This is weird to me, because I work at a UPTO company and most of my co-workers take at least 3-4 weeks off a year of vacation time and they don't have to worry about it cutting into their sick leave. Whereas, I've worked at other companies and you may start at 15 days PTO and it's one bucket for sick time and vacation.
I've definitely heard horror stories about UPTO meaning "no time off", especially in crunch-happy industries where requests are simply denied. But people criticizing UPTO seem to describe it as an all around bad deal compared to allotted PTO.
Meanwhile, I mostly see companies (even successful, generous-benefits ones) offering extremely restrictive PTO. "Two weeks PTO for all uses, and you gain one extra day every few years" isn't an appealing offer in the slightest. I've definitely watched friends with graduate degrees and many years at one company try to decide whether to work sick or give up pay.
That doesn't make UPTO a reliable offering, but I'm not convinced that it's worse on average than the levels of set PTO on offer in the US.
