My company has unlimited PTO for being sick. If sick for more than 3 days (consecutively or probably within some time) you are required to provide documentation to HR of the sickness.

A (young, vaccinated) colleague caught COVID and was out for weeks, with multiple urgent care and one ER visit (quickly discharged; urgent care thought he might have had a stroke).

As far as I can tell he’s had no problems with the company after providing the medical evidence that he was, in fact, sick during that time.

OP’s story sounds terrible and the company completely toxic. I don’t defend it at all. However, in the US, nationally taking time off to care to others is not what paid sick leave is typically intended for. (In Washington State, where I live, the Family Care Act allows employees to use any form of paid leave provided by their employer to care for sick family [1]; I don’t know how many states have passed a similar laws.)

Taking leave to care for a sick family member is typically a different kind of leave. In the US, the Family and Medical Leave Act (known as FMLA) entitles eligible employees to 3 months per year to, among other things, care for a seriously ill spouse, or treat a serious illness of their own. FMLA leave is completely unpaid but your job is protected during and after that time, and there’s insurance you can buy to maintain your income when on FMLA.

It is illegal for an employer to deny a request for FMLA if you are eligible for it, or to retaliate for taking it [2]. If you are eligible for FMLA and request it or are retaliated against by termination, that sounds like a lawsuit that would be easy to win, as well as getting the company in trouble with the Department of Labor.

But who would want to work at a company with such toxic behavior from management and HR? I’m glad this was exposed, assuming that it’s true. (You never know who is lying and has a hidden agenda or axe to grind that they are not disclosing.)

Good companies offer paid leave for the same activities that FMLA requires unpaid leave, such as Amazon’s 6 months of paid leave for birth mothers and 3 for other new parents. My current employer is offering 30 days of paid leave for taking care of family members who have serious illnesses like COVID and I’m confident based on what I’ve seen so far that they’ll honor it.

There’s no “unlimited vacation” at Facebook or Amazon and I’m glad for that. My management chains at both companies have always encouraged taking vacation, and set an example by doing it themselves. Facebook even allows you to have a negative vacation balance, and I haven’t seen people need permission for taking their vacation at either company, though it would probably be wise to do so if you were playing an important role in a vital company activity that would be happening during your vacation (such as the launch of a major product you worked on, or periodic performance reviews if you’re a manager or have an important role in them). I typically entered my vacation into the system after taking it at Amazon, and would let my manager/peers know only if I was planning to be gone and unreachable for an extended period. (At Facebook there’s a good system for notifying people who want to/need to know when you will be out of the office, which also sets up the equivalent of out of office emails for their predominant form of internal communication, which is via Workplace.com (basically Facebook for Work, and an overall excellent product that I would recommend [3]); so at FB I’d enter it in advance because of those integrations, but unless I was performing a crucial job function at a crucial time, I wouldn’t expect to need to ask for permission, so much as notify my manager of my plans.

During performance or promotion review committees for employees I’ve participated in, we always tried to adjust fairly for accomplishments per day of work vs. expectations and others, to avoid penalizing people who take full vacation or leave. It’s human nature to want to give a better performance rating to someone who worked hard for a year with minimal vacation, vs. someone who was on leave for half the year and also took vacation, thus having fewer accomplishments total; but the performance committees I’ve seen and participated in always tried to be fair and measure performance adjusted for time worked, and if anything erred toward being generous toward those who had been on long leaves.

> I'd rather have a policy that only allowed 3 or 4 weeks with a minimum mandatory that each employee is required to take at least two weeks off per year.

As a person who was once young, very ambitious, and had no responsibilities or dependents, I would be opposed to requiring that people take so much vacation. When I entered the industry, I wanted to work hard, build things, build a reputation, progress in my career, learn new things, and earn achievements (including one that got me an award and handshake from Jeff Bezos, back when he was CEO at Amazon); I didn’t want to or need to take vacation, and would have preferred higher pay instead. College was largely a 4 year vacation already, except for a few very challenging 400 level CS courses, and during which I had taken several real international vacations with my family. After graduation I was ready to work hard and build my career. The company provided holidays plus an extra day or two were sufficient for me.

What I do wish is that companies were required to pay employees for any paid time off that is offered but not used, as they are required to do when you leave the company, but ironically not if you stay. (By not used I mean such as due to maximum vacation balances or yearly vacation balance resets, as Amazon used to do). Any vacation that would otherwise accrue as vacation balance but doesn’t, due to maximums, should be obliged to be paid as a proportional amount of compensation to the employee; the same if a vacation balance is reset.

I am older now and have responsibilities for people besides myself, and I am aware of the risk of working too hard and burning yourself out, which is why I am glad to have always worked in environments where taking vacation has been encouraged. But for people with few responsibilities that love their job and want to progress in their career as fast as they are able, I do not think those people would be happy with vacation being forced on them. I wouldn’t have been. I do wish that employers were required to compensate employees for any PTO that is offered but not used though. I can understand why some people would not want the law to require this, since it might encourage people to overwork themselves - but we are all adults and some people may be in a situation where they need more money more than they need vacation time; it should be their choice in my opinion.

[1] https://www.lni.wa.gov/agency/outreach/paid-leave-under-the-...

[2] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/77b-fmla-protec...

[3] I don’t know if it has the same degree of integration via bots that Slack has, however, so if that’s important to your workflow then you may want to scrutinize this aspect when evaluating the product; but the capability for them exists and is used extensively internally.