Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation
Hi HN !
I recently took on a managerial role / project manager (I manage 2 programmers) at my work. Now that the summer holidays are approaching, my boss asks me, that during my holidays, I take my emails or that I be available to be called (~ 3h week).
He tells me that this is normal and that it comes with the role of manager.
On your side what is the vacancy policy in your company when you are managers ? Have you any advice on how to handle this ?
For the context it is a small business of 6 people.
114 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadThat 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).
If you're not a member of a Trade Union, then I recommend taking your holiday somewhere which has no phone reception. A nice mountain hike, or similar.
I’m never again working in an environment like that if I can help it unless the company really makes it worth it, and let’s be frank most small companies can’t afford to do that.
For some people, a vacation is just spending all week at home playing video games. Others will just sped time at a B&B or visit family. For them, checking email is not a big deal.
Other people are way more active and want to go camping, surfing or something else that gets them away from their phone/laptop. For these people, checking email is unreasonable because it interferes with their plans.
The two types of people cannot understand the other side. One of them thinks "Why can't you spare a little time in between checking Facebook and Twitter to check your email?" The other side thinks "Who wastes a perfectly good vacation by spending any time on Facebook and/or Twitter?"
But really you only have 2 guys. That’s piss in a pond. Surely somebody can account for your two people for a short time. Where I work managers have 40 people.
People should be allowed to have a vacation. Full stop. No conditions.
It is a strength to want W/L separation, not a weakness.
When you move up to Vice President levels of a large company and are responsible for hundreds of employees and a major product portfolio the company should have the ability to reach you in case of an emergency. If a product under your responsibility fails in production and critically damages the company’s reputation should the company be able to call you during a scheduled vacation day or should they respect that vacation day full stop?
At the same time, as a manager, you should be able to plan for contingencies so that you can have a vacation with minimal disruptions. If you cannot put actions into place to temporarily account for your non-emergency regular tasks you either need to have an honest discussion with your boss about that failure of leadership or re-examine your ability to plan.
1) If there is a legitimate concern that some crisis will arise and be heavily exacerbated by you not being at work during vacation, that is an operational problem in the organization that needs to be dealt with. Who is your backup? What would happen if you suffered a medical emergency and were not in the office for a month? How would they deal with that?
2) It sounds like your expectations and values do not align with your manager's expectations and values. This is something that you should resolve with your manager or consider finding work elsewhere.
The intent of vacation is for you to recharge mentally and emotionally. A vacation where you are still plugged in, still on call, still expected to work, is not much of a vacation.
There are 10 people that work for my company... half of them engineers like myself. It's expected that we aren't completely disconnected on vacation... but at least available if a true emergency crops up that needs our niche expertise.
That said, my boss is awesome and encourages healthy work-life separation, so stuff has to really escalate before you're expected to jump in...
I gather that some folks do feel this kind of pressure, but maybe the answer is to help them overcome that feeling, rather than call the policy nonsense.
But your username and grammar make me wonder whether you're French and in France, are you? If you are, I think it may actually be an illegal request. European attitudes towards work are extremely different to US ones, which are themselves more relaxed than e.g. East Asian.
From https://newatlas.com/right-to-disconnect-after-hours-work-em... :
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"France, in particular, has been ahead of the world in establishing legal frameworks protecting a person's right to disconnect. Back in 2001 the idea was first floated when the French Supreme Court ruled that employees are under no obligation to bring work home, and as technology progressed the Court continued to update its ruling. In 2004, for example, it was established that it was not misconduct if an employee was not reachable on a smartphone outside of work hours.
The right to disconnect was solidified at the beginning of 2017 with France introducing the El Khomri law, which suggests every employee contract must include a negotiation of obligations required of an employee regarding how connected they are outside of office hours. The law is reasonably vague and doesn't restrict after-hours work communication, but rather obliges organizations to negotiate these terms clearly with prospective employees."
I will look up the law to be sure !
Is this a matter of principle for you or were you planning to go to some remote are with no Internet? If the latter, you could just explain the situation to your boss and they will probably understand.
https://www.cnt.gouv.qc.ca/conges-et-absences/vacances/vacan...
It says you're supposed to be able to take your vacation uninterrupted. You might want to check with them.
However here’s the reality: If your employer dislikes you, they can fire you for some false reason. You then take it to court and you win. You will be awarded some amount, and there’s now a legally defined cap on that amount, which the employer knows before they fire you. The amount is roughly one month’s salary for each year worked at the company. And you don’t get your job back.
Of course not all employers use this strategy for various reasons, but it exists as a possibility, so it has to be taken into account when planning what response is in your best interest.
This is one reason that most organizations disallow romantic relationships between a superior and a subordinate.
Based on that I think it is not crazy to ask you to touch base a couples of times a week while on holiday.
Very small businesses often have big problems operating when even one person is missing because there is no slack in the system: Everyone has an important role and has to be on deck.
Hopefully, there is a big upside for you that compensates for this.
In a large company it's possible that no-one will even notice that you went on holdays...
If the expectation is that you'll check your email at least once a day at a set time and do maybe 15 minutes of work tops, then yeah, that absolutely goes with the territory of small company management. Pick a time and put it on your calendar for each day you're away, "Respond to emails", 15 minutes long.
If it's more than that, and the expectation is that you'll be available on short notice to resolve anything that comes up, then you're effectively on call and should use that language explicitly.
What would be unreasonable would be for you to effectively be on call for 8 hours a day during your vacation and to still be deducted the normal PTO rate.
Be clear on what "respond to emails" means -- no more an 30 minutes of typing out answers to emails, or does that mean following up on their requested tasks, tweaks, code fixes, etc?
If you're not doing work but are responding to emails I'd keep a To-Do list so stuff that doesn't fall through the cracks, post vacay.
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.
Go ahead and ask them to call.
Don't be afraid to say when the can check it ( eg. 3 hours later).
And check what the request is. If it's a bullshit interruption, than say you don't appreciated it for this.
If it's a good question, don't worry. You will understand why they did it.
In my case: totally fine, bit I never got an interruption for bullshit :)