for companies.
|
| I worked at a place that went from the standard accrual
| of vacation to "a minimum of 20 days/year, no carry-
| over."
|
| To keep employees from engaging in open rebellion, they
| had to offer two tiers: either 1) you agreed to the new
| plan and gave your accrued time back, or 2) you keep your
| accrued time to date, received no more, and could join
| the new plan only when your vacation time balance hit
| zero.
|
| The new employees, including me, quickly picked option
| one. The long-timers all picked option two, sat on their
| time, and cashed out when they went to other jobs.
| munk-a wrote:
| I'd advise anyone in this situation to go with option 3)
| - find new employment and get the company to immediately
| pay out all that vacation time in cash possibly by
| booking your last three months with the company as solid
| vacation time. Once that's cleared up feel free to rejoin
| the company on option 2).
|
| Earned vacation time is earned - companies trying to
| reclaim it are acting dishonestly and need to be avoided
| at all costs.
| ghaff wrote:
| When my company switched to a use it or lose it system
| (with some extra days thrown in), they let everyone who
| had accrued vacation keep it in a separate category. I
| don't know if I'll ever use it but it's nice to know I
| have an extra bank of 3 weeks vacation if I ever want it.
| munk-a wrote:
| Employers can always chose to force annual vacation
| payout - or have reduced hour rollover (i.e. halved if
| rolled over). I absolutely despise any sort of vacation
| reduction (or full disappearing on expiration) but having
| the hours paid out is a pretty equitable situation. If I
| want to take a vacation in January and am forced to take
| it using unpaid hours (I'll always talk to managers about
| carrying over hours for some fixed vacation if they're
| willing and usually get positive feedback) then I'll at
| least end up neutral at the end of the year (or
| employment) when those accrued hours get paid out.
| vkou wrote:
| Employers don't want to force payouts for the same reason
| that they don't want all the other sources of variability
| I listed. They budget for a payroll of X, not X + 7%.
| bambax wrote:
| This would be illegal in Europe. How does it work in the US?
| bityard wrote:
| I believe different states have different laws, but at
| least in my state an employer is required to pay you for
| your accrued PTO when you leave the company. Therefore,
| they have to have (and accurately track) PTO on their
| accounting books.
|
| Years ago, the company I work for switched from accrued to
| unlimited PTO at the end of the fiscal year in order to
| make the books look better. When it was announced, they
| basically told everyone to take the remainder of the month
| off. The fiscal year happened to be the same as the
| calendar year, so most people were taking huge chunks of
| time off due to the holidays anyway and didn't really care.
| For those who had more PTO than what was left, they were
| told to work with their managers to arrange for as much
| time off as they felt was necessary in compensation.
|
| This only worked because it was a one-time deal and the
| managers were (and mostly still are) very reasonable and
| supportive people. A while later we were merged with
| another company and they switched us back to regular PTO to
| be in line with their own HT policies.
| xtracto wrote:
| This is also illegal in Mexico: Your contract _must_ say
| the number of vacation days you have, particularly because
| at the end of every year you get a "vacation bonus" (prima
| vacacional) that is proportional to your total yearly
| vacation days (25% or 50% pay of each day). If you don't
| use it, they still have to pay you. Of course if someone
| put that they give [?] vacation days, the amount to pay
| yearly to each employee will be quit a bit haha.
| firebird84 wrote:
| There's no accrued PTO. You just work it out with your mgr
| and then just...go. And you get paid for it (at least in
| the companies I've had it) and come back and just go back
| to work.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It basically makes time off an informal thing. You just
| don't show up for work when agreed with your manager.
| Germanika wrote:
| I imagine it would depend on the state. In California, I
| believe they can get away with putting "0" as the number of
| vacation days you are entitled to, so any of the
| "unlimited" days you take off are really at the whim of
| your employer.
|
| Where I am in Canada (and I imagine many states) there are
| legal minimum requirements so I officially get "3 weeks"
| vacation, but take a couple weeks on top of that using the
| "unlimited" policy. So "unused" vacation would be paid out
| according to the official 3 weeks policy in my case. I
| could see something similar being possible in Europe, but I
| think in practice europeans already take more paid time off
| than most North American's with unlimited vacation.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| I mean, *gestures at the US*.
|
| There are no federal or state laws mandating paid vacations
| or holidays. That's entirely at the discretion of the
| company.
|
| There is no federal paid sick leave mandate. Some states
| have them.
|
| We have a federal right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for
| qualified medical and family situations under a law called
| FMLA, the Family and Medical Leave Act. Even that has
| limitations - small businesses, highly compensated
| employees, and new employees are carved out.
|
| When you are hired, all of these are defined by the
| companies policies or what you can negotiate. If you have
| paid vacation time that accrues it'll be paid out if you
| quit; most companies don't like that, so they give you
| "unlimited time" on the approval of management. But because
| we have no statutory protection, your unlimited time could
| legally be "zero hours".
| steveklabnik wrote:
| > There is no federal paid sick leave mandate. Some
| states have them.
|
| Or, you get states like here in Texas, where the state
| senate just passed a bill making it impossible for cities
| like Austin to require companies provide sick leave.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Small government."
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Having worked at companies that do both, I prefer the
| explicitly accrued/yearly allotment. There's less of "I'm back
| in elementary school and need to raise my hand and ask
| permission to use the bathroom" and more "This is my time, as
| long as I'm responsible I can use it essentially whenever". And
| that's with the previous unlimited time company actually being
| fair with it, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to use
| with a company that discouraged it.
| dvt wrote:
| Yet again people airing their dirty laundry in public to get
| Twitter outrage points. We get it, corporations are bad. Do we
| even need a reminder? The past few decades have been filled will
| regular folks getting constantly screwed by Big Tech, Fortune
| 500s, and Wall Street. Nothing here is new.
|
| But my guy, lawyer up. Stuff like this could probably _hurt_ more
| than help if you do end up going to court.
| donretag wrote:
| Let me pile on here: unlimited PTO is a joke
|
| I once quite a job because they did not want me to take off for a
| week during Thanksgiving because of a deadline ... in January.
| Never took a vacation before that. Never again will I settle for
| unlimited PTO.
|
| Every time I have ask during interviews with unlimited PTO
| companies about how much PTO an average employee takes, they
| never have an answer.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Why do you think unlimited vacation was the cause of that?
|
| Companies with set amounts of PTO can also deny your vacation
| request.
| ermir wrote:
| It's about normalizing vacation, and having a minimum means
| you'll take as much time off as anyone else on the team.
|
| Unlimited PTO means take as much as you want, but you have to
| have excellent social awareness to not damage your standing.
| munk-a wrote:
| Oh gods - I've never worked at a place with unlimited PTO
| and that sounds miserable. I'm a highly visible employee
| who fields a lot of questions from junior and intermediate
| folks - taking a three week block off always means the
| other very senior dev needs to shoulder the load (but we're
| on good terms and happy to see each other balance work and
| life)... more senior folks would be less able to take
| vacation due to how much more visible their absence would
| be.
| ghaff wrote:
| I haven't done it for a while but I've certainly taken
| off 3 weeks at a time previously. And if you count a
| combination of work travel and PTO, I did it last about a
| month before the pandemic hit.
|
| And as others have noted, taking multiple weeks off is
| quite normal in Europe.
| detaro wrote:
| It should be ok for absences to be _visible_. And if they
| are more than just visible, you have a bus factor
| problem, and past a certain company size that 's not
| something you should have.
| munk-a wrote:
| But if it's a question of balancing your standing then
| it's all about visibility. If I'm off in a corner working
| maintaining some legacy system as a team of one that has
| somehow failed to be replaced in twenty years then I
| could just continuously be on vacation - additionally
| voluntarily taking odd working hours (like working
| 8PM-4AM) would also make it much less obvious that you're
| snogging vacation... except to the management team which
| usually can't comment on things like that except to
| consider firing you.
