Comment by patates
21 hours ago
For the people here who want to do the same when they are vacation (be completely detached from work): Make it impossible for you to work! Leave your work devices behind! Log out of all accounts, remove 2FA keys after backing them up on paper and tell your partner to not give them back to you for the duration of your vacation, etc. I actually went to a country from which I wasn't allowed to work remotely. Crazy but it was that bad for me.
Signed: Former workaholic.
One of the reasons I left North America for Europe is that such things are normalised. The cultural difference is staggering.
In Germany, if you are on vacation, you are simply not available. You are dead to the world until you return. Emails do not get read, and devices get left at the office.
Another neat thing is that if you get sick on vacation, you get your vacation days back, because vacation days are for resting and recovering.
> if you are on vacation, you are simply not available. You are dead to the world until you return. Emails do not get read, and devices get left at the office.
It's funny because that's kind of the definition of a vacation in my book. I find it weird that some places in the world handle it differently.
Note that it's also much better for the company in the long run: It's a test of resilience and redundany, the famous bus factor. It simulates what happens if someone is not available, and forces the organization around to have a backup plan. Having those is important for cases where employees leave the company or team (switching jobs/teams, accidents, sickness, parental leave, death, burnout, layoffs etc.). It's mind-boggling how many leads at various levels just don't understand that.
I remember vaguely from interning at a bank that there you were actually obliged to be totally isolated from the company for a continuous period of time by policy.
The thinking was that if you were cooking the books of doing some dodgy dealing on the side it would come to light without you there to actively 'manage' it.
I'm a senior at a big tech company. You can do this in America too. Just communicate with your manager and set the boundary. "By the way, when I'm on vacation I'm away from devices, so let's coordinate beforehand if there's anything critical path."
100%, and it extends beyond vacations, too. Unless you have a formal on-call arrangement, then any time you spend doing work stuff outside of your work hours is time you are choosing to donate to your company. It's fine if you want to do that, but you don't have to. I work 8-4 every day. I am not contactable outside that window and definitely not contactable on my days off. I haven't worked at a ton of different places, but at the places & teams I have worked with, I've never had anyone object to this policy.
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I've lived and worked in America my entire life, and in my approximately 40 years of working I've never had a job where I was expected or had to arrange to be available during a vacation. For the odd unplanned personal day maybe I'd try to check email and have my phone with me. But vacation, never.
It doesn't need to be arranged. Like you said, we would check email ourselves of our own volition.
> if you get sick on vacation, you get your vacation days back,
This slightly blew my American mind but it makes sense. What about getting sick on calendar holidays?
No, you don't get the holidays back -- nor do you get weekends, if you're sick.
On the other hand, I've been in a company where there were long discussions about whether the extra day on leap years is a working day or a vacation day...
Not to forget that you get a minimum of four weeks of vacation per year with 30 days being offered most of the time.
This year I used my vacation time well and I already had 3 weeks off while I still have almost 4 weeks left.
This is how it should be though - nobody should be irreplaceable. Look up bus factor etc.
Thanks for the reminder that this shouldn't be taken for granted. I am a German and sometimes this privilege feels so normal that it's unthinkable that it could be different elsewhere in the world.
I help immigrants integrate for a living. Germany can be a frustrating country, but this is one of its best redeeming qualities.
I'd also add that the culture allows and encourages sick days. The average is 15 sick days per year IIRC.
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It can honestly be annoying, if you're not privvy to it.
I remember years ago needing urgent support for some bespoke European hardware we were developing software for. When we called support, we were greeted with a phone message stating the company was closed for the entire month due to vacation. This was not a one-man operation; the whole office closed for a summer holiday. We thought it was a joke.
Needless to say we started to look for a new vendor shortly thereafter...
I'm surprised, typically we don't all take vacation at the same time, but stagger it.
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My advice is don’t ever buy anything that might need support from New Zealand between 24 Dec and 5 Jan. The entire country is just about closed (other than non-niche consumer stores).
Many companies force staff to take vacation days during this time, and there are four (yes four!) public holidays during this period.
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I mean, that's not usual at all in Europe either.
