All of the managerial decisions at Power School come down from the company's ownership, Vista Private Equity and their consulting arm, Vista Consulting Group. Before starting at Power School I would highly suggest any prospective new employee read up on what working at a Vista company is like and see if it's right for you.
Just google "Richer than Oprah" and you'll find a very good article on Forbes about Robert Smith and Vista and how things are run.
Anyway, to keep this concise I will focus on one Con, which is truly a con. "Unlimited" or "Discretionary" time off. US employees at Power School don't earn PTO like most full time employees in the United States (Canadian employees still earn PTO because DTO is illegal in Canada). Instead taking time off is a very closely monitored metric of your employee performance and every time off request is subject to managerial approval. Although the company has no explicit cap on time off shared with employees, there is tracking of the time you take off and warnings from managers against taking time off that is more than your colleagues (even if you are meeting and exceeding very challenging stretch goals set for you).
This obviously benefits the company in the short term by discouraging people from taking time off, and limits liability of the accumulated PTO benefits owed to employees. This may be beneficial to the company in the short term, but it certainly doesn't help with low employee morale. It's a well known fact that rested workers who are encouraged to take time off instead of discouraged work harder and do better at their job. If the ownership of Power School valued long term success instead of selling the company at a profit in the short term, perhaps they would consider that. But, alas they aren't concerned with long term viability, just following the Vista way and eventually selling or going to IPO.
The time off scheme is a good example of how Vista runs things. Short term considerations rule the day in Power School. The short term decision making drove away almost all the smart people I worked with over the course of two years.
