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Comment by donw

16 hours ago

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.

    • Probably more Teams autostart and suddenly you appear in the online list when you are officially on vacation.

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.

    • I don't, but I enjoy a lot of perks that I would not get anywhere else. Thats why I stay. Basically work when I want, where I want. 100% remote if I choose to do so. Very flexible days off (maybe that's also why I am contacted a lot during those days). Almost no meetings, and relatively good pay.

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  • 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.