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Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

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Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

#51

Post by contravariant »

ceothrowaway wrote: post #41

There is both opportunity and threat hidden here. Threat - if the program/project genuinely requires that the manager needs to on emails regularly and if you don't give what it takes to a manager of those programs/projects, they might replace you with someone who does. Opportunity - if you check your emails in vacation and take proper action, then you will gain trust from management and they don't even bother whether…

Both of those seem to imply that checking your email is the right thing to do. So just for balance let's consider the following as well:

Threat - Checking your emails means agreeing that it is normal and to be expected, this will be hard to undo.

Opportunity - Not checking email for a few days will force both yourself and the team to be more independent, and will identify obstacles to further independence.

Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

#53

Post by jameshush »

sloaken wrote: post #2

I would track how much time you spent doing it, and deduct it from your vacation hours. Instead of charging 40 hours, I would charge 37 to vacation. That said I check my email on vacation, typically redirect it to someone to address. I would say I spend 10 to 20 mins a day doing this while eating breakfast or in the library (if you know what I mean).

I agree this is how it SHOULD work, but it really depends on the company culture. Ideally you set up systems in advance where they don’t have to reach you.

Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

#55

Post by burlesona »

I would say asking for a fixed time commitment is not reasonable, that’s not vacation.

However, as a manager it can be hard to truly disconnect and take vacation without either (a) missing a big decision and not being happy with the decision that was made, or (b) delaying the rest of the team by asking them to wait to make a decision until you get back.

So your options for this are:

(1) Have a designated substitute person who will cover your responsibilities while you are out. As a manager this is an important part of your job actually, succession planning. You should be teaching and grooming someone to replace you when you leave. This should be a person who you trust and who you work with a lot, so whatever decision they make will be okay with you. Then you have to be zen about it and actually accept whatever decisions they make while you were out.

(2) Try to pull forward any decisions that you can, so that everything is settled before you leave. There’s a lot you can probably decide in advance, but obviously that doesn’t help with the random unknown things that can pop up at any time.

If you do both of the above then it really is reasonable to disconnect.

You should be able to tell your boss your goal is to truly disconnect, and he or she should respect that. If your boss pushes back on these things, then you should seek to understand why. Is there a specific meeting or a specific conversation that can only happen during your vacation and your boss really wants you to be there for it?

I don’t think it’s crazy to join in a specific conversation during a longer vacation if it’s something that you really care about and it can’t move. Ask yourself if it’s gonna drive you crazy not knowing what decision was made until you get back :)

However, as everyone else has said, you aren’t really disconnecting if you have some things from work you need to check on during your break. This is a legitimate struggle for managers, and it means that sometimes you take partial breaks where you get some rest but not a full vacation because you can’t completely cut out.

It’s OK to take partial breaks sometimes, but not ideal, you also need full breaks. Therefore is my final suggestion is this:

As a manager you end up scheduling your vacation time around your work. Meaning, you probably know when the team is likely to have a stretch where nothing major is going to happen, and that is when you should take a true disconnect vacation. Obviously you can’t predict the future perfectly, so you need the first two techniques to compensate for whatever unknown things may pop up while you are gone. However, as you get used to being a manager you will start to have a good feel for when you really need to be around and when you don’t, and the best thing to do is to take vacation when you don’t really need to be around. You’re not an IC anymore, so you can’t just peace out and leave your manager to deal with it ;)

I hope this helps. Good luck, and welcome to being a manager :)

Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

#56

Post by dathinab »

mcv wrote: post #46
bobflorian wrote: post #27

This is completely unacceptable. I work for a small company of 9, with 3 programmers (me being one). On vacation we all unplug to the fullest extent. It's all about setting expectations, having redundancy and backups. In fact, the boss hired me so that he could do exactly this, unplug and leave the country to have a solid vacation. I tend to either unplug all the way, or make it impossible to contact me by either bei…

For every position in the company, there needs to be someone who can fill in if the need arises. You already need that anyway in case someone has a serious accident or something, so you might as well make use of that when people go on vacation.

But especially for manage position this should not be necessary. Most small software companies will do just fine if run for a view weeks without a manager (as long as it doesn't overlap with the start/end of a project).

Also the problem is he is not asked to provide emergency contacts, he's asked to continue to check all his emails. Which for many people will mean they won't be able to get there had completely it of work and as such majorly degrade the vacation.

Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

#57

Post by pestaa »

sloaken wrote: post #2

I would track how much time you spent doing it, and deduct it from your vacation hours. Instead of charging 40 hours, I would charge 37 to vacation. That said I check my email on vacation, typically redirect it to someone to address. I would say I spend 10 to 20 mins a day doing this while eating breakfast or in the library (if you know what I mean).

It's strange because I'm normally a law abiding citizen, but still totally going to steal that library phrasing.

Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

#58

Post by ljm »

setr wrote: post #44

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 just a cop out.

Re: Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

#59

Post by e40 »

mcv wrote: post #46
bobflorian wrote: post #27

This is completely unacceptable. I work for a small company of 9, with 3 programmers (me being one). On vacation we all unplug to the fullest extent. It's all about setting expectations, having redundancy and backups. In fact, the boss hired me so that he could do exactly this, unplug and leave the country to have a solid vacation. I tend to either unplug all the way, or make it impossible to contact me by either bei…

For every position in the company, there needs to be someone who can fill in if the need arises. You already need that anyway in case someone has a serious accident or something, so you might as well make use of that when people go on vacation.

With 3 programmers, I seriously doubt there is a backup for every function.
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