I think my POV on this is a bit different than what others are expressing… I don’t mind answering the occasional email while on vacation, but I view it as a fair trade - as long as the company doesn’t mind me handling the occasional personal obligation during work hours I don’t mind handling the occasional work obligation during personal hours. If the company wants to be strict about clock in/out hours or taking PTO for every 30 minute errand or the work trends in a way that routinely exceeds 40 hours per week total then I’ll stop doing work “off the clock”, but so long as they’re willing to be reasonable I’m willing to be reasonable.
The idea with vacation is that you don't think about work. When I start vacation I disable all the channels that people usually use so that no one asks me even by accident. There needs to be a time when you are completely undisturbed and disconnected. If you are disturbed by work you will think about work while you answer and maybe even after that. That's not good.
I also think you should normalize for yourself and your workplace that there are times when you are not there. If only you can answer a question then there needs to be better documentation. See it as a trail run for when you get hit by a bus. If they will struggle without you then that is a problem that needs to be fixed. If you are always reachable these problems will never surface.
> There needs to be a time when you are completely undisturbed and disconnected. If you are disturbed by work you will think about work while you answer and maybe even after that. That's not good.
IMO this is not a universal truth - I’m sure some people need that level of disconnection, but I don't find I'm one of them. I generally like my job, and don't find that forcing myself to disconnect does me any particular mental good. But other people report needing that separation, and that's fine! I don't think there needs to be a one-size-fits-all answer here.
I do agree with your bus factor argument though.
I generally work for small companies, and while I'll do something very similar when taking leave (or just at the weekend) I do also make sure someone has contact details for me in the case of anything that truly can't wait until I get back. My experience of doing this has been that people will be judicious about whether something actually warrants interrupting someone's holiday, and it also results in me being less inclined to check in on email/Slack now and again just in case something is up.
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I'm the same.
If I can answer a question with a 30-second response to a Slack message, I will, and I won't mind it as long as it's not frequent. I won't join a call, and I'm only logged into Slack and Outlook on my phone, so if answering requires checking something on Confluence or Jira, I can't help.
Maybe I feel this way because actually being asked something is exceptionally rare. I'll be gone for a week and MAYBE I'll get one message.
Lock-out vacations were one of my favorite things about being at a bank. Auditors cared about the ability for employees to keep a thumb on the scale, so it was a policy requirement that all workers with a certain amount of access needed to take an uninterrupted vacation of N days, with login ability disabled.
Fantastic tool for shaking out hidden bus factors.
This seems like a lot of extra work. If at all possible, just keep your work stuff on your work laptop/computer. And then keep that at home/at work. No need to sign in and out of 20 different accounts.
> This seems like a lot of extra work
Music to the ears of a workaholic :)
Seriously, that'd be nice if everyone would do this (and I do it now, very strictly) but I also know how easy for one to start blurring the lines between work and personal lives.
My company have accidentally forced this on me, and it is great.
I used to have a desktop that I could VPN+RDC into from my personal laptop or desktop to work away from the office¹. I've now got a laptop, that refuses to let me authenticate remotely and they have no interest in fixing that as there are other priorities, so I simply can't work if I don't have that laptop with me and I'm not carting it around when I'm already carting my own around (and if I'm not carrying my own, it is because it isn't a suitable situation to be bringing any laptop).
Not a workaholic, I don't think, but a 24/7 stress monkey when I think that I could be helping. Simply not being able to work away from the office actually helps with that: if there is literally nothing I can do, especially given it is work that has made that impossible, I don't stress the same way.
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[1] other than the VPN connector and the MFA doo-hicky on an old² phone, nothing work related, even Teams, even email, ever touches my personal devices
[2] a small old thing, factory reset with a dummy google account and just the MFA apps installed
> Not a workaholic, I don't think, but a 24/7 stress monkey when I think that I could be helping
I er... think you might be a workaholic.
But I'm glad for you that your current setup is helping :)
Does it count as being a workaholic when work is just one place it manifests? I class it more “being-useful-aholic”!
I now want to seek an on site role and request a desktop computer.
> Leave your work devices behind!
Specifically, if your job offers (a) to pay for your personal phone line, or (b) a work mobile phone, choose (b).
