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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

#31

Post by drzzhan »

donalhunt wrote: post #3

Testing people outages is a good thing for any team or organization. I always look at multi-week holidays as an opportunity to identify knowledge / skills / activities that I (or another person) provide(s) cover for. None of us will be around forever. Some of our software might be...

Wow. Good insight! I have never viewed vacation this way. I always thought the only reason vacation exists is because companies have to give vacation due to laws and well being of their employee. So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something.

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

#32

Post by [deleted] »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #9
therealmarv wrote: post #5

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

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.

[deleted]

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

#33

Post by tomasGiden »

vq wrote: post #20
ensignavenger wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many holidays do you get in addition to that? Is that in any industry, such as fast food service or grocery store clerks, or just professional jobs, or only your own industry? I know time off isn't the best in the US, but a good comparison requires a bit more info.

I live in Sweden where we have minimum 25 paid vacation days (I have 28) and 9 paid holidays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

Sweden here also. Quite common with 25 days and paid overtime or 30 days with unpaid overtime.

And then you have parental days which are 480 in total per child which can be used both before they start preschool and for longer vacations when they are older. In Sweden it’s also quite common that both parents split it 50-50.

So 4-5 weeks of time off in the summer is not uncommon at all for parents and totally accepted by companies.

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

#34

Post by nasmorn »

drzzhan wrote: post #31
donalhunt wrote: post #3

Testing people outages is a good thing for any team or organization. I always look at multi-week holidays as an opportunity to identify knowledge / skills / activities that I (or another person) provide(s) cover for. None of us will be around forever. Some of our software might be...

Wow. Good insight! I have never viewed vacation this way. I always thought the only reason vacation exists is because companies have to give vacation due to laws and well being of their employee. So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something.

You feel guilty that the law doesn’t allow you to give your entire time to a corporation? I can ease your conscience, the law is simply an equilibrium where capitals long term exploitation of labor and the risk of violent revolution are carefully balanced.

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

#35

Post by chmod775 »

drzzhan wrote: post #31
donalhunt wrote: post #3

Testing people outages is a good thing for any team or organization. I always look at multi-week holidays as an opportunity to identify knowledge / skills / activities that I (or another person) provide(s) cover for. None of us will be around forever. Some of our software might be...

Wow. Good insight! I have never viewed vacation this way. I always thought the only reason vacation exists is because companies have to give vacation due to laws and well being of their employee. So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something.

> So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something.

Do you feel guilty when they pay you too? Paid vacation is a form of compensation.

Every day of your ~30 days of vacation which you do not use, they likely have to pay you out as a full day's worth of wages anyways.

Most will prefer you take a month or two each year off, recuperate, and come back refreshed and productive, rather than having to deal with the bookkeeping and tax hassle of paying you extra.

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

#36

Post by flohofwoe »

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…

Well yeah, that's why a vacation is a good test, "important job" or not. If the person needs to respond or even check in during vacation, the team needs to fix their process.

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

#37

Post by keybored »

drzzhan wrote: post #31
donalhunt wrote: post #3

Testing people outages is a good thing for any team or organization. I always look at multi-week holidays as an opportunity to identify knowledge / skills / activities that I (or another person) provide(s) cover for. None of us will be around forever. Some of our software might be...

Wow. Good insight! I have never viewed vacation this way. I always thought the only reason vacation exists is because companies have to give vacation due to laws and well being of their employee. So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something.

I hope you’re being sarcastic.

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

#38

Post by segmondy »

fluoridation wrote: post #29
mystified5016 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 especiall…

You must be lucky, but most people I know and from my own experience end up replying to email, slack or phone calls while on vacation and work piles up for them relative to how long they have been away.

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

#39

Post by Atotalnoob »

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

A week is too short. The bank I worked at had mandatory 3 weeks, which did not count against your PTO.

1 week, people can mostly ignore your job function and limp by

2 weeks, people can do ~50% of your job and limp by

3 weeks, you do need someone to complete all/most of your job functions.

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

#40

Post by fluoridation »

segmondy wrote: post #38
fluoridation wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 especiall…

You must be lucky, but most people I know and from my own experience end up replying to email, slack or phone calls while on vacation and work piles up for them relative to how long they have been away.

Like I said, I hope you're compensated accordingly. Off time is off time, and being on call has a price attached to it. If you're being treated like you're on call but without the corresponding pay rise, that's called wage theft.
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