| munk-a wrote:
| The advantage with companies with set amounts of PTO is that
| they end up either needing to roll those hours forward into
| the next year, pay them out - or look like a total ass and
| expire them (often a combination of two or all three). When
| you have a fixed amount of PTO there's more clear
| accountability about where unused hours go and, potentially,
| you can reclaim missed vacations in the form of an end of
| year payout that compensates you for the lack of a vacation.
| jerglingu wrote:
| Can people not just take PTO whenever they want? Or does it
| breach some company policy at certain places? I don't get why
| this person felt like he had to ask for time off when his wife
| had cancer.
|
| edit: thanks for the responses. My question was not on PTO
| accrual or the optics around it, but on the practice of just
| scheduling time off and taking it versus asking for permission.
| Today I learned I am either very lucky to be working at the
| places I have been, or maybe my bosses have been too timid to
| tell me no
| kasey_junk wrote:
| More than that, his leave was protected my Family and Medical
| Leave Act. They can deny PTO but they can't deny unpaid leave.
|
| This person should file a complaint with the US Dept. of Labor.
| denverkarma wrote:
| The person took paid medical leave, and when that ended, was
| offered unpaid leave. They didn't want to use unpaid leave,
| they wanted to "use their earned vacation." But the person
| did not understand - apparently still does not understand -
| that there is no accrued vacation.
| babycake wrote:
| There is no accrued vacation ok... but he is supposed to
| get 'unlimited' vacation days, right? So if you take that
| word 'unlimited' at face value, that means he should be
| able to take some days off to take care of his wife.
|
| Unlimited PTO is part of his compensation package for
| working at this company, so while he didn't 'accrue'
| vacation in the traditional sense, he's still entitled to
| his PTO.
|
| So in the end, it doesn't matter whether he accrued them or
| not, his PTO is his to use. And he was denied that.
|
| He even stated that his manager was the one who stated to
| him that he had at least 20 days off:
|
| > When I joined, my manager told me exactly how many days I
| have: "federal holidays + 20 days", which is considered
| "quite generous for the US" (exact quotes)
|
| So it's not even on him that he thinks he's earned 20 days.
|
| What difference does it make if he 'earned' his PTO vs
| using his 'unlimited' PTO? I don't understand why this
| distinction is being made in the context of the article. If
| it's just to say that companies can deny PTO because it's
| not federally protected, well, that's an even bigger
| problem. Maybe it should right? Either way it makes the
| company look bad.
| denverkarma wrote:
| I agree with you about how it looks reading only this
| persons story. However, my experience with Atlassian was
| that taking PTO is no problem, and normally a request
| like this would not have met pushback. From what I know
| of the situation, there was a lot more to it than this.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Um, yes, of course you have to ask for time off. How else would
| it work - you'd just tell your manager that you weren't coming
| in and then not show up and your tasks wouldn't get done? That
| seems ludicrous, you'd be fired, good luck getting anything you
| left in your desk drawers back.
|
| I'm fortunate now to work at a place where if I had to take
| time off for a medical emergency or paternity leave I could
| call and explain and it would almost definitely be granted,
| they might ask for some email support or phone calls to offload
| my tasks to someone else... but you still have to ask.
| [deleted]
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| > you'd just tell your manager that you weren't coming in and
| then not show up and your tasks wouldn't get done?
|
| Yes, exactly. That's how it works in my organization. You
| don't schedule tasks when you're going to be out of the
| office. If they're time critical, someone else will pick them
| up (and drop less time critical tasks of their own). If
| they're not time critical, they just wait for your return.
|
| I recognize that I'm lucky to be in this situation, but it's
| certainly possible if you have a reasonable bus-factor.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I've worked at a place where use of PTO had to be authorized.
| If you were sick, you needed to get that approved a week before
| calling in. There was an exception if you had a doctor's note,
| but too many of those, note or not, you'd be fired.
|
| Using federally-protected unpaid leave would get you fired
| under some other pretense when you returned to work.
|
| At a different job, I was doing fine without accommodations
| until the new HR manage decided to get rid of flex time and
| require PTO to be taken in 8 hours blocks. Shortly after I
| applied for ADA accommodations, they took a few montsh to move
| me into a different department under a very specific role made
| for just for me. Then after a few months in that role, they cut
| the position.
|
| Finding another job wasn't an option. I had recently been
| diagnosed with bipolar and couldn't afford losing my insurance.
| Apes wrote:
| It's the "unlimited PTO" scam - tech companies figured out a
| loophole that lets them give their employees zero days of
| guaranteed PTO, doesn't require them to pay out for unused PTO
| days when an employee leaves, and is technically legal for
| meeting the minimum PTO laws in the US.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Did you read the article?
|
| According to the author, you don't accrue PTO there AT ALL.
| Your manager can basically just allow you to be paid for time
| when you aren't working at his discretion. No maximum, but no
| minimum too.
| drstewart wrote:
| >Your manager can basically just allow you to be paid for
| time when you aren't working at his discretion
|
| This has nothing to do with unlimited PTO, or even legally
| mandated vacation time. Even in Europe, which I'm sure all
| the people here will point to, has similar rules, e.g:
|
| https://www.howtogermany.com/pages/employee-rights.html
|
| >Employees must apply for vacation time and the employer must
| approve the written request. An employer can turn down a
| request due to urgent operational reasons or vacation
| applications of other employees who, due to "social factors",
| have a higher priority.
| mikebos wrote:
| The practice in Europe is such that as a large company
| there is no excuse for urgent operational reasons / social
| factors, these could have been mitigated by more personnel.
| A fact well established at least in the Dutch court and I
| assume valid in the rest of Europe.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| It's how "unlimited PTO" actually works. It's unlimited at
| both ends of the spectrum because the US has no laws that
| mandate that employees ever get time off.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| The business needs are balanced against your time off. If the
| product you're working on is behind schedule, for example,
| PTO is less likely to be approved.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| When you aren't actually accruing hours, "business needs"
| are a euphemism for "your manager's whims."
| pklausler wrote:
| IME it's "unlimited" but each request requires approval.
| jaeming wrote:
| 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, "you know
| you don't have to use all you're PTO, right?". I'd ask, oh, it
| will rollover to next year? The reply: "No, it won't. But that's
| really the wrong way to think about it."
|
| 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 2/3 of your team must be available at any
| time (regardless of the team size), oh, and those rules weren't
| in the official policy. Good luck trying to get specifics in
| writing.
|
| 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've already taken unless I go through
| my requests and count the approved ones myself.
|
| The unlimited policy is definitely a scam at many companies. Most
| of my team has been denied requests for reasons that don't exist
| in the written policy, like, "you recently had PTO already."
| Honestly I'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.
| itronitron wrote:
| Accrued PTO can become a major liability for companies as it is
| wages that must be paid out at some point in the future. That
| is probably the main/only reason that companies offer
| 'unlimited' PTO since it doesn't carry over at year end and
| zeroes out when an employee leaves the company.
| 1024core wrote:
| > The unlimited policy is definitely a scam at many companies.
|
| It is so they don't have to pay you for your unused vacation
| when you leave. It's a financial trick.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Companies like "unlimited" PTO because it doesn't put a
| liability on their books (e.g. 6 weeks of PTO x N number of
| employees amounts to a large liability).
|
| What companies doesn't like though is when you put restrictions
| on it.
|
| What I've seen as a middle ground is to have unlimited PTO but
| if you take more than 3 consecutive weeks off, it must convert
| to a leave of absence.
