Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My boss ask I take my emails while on vacation

67 pointsbouchardm112 comments

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.

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This is somewhat cultural: it would not be considered unacceptable in many startups in the US, where I am right now.

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... :

"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."

Haha you almost got me, french yes, france no: Québec Canada :)

I will look up the law to be sure !

In my opinion, law is a bit irrelevant here. You should know what you want to do, if you don't want to do it then decline and see how it goes; If you feel like doing it accept it. Do not let those small details alter your aspirations, in the end all it matters is what you want to do. You are obviously skilled enough to find another job, so do not be afraid to stand up for yourself.

I think this is a bit of a narrow view. Even if I probably do what you say and decline it myself, personal circumstances will vary. I think law here is relevant since it is the minimum that the company will have to uphold and your case to decline will be stronger. You are right in that each person should think about what they want, but they should also balance it with their circumstances.

I'm not a lawyer / Je ne suis pas avocat:

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.

I'd say it's a perfectly reasonable request given that you manage over a third of the company. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was a law against it in Québec... worth finding out and informing the CEO if there is.

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.

Hi from another Canadian. Here in Ontario it is illegal to ask employees to perform any work-related tasks while on holiday and I am 99.9% sure the same is true in Quebec (we have an office in Montreal). Whether you wish to enforce that is up to you. We actually ask people to unplug and recharge in my company - it makes for better outcomes long term.

I’m in France and I’ve lived here for 30 years. What you’ve written is correct.

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 completely unacceptable. I work for a small company of 9, with 3 programmers (me being one). On vacation we all unplug to the fullest extent. It's all about setting expectations, having redundancy and backups. In fact, the boss hired me so that he could do exactly this, unplug and leave the country to have a solid vacation. I tend to either unplug all the way, or make it impossible to contact me by either being somewhere remote. I haven't come back to a burning fire yet.

For every position in the company, there needs to be someone who can fill in if the need arises. You already need that anyway in case someone has a serious accident or something, so you might as well make use of that when people go on vacation.

But especially for manage position this should not be necessary. Most small software companies will do just fine if run for a view weeks without a manager (as long as it doesn't overlap with the start/end of a project).

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.

With 3 programmers, I seriously doubt there is a backup for every function.

Then they either need to tolerate less than 100% availability for those functions or hire more people.

For a company of the size we are talking about, it would definitely by the former. Even at 20 people, it's not possible (financially) to have backups for every function and we have to tolerate downtime for people.

It's all about culture. Try to be the agent of change, or change your expectation on what you can achieve in your current role.

From the corporate perspective, the problem is that work should not, and cannot, shutdown, because you've gone on vacation. In a company of sufficient resource, you would normally be able to offload the management onto someone else for the duration (eg your #2, or a peer)

But this is not your case -- you have only 6 people -- there's no one to offload onto. The size of your group is such that everyone is presumably vital to the operation, and cannot be removed without surgical intervention.

So you're in the state of having to do one of two things:

1. Solve the problem for the company, and somehow institute policies, tasks and responsibilities to allow your resources to survive on their own for some time (you need to eventually do this anyways so you can work on higher level things)

2. Work minimum hours during vacation to make sure nothing blows up

3. Work no hours during vacation, and if it blows up, it blows up (and accept the backlash for it)

The key thing is that having such responsibilities means that you can't leave things in a broken state -- if that means you have to work extra hours to keep things working, so be it.

The only reasonable option there is the third one, and the company itself suffers the backlash for running on such a high bus factor.

Vacation is for vacation, not work. If you're asked to stay on call then you better be paid for it. After all, you're not one of the founders, you're an employee.

If a business can't survive with a week or two of planning or delegation then it has other problems. Eating vacation is just a cop out.

However, you're not a low-level resource; especially in a 6-man company. Being given responsibility for your team, you are responsible for it -- good or bad. It's your duty to ensure your team is capable of limited autonomy (if they were believed to be capable of full autonomy, your role as manager is redundant, and the hierarchy shouldn't have been created in the first place)

If you haven't yet created the necessary environment that you can just step out for some time, then working beyond working-hours is the inevitable result.

