If you have to work during your holidays then they shouldn't be called holidays.
That's my feeling
Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
11–20 of 114 posts
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#12Your boss in the wrong for asking you. At the same time, you will probably be viewed negatively for not doing it. Your call.
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#13Two things:
1) If there is a legitimate concern that some crisis will arise and be heavily exacerbated by you not being at work during vacation, that is an operational problem in the organization that needs to be dealt with. Who is your backup? What would happen if you suffered a medical emergency and were not in the office for a month? How would they deal with that?
2) It sounds like your expectations and values do not align with your manager's expectations and values. This is something that you should resolve with your manager or consider finding work elsewhere.
The intent of vacation is for you to recharge mentally and emotionally. A vacation where you are still plugged in, still on call, still expected to work, is not much of a vacation.
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#14Especially in the context of a small business of just 6 folks... yes, I think keeping tabs on your email is understandable.
There are 10 people that work for my company... half of them engineers like myself. It's expected that we aren't completely disconnected on vacation... but at least available if a true emergency crops up that needs our niche expertise.
That said, my boss is awesome and encourages healthy work-life separation, so stuff has to really escalate before you're expected to jump in...
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#15With the disclaimer that I am not a manager: this is somewhat normal at smaller companies I've been at, but it is still completely unreasonable to ask you to check emails while on vacation, even at a 6 person company. I have always taken a hard line on this as a non-manager, and so should you. If they give you actual vacation hours that they have to pay out instead of nonsense like the "unlimited vacation" policies a lot of companies have (meaning they don't have to pay out and can rely on most employees feeling pressured to come back quicker), you have the choice of accepting their terms but only if you deduct the time from your vacation hours taken (although trust me, for your own mental health, take the time and don't think about work at all).
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#16This is somewhat cultural: it would not be considered unacceptable in many startups in the US, where I am right now.
But your username and grammar make me wonder whether you're French and in France, are you? If you are, I think it may actually be an illegal request. European attitudes towards work are extremely different to US ones, which are themselves more relaxed than e.g. East Asian.
From https://newatlas.com/right-to-disconnect-after-hours-work-em... :
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"France, in particular, has been ahead of the world in establishing legal frameworks protecting a person's right to disconnect. Back in 2001 the idea was first floated when the French Supreme Court ruled that employees are under no obligation to bring work home, and as technology progressed the Court continued to update its ruling. In 2004, for example, it was established that it was not misconduct if an employee was not reachable on a smartphone outside of work hours.
The right to disconnect was solidified at the beginning of 2017 with France introducing the El Khomri law, which suggests every employee contract must include a negotiation of obligations required of an employee regarding how connected they are outside of office hours. The law is reasonably vague and doesn't restrict after-hours work communication, but rather obliges organizations to negotiate these terms clearly with prospective employees."
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#17I'm always available for call whenever physically possible, mind you I work in finance. Depends what kind of ownership of the project you take, but you should NOT be forced into it; That should have been discussed when you took on the managerial role, as obviously you didn't have full understanding of responsibilities. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that request (again it should be request not forced), but bigger problem is that you might have other hidden responsibilities and that is a bit of a red flag.
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#18At the last 3 companies (all small startups) I have worked for, this would have been considered unreasonable. When a person is away, we would not attempt to contact them unless it is a true emergency, and there would be no expectation that they should check their messages. You should be able to delegate your responsibilities to one of your colleagues.
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#19You say that you manage 2 devs in a 6 people business: You and your team are half the whole company so I'm thinking that you are critical.
Based on that I think it is not crazy to ask you to touch base a couples of times a week while on holiday.
Very small businesses often have big problems operating when even one person is missing because there is no slack in the system: Everyone has an important role and has to be on deck.
Hopefully, there is a big upside for you that compensates for this.
In a large company it's possible that no-one will even notice that you went on holdays...
Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
#20Why is this on HN, and why are people upvoting it? Isn't WP.SE a thing any more?