| Vadoff wrote:
| At FAANG the PTOs roll over (but there's a maximum cap, usually
| 1 full year of saving PTOs) + when you leave the company they
| convert to cash based off your hourly salary.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| Right, PTO is compensation.
|
| I always make sure I end the year with a zero PTO balance (no
| rollover) and I make sure that I encourage my employees to do
| the same.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > Fast forward a year later and we were hearing things from
| executives and managers like, "you know you don't have to use
| all you're PTO, right?".
|
| Funny, they might as well suggest that you don't have to take
| entire salary you agreed on.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| The trick is to negotiate unlimited compensation along with
| unlimited PTO.
|
| Oh wait
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Just give me a credit card. I will spend money on things I
| want, as long as it's within reason. Such a workable system!
| megablast wrote:
| > like 2/3 of your team must be available at any time
| (regardless of the team size),
|
| You don't think this is a reasonable rule??
| [deleted]
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think the issue is that it was used as an excuse to deny
| vacation. It could also lead to everyone being put on teams
| of 2. Great, now no one can take a vacation by definition.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Here is the problem with these policies. What happens when
| just 1 person or 2 people have key knowledge?
|
| My company has/had (the people I know with it left) this
| problem. Things hinged on one person and a team of
| effectively 1 or even 2 can never go on vacation.
|
| Now, obviously this should be considered a problem too but
| other problems can make the 2/3 part unworkable.
| reificator wrote:
| Not if your team size is two, for example.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Right, it seems relatively simple to calculate someone's salary
| to also include additional 5 weeks of pay per year so that if
| you have to pay it out it was already budgeted. Alternatively,
| you could do it in such a way that every two weeks you get paid
| for 11 days worth of work and all time off is unpaid.
| Essentially you are getting 26 paid vacation days and you can
| use them or keep the extra money. It seems like a win-win.
| Known costs that are over time and extra money for employees or
| extra time off for employees.
| [deleted]
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I always been baffle by that.
|
| My last job switch, 6 month ago, I explicitly asked to apply
| that calculation on my shinny new yearly salary. To go from 2
| weeks off to say.. 5. ( I really means 6 ... )
|
| I got 2.5 and a lesson on budgeted HR cost and resource
| availability. At least there was a response.
|
| The funnier is : I had to care for a family member too. I
| took 3 weeks already and they just routinely approved the
| unpay part of it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Part of the problem is that California doesn't let companies
| have use it or lose it policies. Companies need to pay out
| unused at the end of the year.
|
| And employees don't like accrual cap policies (i.e. stop
| earning after you hit some figure) that don't let them bank
| some amount over their annual accrual.
| bedhead wrote:
| I used to work at a company that, like everyone else, tracked
| PTO days. But I'm kind of a pain in the ass so I never
| bothered, plus, I worked ridiculously hard and came in at least
| one day every weekend and sometimes both Sat and Sun (plus most
| nights in general). Anyway, the head of HR asked me to start
| putting my PTO days in the system and I said sure, just let me
| know where I can submit the overtime slips. They got the
| point...it helped that I was good at my job.
|
| I've always liked the "treat people like adults" policy with
| unlimited PTO and no formal tracking. If someone can't manage
| PTO and is abusive of it, my guess is they either might not be
| a great hire anyway, and if they are, what are you
| accomplishing by bothering them?
| angrais wrote:
| I'm quite confused at your response. Why are you so proud to
| give a company all your time, including nights and weekends,
| and for no additional costs?
|
| Then when asked to take PTO you asked for money instead of
| holiday, despite working nights and weekends?
|
| wat
| cynix wrote:
| Seems you misunderstood their comment. They took time off
| but never logged it in the system. HR asked them to log the
| days they took off, they said sure but I also get to log my
| overtime and get paid for those then.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Ignoring the fact that they are considered an exempt
| employee (at least in the US).
| bedhead wrote:
| I did well and was promoted and given raises and bonuses -
| that was kinda the point of working hard, not to get more
| days off. I just didn't like people making PTO a thing, it
| struck me as juvenile. I used plenty of PTO days, one
| summer I took every Friday off, but I didn't like the idea
| of being tracked like I was a child. My simple thought was
| if people do a good job, who cares about PTO tracking.
| angrais wrote:
| I see. That's much clearer, thanks.
|
| Although the point of documenting PTO is both useful for
| you (to quantify days off as you may be taking much less
| than you thought!) and the company (was behead meant to
| be in work today?! What if there's a fire alarm and
| headcount is needed?)
|
| Congrats on the promotion and raises! I agree that
| ideally working hard should lead to those outcomes.
| OJFord wrote:
| > So it turns out people were taking much more time off now
| than when PTO was unlimited.
|
| Is that surprising? I've had 'unlimited' (there must be a
| better way of saying that: _obviously_ it has 'fair usage')
| for a couple of years, not counting but I'm pretty sure I've
| taken less than statutory.
|
| Previous place was seven days over statutory and up to five
| would roll; fewer than statutory requirement taken would be
| paid in lieu (by law), obviously I took enough to use it all or
| roll some over - why let a couple of days go to waste? But when
| there's just no numbers on anything... if I don't have
| something to do I don't take it. (That's probably unrelatable
| for anyone with children, or a spouse who _is_ taking holiday,
| that makes sense and I 'm not knocking it!)
| kstrauser wrote:
| My employer noticed that people weren't taking _enough_ PTO,
| even with an unlimited PTO policy, so made new _minimum_ PTO
| requirements. Each employee is required to take _at least_ 2
| days off per quarter and _at least_ 2 weeks per year. People
| have actually started using it.
| reginold wrote:
| Nice, this seems like the best way to do it. Fight
| workaholism, threatens the long term success of the business.
|
| The problem is without other changes you likely incentivize
| people to take "PTO" but still work.
| xtracto wrote:
| I was an executive manager at 2 different startups that
| originally had "unlimited" PTO. In both of cases it felt
| _wrong_ to me: The reality is that PTO is _never_ unlimited.
| Like, if it was unlimited, someone could come to me and ask for
| 40 days of PTO and I 'd have to tell them yeah. Or what about
| taking every Friday off?
|
| The result was that, lazy/low-performing people would take the
| most PTO while high performing more dedicated people would
| sometimes NOT take 1 day in _a year_ (I had to remind /push
| them to take PTO at the end of the year for their own
| sainity!!).
|
| Personally, I prefer companies that tell me "25 days of PTO" or
| 20 or 30 or whatever. That way you everyone including the
| managers _know_ that every employee WILL be out of the office
| that time, and it becomes a _RIGHT_ of the employee instead of
| a charity of the manager.
|
| Ultimately, in these two startups changed from "unlimited" to
| something between 2 and 4 weeks of PTO per person.
| nicoburns wrote:
| If PTO was really unlimited then nobody would have to come in
| at all. Which obviously wouldn't work in practice.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I'm a contractor, and I do pretty well.
|
| I bill by the day or by the hour. Client's choice. I even
| round down to the nearest even hour each day so I don't ever
| have to have that icky feeling of "did I really bill them
| right this week?" which would just distract me.
|
| When I work 14 hours in a row, that's what I bill. If I'm in
| the zone I push it till I fall over. It's worth it for the
| client. If I'm having an off day, I go home early and bill 4
| or 6 hours.
|
| If I'm billing by the day, I just bill by the day. Whether
| it's 14 hours of working or 4, it evens out and if I'm
| unsure, I'll bill half a day. The important part is that the
| work gets done. And if I work a Saturday, you bet it's
| billed.
|
| Now, why do I say all of this? Because when it comes to time
| off I _vastly_ prefer my situation. Sick for months? I 'm not
| worrying about whether my PTO qualifies or whatever. I just
| don't get paid. This has happened recently and when I was
| healthy again my clients were happy I was able to help again.
