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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1669 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 28, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Which country is this? In the US, I have never seen an employer who groups sick days and PTO. Of course, I'm in hi-tec where the standard of benefits is usually high. Not luxurious - like, I have a pretty decent benefit package now and it has just 5 sick days a year (there's also short-term disability but that's whole other story) - but still a separate benefit from PTO.

I’m American and my company uses a single pool of PTO. It’s a small startup-esque company, so maybe that plays a role? I will say that my friends in tech (I’m a mechanical engineer) have simultaneously better PTO policies and worse PTO cultures than anyone else I know. Plenty of allowed time off and they barely use it.

PTO cultures, especially in tech startups, are commonly abysmal. Or at least were when I was there. While it is understandable for early founding team, where working one's ass off can literally make one millions (if one's very lucky of course), unfortunately it gets transferred to the wider team where the benefits are much more limited. It takes explicit and conscious effort to counter this dynamics, and I only rarely have seen companies that do it, and explicitly encourage and normalize taking regular vacations and not being "always on call". While being young, childless and untethered, it may not be that big of a deal, but later in life it becomes a bigger deal.

A single pool of PTO would be a high side of average deal in the trades- the alternative is usually to have no paid sick time at all(vacation needing to be scheduled in advance, in one day increments, often counting the weekends in between vacation days as part of it).

very common these days in the US. Sick days are notoriously underutilized (see above discussion).

Strong agree, I have about ten months of sick leave at this point. Nice if I ever get a lingering illness whilst still employed but otherwise? EH!

This is the U.S. I work for a company that provides B2B IT services. I get 5 weeks of undifferentiated PTO per year and can roll over 1 week. Most of my work can be done from home, meaning I very infrequently need to take sick days, so this works out well for me IMO. The company has also been pretty lenient with letting people borrow from future PTO in the case of genuine medical necessity to avoid having to use FMLA leave.

I'm American, and I've known a lot of people with PTO that combines vacation and sick days. It may be a difference in state labor laws.

Could be, I have worked either in California or with companies that have significant California presence, and California requires sick days.

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