101–110 of 114 posts
Didn't you tell me recently that you started to get really into backwoods camping? It's unfortunate that signal is so bad in the woods, eh?
From the corporate perspective, the problem is that work should not, and cannot, shutdown, because you've gone on vacation. In a company of sufficient resource, you would normally be able to offload the management onto someone else for the duration (eg your #2, or a peer) But this is not your case -- you have only 6 people -- there's no one to offload onto. The size of your group is such that everyone is presumably v…
Probably delegate some of the short term responsibilities to one of the devs.
1) Decide if this company is in this category (you’re proud to be part of it and think it can change the world); 2) Decide if you are someone who is capable of doing this (it’s a huge commitment, are your ready and able to be a world changer?); 3) Determine if you’re in an early enough group to justify this commitment (~first ten? 20?); and, 4) Set reasonable parameters around checking in / email to be available in an emergency, but otherwise are on holiday (i.e. if it’s not an emergency / meeting agreed upon emergency requirements, you’re on holiday and not working) — you’re not just answering questions via email).
Above all, say what you mean (I will / will not do this) and do what you say.
For context, I’m founder of three startups collectively >$500M exits. And any first five-ten employees who didn’t understand the above would have a short tenure. They’re simply not startup material.
That said, we strive for 40-hour weeks, we take evenings and weekends off, and we expect all statutory holidays and personal holidays off — always with the caveat that if the fit hits the shan, we’re all available to band together and solve the problem.
So much of this is commentary by people who have never worked at a successful startup that grows from zero to 100M+. Purists who would do well with a union and have never felt what it is to be part of a core team that brings something from zero to changing the world. They focus on questions like what has the company done for me? And ignore the basic tenets of employment. Go work for a 10,000+ company with that attitu…
Any boss who makes these demands does not understand how employee burnout effects the long-term health of the company and does not value your role enough to safeguard the contributions you make through well-managed redundancy plans.
So much of this is commentary by people who have never worked at a successful startup that grows from zero to 100M+. Purists who would do well with a union and have never felt what it is to be part of a core team that brings something from zero to changing the world. They focus on questions like what has the company done for me? And ignore the basic tenets of employment. Go work for a 10,000+ company with that attitu…
This is such baloney. If the company has no ability to function without you for a week or two (barring emergencies) it's clearly a doomed enterprise. Any boss who makes these demands does not understand how employee burnout effects the long-term health of the company and does not value your role enough to safeguard the contributions you make through well-managed redundancy plans.
If you’ve never been a critical employee in building a company from zero to something, I think that says enough.
Failing that experience and focusing on what the company is doing for you is the brightest light ever telling you that you’ll never be part of a successful startup.
3 hours per week is not a big deal. The higher you go the more you should expect to live the job. If that’s a tough pill then don’t become a manager. But really you only have 2 guys. That’s piss in a pond. Surely somebody can account for your two people for a short time. Where I work managers have 40 people.
By definition, you get paid for 0 hours of work during a vacation. Working infinity times as much as you have to is a big deal.
From the corporate perspective, the problem is that work should not, and cannot, shutdown, because you've gone on vacation. In a company of sufficient resource, you would normally be able to offload the management onto someone else for the duration (eg your #2, or a peer) But this is not your case -- you have only 6 people -- there's no one to offload onto. The size of your group is such that everyone is presumably v…
The only reasonable option there is the third one, and the company itself suffers the backlash for running on such a high bus factor. Vacation is for vacation, not work. If you're asked to stay on call then you better be paid for it. After all, you're not one of the founders, you're an employee. If a business can't survive with a week or two of planning or delegation then it has other problems. Eating vacation is jus…
That is with the explicit warning that it is only to be used in situations where the site is down and we've called everyone else.
Whether they answer email is hit or miss. The ones that do I think are just workaholics.
My take is that I don't generally mind, because typically the reason I'm getting called is that I dropped the ball on something. I've been called twice out of work hours when I wasn't on call. Once because I developed a system and did a shitty job training other people on it, so when something broke that wasn't a simple fix, I got called. The other time was because the solo dev for the product was on vacation, his replacement on call didn't know much about the system, and I had worked with it the most other than the main dev. I should have documented how I worked with the system and fixed it in the past, but I didn't, because documentation always ends up as the last thing I want to do. The org likes documentation and would have given me time to do it, I just didn't want to. So I reaped what I sowed there.