If the company has good work life balance, it's great. We have unlimited vacation where I work and it's actually fantastic. Most people take 4-6 weeks off. Personally I take 8 some years. It's so much more relaxing to not have to track time off or worry about allocating enough for periods like the holidays in addition to vacation. I've never had more than 20 PTO days at a company I worked, and often had 15 to start, so this is way more vacation than typical.
Yep - my (somewhat dull and conservative) employer did this as well.
I was cynical, but year later I'm pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong - I think we collectively all took 15% more holiday. Not a mind-boggling change, but not the "we'll all be bullied to stay at our desks" result I'd anticipated.
Anecdotally I think the largest change is people get less precious over guarding their holiday as a precious resource, even if they've no idea how they'll spend it. You finish your week's work on Friday morning? Ask if anybody needs anything from you and then just take the rest of the day off. No compulsion to find some busy-work and protect 4 hours of vacation.
It can be hard to figure out which is which for the company before getting hired though. Asking about programs that encourage PTO is a good way that I've found to suss out these types of details.
My current job offers a few "extra" things on top of unlimited PTO like during the summer, a $100 bonus if you post a pic of some activity you did on PTO (literally anything, and can even opt out of sharing if you are so inclined) or more recently, a "competition" for the best use of PTO. I think someone reading a book in a hammock won.
I always ask about work-life balance when I get an offer. Companies so far have been pretty honest about it. There's really no point in hiring someone who is not going to fit with the work culture.
