Volunteering with young people doesn't mean you have to live next door to them (and listen to their music, carousing, etc).
Anyway, these places look like a riot! It's like college life without the hassle of exams. And yes they probably even have a "hookup" culture.
These could be specialized for all types of interests. Imagine something like a "hacker house" but on a community level...spend your days coding, debating, woodworking...all with people who love it too.
55 seems too young to get into something like this, but I could definitely see 60-75. After 75, seems like you want serious peace and quiet so these places probably aren't a good fit.
The confusion in this thread about the old PTO vs new unlimited PTO makes me wonder if the next generation will even know what was lost. For anyone still confused, the old PTO is basically extra pay with strict conditions on how it can be used. For example, under the old PTO, if an employer gave 4 weeks vacation, then if the employee quits after one year, they get the 4 weeks in cash value, it's like another month of salary. In the new unlimited PTO system, the employee gets nothing. Unlimited PTO is a downgrade for employees. The theoretical benefit of unlimited vacation often ends up with less vacation taken than before because there's no strong policy an employee can use to argue for taking vacation. Previously, since there's often a cap on vacation days, an employee could easily argue they need to take vacation or they are losing money. Now they have to beg management and they have no strong position. It's issues like this and others such as non-competes that really shows the need for either a union or association like lawyers and doctors have.
No, I'm waiting for the day I can avoid the world of work, which has become progressively shittier since I graduated college in the early 90s.
When I started as a developer, it was NORMAL for an employer to:
- 1:1 match 401k fully, some even offered pensions
- offer PAID vacation time, not this bullshit scam "unlimited PTO" which is really just unpaid vacation.
- offer full zero-deductible/zero-contribution health insurance
- offer real equity to rank-and-file employees
- realize you came in to work at 9 and left around 5 and weekends were yours.
Practically everything about the working world has become progressively worse and I cannot wait to be done with it. I really feel sorry for people entering the industry now, they will probably see health insurance benefits worsen or disappear, and may even see themselves paid by the hour.
I just entered the industry, and the benefits you listed were included in every offer I considered. My current job includes all of them except equity and, based on conversations with my peers, that's the exception rather than the rule.
I'm happy for you but increasingly your experience is the exception.
Even tier-one companies offering me positions with "top of market" pay have offered me health insurance that requires a monthly contribution...with a family these contributions are often meaningful. These are a stealth pay cut. If you are being paid $200k but have to contribute $1k a month for your health insurance contribution...
Paid vacation is becoming as rare as a white rhino. Even big companies are moving to the "unlimited PTO" model because they know full well no one actually exploits the "unlimited" time off; if they do, they put their jobs at risk. Companies are increasingly out of the business of accounting for your vacation time. Amazingly, there are some rubes out there that think "unlimited PTO" is a perk. if you don't see vacation days accrued on your paystub, the IRS says you are getting none.
Once again, when I entered the industry, you didn't even have to ask about these benefits, they were assumed. Indeed, lots of companies did 2:1 matching of 401k. Try finding that now.
In each of the teir 1 companies minus Amazon and Facebook you’ll get that and more. Most large t2 companies give all those benefits as well, just with less RSUs and free stock bonuses.
Unlimited PTO policies are paid time off, but not contractual accrued leave. As descendant posts say, you do not need to account for unlimited PTO whereas you need to account for annual leaves. This only matters at the time of quitting the institution.
Responder "flerchin" below, please tell me what employer offers "unlimited PAID vacation"....do you even know what "paid" vacation is?
Here is what it is. If you accrue four weeks of vacation and leave the company, they give you a check for four weeks of pay.
When I left a job in 2009, I had six weeks accrued. I walked out with a check big enough to buy a car. They HAVE to give you the money when they are accounting for PAID time off. This is also why employers that offer PAID vacation will cap it or require that you use a certain number of days per year...they need to actually account for these as days they are obliged to pay you for - its TAX LAW. In the public sector, there have been a lucky few that have negotiated away this cap. When my father retired from the fire dept he had THREE YEARS of sick time accrued...they had to pay him for it! It wasn't 100% pay, but it was still a huge check.
"unlimited PTO" is NOT PAID vacation. It just isn't. Unlimited PTO is the company telling you it will look the other way if you decide not to come into work on a certain day if you have followed company guidelines for scheduling the day off. By accounting rules, they are actually giving you ZERO actual paid vacation days. Yes, zero. Ask your accountant. Amazingly they convinced a generation of workers that the new model was a perk.
If you do not see vacation day accrual on your paystub, you are not getting paid vacation. So says the IRS, so I don't really care if you downvote me.
In most, if not all, places with unlimited PTO, the P stands for paid. The rub is that it's not unlimited, by convention. What you have described is a sabbatical policy.
They're not describing a sabbatical policy, sabbaticals are generally unpaid.
PTO is accrued, is part of the compensation package, and when unused results in a check for those hours of unused PTO at the salary rate in effect when employment terminated.
The "unlimited personal time off" scam is a compensation regression from the previously standard accrued/earned PTO package.
For employees with leverage, the "unlimited time off" can turn out fine if they take advantage of it without harming their role in the company.
But, for such employees, the previous system of accrued/earned PTO is typically advantageous anyways because they will often be able to take time off or "work from home/remotely" while effectively taking time off without depleting their PTO balance, leaving it for payment when employment terminates.
In any case, for the majority of employees, "unlimited time off" is really just a loss of compensation as they don't usually have the leverage and/or diligence to take sufficient time off before termination.
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At a past startup, in an attempt to get better terms in an upcoming funding round, the executives got the brilliant idea of switching from a standard PTO policy to "unlimited". They sold it to the employees at an all-hands meeting as a compensation upgrade.
The sales and operations folks celebrated, while us engineers, who had largely taken zero vacation under continuous crunch since starting immediately asked what would happen to our respective unused PTO balances.
Their response? The unused PTO would be zeroed "now that it was unnecessary, since you could take unlimited vacation anyways."
It was a sleazy attempt to erase the unused PTO balance commitments to all employees from the books before raising the next round. At everyone's expense.
We engineers called the executives out on it, and threatened to quit immediately which would force them to cut PTO checks to all of us - and said we'd be in tomorrow to interview and renegotiate our positions if desired.
That forced them to instead freeze our unused PTO balances. We were unable to prevent them from pivoting to the "unlimited time off" plan however, everyone was effectively demoted that week. I did however receive my substantial unused PTO check when I eventually left that sinking ship.
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Hopefully that (true story) helps illustrate the difference...
Furthermore, in companies that offer actual paid vacation, you are typically obligated to use some each year, which means when you book your time off, it is almost unheard of for a manager to claim you are actually needed in the office due to "crunch time" etc....which could very well screw up the company's tax accounting.
Meanwhile, in the scam world of "unlimited PTO", I have found it is common for managers to ask that employees delay or reschedule vacation.
Anyway this whole subthread illustrates that many HN readers lack basic financial literacy...they don't even understand their own compensation
Unlimited PTO is just one more way the Suits outsmarted the nerds
Volunteering with young people doesn't mean you have to live next door to them (and listen to their music, carousing, etc).
Anyway, these places look like a riot! It's like college life without the hassle of exams. And yes they probably even have a "hookup" culture.
These could be specialized for all types of interests. Imagine something like a "hacker house" but on a community level...spend your days coding, debating, woodworking...all with people who love it too.
55 seems too young to get into something like this, but I could definitely see 60-75. After 75, seems like you want serious peace and quiet so these places probably aren't a good fit.
I absolutely cannot wait to retire!