What if your company actually trusted you to manage your own time off? It’s something we’ve thought about a lot as we grow. We don’t want Utorg to be a workplace where people burn out just because they’re counting down their remaining days off. Instead, we want to build an environment rooted in mutual trust, where everyone embraces responsibility for both their own rest and the team’s results.

That’s exactly why we retired the traditional fixed-day policy to introduce our new unlimited PTO pilot.

What’s “unlimited PTO” in Utorg?

PTO is Paid Time Off. Unlimited means no fixed number of days per year. All together, it’s our new vacation policy with no fixed day limit.

You take time off when you need it. But unlimited doesn’t mean consequence-free. The responsibility is still there:

• a coverage plan from an employee is required for absences of 2 or more business days
• there are restrictions during High Season periods (announced in advance)
• vacation requests must be submitted at least 5 business days ahead

It’s recommended that employees take at least one full 10-day vacation per year. 

There’s no strict limit on how often you can take time off. Our employees can take as much as they need, keeping the roadmap and team workload in mind.

Why we decided to try it

Because the old model wasn’t built around how people actually work. A fixed number of days sounds fair on paper. Everyone gets the same, you plan ahead, done. But in practice it creates weird behavior. People hoard days “just in case.” They feel guilty taking time off mid-project. They come back from vacation already thinking about the backlog. That’s not resting.

We also looked at what was happening around us. Companies in our space, like Coinbase and Kraken, had already made this shift. And the pattern was clear: when you stop treating rest as a limited resource, people start treating it as a normal part of how they work.

So we asked ourselves a simple question: do we trust our team to manage their own time? The answer was yes. And if the answer is yes, then a day counter starts to feel like a pretty strange way to show it.

Here’s what we’re moving away from and toward.

We’re running this as a pilot until the end of this year. This is because we want to do it properly, measure what actually changes, and make decisions based on real data rather than assumptions.

How it actually works

The short version: the employees decide when they need time off, make sure everything is covered while they’re gone, and their manager signs off. That’s the core of it.

The actual flow seems like this (the perfect scenario):

1. Submitting a request. An employee submits a request as soon as they know they need time off. That’s enough time to prepare a proper handover. 
2. Creating a coverage plan. This is the part that makes the whole thing work. A coverage plan is a simple document that answers one question: while the employee is away, is everything under control? It includes who’s covering their tasks, what’s being handed over and in what state, any critical deadlines, and who to contact if something comes up. The employee submits it, the manager reviews it, and once it’s approved, everything is good to go.
3. Letting the team know. Once everything is approved, the employee posts in Slack (our main communication channel): who’s covering, how to reach them, and anything else the team needs to know.

Who’s responsible for what

Unlimited PTO works because nobody’s left wondering what their job is when someone’s out.

Employees own the process end-to-end: initiating the request, building the coverage plan, and making sure the handover is solid before they leave. 

Managers confirm, handle edge cases, and push back when something genuinely can’t be covered. 

Team leaders keep an eye on the broader picture: who’s out when, and whether the team can absorb it.

On the operations side, HR Ops owns the policy itself, supports people through it, and tracks whether it’s actually working. The HR manager has a quieter but important role: noticing when someone hasn’t taken a real break in too long, and doing something about it.

Want to work somewhere that actually means it?

A little structure is what makes unlimited PTO work. Without clear rules, people tend to take less time off, not more. We designed the pilot so that resting is the default, not the exception.

We believe that people do their best work when they’re not running on empty. And building a company where that’s actually true, not just written in a values doc somewhere, takes real decisions, not just good intentions.

So if you’re looking for a team that takes this stuff seriously, we’re hiring. Check out our open positions and see if there’s a fit.

Open positions at Utorg → see roles

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