We have the choice at $WORK, and many teammates chose (a) as it allows them to save some money each month on their phone bill, but now you're basically constantly tethered.
Easy, that has always been my whole European life, want to reach me on vacations, pay for it.
This is one of the reasons I work in an office every single day. I leave my work laptop there. I don't have any work software on any of my personal devices, including my phone. If I had the ability to check in on work things while out of the office, I probably would, so I make it impossible.
This is exactly the move. Work and life should be separate. No work stuff on your personal devices; no personal stuff on your work devices. This way, you can be your best self in both worlds.
As a manager, I will quite literally ding people for working when they are supposed to be off.
Work during work time, don't work during not-work time. Good practices mean that everyone is important, but nobody is irreplaceable, the team and the work will move along a little slower, but that's fine.
Quote from my partner's manager before a vacation:
"If I see you log on, I'll disable your account."
I had a colleague at my previous company where we had to log her out of everything and ask IT to keep her logged out until their vacation was done every single time. Her water broke during her pregnancy leave and she still replied to someone asking her a question in Slack near real-time, after which we made her uninstall Slack from her phone altogether lol
Some people are just workaholics and need interventions to actually take a proper holiday.
Humm he means figure out everything you’re signed in to before going on vacation and log off?
Personally I’m sure I’d forget to sign out of something.
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extremely relevant recent Kai Lentit skit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E7kBOH9owI
Being the only dev in a startup since 2 years without a single day off where I wasn't messaged by my employer I want this. At least I'll have a 3 week out of country trip where I do not bring my laptop later this year...
You should really consider another place to work at, unless you own a massive, measurable chunk of the company in a legally binding way.
The only people who should suffer this much are the true busines owners.
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That's exploitation, no? You're just scammed into it, because you let it slide.
Honestly, that is just bad management. It can make sense if it's your company, but even then, the risk profile is just off the charts. What happens if your only developer leaves or gets sick?
Real engineers think about handling things when stuff goes wrong, not "everything will be on the happy path forever".
Yes, there are constraints, but to me this sounds like an unacceptable level of exposure.
You're a good person.
My manager doesn't stop overworking. When told on peer performance review that we have people who are consistently overwork because they are swamped, he played it down.
But hey, at least he doesn't encourage overworking either.
Kai Lentit just dropped a video on precisely this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E7kBOH9owI
Or maybe don’t have devices doing double duty such that 2FA and work devices can be partitioned out from any incidental personal use. That way, even if you have one half of it, you still don’t have enough to attempt work.
> Log out of all accounts, remove 2FA keys after backing them up on paper
Seems like a lot of extra work, just to go on vacation :)
I would suggest another approach. Automate your work, that you can work from your phone. I go on multi day hiking trips, or a week long family beach holidays, without taking PTO...
Edit: I do not get negative reactions. Big part of my work is to monitor system, and answer questions. I spend less time on my phone than most social app users! I still do heavy coding in office a few times a month. And I am self employed for nit pickers.
Work does not have to be sufering, you can enjoy it!
>> Log out of all accounts, remove 2FA keys after backing them up on paper [...]
>> Signed: Former workaholic.
> Seems like a lot of extra work, just to go on vacation :)
That's the point, this person and plenty others, are NOT able to "just" go and disconnect. If you can do that, wonderful for you, but please don't assume others are like you precisely when they are humble enough to clarify that they do have a problem and try to help others to overcome it.
Just not bringing the devices should be enough.
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Regarding your edit, you might be ok with going on a multi-day hiking trip or family holiday while still doing some amount of work from your phone, but many of us think that's a bad idea.
Truly disconnecting from our work is necessary for our mental health. When I'm on vacation, I want to be on vacation, which means not working.
Again, maybe you don't want to actually fully be on vacation from work. I guess that's fine; you do you. But I don't think that's healthy for most people, and regardless of health, many people do just want to completely disconnect from work for some number of days.
You're basically saying to get a different job.
That's going to work in some situations, but it's not broadly applicable for many reasons. In particular it's way more work than the act of backing up 2FA and logging out of everything. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense for people to think that's not good advice.
This is the ideal, but in practice you need to own the business to live this way..
Also candy is enjoyable but 24/7 sucking on it is not.
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