Burnout remains one of the technology industry’s most persistent problems. Long hours, on-call rotations, production incidents and relentless delivery schedules continue to push IT professionals to their limits.
Yet despite those realities, most candidates never ask about one of the benefits most directly tied to recovery and work-life balance.
According to research from Glassdoor, nearly 60% of workers don’t discuss paid time off during the hiring process. For technology professionals, that omission may mean missing one of the clearest signals of how a company operates when workloads spike, deadlines slip and employees need time to recharge.
The finding highlights a disconnect in how many candidates evaluate opportunities. Salary, remote work arrangements and technology stacks often dominate interview conversations.
But workplace culture is frequently revealed through something less visible: whether employees are encouraged to take time off, how teams handle coverage when someone is away and whether workers can truly disconnect without worrying about the backlog waiting for them when they return.
“There is still a perception that asking too directly about time off, burnout, or workload might send the wrong signal,” says Andrew Reid, director of GTM Recruiting at SignalFire. “That is unfortunate, because those factors often have a major impact on whether someone is able to perform well and stay in a role over time.”
For IT professionals in particular, the issue is compounded by a culture that often rewards availability. Workers simply assume they’ll deal with workload pressures regardless of the policy.
“Many IT workers also have a tendency of not taking PTO in the first place beyond the occasional sick day because they know all the work that piles up while they are gone will be waiting when they return,” says John Bambenek, president of Bambenek Consulting.
When Unlimited Isn’t Really Unlimited
The rise of unlimited PTO policies has only made the conversation more complicated.
On paper, unlimited PTO sounds like a generous benefit, but in practice, the value of the policy depends almost entirely on whether employees feel comfortable using it.
“A healthy unlimited PTO program has two major characteristics,” Chris Martin, Senior Economist at Glassdoor
says. “First, workers take PTO as often (or more often) than they would with a comparable, traditional PTO accrual program. Second, when workers take PTO, they can disconnect.”
That second point matters. If employees are expected to monitor Slack, answer emails, join meetings or remain available for incident response while supposedly on vacation, the benefit quickly loses its value.
SignalFire’s Gana Rajasegaran, director of technical talent, argues candidates should evaluate unlimited PTO through the lens of actual employee behavior rather than corporate messaging.
“The clearest test is whether an employee can answer this question: ‘Can I take a full week off without apologizing, checking Slack constantly, or feeling guilty?’” he says.
Companies with healthy cultures can typically provide specifics about average PTO usage, manager expectations and coverage practices. Organizations relying on unlimited PTO primarily as a recruiting tool often struggle to offer concrete examples.
There’s also a practical consideration many employees overlook. Under traditional PTO programs, unused vacation time may be paid out when employment ends. Unlimited PTO policies generally eliminate that possibility.
“An extra couple of weeks of pay for a PTO payout when being laid off can really help people bridge the gap between jobs,” Bambenek says.
Managers Set the Rules
No matter what a policy says, employees tend to follow the signals they receive from their direct manager.
That reality is particularly important in technology organizations, where vacations often intersect with project deadlines, production incidents and staffing shortages.
“Manager encouragement may be the single biggest factor in whether unlimited or generous PTO actually works,” Rajasegaran says. “Policy creates permission, but managers create safety and ease of use.”
Martin points to on-call responsibilities as one of the most significant contributors to burnout.
“On-call work contributes to burnout because workers can’t fully unplug,” he says. “Giving workers real recovery time is what sustains their performance over the long haul.”
Strong managers understand that recovery time is not a perk. It’s part of maintaining long-term performance.
Bambenek argues conversations about PTO should become a routine part of management rather than something employees must initiate themselves.
“Managers should make asking about PTO plans part of their routine one-on-one conversations,” he says. “Encourage employees to plan a week vacation somewhere and make sure when they are on that vacation that their phone doesn’t ring.”
Reid agrees, noting employees are far more likely to take meaningful breaks when managers proactively arrange coverage and protect them from being pulled back into work unnecessarily.
Reading Between the Policy Lines
The interview process remains one of the few opportunities candidates have to assess how a company operates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean asking, “How much vacation do I get?”
Instead, experts recommend focusing on questions that reveal team norms and operating practices.
Martin suggests asking how teams cover work when colleagues take time off and, in unlimited PTO environments, how much vacation employees typically take each year.
Rajasegaran recommends asking interviewers to describe the last time someone on the team took a full week away from work and how responsibilities were handled during their absence.
Reid suggests candidates ask about:
- PTO usage patterns across the team
- Coverage expectations during absences
- Slack and email expectations while on vacation
- On-call requirements and compensation
- Flexibility during high-pressure periods
Specific answers often reveal more than the policy itself. Companies that genuinely support time off can usually explain exactly how they make it work. Organizations that don’t often fall back on vague assurances about flexibility and trust.
The New Measure of Flexibility
The rise of remote and hybrid work transformed recruiting conversations and became a central differentiator for employers, with candidates today increasingly evaluating a different question: Is this a sustainable place to build a career?
Rajasegaran says workers are paying closer attention to manager quality, workload expectations and company operating culture.
“Employees no longer evaluate jobs solely on compensation or brand name,” he says. “They look at whether a role is sustainable.”
That shift may explain why PTO policies are becoming more important, even if candidates aren’t always discussing them directly. Time off has become a proxy for something larger: whether an organization has built systems that allow employees to perform at a high level without burning out.
For technology professionals evaluating their next opportunity, the PTO policy itself may be less important than the culture surrounding it. A company’s approach to coverage, manager support and employee recovery often reveals far more about day-to-day life than a benefits page ever could.
“The goal is to understand how things actually work and dodge a bullet if it’s clear that the work culture at this company does not align with what you’re looking for,” Martin says.