|
| This weird sorta dance around time off (sick days, PTO,
| government holidays, dealing with a manager under pressure
| for the quarter, etc) makes a bit of sense for the working
| poor, but I don't understand why so many software developers
| bother. Just bill what you work and if you want a day, week,
| or month off take it. I'm sure if more developers asked to
| work this way large corps would be happy to accommodate them.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| That sounds like your situation but not general advice.
| Mortgages are required to be paid monthly a sudden loss of
| income would hit many hard.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Obviously for this stuff to be workable you need to way
| more than what's needed to cover living expenses and have
| long term savings.
| josefx wrote:
| > I'm sure if more developers asked to work this way large
| corps would be happy to accommodate them.
|
| Oh, yes the penny pincers in accounting will just love the
| fact that their budget calculations for the next year will
| entirely consist of statements like "whatever our 1000 code
| monkeys feel like working even if it exceeds the amount you
| are willing to pay if they get into 'the zone', best case
| you wont have to pay them at all because none showed up".
| nickff wrote:
| It sounds like you're someone who is comfortable in dealing
| with uncertainty. I think most people desire certainty and
| stability, so they want employers and the government to
| 'guarantee it' (even when the guarantee is illusory).
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| 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's generosity.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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's important to
| consistently take PTO.
| quantumBerry wrote:
| >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.
|
| The CEO made a dumb bet and lost. You can't be mad when you
| offer unlimited PTO and people use it.
| edoceo wrote:
| Oh, you can be mad. But you shouldn't be a jerk about it.
| it200219 wrote:
| Yup, have seen similar thing where we hired and SWE and took
| 2 months off stating he need to take care of sick parents in
| India. He came back, 2 days later he resigned & joined FAANG.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Hang on, I'm in danger of understanding something.
|
| If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave after 2
| years, I assume it gets paid out?
|
| If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take any
| and leave after 2 years, what do you get?
|
| Edit: Thanks. Yikes. Unlimited PTO actually seems worse than
| a specified allowance from where I sit.
| detaro wrote:
| nothing, that's part of the motivation for companies to
| offer it.
| ericmay wrote:
| That's _exactly_ why so many companies are enacting
| "unlimited" policies.
|
| What they do is say "It's unlimited, but if you take more
| than 4 weeks it has to be approved" or something and then
| that way they can cap you like they did before but also not
| pay you out if you leave because _wink wink_ it 's
| "unlimited".
| reginold wrote:
| Yep as a business owner it's a great way to get out of
| paying PTO.
| reginold wrote:
| Yep as a business owner it's a great way to get out of
| paying PTO.
|
| These are all just the slow crawl of American businesses
| towards irrelevance.
| canadaduane wrote:
| This reminds me of "unlimited" cell phone plans where you
| can use as much data as you like, but at some point the
| data gets slower and slower.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > If your contract is for unlimited PTO and you never take
| any and leave after 2 years, what do you get?
|
| In all the "unlimited PTO" jobs I've had, nothing.
| jedberg wrote:
| You get nothing because you've accrued nothing.
| macksd wrote:
| Nothing. That's why they don't have to keep it on their
| books.
| drm237 wrote:
| It depends on if your company capped how much you could
| accrue. However much you accrued should be paid out.
|
| Nothing.
| eli wrote:
| > If you get 5 weeks PTO and never take any then leave
| after 2 years, I assume it gets paid out?
|
| Even in this case, it depends where you live and sometimes
| what your contract says. California requires it, but most
| states don't.
| tkojames wrote:
| Yep in California PTO and vacation get paid out. They can
| not do use it or lose it. They can cap how much of PTO
| and vacation you can have at one time. Sick time does not
| need to be paid out. The whole scam of unlimited PTO is
| so they do not have to pay out when you leave. Then can
| not roll over your PTO or vacation at the end of year but
| if they do that, they have you pay you out.
| eli wrote:
| Seems pretty cynical. Isn't this trick easily defeated by
| taking regular PTO instead of hoarding it?
| garmaine wrote:
| California companies and work culture largely discourages
| taking PTO, so it tends to accrue.
| tkojames wrote:
| Really depends on the company and in big companies it
| depends on your team. My very first job out college had
| vacation and sick time. You could take your vacation at
| any time no questions asked. It was really nice but they
| paid less than everybody else. But the work life balance
| was much better. You saw a lot of people with families
| come and work there and take paycut. It was interesting
| seemed work well for them.
| tkojames wrote:
| Yes you never want to hit your cap. At some of my older
| jobs people would be like oh crap I gotta take two weeks
| off starting next week. I much rather have defined PTO.
| My last role and current role are "unlimited PTO" I take
| about 4-5 weeks off with out issue. But you are taking a
| risk for sure going to company with "unlimited PTO".
| andrewfong wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if California just passed a law
| that called for unlimited PTO to be paid out (using some
| pretty high implied accrual rate, like 8 weeks a year or
| something).
| hkt wrote:
| I don't know how it would work in cali, but in the UK I'd
| pitch at statutory minimum holidays (25 days+bank holidays)
| OR average time off taken at the company, whichever was
| higher. I'm sure an employment tribunal would take either.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > 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's generosity.
|
| I don't understand why you're mad at someone for using a
| benefit he's entitled to?
|
| Unlimited PTO means you should never have to work if you
| don't want to. Otherwise it's not unlimited.
|
| If there's a limit just state it upfront.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| "In many organizations, there is an unhealthy emphasis on
| process and not much freedom. These organizations didn't
| start that way, but the python of process squeezed harder
| every time something went wrong. Specifically, many
| organizations have freedom and responsibility when they are
| small. Everyone knows each other, and everyone picks up the
| trash. As they grow, however, the business gets more
| complex, and sometimes the average talent and passion level
| goes down. As the informal, smooth-running organization
| starts to break down, pockets of chaos emerge, and the
| general outcry is to "grow up" and add traditional
| management and process to reduce the chaos. As rules and
| procedures proliferate, the value system evolves into rule
| following (i.e. that is how you get rewarded). If this
| standard management approach is done well, then the company
| becomes very efficient at its business model -- the system
| is dummy-proofed, and creative thinkers are told to stop
| questioning the status quo. This kind of organization is
| very specialized and well adapted to its business model.
| Eventually, however, over 10 to 100 years, the business
| model inevitably has to change, and most of these companies
| are unable to adapt." [1]
|
| [1] https://jobs.netflix.com/culture
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| This is so well-written. Now I want to work at Netflix!
| lhorie wrote:
| Well, this is kinda like complimentary condiments or
| whatever. Technically you are allowed to abuse it to the
| wazoo, but in practice it just means "Take a reasonable
| amount, we're not stingy". There obviously is an unspoken
| "we're all grown ups here" type of social contract in these
| sorts of things. Abusing it is going to come at the cost of
| the commons, and in the GP's case it did cost them the
| perk, so being angry at the abuser seems justified.
|
| One of my co-workers a few years ago decided to go to Japan
| for 3 months, but that didn't fly with my company and it
| ended up being mostly an unpaid sabbatical (despite the
| unlimited PTO policy). 3 months later, the guy extended his
| stay and let us know he wasn't coming back. There were no
| hard rules anywhere in sight, but the way this played out
| seems perfectly reasonable to me.
| danielrpa wrote:
| It's the good old "tragedy of the commons":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
|
| Also known as "that's why we can't have good things"... :/
| jedberg wrote:
| > Once you max out on accrual, you are giving the company
| money, which is stupid so it's important to consistently take
| PTO.
|
| Early in my career I never took a vacation, so I maxed out. I
| realized that I'd be losing money by being maxed out, so I
| worked out a deal with my boss to take every Friday off from
| May to September that year. Four day work weeks all summer
| was pretty nice!
