Microsoft's new unlimited vacation policy may not be so simple

Microsoft has a new unlimited vacation policy as of this week.

It applies to full-time salaried employees in the United States — that is, those employees remaining after major job cuts announced Wednesday morning.

Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees between now and March, according to a memo CEO Satya Nadella sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The news comes just days after the company implemented its new vacation policy, which some analysts say benefits employers more than employees.

"People have different opinions on why companies implement this. It's often pitched to employees and prospective employees as a benefit," says Taylor Soper, managing editor of GeekWire, who recently reported on the various pitfalls of an unlimited vacation policy. "Others say this is more about the bottom line, in that it prevents companies from needing to pay out unused PTO when an employee leaves the company."

Then there's how "unlimited" is understood at the company and even among individual teams — the policy is not a free pass to take a permanent paid vacation.

Employees will still need their manager's permission to take time off, for example. Soper says that means the policy could be enforced differently from one manager to another, potentially deepening inequities. Soper says experts have found policies like this may actually increase sexual, racial, or gender discrimination.

"If the company doesn't have a well-structured and transparent policy around unlimited PTO, that can create more problems," he says. "And some studies show that when you have an unlimited PTO policy, employees actually take less vacation than when there was the traditional PTO policy in place."

In any case, the shift at Microsoft is part of a broader trend in tech.

"We're seeing some layoffs. We're seeing some belt-tightening," Soper says. "So, those who say that this is more about the company's bottom line, there may be more meat to that."