Have you not worked in California? This is sidestepped by offering "unlimited PTO" at every company I've worked at in the last 10 years. I can only think of one friend here who actually got paid out for unused PTO.
This is just very reflective of hip start-ups. A large amount of tech companies (i.e., more established ones) have standard 15-21 day PTO accrual policies.
I've gotten paid out twice for my PTO and one of them actually happened to be a "hip start-up" who didn't believe in "unlimited PTO".
I choose to see your personal anecdote with my own, if you’ll appreciate it as far as pleasant exchange will allow; the “unlimited vacation” model (or “Flexible PTO” whatever we want to call it) seems to be becoming less of a ‘hip start-up’ thing, as experienced in my last two jobs-and widely becoming a recruiting hook in even established enterprises: one was a boring as hell telecom provider introduced it a year before I departed, the other was an equally boring as hell real estate software vendor introduced it years before my arrival.
$currentEmployer is announcing with rolling it out next year, they themselves are a rather boring healthcare systems provider.
Maybe the difference lies in how the two of us define ‘hip start-up’, though.
