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The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

lore.kernel.org

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Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#21

Post by teekert »

playingalong wrote: post #7
therealmarv wrote: post #5

Not familiar with Kernel maintainers but do some never take full 2-week long holidays??

If in US, that'd be once in a lifetime - e.g. for your honey (half) moon.

Here in the Netherlands most people take 3 weeks in the summer. Then a week in fall, one around Christmas and then perhaps you just buy some extra days (meaning it’s unpaid time off) for a skiing trip in February.

And then we have Easter, Pentecost, ascension day, Christmas, New Year’s Day. All public days off.

Personally for a long time my contract was 36 hours, get you 1 more day off every 2 weeks.

That American system sounds so depressing, but I guess you get used to anything.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#22

Post by heffer »

mimotomo2009 wrote: post #17
ctm92 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy how this is normal, in Germany you won't even find anybody to work for you if you offered less than 30 days of vacation

Better: in Germany you have the legal right to have a minimum of 24 days of vacation in the year (§3 Bundesurlaubsgesetz).

If you work Monday to Saturday. The law requires 20 days for people that work Monday to Friday. The effect is the same though: In both cases you get 4 weeks off.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#23

Post by pavel_lishin »

djbusby wrote: post #10
nonameiguess wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and insider threat mitigation is exactly why audit standards in regulated industries include mandatory vacations.

My favorite part of working in banking. Minimum week no contact per year. All these other industries would call me about (trivial) things when I was "off". Regulations forced people to respect (some) time off

I've never been a manager, but my favorite managers always lead by example - they would take arbitrary time off, and would be completely unreachable during that time.

As a senior eng, I try to do the same when I have time off - work notifications are muted, and my away message is typically set to "I'm away for X days. If you to reach me, no, you don't."

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#24

Post by rtpg »

Lerc wrote: post #19

It's nice to see this happen, Being a good maintainer requires a particular mindset. I do not have this mindset. I am a maintainer. I have been absent from one of my projects for 9 months. People actually use this thing. That eats me up inside. That anxiety is partially why it's difficult to start up again. I am the kind of person who makes things, unfortunately when you make things you become the maintainer by defau…

I do maintenance on a library and while often I feel bad about not looking at it for months at a time, I’ll try to counterbalance it by just sitting down one evening , swallowing my pride, and just chew through some of the issues.

In the end, it’s always a bit satisfying to do. Still not a great situation but I’m trying at least.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#25

Post by keybored »

Lerc wrote: post #19

It's nice to see this happen, Being a good maintainer requires a particular mindset. I do not have this mindset. I am a maintainer. I have been absent from one of my projects for 9 months. People actually use this thing. That eats me up inside. That anxiety is partially why it's difficult to start up again. I am the kind of person who makes things, unfortunately when you make things you become the maintainer by defau…

This is their dayjob.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#26

Post by keybored »

therealmarv wrote: post #5

Not familiar with Kernel maintainers but do some never take full 2-week long holidays??

I didn’t expect the most discussed part on this submission would be about people who don’t take vacation when this one[1] is (whatever absence is about).

[1] The Git maintainer. Not a kernel maintainer.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#27

Post by fluoridation »

segmondy wrote: post #8
TZubiri wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative organization discovers basic organizational concept: vacations.

Not the same, a vacation is a vacation, most people don't think of it as people outages. Most work will just be queued up until the person comes back or worse the person will be contacted during vacation to answer questions, provide information or do some work. Being hyper aware of this means no contact for the individual while on vacation and watching that work is not being queued up for them. They should not have t…

Man, I hope that position pay really well for that kind of commitment. If anyone tries to reach me while I'm on vacation I will not even realize it, and I won't be bothering to "catch up" when I return.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#28

Post by mystified5016 »

fluoridation wrote: post #27
segmondy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same, a vacation is a vacation, most people don't think of it as people outages. Most work will just be queued up until the person comes back or worse the person will be contacted during vacation to answer questions, provide information or do some work. Being hyper aware of this means no contact for the individual while on vacation and watching that work is not being queued up for them. They should not have t…

Man, I hope that position pay really well for that kind of commitment. If anyone tries to reach me while I'm on vacation I will not even realize it, and I won't be bothering to "catch up" when I return.

Then you must not have a very important job. The hypothetical person being discussed here is someone who multiple people depend on. Their work is critical to other processes and blocks other work from happening. They own a lot of institutional knowledge that may not be shared evenly among other employees.

That's the point of the exercise: to identify mission critical people and make them not critical to the entire business. If your business hinges on one person who knows everything and works on everything, you're fucked if they disappear and you haven't ensured at least some redundancy.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#29

Post by fluoridation »

mystified5016 wrote: post #28
fluoridation wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I hope that position pay really well for that kind of commitment. If anyone tries to reach me while I'm on vacation I will not even realize it, and I won't be bothering to "catch up" when I return.

Then you must not have a very important job. The hypothetical person being discussed here is someone who multiple people depend on. Their work is critical to other processes and blocks other work from happening. They own a lot of institutional knowledge that may not be shared evenly among other employees. That's the point of the exercise: to identify mission critical people and make them not critical to the entire bu…

The way the other person phrased it made it seem like that kind of fake vacations are the norm, which is what I was replying to.

>Most work [during someone's vacation] will just be queued up until the person comes back or worse the person will be contacted during vacation to answer questions, provide information or do some work.

Nothing in that sentence implies that the person is referring exclusively to an especially important position.

Re: The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

#30

Post by c0wb0yc0d3r »

macintux wrote: post #18
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a decent company will give you three weeks total vacation. To get more than that can require decades of service (eg four weeks after 10 years with the company). To “squander” two thirds of the allotment in one go is rare.

I tried to negotiate 4 weeks when I joined my current company, but the hiring process went dead. My inside contact told me that as far as he could tell, they simply did not have a mechanism to handle someone asking for more than 3 weeks.

I usually do the same. It seems to blow many minds.
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