If you've noted and escalated the problem -- that this environment cannot be setup without whatever additional resources/support -- then that's your safety net against any backlash. (It's now your bosses fault if he's aware and does nothing). But if you haven't... the onus remains on you

Again, you continue to describe the role of a FOUNDER, not an employee.

Your use of words like “blow up” and “duty” need some serious reflection. One of the biggest failures of or modern corporate culture is the mindset that we should live to work instead of work to live. A vacation requires disconnect to be truly valuable, if your brain is still in work mode, you may as well have stayed in the office.

I'm describing the role of a manager, versus a contractor/leaf-resource.

A vacation is valuable, I agree, but your position within a company is a reflection of our position within it's operation -- the higher you are within it, the more people you screw over when you say "it's 5pm goodbye" and don't have things setup to handle it. Your power, and pay, is a reflection of that: you have less and less leeway, as you have greater impact, to screw around.

It would be a very poorly run company that allows everything to shutdown because a VP (key: not founder) went on vacation -- the same is true of a department head, and his department, and a team lead, and his team. But it's also the CEO's job to make sure he picks VP's who ensure this not the case within his domain, and the VP must pick the department heads, and the department heads their team leads -- if you are willing to allow, or unable to prevent, such scenarios to bust forth, you really shouldn't be managing that particular domain.

The more important you are, the less freedom you have, because the greater the impact your choices will have.

And to be clear I'm not using duty as an implication of loyalty or whatever -- I mean that a manager, or manager of manager's job really boils down to one thing:

Ensure productivity within your domain

Not letting your team implode in two weeks of your absence is part of that

> the higher you are within it, the more people you screw over when you say "it's 5pm goodbye" and don't have things setup to handle it

disagree. in fact you should be doing this, especially if you're in a higher position in whatever hierarchy. because you then have more power to dictate culture, and properly set boundaries.

all these arguments have been mentioned before. it can be seen as a mini-drill/game day to see how the business copes when you're gone (for whatever reason). if you've set up/helped set up a robust business, nothing bad will happen. if not, you've already failed the business. i guess that requires trusting your employees though.

being liable to burn out is also a risk to the business, not an asset. if you are a knowledge worker, not unplugging and coming back refreshed is also a risk to the business, not an asset.

My key requirement is that you need to have things (processes, roles & responsibilities) setup to handle it.

I'm not arguing whether its good, or bad, to setup such a culture -- go ahead, I won't stop you; hell, I'll enjoy it. But things need to be setup to actually survive that model.

If things are not setup properly, and you try to enforce your hardline stance anyways, regardless of how it impacts your domain, then you are operating as very poor manager. You can't just randomly drop the ball like that -- if you want a strict 8-5 working culture, or a 100%-offline vacation culture, you need to do the preparation for it.

And if it can't be done, because of whatever local constraints, then it would be absurd to go forward with it anyways; then your goal should be to find some reasonable alignment with those constraints. The same way that a programmer can't simply decide that functional programming is THE ONE TRUE GOD, and inject haskell into everything when no one else knows it, and then rewrite everything, when no one else can participate.

You can't just go ahead with it randomly, and say it's not your responsibility (it's your domain: it is your responsibility), and really, its the FOUNDER's fault for allowing this situation to occur, I'm actually not involved anywhere in this -- because then the FOUNDER should, and hopefully will, execute according to his responsibility: replace you with someone who does realize he's responsible for his domain, and set things up to run efficiently/effectively within the culture he chooses to instantiate.

That is, from the corporate perspective, the culture really doesn't matter -- as long as it works. The criticized culture is simply the common, default, good-enough solution that works just about everywhere (and features the IBM property: no one gets fired for buying into it); another culture is fine, as long as you do the prep work for it.

But if you don't, and try to enforce it without preparing for the consequences (both to extract the good and mitigate the bad), then it's entirely your own failure.

I think the second option is entirely reasonable, so long as you are compensated for it and the responsibility was well-communicated in advance (ideally before taking the job, or during onboarding).

This is not quality thinking. Without adequate time to destress and unplug, employees are likely to leave and if an employee leaves, the company will lose far more than someone’s vacation time. Leave employees alone while on vacation unless absolutely necessary.

