- As companies like Netflix double down on unlimited PTO benefits, the boss of $11 billion fintech company, Bolt has just axed the policy altogether. Its millennial founder and CEO Ryan Breslow says instead of encouraging flexibility, it bred burnout and unfairness. Now, he’s capping vacations because the ‘bad ones’ were taking too much time off.
On paper, unlimited PTO sounds like the holy grail of benefits a company can offer its employees—the ability to take endless vacations and avoid burnout. But for the $11 billion fintech startup Bolt, (not to be confused with the Uber rival, also called Bolt), unlimited PTO has been a double-edged sword that has caused more problems than solutions.
“We just killed unlimited PTO at Bolt,” its founder and CEO, Ryan Breslow has just revealed on LinkedIn. “It sounds progressive, but it’s totally broken. When time off is undefined, the good ones don’t take PTO. The bad ones take too much.”
While this is contrary to research from financial services firm Empower, which found that employees with unlimited PTO take on average 16 days off versus 14 days for those with limited policies, Breslow said much of that time was taken off by “b performers”—leaving high performers to pick up the slack.
“This leads to A-performer burnout. B-performer luxuries. And feelings of unfairness across the board,” the millennial boss explained.
“So we’re flipping the script: no more confusion. Every Bolter now gets four weeks of paid vacation (yes, the traditional corporate standard), with the opportunity to accrue more with tenure. Not optional,” Breslow added. “We mandate everyone take all four weeks off.”
Now, the company is capping annual leave at around four weeks—but Bolt workers can accrue a maximum of 25 days leave with tenure.
“We believe a team executing at the pace and scale we do deserves real, protected time off, not vague promises,” a Bolt spokesperson echoed in a statement to Fortune. “When we saw in our own data that our A-players weren’t taking enough time away, we knew we had to fix it.”
Rebuilding culture with an HR overhaul
Breslow rejoined Bolt this year after a rocky few months that included rounds of layoffs and a failed fundraising attempt that carried a $14 billion valuation. It was last valued at $11 billion in 2022, with investment coming from top firms like BlackRock.
Reshaping Bolt’s culture has been a centrepiece of the 31-year-old’s changes since retaking the helm in March. On top of the PTO change, Breslow also publicly announced the company was doing away with its HR department in favor of “people ops”—which is more focused on efficiency over fluff, he wrote on LinkedIn.
“HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach,” he said. “People ops empowers managers, streamlines decision making, and keeps the company moving at lightning speed.”
The company also had some wins in recent weeks, including securing partnerships with Klarna and Palantir, but the only way to make sure that continues to happen, Breslow said, is to ensure top talent can thrive.
“If we’re asking people to move fast, build hard, and operate at the highest level, we need to protect their recovery time with the same intensity,” Breslow said. “Execution requires clarity. That applies to PTO, too.”
The unlimited PTO debate rages on
Despite growing calls from workers for better work-life balance and indications that unlimited PTO could lead to outperforming the S&P 500, the policy remains embraced by just 7% of employers, according to SHRM.
Netflix is considered to be an early pioneer of the policy. Reed Hastings, the billionaire cofounder of the streaming service, has said he takes six weeks of vacation each year—and encourages his employees to do the same.
“I take a lot of vacation and I’m hoping that certainly sets an example,” the former Netflix CEO said in 2015. “It is helpful. You often do your best thinking when you’re off hiking in some mountain or something. You get a different perspective on things.”
Today, the company claims to not have a strict 9-to-5 workday–or even holiday schedule—and encourages workers to take time off to observe what’s important and when their mind and body need a break.
More than a quarter of workers, or 26%, say they would consider a lower-paying job if it offered the unlimited option.
At the same time, shifting to the policy has sometimes backfired. In 2014, Tribune Publishing—the company behind the Chicago Tribune and formerly the Los Angeles Times—attempted to transition from limited to unlimited PTO, but faced backlash from its employees.
Less than two weeks later, the publisher reversed course after receiving “valuable input from employees,” citing that the new policy actually just “created confusion and concern within the company.”
