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“And the best part is, we have unlimited vacation days – we really care about maintaining a healthy work-life balance here” is the biggest lie you’ll hear in your young career. With the integration of smartphones with email and Skype/Slack into modern business in the past decade, employers now deem your personal time their time. Now? No issue is too trivial that it can wait until tomorrow.
Got a question that you can’t take two minutes to figure out on your own? Bother one of your coworkers over the weekend or while they’re on vacation.
Can’t reach someone from the company midday on a Saturday for some inexplicable reason? Safely assume they’re dead because they should know that if they’re not working “out of pocket” then they must be “out of reasons to work here anymore” and they’re fucking fired.
Make sure you enjoy your long-awaited vacation time too. But not too much because, remember, you’re a company man. This startup/tech/sales/finance/advertising job you have which isn’t nearly as important as, let’s say, an ER doctor should be treated as if it’s much more important than, let’s say, an ER doctor. Unfortunately, there aren’t any policies in place for your job to be handled by anybody else while you’re gone. That’s just not possible.
The first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Check your email. The first thing you do before you go to bed? Check your email – China’s just waking up. The first thing you do when you get up in the middle of the night to make a BM? Check your email, China BMs at their desks. Become so enveloped with the day-to-day waves of bullshit here that you spend weekend nights dreaming about work and international trips replying to emails while your out-of-office is still up.
Oh, you’re so sick that you spent all night at Urgent Care? Sure, you don’t have to come in today, but you’d better be on your couch with a laptop in front of you. We wouldn’t want you to get anybody else in the office sick, or fully recover for that matter. Tomorrow, make sure to come in early and leave late too to make up for lost time in the office. In fact, why don’t you do that every day from now on?
The best part of this “hip” and “laid-back” culture is that since we offer unlimited vacation days, if you ever decide to leave we don’t owe you a dime! It saves us money and makes your next transition much more difficult. So why wouldn’t you want to come work here? Even if you can’t use all that unlimited time off we give, we still have a ping-pong table!
You’re also not allowed to use the ping-pong table. .
Respond
JR Hickey
Stand up comedian and writer from Chicago who now resides on the West Coast. JR can be seen performing at Cobbs Comedy Club in San Francisco and Zanies Comedy Clubs in Chicago. His work has been published in the Chicago Tribune and recently he was a part of SF Sketchfest 2015. JR's also the host of the PGP dating podcast Don't Take It From Us. He loves you very, very much.
@JRwilldoit
@JRwilldoit
Duda was saving up his PTO. Such a shame
Will used all of Duda’s days for him
Did these layoffs actually happen? For what reason?
Go listen to the podcast, they’re very transparent about it there
There’s nothing we can say or do that will be sufficient for everyone, but here’s a writeup from our CEO:
https://medium.com/@madisonwickham/its-not-just-business-fee49273ed0f?source=linkShare-aa07e48634a7-1476359527
Should have published this on the front page yesterday afternoon. Would people still be upset? Yeah, probably, but they would appreciate at least having some understanding of the situation.
I was being a sarcastic smart-ass (par for the course). I understand it’s a touchy subject
I get it. That’s what the comments are here for. Honestly just thought it’d be a good place to drop that in.
Deleting my work email from my phone was the best decision I’ve made in my postgrad life.
I left it on my phone, but turned off all notifications. Check it maybe once a day but don’t worry about it beyond that.
I’m one of the few people in my department with it. They assume its to be hard working. In reality it’s so I can roll in late, schedule a fake meeting on outlook and look productive.
I’m a new postgrad working in corporate law with 10 days of PTO. How many can I use?
Big law firm? None.
What do you know about law, Dave?
I know Bird Law.
Never worked in big law, but one of my best friends is balls deep in it. The demands for any associate who just wants to consider becoming a partner some day are absurd.
Dave knows employment laws, thats for sure.
Work at one of the larger law firms in the country (not a lawyer), but associates have literally zero free time. We get 5 weeks vacation from the get-go but they use maybe a week throughout the year. 1st years get paid $190k so they really shouldn’t complain.
It’s technically UPTO because you still have meet your billing requirement regardless of PTO taken. The more “PTO” you take, the more you fuck yourself over on a daily basis, so you save up work you can do on “vacation” to at least get 2-4 hours in a day to not fuck yourself. It’s pretty miserable.
I’m using it now and it’s awesome! I’ve signed up for my account and have been bringing in fat paychecks. For real, my first week I made $304 and the second week I doubled it and then it kinda snowballed to $120 a day! juet follow the course..
Use full site………….. http://www.MaxCash3.Tk
you can’t
The dirty secret of “unlimited” PTO is that the majority of these companies employ younger people without families or commitments. They wager that their employees will take less PTO overall because there is no “summer break” to deal with. In addition, they don’t have to pay out accrued PTO when they fire or let someone go. What sounds like a sweet perk, is actually helping the company’s bottom line.
Sounds like a direct stab at Grandex… just connecting the dots.
I don’t even have PTO. PGP
Bruh, slavery was outlawed.
Slavery was never outlawed, it just got more advanced, widespread, and it stopped being discriminatory. Come on! God damnit!!
@NCAA
15 days PTO plus 5 sick days isn’t the best (my brother and his wife work in the UK and get a month), but I’d rather have a set amount of daysI can take at leisure where I don’t have to feel guilty or worry about my career progression or getting fired. “Unlimited” vacation days are more likely “indeterminate” and not often approved.
Er, 3 weeks paid vacation plus sick days is pretty effin’ dope in the States.
The problem with “unlimited PTO” is that you’ll never feel (or get treated like) you earned the time off.
This is too real. I took half a day off yesterday for a doctor’s appt. I worked during 3 of those 4 hours of sick time because my boss likes to “forget” that I’m out of the office.
Not tryna brag, but I get 5 weeks paid vacation and I honestly am not sure why. No 20-something in their right mind would use all of that with a clear conscience, even though “PTO is encouraged”
I never understood why people feel guilty about taking PTO. If I bust my ass for a company that pays a not-so-competitive salary, then I’m taking every day they give me.
It’s not necessarily me that feels bad, it’s other people telling me I should feel bad. Like I took a day off to go to Six Flags (#PGP) and I got shit on by everyone for taking off for that. Bottom line: everyone sucks
I hear ya. The reason I said that was I’ve seen it mentioned on PGP articles before that our generation doesn’t take PTO. I don’t know about everyone else but most of the people I work with are in that 23-35 range and everybody’s taking PTO. Between the Texas State Fair and last week’s Rangers playoff games (thanks MLB), we’ve been throwing around PTO like Oprah.
I work for one of the Big 4. If you’re in a profession where billable hours matter, PTO is irrelevant. You take it a day or two at a time when you can, or right after your performance evaluations.
This was quite depressing for a Thursday