| hkt wrote:
| Genius. I'm asking to do this tomorrow.
| milesvp wrote:
| Another option is if you can alternate every other friday
| and monday you'll get 4 day weekends every other weekend.
| This can really be refreshing too.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Honestly as a long-tenured employee, I'd be more happy with a
| modest, capped N weeks / year, with an explicit XX week
| sabbatical every M years.
|
| It's difficult to get that "hard reset" you need every once in
| a while with a 1-2 week vacation [which to be fair, is already
| fairly privileged], and even if you have 4-5 weeks / year
| ["generous by US standards"] it can be hard to take more than a
| couple of weeks at once because you need to save a week or so
| for Christmas, a few days for your anniversary, a couple of
| days for you or your spouse's birthday, three days to close out
| Thanksgiving, etc etc.
| quantified wrote:
| > 1-2 week vacation [which to be fair, is already fairly
| privileged]
|
| Sucks not to be German. 6 weeks a year that gets used is
| pretty humane.
| aecay wrote:
| The UK also gives people 6ish weeks (5 weeks to take when
| you want, plus 8 fixed bank holidays). I grew up in the US
| and am American more than I am anything else. I've lived in
| the UK for a relatively short time (6 years, under 20% of
| my life) -- but that's been my entire professional career.
| It's cultural differences like this that lead me to believe
| that America will never feel like "home" again -- I now
| can't imagine living somewhere where 6 weeks of vacation
| time seems like it's far outside the norm.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Western Europe in general. Something between 4-6 weeks is
| pretty common. Not having at least 4 weeks of paid vacation
| sounds bonkers?
| josephg wrote:
| Same in Australia and New Zealand. The US is the odd duck
| here, both legally and culturally.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| I think the funniest part of discussions like this on HN
| is all the Americans who are somehow... proud? for not
| taking any paid time off, and then the ones that are
| weirdly grateful for getting a pittance of time off from
| their employer?
|
| Listen, PTO is money is salary.
|
| Not taking PTO is leaving money on the table, it's the
| same as being proud that you're not receiving your full
| salary for your work, or being grateful that your company
| actually paid the agreed-upon salary this month.
|
| But some people don't make that connection, because
| they're conditioned by shitty labour rules in the US.
| [deleted]
| softveda wrote:
| Australia is 20 days as well, some companies voluntarily
| offer 1-2 weeks more. It accrues if you don't take the
| leave and must be paid out if you leave, there are no caps.
| But most companies will force you to take leave if you have
| accrued 40 days as it affects the balance sheet.
|
| Sick/Personal leave is min 10 days/year and also accrues
| with no cap but is not paid out if you leave. In addition
| there are myriad of unpaid leaves for causes like
| bereavement, natural disasters, domestic violence etc.
| darekkay wrote:
| > Honestly I'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.
|
| In Germany, your idea is the law. You get at least 5 weeks of
| vacation per year and you have to take at least 2 continous
| weeks off.
| merb wrote:
| nope in germany the law is 24 work days and if you have more
| than 12 days off per year it's preferably! advised to allow
| 12 or work days contiguously (but it's not a hard requirement
| it only comes into play if an employee wants to take it like
| that) (people below 18 have different rules) also the
| employer is required to tell if days off will decay and force
| them to take them.
|
| and work rules are always in favor of the employee so it can
| be extended but never reduced in a contract.
| mlboss wrote:
| In California PTO is considered part of salary. You either take
| the vacation or else company will pay you the vacation days or
| all your days will be rolled over to next year.
|
| Thats why most of the companies in Bay Area have unlimited PTO
| to bypass this law.
| shoto_io wrote:
| I think unlimited PTO is an absurd policy to begin with. Why
| would you allow that? If people take a reasonable amount of
| days, then why not just have a generous policy like 6 weeks. If
| some people abuse how are you going to deal with them? Fire
| them? No, because you had the unlimited policy...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It is like unlimited benefits. As soon as you put limits on it,
| some people start to look at "using them up."
| fatnoah wrote:
| Having gone from limited PTO to unlimited really helped me
| realize that I'm a hoarder. When PTO is limited, I rarely
| take it, but when I had unlimited I was much more liberal
| about actually using it. I went from average 1-2 weeks per
| year to 5-6, mostly by taking random days here and there,
| ducking out early to have a fun afternoon with the kiddo,
| etc.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You call it "hoarder", I'd call it "low risk tolerance".
|
| I'm sort of the same. I never had unlimited PTO, but I tend
| to save my time off for cases where I actually _need_ it.
| Saved my bacon a bunch of times, before I started working
| remotely, with teams /companies that don't mind me taking
| off half a day to run some important errands, as long as my
| total work hours add up to the correct number each month.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| GP is the opposite. He figures out how to use all his
| allocated time when he didn't bother to before.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I don't understand unlimited PTO. I mean, why not just take
| every Friday off, then? There is almost never a point at
| where where there's no work to be done; it's never going to
| be a case of "as long as you get your work done, you can
| take time off"... because there's no such thing as "done",
| just "prioritized".
| fatnoah wrote:
| There are still expectations on the amount or level of
| work to be done. If you're meeting those and not blocking
| others, there's no reason one couldn't take more time
| off.
|
| It's certainly a tricky thing to sort out, though. As you
| noted, "abuse" is possible, but defining what constitutes
| abuse is nearly impossible.
| mattnewton wrote:
| If you can be competitive with peers and get enough done
| to continue progressing in your career with every Friday
| off, why not? The limit for me has always been my own
| productivity (and availability for meetings), and I think
| at a certain role level it's a reasonable expectation
| that you be measured in outcomes and not time spent at
| desk.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The counterpoint is also valid: don't have policies which, if
| used, would be untenable to the company.
|
| The best places I've worked have had PTO policies, no
| rollover (but flexibility for longer trips), and (critically)
| managers who would gripe at you at the end of the year if you
| didn't use your PTO.
|
| Expectations were clear, everyone was on an equal playing
| field, and PTO was sized to something the company could
| afford everyone making use of.
| aviau wrote:
| > don't have policies which, if used, would be untenable to
| the company.
|
| I am ambivalent on this. Some benefits are a bit like
| insurance, I don't mind not using them fully but I am glad
| its available when I need it.
|
| The big issue is that it has to be available when I need it
| and it can't just be a scam.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I think that's where policy + manager discretion for
| overages is the better approach. Your manager should know
| if you and your team are killing it.
|
| "Unlimited PTO" just sounds like make believe land.
|
| And if it's not an actual, usable, guaranteed policy that
| doesn't negatively impact your career... then why are we
| deluding ourselves and creating a policy vs culture
| mismatch?
| susiecambria wrote:
| Agree completely.
|
| Years ago, when I was first married (like several months
| after getting married), my husband needed surgery. The
| surgeon thought it might be pancreatic cancer.
|
| The board gave me all the time I needed, no questions.
| And, the day of the surgery, a colleague from work spent
| the day at the hospital with me. A free day from the
| board and director.
|
| Now it's true that I worked every day husband was in the
| hospital - I mean, he was sleeping most of the time so
| why not work? But they knew I would work since that's
| what I did. I delivered for years.
|
| I was incredibly grateful they allowed me to take the
| time. Am still grateful. But I was also in a position
| where I could take an unpaid leave or quit. Neither
| optimal, but family comes first.
|
| Would the organization have done the same for other
| staff? I don't think so. I had been there the longest and
| busted my ass for them, loving the work every single day.
| billti wrote:
| Exactly. I haven't seen it as much now I'm in the U.S., but
| when I worked in Australia, it was very common for your 2
| weeks of paid sick leave to be seen as "vacation". Most
| people who had sick leave left come December, were suddenly
| sick for a few days before the end of the year.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| The sickie is an Australian tradition.
| jlawer wrote:
| Depends on your role / age / situation.
|
| When I was younger and working more junior roles and moving
| from role to role every year or 2 (generally headhunted)
| there was a use it or loose it mentality. You wouldn't take
| the day off the moment you had a sniffle / didn't feel
| 100%.
|
| However once your older, have kids and are at the role for
| more then a few years, that sick leave is often "banked"
| for when the kids come down with whatever is going around
| the schoolyard this week
| paul_f wrote:
| Reminds me of the story in Freaknomics of a Daycare that
| instituted a late fee. After the fee was instituted, the
| number of parents being late went up!
