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Five weeks, which is what the OP took and what rattled the china for management, is way too much. That's senior-executive-range vacation time. BTW, the five weeks was IN ADDITION TO the customary ten paid holidays, whatever sick and PTO leave is needed for dental and doctor appointments, etc.
Unlimited PTO is a marketing gimmick and accounting ploy, as indicated by several comments upthread. A reasonable expectation is two weeks vacation per year for staff and managers under the age of 50. Perhaps three weeks for those older (senior staff). Plus holidays, plus paid leave for sick time, etc. Executive compensation is entirely different, and much more vacation time or "unlimited PTO" is often negotiated or otherwise indicated.
2 weeks is not necessarily the rule in decent white collar jobs at this point. On a recent job search, I saw 12-15 days pretty commonly.
Now when it comes to unlimited PTO, the promise of it is basically asking employees to test it out. I think companies doing this need to be prepared to deal with a lot of confusion and conflict with employees. Their 'bet' is that employees will be scared and play it very conservatively in response. And that'll work with a % of workers. But then there's going to be workers who arrive at their own estimate as to what they consider 'fair' and will just work with that number, and then you're going to have some who will just view it as carte blanche. After all it is sold as a 'perk' to staff, so some folks will be audacious enough to turn that into 4-5 weeks. And then it's up to their supervisor to have that awkward conversation of "unlimited actually being limited to some mystery figure that no-one can pin down but is definitely well shy of whatever you're asking for".
Maybe for their next trick, companies can just issue blank paychecks and have you fill in what you think you are worth. And if your number is higher than some unwritten mysterious figure they have in mind, you get fired.
What the OP experienced isn't as much a PTO issue as is a communication issue. And both sides are often at fault in these situations. The company should have better communicated their PTO policy - I'm sure it's not just "Unlimited PTO" and left it as that. There's likely more in the policy/employee handbook that may have helped the OP. But more importantly - it only takes a bit of common sense to gauge what the culture is like. Perhaps the OP should have had a talk with his manager to get a feel (or vice versa). At the end - it sounded like he was approved for the vacation. But was "talked to" about it. So maybe the it wan't much of an issue.
Regardless of what a company policy is - there's often situations that makes it an "anomaly" that needs to be addressed separately.
Which leads us to the term "unlimited vacation". I think most (should) realize that that most "names" or descriptions are more often not literal. All you can eat is often not really that, bottomless drinks isn't always that either. Most of these terms do come with restrictions.
I feel it was a name given by the originator and others simply used it for simplicity sake. As with anything else work related, each company is going to have their version of said policy. It's simply easier to call it "unlimited vacation" vs. "unlimited vacation as long as your work is done and your team lead or supervisor has approved it and other issues that we may need to work out on an as needed basis". I guess a more accurate way of naming this would be "no preset limits vacation" or "no earned vacation". But the latter can also be criticized when taken literally.
And it's not something they came up just to pull the wool over peoples eyes. I sometimes feel people know exactly what the deal is but feel they can "play dumb" and either game the system or voice their agenda.
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