Memo: Microsoft plans to give US salaried staff unlimited Discretionary Time Off plus 10 corporate holidays, leaves of absence, mental health time off, and more
surprise—away from the worker. https://twitter.com/... Amy Diehl, Ph.D. / @amydiehl : Unlimited PTO is a trick. It sounds good, but it actually encourages presenteeism. Instead companies should give employees a set number of days (which are payable upon separation) AND encourage everyone to use them. https://twitter.com/... @solientart : “Unlimited PTO” is only real if you're culturally allowed to use it without consequences. I don't know of any workplace that actually allows for this outside of university sabbaticals (which are still technically work). https://twitter.com/... @adequate_scott : Taking the “unlimited PTO” scam at face value in 2023 is journalistic malpractice. They didn't remove the limits from PTO, they ended PTO and replaced it with an amorphous, unknowable YMMV policy that helps their balance sheet. https://twitter.com/... Ryan Kitchens / @this_hits_home : a pitfall of unlimited PTO (beyond it not translating to dollars) is that people have to navigate the social norms of what is a reasonable amount of time, and that's hell for neurodivergent people. Most companies do not maintain the culture necessary to make the concept work. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This memo lands at the end of a three-year tug-of-war over where work happens. Tech companies first moved incentives out of the office during the pandemic, leaning on time-off allowances for parents and mental health support, and Twitter's remote plan then triggered a wave of copycat work-from-home policies. By 2022 the same companies were spending billions expanding US office space even while letting some staff stay permanently remote.
Against that backdrop, Microsoft is choosing the benefits lever instead of the mandate lever: unlimited Discretionary Time Off plus 10 corporate holidays, leaves of absence, and mental health time off for US salaried staff. The catch flagged by critics like Amy Diehl is structural — unlimited PTO typically removes the accrued-days payout owed on separation and shifts the real gatekeeping from policy to manager culture.
First-order effects
- US salaried Microsoft employees gain uncapped Discretionary Time Off alongside 10 fixed corporate holidays, but lose any banked-leave balance that would be payable when they leave the company.
- Approval discretion moves fully to individual managers and team norms, since there is no accrual ledger left to arbitrate how much time off is 'owed'.
Second-order effects
- Competing employers face a fork: match the perk to stay competitive for salaried talent, or push the opposite direction — as Amazon did when Andy Jassy ordered staff back five days a week from January 2025, citing culture.
- Finance teams across the industry watch the liability line: converting accrued PTO into discretionary time removes a booked obligation from the balance sheet, making the policy attractive beyond its recruiting value.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, corporate leave splits into two camps — discretionary-time adopters versus return-to-office mandators — with benefits packages doing the negotiating that office attendance rules used to do.
- Whether unlimited PTO delivers real time off depends on cultural permission rather than policy text; absent that, the model risks entrenching presenteeism while quietly erasing separation payouts, which may eventually draw regulatory or labor scrutiny.
The trend: Tech employers are replacing formal accrued-leave policies with discretionary time as they renegotiate flexibility against mounting return-to-office pressure.