Always move companies. There's always somewhere that'll do better for you.
My company gave us more holidays off, decided to add extra days off before and after holidays that typically land on weekends, unlimited PTO and a policy of encouraging you to take time off not shame you for using 1 day for a doctors appointment, and surprisingly unlike literally everywhere else I worked, they gave me an 8% raise to account for inflation.
I agree, but someone here in HN mentioned a strategy that I think can really work when you are "offered" unlimited PTO as a hiring perk: Once you get the final offer, send an email to both the Recruiter and the hiring manager (shoot as high in the org-chart as you can) and mention something like the following:
"I see that the company has an 'unlimited PTO' policy. The standard PTO time I have taken in the places I work for the last 5 years is 25 days PTO a year. Would I be able to take the same 25 days per year of PTO under the Company's 'Unlimited PTO' policy?"
That way, you are establishing a written record that 25 days (or whatever time you'd prefer), and are letting them know in advance the number of days you will take. That way, you can take 25 days every year, and if they somehow hint you that you are taking "too many days", you can refer to the email showing that hey, before you started, they told you that 25 days was OK.
If it matters, September is my 1 year anniversary and since I started I've taken almost a full month off for various trips I've taken and not a single person has a problem with it. So while I would normally agree with you, in my context I cannot.
In the bad case, your PTO rarely gets approved, and you never accumulate any to be paid out. Peer pressure is used to convince people to not take time off.
In the good case, leaders lead by example by taking time off frequently, and encouraging their reports to do the same. PTO is approved more often than not. If people start "abusing" the privilege, they get spoken to personally, instead of the whole team/company being punished by changing the policy.
I've worked at a place with unlimited PTO, and it was the latter case, and it was great. I never had to budget my time - I never had to worry that spending an extra day at the beach during the summer meant that I would have one less day to spend with my family in another state during the holidays. The time I took off seemed much more worthwhile than being paid out for 3 accrued days or whatever.
Yup, and my place of employment is also the latter. Leadership takes time off all the time. Heck my direct boss who is senior engineering director just took 2 weeks off for vacation, which overlapped with a major release launch, he didn't care, his vacation personal time meant more.
Our VP of Engineering takes off quite a bit too. They all encourage us to and also encourage us to take mental health days too. Mental health is a big concern in my company and they do not take kindly to people not taking care of themselves... It sounds bad to read that way but "do not take kindly" in a good way.
Also we're a heavily remote first and ROWE company, that could also make a huge difference.
I don't publicly disclose my employment despite being absolutely enthralled with how great they are, but if you DM me on twitter and mention this thread, if you're looking for a job, give me your resume and if we're looking for someone like you, I'll definitely let you know and see about getting you in.
My company gave us more holidays off, decided to add extra days off before and after holidays that typically land on weekends, unlimited PTO and a policy of encouraging you to take time off not shame you for using 1 day for a doctors appointment, and surprisingly unlike literally everywhere else I worked, they gave me an 8% raise to account for inflation.