Vital is a strong word. If he quit they’d find a workaround until they hire a replacement. Use that same workaround while he is on holiday.

Probably delegate some of the short term responsibilities to one of the devs.

Two things:

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.

I would track how much time you spent doing it, and deduct it from your vacation hours. Instead of charging 40 hours, I would charge 37 to vacation.

That 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).

I agree this is how it SHOULD work, but it really depends on the company culture. Ideally you set up systems in advance where they don’t have to reach you.

It's strange because I'm normally a law abiding citizen, but still totally going to steal that library phrasing.

With the disclaimer that I am not a manager: this is somewhat normal at smaller companies I've been at, but it is still completely unreasonable to ask you to check emails while on vacation, even at a 6 person company. I have always taken a hard line on this as a non-manager, and so should you. If they give you actual vacation hours that they have to pay out instead of nonsense like the "unlimited vacation" policies a lot of companies have (meaning they don't have to pay out and can rely on most employees feeling pressured to come back quicker), you have the choice of accepting their terms but only if you deduct the time from your vacation hours taken (although trust me, for your own mental health, take the time and don't think about work at all).

Re: "nonsense like "unlimited vacation" - I've worked at a few companies with unlimited vacation and felt no such pressure. I not only took more vacation than the typical American two weeks, but it gave me flexibility to take advantage of things like last minute ski/camping trips. This really allowed me to put my life first and be a relaxed productive member of the company.

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.

Lucky you. It's not just a feeling though (although there is that). My bosses have basically all constantly asked me when I was coming back if I tried to take more than a few days, and with no chance to earn vacation time there was no chance of it being paid out when I left.

Didn't you tell me recently that you started to get really into backwoods camping? It's unfortunate that signal is so bad in the woods, eh?

not to mention the lack of electricity, and the weight limit on my backpack. and the kids needing constant attention. we'll also be kayaking from place to place, through some wild streams. the only electronics i'll be able to take is my waterproof camera.

Backwoods camping in Canada? Good luck getting any sort of signal out through all of those mosquitoes (and ticks, if you're in Eastern Canada).

That's normal, sort of. For context: I've worked in a 6 person startup as a founder, a 60 person startup as management, and right now a tech giant as a peon. My policy for myself and anyone under me has been the same in all three cases, and it's been consistent with my colleagues in all three cases. (Exception: there are 100%, definitely, guaranteed, examples of unreasonable managers at the tech giant I work for, I'm just not personally aware of them.)

1. In general, talk to and designate someone to cover for you for the responsibilities that have to continue while you're on vacation. If that's not possible, see #2.

2. In general, don't answer emails. Activate your out-of-office auto-response feature. Set a protocol with your colleagues for how to flag urgent issues in email, such as an [Urgent] tag, and mention it in your out-of-office auto-response. If you're not going off the grid, then once a day check for urgent emails and respond to those. Ignore the rest. If you're going off the grid, make sure everyone knows you're off the grid (mention it in your out-of-office auto-response).

3. If you anticipate potential emergencies where you have to be involved, then set a protocol for how to contact you quickly in case of emergency, and bring your work with you just in case everything catches on fire. I always used "email me, call me on my Google Voice number, leave a message if I don't pick up, text me, and message me in company chat, in that order."

The key point is that sometimes it's urgent and the bus number is 1, and you're that one person, and in those cases it makes sense to ask that you be reachable. In all other cases your vacation should be respected and you should be left alone.

This is all great advice. My company uses slack instead of email, what’s helped me is silencing slack but telling people they can call me if there’s a fire. Before then I set up all the systems I can to prevent anything from slipping through, so I haven’t been called on vacation yet.

It’s all about setting expectations and delegating responsibility in advance.

Having a backup plan helps.

Also making full use of the available tools:

- calendar OOO messages

- automated email replies

- slack status messages showing OOO dates

Yup! All these are very simple things you can do. People forget to do the simple things because they think work is more complicated then it is.

If you have to work during your holidays then they shouldn't be called holidays.

That's my feeling

Vacation isn't vacation if you're doing work. Take a hard line. Make sure the same happens for the people you're managing as well.