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Sounds like a situation where you go from feeling like an
| asshole to the daycare employees to utilizing service that
| you paid for.
| paxys wrote:
| Do people really come back from a 6 month paid parental leave and
| expect to get promoted? No shit the coworker who busted their ass
| the entire time will get picked over you. That isn't
| discrimination, just reality.
| markphip wrote:
| It seems like a sad story all around. All of the parts about how
| the PTO works seems pretty normal to me though. You definitely do
| not accrue any days in an Unlimited PTO system, that is the whole
| point of it. The company wants to clear themselves of the
| obligations that comes with accrued vacation days.
|
| As an Engineering Manager myself though, I just cannot imagine
| not giving this guy as much PTO as he needed. I would have at the
| very least tried to work with him to help as much as I could such
| as maybe having him only work 2-3 days a week for a while. So
| just based on his version of events I tend to blame the managers
| and how they handled it. Even if I was getting pressure from my
| manager I would stand up for anyone that reported to me and their
| need to have time off in this situation.
|
| I hope his wife is recovering and that he has landed a new job
| somewhere.
| nsonha wrote:
| Unlimited PTO is bs, just have a fixed number and pay people if
| they don't use them.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| What is PASCAL at Atlassian? Some kind of a career assessment
| tool?
| eecc wrote:
| Well, I'll keep quiet because who knows how far libel law goes.
|
| Having said that, "we've got deadlines" doesn't resonate well
| with https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-1330
|
| smh
| rejectfinite wrote:
| This feels like a USA problem and not a company problem.
|
| Here we have federal/government regulated
| PTO/sickleave/vacations. :)
| drstewart wrote:
| While I'm sure there are some legitimate grievances here, nothing
| about this makes the author look credible in any way. Personally,
| none of the claims made here seem to stand up to scrutiny.
|
| He claims that Atlassian has illegal hiring practices because of
| one instance where they passed on the first candidate that just
| cleared the technical bar? Or that unlimited PTO is a scam
| because his manager had to approve time off requests (completely
| standard practice - unlimited PTO or not)? Sorry, my pitchfork is
| staying put.
| _hilro wrote:
| > Or that unlimited PTO is a scam because his manager had to
| approve time off requests (completely standard practice -
| unlimited PTO or not
|
| If a company advertises unlimited PTO but then the company(or
| it's representatives) block my ability to take PTO, then yes it
| is a scam.
|
| Why doesn't Atlassian keep track of requests/denial rates and
| then intervene since they're so benevolent and worried about
| the potential future employees well-being?
| ghaff wrote:
| But it would equally be a scam is I explicitly earned a given
| number of vacation days and couldn't take those.
|
| My main objection to "unlimited PTO" is that it really puts
| the onus on the company to set some expectations and stick
| with them, e.g. "While it will differ by
| workload/deadlines/etc., a normal expectation is that
| employees take 3 to 5 weeks in a typical year." (or
| whatever.)
| h4l0 wrote:
| Disclaimer; I work at Atlassian as a Software Engineer.
|
| First of all, he has this weird take at the very beginning
|
| > Interesting fact 1: Atlassian is the only company that has
| words "sh*" and "f* _" in their core values.
|
| Those values are "Don't f*_ the customer" and "Open company no
| bulls**" (oh the irony). This 'take' immediately threw me off.
| Why would you even mention something this trivial? I'll give it
| a pass as his emotions were probably elevated.
|
| > After being in the company for more than a year I had found
| that folks with children are less likely to get a promotion. I
| had no evidence, it was a feeling.
|
| Most of the folks I've seen got promoted had children. Having
| no evidence to support your claim in an article like this (with
| a banger title) is a red flag to me.
|
| PTO is unfortunately something that I'm unfamiliar with. The
| country that I live in prohibits unlimited PTO by law, so I've
| never had that experience. Although, using the PTO that I
| acquire is still subject to approval of my manager. That part
| of the story is what the author should have really focused on.
| Going after the whole company in such a vicious manner is not a
| good look in my opinion.
|
| I agree with most of the top comments here. Stay low, get a
| lawyer, deal with this silently. Hope his wife has a fast and
| easy recovery. Tough times, tough challenges for the author
| personally. No matter how hard I try, I certainly wouldn't be
| able to fully empathize with him.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| My only experience of unlimited PTO was at a startup that was
| very successful and full of people who worked very long hours and
| took almost no vacations. If you took a vacation everyone was
| very supportive, in the sense that: We are really glad you are
| doing this, we know how hard it must be for you to take a
| vacation.
|
| In my second year when I let people know that I was going to a
| second five day vacation (ie two one week vacations in a year) I
| could see opinions of me drop considerably. I was not a team
| player.
|
| If I ever were to work at a place with unlimited PTO, I would
| simply ask, what is the average PTO people take in a year. If
| they can't say, don't believe it. It's just a ploy to not have to
| account for vacation days or pay vacation days when there is
| turnover.
| borski wrote:
| We enforced a fairly strict "you should really take this
| minimum amount off per year" while we had our unlimited
| vacation policy. We never went so far as to punish anyone for
| not taking it, but we set the _minimum_ expectations upfront,
| and that seemed to work well.
| soared wrote:
| I'll give you a funny opposing story. I worked at oracle data
| cloud, a very small section of oracle. We got unlimited pto but
| the rest of oracle didn't. They wouldn't rebuild/change the hr
| system so we were told to just not put pto in the system and
| take it as needed. When I left I had taken close to two weeks,
| but was also paid out more than one paycheck's worth for my
| "unused" pto.
| rjbwork wrote:
| I really like this about my current employer. I take _at least_
| 4 weeks off a year in addition to medical /sick leave for
| things like dr's appointments and just not feeling well. They
| don't even track it as far as I can tell. Couldn't tell you my
| exact number I've taken this year or last year, but I take a
| full week every quarter and my managers have never quibbled
| about it or anything.
|
| I don't think I'd work somewhere that was so nit picky about
| PTO and looked down on fellow workers for taking it. That way
| quickly leads to burnout and long term lower productivity.
| h_jason wrote:
| Current Atlassian here:
|
| This article doesn't represent my experience at the company so
| far at all. My team has been super chill about taking 3-4+ weeks
| of PTO, we've got people having kids and getting promo, we have
| people taking parental leave and coming back in good standing on
| the team, and we've had people take carer's leave without any
| problem.
|
| Not sure if this person was in bad standing with the team to
| begin with or just happened to have a tough manager, but this
| kind of vitriol is not at all justified from what I've seen at
| the company.
|
| I have seen several overly entitled people throw tantrums about
| inadequate pay/benefits/conditions since I've been here, and
| that's pretty much how I would categorize this website.
| xutopia wrote:
| The best scenario for PTO is when they say "You have X weeks of
| garante PTO per year. If you need more time off for whatever
| reason that is between you and your manager."
| masa331 wrote:
| I'm sorry that your wife is fighting cancer. It's terrible and i
| wish you overcome it together.
