Our careers page lists "Unlimited PTO" as a benefit, in a bulleted list, next to "dental" and a photo of two employees laughing at a laptop that is almost certainly displaying a stock screensaver. We'd like to report, honestly, how much vacation people actually take under this policy, and why the number is smaller than the one it replaced.

The policy that got replaced

Before unlimited PTO, employees had 15 defined days a year. People used, on average, 13 of them, because 15 is a number, a number creates a target, and a target gets pursued. Everyone could see the number, everyone could plan against it, and nobody felt guilty using what was explicitly theirs.

What happened after "unlimited"

Average usage dropped to 9 days. Not because anyone enjoys the office more now. Because "unlimited" removed the one thing that made the old policy usable: a defined allotment you were entitled to without negotiation. Once the ceiling disappears, every single day off becomes a personal judgment call — is this a reasonable amount, am I the person who takes too much, would my manager mentally file this away — and most people, lacking a number to point to, default to taking less.

The social proof problem

In the old system, a coworker taking their 15 days told you nothing about whether you should take yours — everyone had the same 15. In the unlimited system, every coworker's vacation becomes a silent data point in an unspoken ranking. Someone takes four weeks, and it becomes gossip. Someone takes one week, and it becomes the ambient norm everyone else quietly recalibrates against, dragging the real number down year over year with no policy change required.

The manager incentive nobody states out loud

A manager with unlimited PTO on their team has no budget line item constraining vacation, which sounds generous, except it also means there's no number protecting the employee from a manager's unstated preference. "How much vacation is normal here" becomes a question with no written answer, settled entirely by osmosis, which tends to favor whichever manager happens to take the least themselves and sets the visible floor for everyone below them.

The actual function of "unlimited"

It removes a liability from the balance sheet. Accrued, defined PTO is a payable liability — when someone leaves, unused days often have to be paid out, in cash, a real number that affects the books. "Unlimited" PTO accrues nothing, because there's no defined amount to accrue, which means there's nothing to pay out when someone leaves. The benefit that reads as generosity on a careers page often began as an accounting decision, and the fact that it also, coincidentally, makes people take less vacation isn't the plan — it's just the plan's convenient side effect.

What we're not saying

We're not saying unlimited PTO is a scam everywhere — some companies genuinely build a culture where people take real, long, guilt-free vacations under this exact policy, usually because leadership visibly, repeatedly, models taking a lot of time off themselves. We're saying the policy only works when someone actively counteracts the vagueness it introduces, and most companies adopt the policy without adopting the counteracting behavior, which is how you end up with a benefit that sounds infinite and performs smaller than the finite one it replaced.

Our recommendation

If you're going to call it unlimited, publish the actual company average every year, out loud, specifically so new hires have a real number to calibrate against instead of guessing. Or just bring back the defined number. A real 20 days, used, beats an unlimited policy that quietly produces 9.

If your own "unlimited PTO" policy is producing single-digit average usage, email us at contact@b2bsaas.guru. We'll help you audit it. We'll also ask, gently, how much vacation our own team actually took this year. We're not entirely sure we want to know either.