I'm always available for call whenever physically possible, mind you I work in finance. Depends what kind of ownership of the project you take, but you should NOT be forced into it; That should have been discussed when you took on the managerial role, as obviously you didn't have full understanding of responsibilities. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that request (again it should be request not forced), but bigger problem is that you might have other hidden responsibilities and that is a bit of a red flag.

When someone with power over you makes a request, you can never be sure it's not forced, regardless of how they word it.

This is one reason that most organizations disallow romantic relationships between a superior and a subordinate.

If you are expected to reply to email then you are not truly having a vacation. The only "3 hours" thing is disingenuous because if you are required to look at work email then inevitably you will wind up thinking about work. That is not a real vacation. Giving up the ability to truly enjoy your vacation is not some default that is accepted when taking on a management role. I don't think its normal, maybe it's normal for him but that doesn't mean it should become your normal. Tell them unequivocally "no" and explain why. It's important to set proper boundaries early or this can become the beginning of these types of encroachments on your work-life balance.

Putting up with that kind of nonsense in 6 person company isn't worth your while.

Just be clear between you and your boss what the expectation is.

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.

I would frame it that way as well.

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.

Your boss in the wrong for asking you. At the same time, you will probably be viewed negatively for not doing it. Your call.

A potential reply to avoid coming across poorly could be something like: "what time code or project number should I report my time under when I stop my vacation and go on-call?"

I find this is a great response, unfortunately we are a SASS, only one project number :/

You say that you manage 2 devs in a 6 people business: You and your team are half the whole company so I'm thinking that you are critical.

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...

So much of this is commentary by people who have never worked at a successful startup that grows from zero to 100M+. Purists who would do well with a union and have never felt what it is to be part of a core team that brings something from zero to changing the world. They focus on questions like what has the company done for me? And ignore the basic tenets of employment. Go work for a 10,000+ company with that attitude.

1) Decide if this company is in this category (you’re proud to be part of it and think it can change the world); 2) Decide if you are someone who is capable of doing this (it’s a huge commitment, are your ready and able to be a world changer?); 3) Determine if you’re in an early enough group to justify this commitment (~first ten? 20?); and, 4) Set reasonable parameters around checking in / email to be available in an emergency, but otherwise are on holiday (i.e. if it’s not an emergency / meeting agreed upon emergency requirements, you’re on holiday and not working) — you’re not just answering questions via email).

Above all, say what you mean (I will / will not do this) and do what you say.

For context, I’m founder of three startups collectively >$500M exits. And any first five-ten employees who didn’t understand the above would have a short tenure. They’re simply not startup material.

That said, we strive for 40-hour weeks, we take evenings and weekends off, and we expect all statutory holidays and personal holidays off — always with the caveat that if the fit hits the shan, we’re all available to band together and solve the problem.

This is such baloney. If the company has no ability to function without you for a week or two (barring emergencies) it's clearly a doomed enterprise.

Any boss who makes these demands does not understand how employee burnout effects the long-term health of the company and does not value your role enough to safeguard the contributions you make through well-managed redundancy plans.

Given the criteria I set above - I would love to know your experience with it before you call it baloney.

If you’ve never been a critical employee in building a company from zero to something, I think that says enough.

Failing that experience and focusing on what the company is doing for you is the brightest light ever telling you that you’ll never be part of a successful startup.

I'm not a manager, but my managers are typically available by phone for "oh shit" situations. I say typically in the sense that they keep their phone around, and will answer if it goes off, but don't make a promise that they will have cell service, etc.

That is with the explicit warning that it is only to be used in situations where the site is down and we've called everyone else.

Whether they answer email is hit or miss. The ones that do I think are just workaholics.

My take is that I don't generally mind, because typically the reason I'm getting called is that I dropped the ball on something. I've been called twice out of work hours when I wasn't on call. Once because I developed a system and did a shitty job training other people on it, so when something broke that wasn't a simple fix, I got called. The other time was because the solo dev for the product was on vacation, his replacement on call didn't know much about the system, and I had worked with it the most other than the main dev. I should have documented how I worked with the system and fixed it in the past, but I didn't, because documentation always ends up as the last thing I want to do. The org likes documentation and would have given me time to do it, I just didn't want to. So I reaped what I sowed there.