|
| But other than that i don't get the article. You are a software
| engineer in US. You are part of the elite, you have top salary,
| you will probably never have to worry about job security and
| money. You can make decent savings. You have powers to build your
| own business. Something a few billions other people don't have.
| Yet you are crying like a baby that you maybe got a bit screwed.
| Take it as a lesson for your next interviews and employments with
| other big and rich technology companies. It's not like you spent
| your whole life there.
| seanjregan wrote:
| My wife had a heart attack not long after giving birth to my
| second child. My parental leave was planned for a few weeks
| later. When I got the call, I closed my laptop walked out of a
| meeting and went to the hospital. I didn't come back to Atlassian
| until my life was sorted out many months later.
|
| They handled everything for me to make it easier.
|
| I'll add that they pay 100% of my health plan and the birth of my
| kids cost less than the 3 whole foods bag I bought on the way
| home.
| frabbit wrote:
| Whole Foods? Aren't they the union-busting[1] exploiters? I'll
| take your anecdote under advisement.
|
| 1. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-
| foo...
| jjmorrison wrote:
| This is what the google / facebook monopolies have done to
| silicon valley culture. People want the least amount of work and
| accountability, but feel entitled to every promotion, bump, perk
| in the book.
|
| At the end of the day, to pay these salaries, the company needs
| to drive performance and growth. Keeping a company alive is super
| hard - it's not your safety net.
| [deleted]
| slackfan wrote:
| So why didn't you quit? It's not like the job market has been
| massively hot or anything for the past three years. I've seen
| people run into similar (not to the same extreme) issues at
| various employers over the years, and the answer is "ok", as you
| hop back into the interview pool and then shortly give your two
| weeks.
| timdaub wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised that people ever believed that unlimited
| PTO bullshit. I mean literally using these two words together is
| already a lie.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Recent ex-Atlassian employee here. No part of this article
| matches with my experience. It's one of the better companies I've
| worked for. I usually took 3-4 weeks of PTO a year, it wasn't a
| big deal. We didn't even have to register our time off in a
| payroll system or anything like that. Yeah you couldn't take 6
| months off and expect to keep your job, but I felt like 3-5 weeks
| of PTO was the norm there. I also had female managers who took
| 3-4 months of maternity leave. It wasn't a big deal. This article
| complains about being at a job for 2 years without a promotion.
| That's the mark of an entitled person. P4 is still a great
| position with solid pay.
| olingern wrote:
| Keep in mind managers often make or break your experience. The
| article could be about OP's manager as much as it could be
| Atlassian.
|
| Companies that don't provide any training and structure with
| how managers handle engineers end up with employees having
| wildly different experiences. So, I would find Atlassian at
| fault here
| ununoctium87 wrote:
| Atlassian provides very thorough and structured training
| before anyone is allowed on the management ladder
| anunnymouse wrote:
| Oh, you again.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Atlassian is ultimately responsible for the experience of all
| employees.
|
| That said, this employee seems to have long running
| grievances with his or her managers that predate the cancer
| diagnosis. Somewhere in there was a team switch (see the
| complaint about new techs / can't go back to the previous
| team.) So this spanned multiple managers.
|
| As near as I can infer: the central complaint is Atlassian
| didn't offer longterm paid leave to deal with the cancer
| treatment, this employee didn't want to use unpaid leave, and
| Atlassian expected him or her to either work or go on unpaid
| leave. It's hard to tell.
|
| This post and many of the details about it leaves me
| suspecting the relevant managers at Atlassian would tell a
| very different story.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| It actually says in the beginning that he was a P5, which I
| assume to be over 200k total comp, which is more or less the
| top few percent of software engineers nationwide. That is a
| great comp package even for management. So if you are indeed
| that valuable, any company would want to retain you, and you
| could ask for a lateral move to a new manager, or just bolt
| when things get hairy. Everybody wants to retain or hire the
| top talent.
|
| Edit: that is not to justify the alleged treatment, only
| placing the situation in relative terms. He wasn't being paid
| 80k at the only shop in town, with no other possibilities
| available.
| x0x0 wrote:
| The poster did get a lateral -- see the complaints about the
| new team and not being able to go back to the old team.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> I also had female managers who took 3-4 months of maternity
| leave.
|
| That's super poor, wtf. What do you even do after these first 4
| months then? Give the baby to a babysitter? I know US law about
| this is weak, but wow.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Yes, US median is something like 2-5 weeks maternity leave
| and many require you to exhaust all of your accrued paid sick
| time and PTO _first_ and many of them also require you to
| file it as FMLA (the federal red tape /insurance program for
| long term leave) even if you don't plan to extend past
| "given" amounts of maternity leave. So yeah, in corporate
| dystopian America, 3-4 months sure looks generous.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| A lot of people lean on grandparents or spouses for kids. But
| to be honest, we all worked from home so it wasn't a big
| deal. It was common to see kids or babies in Zoom calls.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > we all worked from home so it wasn't a big deal
|
| As a parent of an infant myself (well she's one now), I
| _cannot_ imagine trying to work while also caring for a
| child. Like I 've done it, and it's incredibly, incredibly
| difficult.
|
| But yeah, if both parents are working you need childcare,
| and that's expensive if you don't have (much) family
| support.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| What does your contract say with regards to unlimited vacation?
|
| If you take it literally how could they fire you if on your
| first day you leave for PTO and never return. I wonder if this
| has ever been tested in court
| oauea wrote:
| > I usually took 3-4 weeks of PTO a year
|
| So the legal minimum in most countries?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I also had female managers who took 3-4 months of maternity
| leave. It wasn 't a big deal._
|
| It wasn't a big deal because _it 's the law._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| There implication is it was paid which is NOT the law
|
| "The FMLA allows eligible employees to take up to 12 work
| weeks of unpaid leave..."
| [deleted]
| jjav wrote:
| The OP quote about the female manager doesn't really imply
| whether it was paid or not, one way or the other.
|
| That said, whether FMLA is unpaid or not depends on the
| state.
|
| I took my 12 weeks of FMLA parent leave (as a father) and I
| was paid weekly by the state (California). There is a cap
| to what the state will pay so it was less than my regular
| salary but it was a paid leave with the state providing the
| income.
|
| (On top of that my company made up the difference, but that
| was a benefit they chose to give. But even if the company
| was stingy and didn't want to pay anything during the
| leave, the state does provide some income.)
| jjcm wrote:
| Another recent ex-Atlassian here (I left 4 months ago after
| working there for 5 years), and I'll +1 this. Was a really
| solid company. I took multiple 3+ week vacations over my 5
| years, and one 3 month vacation. In addition it felt like the
| company actually cared about me. I had the best work life
| balance of any company I've worked for at Atlassian.
|
| Some other things about this article stood out to me though.
| The author brings up: "Interesting fact 1: Atlassian is the
| only company that has words "shit" and "fuck" in their core
| values." without the context here. These values are "Don't fuck
| the customer" and "Open company, no bullshit". It seems strange
| the author is calling out the language of values I actually
| feel were pretty decent. If anything this is just a reflection
| of word choices of Australian vs American cultures. It feels
| like the author is just trying to pull every gotchya out there
| due to a bad experience with a manager.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >If anything this is just a reflection of word choices of
| Australian vs American cultures.
|
| Too right, cunt.
| duderific wrote:
| Using those words in their official core values just seems a
| bit juvenile and unprofessional. Not a red flag, but maybe a
| yellow one.
| oauea wrote:
| > These values are "Don't fuck the customer" and "Open
| company, no bullshit".
|
| Huh. As a customer, this is surprising.
| as1mov wrote:
| > These values are "Don't fuck the customer"
|
| Not really living up to that one lads, considering your
| software is an absolute raging dumpster-fire
| OJFord wrote:
| > I also had female managers who took 3-4 months of maternity
| leave.
|
| Is that supposed to sound like a lot? Not all commenters are
| from the US! Here in the UK, AIUI, it fairly recently shifted
| from 12mo maternity (paternity I _think_ was employers '
| discretion entirely?) leave to 12mo split between parents as
| they see fit, and not necessarily concurrently or at birth,
| etc.
| ssully wrote:
| In the US, that is decent. My wife's job (non-tech) offers a
| month at like 75% pay I believe.
| OJFord wrote:
| I'm not trying to encourage anybody to quit their jobs for
| a different local job that I suppose will have better
| benefits - I'm commenting under the assumption that the
| discussion's a bit more abstract than that.
| ssully wrote:
| Oh, I understand and your point is good. I just wanted to
| add a little context that the benefits vary wildly when
| it comes to maternity leave.
| ununoctium87 wrote:
| You can't compare US benefits to UK benefits. I'm fairly
| certain Atlassian's EU offices will have very different
| parental leave to the US. IIRC, Aus is 6 months
| politelemon wrote:
| The topic however is about the claims of "unlimited". The
| location becomes less relevant.
| OJFord wrote:
| Well I'm comparing to UK (perhaps nee EU?) _statutory
| requirements_ , of course there's some win-some/lose-some,
| I just think (even as a right-leaning^ bachelor) that's
| something worth legislating around.
|
| Especially if you're (I'm not) pro positive-discrimination:
| the 'time with newborn vs. work/pay/career progression'
| decision is awful for gender equality, surely?
| Traditionally it is indeed _maternity_ leave, and if you
| don 't even mandate a good amount of that then the 'better
| hires' are men (all of us, family size decisions aside),
| women who won't-have/have-had children, and women who value
| career more.
|
| (^: I say 'leaning' more because of US/UK political
| spectrum differences than anything else; feel free to read
| 'pretty solidly Conservative' in a UK context.)
| MandieD wrote:
| Germany: 14 months paid parental leave ("Elterngeld"), with
| max of 12 used by one parent, at 2/3 of average net from
| previous year, capped at 1800 EUR/mo, paid via the employment
| office. Months can be distributed as desired through first
| three years of child's life. Outside of paid parental leave,
| either or both parents can opt to take unpaid leave, or work
| 15-30 hours/week (pay prorated, of course) until the kid is 3
| - all of this is collectively called "Elternzeit". My husband
| used his first Elterngeld month right after our kid was born,
| and is using his second now as I start back to work. It's
| excellent, and everyone deserves this.
|
| "Mutterschutz" is why I was put on paid leave six weeks
| before the due date, and forbidden to return any less than
| eight weeks after birth - that's paid at a rate close to
| previous net and if there is a cap, it's higher than my nice
| (by German, not US tech hub, standards) IT salary. Paid out
| of federal taxes, administered by employers.
| mmarq wrote:
| 10 of these 12 months are on statutory parental leave, which
| is something like 140PS per week. If you have a decent job,
| it's almost equivalent to unpaid leave.
|
| Recently companies started offering enhanced parental leave,
| usually 5-6 months of full pay, but it's not even close to
| being the norm.
| OJFord wrote:
| Ah. Hadn't appreciated that, thanks. I suppose that's still
| better than nothing though, so the USA's 3-4 full pay ends
| up more than 2, but another 10 months' pay however meagre
| with a job to return to seems better to me. I think (again,
| with no experience) in that situation I'd be optimising for
| time off rather than money anyway, once required amounts of
| each are reached I mean.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| 3-4 months is a lot for the US. Most states have no legal
| minimum, at $COMPANY I would get 8 weeks (12 if I moved back
| to California).
| adrr wrote:
| I never heard of a company giving less than 6 months. My
| wife works for a very large financial firm and it was 6
| months. All startups I worked at were 6 months.
| x0x0 wrote:
| And in california, it's paid, but at 60-70% of wages. And
| capped at like $1357 a week. Better than nothing, but for
| most people here, it's not paid at your salary.
| politelemon wrote:
| You might have a skewed or incomplete perception I'm
| thinking... Neither of the holiday amounts you've quoted here
| are big in any sense, they're actually quite low.
| jjav wrote:
| > We didn't even have to register our time off in a payroll
| system or anything like that.
|
| This tells me that it was entirely up to your manager to be ok
| with it or not, as it wasn't tracked anywhere else.
|
| That's a double edged sword. If you have an awesome manager,
| it's great. But if you have a workaholic manager, you'll have a
| difficult time getting any time off ever.
|
| It's much better overall to have a policy of N days per year
| (none of the "unlimited" lies) that accumulate clearly on your
| pacheck, that way there is never doubt or argument as to how
| many days you have earned and can take.
| lnanek2 wrote:
| It's true that "unlimited" is just a scam so that the company
| doesn't have to pay accrued unused vacation. I think most people
| just read between the lines and understand it is "unlimited with
| manager approval." 8 weeks is quite a lot. I don't know anyone at
| my unlimited vacay company that has taken that much. 4 is normal.
| 6 is kind of pushing it. I usually take 2. This is the US,
| though, I've heard Europeans expect more.
|
| Maybe instead of demanding 8 he should have just offered to take
| 4 and use family medical leave for the other 4. Seems like a fair
| offer that works out to 50% salary. FMLA is more legally
| protected than PTO as well, since the PTO could have fine print,
| essentially, saying it is with approval.
|
| I've definitely been in the position before where my SO needed
| more care than I could give when going through a tough pregnancy
| and after without getting negative comments from management about
| my availability. In my case I hired a nanny. Could be tough for
| him if he's more cash strapped, though. Still have my job,
| however.
|
| Also, he might be better off removing a lot of the informal
| language about "lies" and "shit". People will take him more
| seriously if he makes the tone a bit more objective while still
| pointing out the employers' legal obligations weren't met if they
| violated FMLA, or the weaker argument that they didn't provide
| what offered in the job listing if that's the strongest argument
| against them, etc..
| black_13 wrote:
| Everyone that works is at mercy of some employers healthcare
| policy. Simple universal healthcare.
| transitory_pce wrote:
| The problem likely isn't the company -- is the reporting line and
| the inexperienced middle manager he was reporting to.
|
| Dont suffer these people. Esclate to N+1. Eventually you reach
| someone sensible.
| darkerside wrote:
| I feel bad for this person. I like to think that I wouldn't be so
| bitter and angry in this situation, but really, who can say? That
| situation being, his wife has cancer, which has nothing to do
| with Atlassian.
|
| It does sound like he has had some subpar managers (which is the
| cost of promoting from within, you will have managers learning on
| the job), but it also sounds like he is lashing out at a company
| for being a company. Light on details, and clearly one-sided.
|
| Again, I don't totally blame him. Life has dealt him a shit hand
| this year.
| jedberg wrote:
| I've found that it makes much more sense to call it "untracked"
| PTO instead of "unlimited". Obviously there is a limit. But
| untracked implies that as long as things get done in a timely
| manner, no one will hassle you.
|
| So far I've only worked at one place with untracked PTO, and it
| was great. Took more vacation there than anywhere else I had
| worked, and management was really good about not only pushing you
| to take PTO but taking it themselves in big blocks to show that
| such behavior was OK.
| amackera wrote:
| Sad story (though of course there's always more than one side to
| any story!)
|
| I hope folks are clueing into this by now, but flashy policies
| like "unlimited vacation" or "unlimited sick days" _are_ a scam.
| They sell well but never deliver what's on the tin. Instead, I'm
| a fan of "minimum X weeks PTO" or "minimum Y sick days". Any
| request under the minimum is automatically approved. Anything
| after is up to manager discretion.
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