Is this normal? Sadly, yes.

Is this legal? Maybe. Probably. IANAL but as far as I'm aware, there is nothing wrong with the request itself. That said, if he fires you based on inaction during holdiay periods, there may well be legal recourse depending on your country etc. But get legal advice before you go down that route.

Is this acceptable? Maybe. As manager, it's up to you (and in your best interests) to maintain control of the situation. In your "I'm off, have a good couple of weeks" message, set limits on what kinds of communications you expect to deal with while on holiday. Remind everyone that they too are expected to enjoy the freedom of their time off, and if you expect them to be unacceptable about it then be clear that anyone found abusing your free time will be ignored or worse.

Ensure that, where possible and appropriate, you nominate deputies with the experience and good sense to deal with the kinds of issues that are likely to come up.

Also, check what they expect from your 3 hours a week. If it's 3 hours reporting on the activities of the team, kindly inform them that the answers will be a couple of weeks old, or that you will refer to members of your team for that information.

Remember also that it is your responsibility to help set the tone and atmosphere for the company. How you deal with this determines how others will deal with similar situations. So sure, be accommodating up to a point, but remind those around you that team morale pivots on valuing each other and protecting each other.

Especially in the context of a small business of just 6 folks... yes, I think keeping tabs on your email is understandable.

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 can tell you that on my side, it is expected that you are completely unreachable when you are not supposed to be working. That applies during your holidays, when you are sick (you still need to open the door to the work's doctor if he comes visit you) or before/after work hours and during the week-end. Not only your boss or collegues wouldn't try to contact you (or would not expect a response), but they would not even try, as it could lead to you (rightfully) complaining to HR.

The reality as always is more complexe. It is true that some role come with an (implied) expectation of general availibility. While it would be your right to decline any work-related phone call, I'm sure it could one way or another impact your relation with your boss, especially if 'it comes with the role'. I guess it all depends on what you want. If you don't want to be answering work calls during your holidays, you can always fake being unreachable. It's not unreasonnable to not have your phone with you at every moment. Or, if you don't mind being reachable, maybe arrange for a predefined time slot (from 9 am to 9.30 am every day) when they can call you, so that you don't have to worry about it all day.

I see it this way:

As a manager you are responsible for your department those responsibilities dont magically poof away because your on vacation. If you have successfully set up your team/department in a way that you can "go dark" for your time off (e.g. no need of your knowledge, and proper key teammates can step in for you to interface with other teams/departments) then great, otherwise you should expect backlash if something goes wrong.

Because it's a small company[1], I'd suggest as a compromise that you provide a way for them to reach you in emergencies, but otherwise do not check in.

That way someone has to make the choice to disturb you when it's truly necessary, as compared to preemptively laying claim to some vaguely-defined portion of your vacation time.

[1] For a larger company, my answer would be no - your vacation time is your time, and not the company's.

At the last 3 companies (all small startups) I have worked for, this would have been considered unreasonable. When a person is away, we would not attempt to contact them unless it is a true emergency, and there would be no expectation that they should check their messages. You should be able to delegate your responsibilities to one of your colleagues.

Depends on the situation, I would play the wait and see card.

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 :)

I went through a period of my life over several years where I did this. I was pretty much on, checking emails and responding whenever I was awake. I found it to be a horrible life balance when I finally stopped, realized my health had deteriorated and I had missed key moments of my daughters early life.

If the company will truly fall apart when you become unavailable, then you are doing it wrong. Hire people you can trust, train them, maintain well-defined processes in some Body of Knowledge repository. Then let people know who to contact for what. Give clear and accurate criteria for the emergencies when you should be called/texted. Then be present always, whether it is work or vacation. You'll find your happiness increases, your job output increases, and the people you work with will grow and be happier for it.

Not unusual but a little interesting that your boss is explicitly asking that you be available during holiday. And I don't think it's unreasonable for them to ask.

If I were you, I would see if you can work something out with your boss that's agreeable to both of you. Maybe it's fine just to glance at the emails for 5 or 10 minutes in the whenever time window is convenient, with no expectation of action until you actually are back to work. If that's no good enough (i.e. they want you explicitly looking at your emails for a set window) then try to see if there's some other form of acceptable recompense in exchange for you to be working on holiday, for example extra pay to compensate for the fact that your giving up some vacation time to do work.

For a startup with only 6 people and you are one of the managers/leaders of managing others, there could be exceptions the team needs your decision while you are out on vacation.

This depends on the work culture at your company and in the country you are in as the labor law and norms varies. My own experience has been that it's entirely possible (imaging your 2 direct reports are roadblocked waiting for you to make a decision) and your role is so crucial that your boss depends on your to make an informed decision, your attendance on email responses could be important. Obviously, if it's a short vacation and everything is planned out and prepared for, your response on emails would probably not needed.

Again, I don't think there is a common scene here you can find on HN.

I work at a small company too. When I go on vacation, one of the owners steps in for me as much as he can. If there's a true emergency he can't deal with, he will call me.

I never check my email on vacation. I also try as much as I can to do the same for them so they can go on vacation.

If the company is only 6 people I don't think it's unreasonable to ask you to check email. Small companies need to project as bigger than they are to potential clients and answering your emails helps that illusion. Just take 20 minutes and do it after lunch.

It is unreasonable. It’s just been normalized in certain settings. I’ve been in teams like that, and having to check in while on vacation makes it hard to take your mind off of work. Its one thing if my manager asks for my cell phone in case there’s a true emergency. But having me check my email every weekday? No. Boundaries are healthy.

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.

People "vacation" in radically different ways.

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?"

I'd come at this from the point of view that no, holiday means no contact.

It is not "normal" for managers to be available to be called while they're on holiday. When I've been in management roles the rules have been the same as non-management rules. Holiday is holiday: you're not there.

What that means is, if your manager needs support while you're away, you and he need to have a discussion about what cover looks like such that you personally don't need to be there. What can you delegate up or down? Is there a peer you can hand some responsibilities off to temporarily?

If he's not willing to have that discussion at all, that's a real problem, but I'd approach it as a problem to be mutually solved.

There is both opportunity and threat hidden here.

Threat - if the program/project genuinely requires that the manager needs to on emails regularly and if you don't give what it takes to a manager of those programs/projects, they might replace you with someone who does.

Opportunity - if you check your emails in vacation and take proper action, then you will gain trust from management and they don't even bother whether you are in office or in vacation. they might even give more responsibilities.

Because business never goes on vacation, you cannot tell customers that key person is in vacation. You can find someone to act as a manager when you are on vacation. But that person might replace you, if you are not very careful.

Both of those seem to imply that checking your email is the right thing to do. So just for balance let's consider the following as well:

Threat - Checking your emails means agreeing that it is normal and to be expected, this will be hard to undo.

Opportunity - Not checking email for a few days will force both yourself and the team to be more independent, and will identify obstacles to further independence.

Here is my suggestion, given the size of the company and your role. Ask your boss to try and answer your work emails while you are on vacation, or send a reply saying you will get back to it when you are done with vacation. If he encounters something he isn't sure about, he can email you. That way you will only be bothered about things that really require your attention.

Offer to do the same thing for him when he is on vacation. This is a better strategy for co-workers, but since you are a small company you can see what your boss says. At the size you are at it is important that you offer to reciprocate what you are asking for, to show that you want to be treated fairly and appropriately.

> For the context it is a small business of 6 people.

I think the size of the company explains why you were asked to take emails while on vacation. In a bigger organization, with more redundancy, handling vacations would be less of a problem.

I’ve never been told take emails while on vacation, but I’ve volunteered to do so when there was nobody available with the skills and/or specific knowledge to replace me.

Since you’re asking for advice, I’d advise you to accept taking emails and just try to ensure it doesn’t take you to much time. Avoid doing too much hand holding in your messages and just answer the critical stuff. Before you leave, explain to the two programmers what they can decide on their own and what they can’t.

I have always applied the unofficial policy that if an employer needs me in an 'emergency' (ie. to do something at short notice when I wouldn't otherwise be working for them), then I will do it, but will round up the time rather generously and take that amount of extra time off elsewhere.

For example, boss calls interrupting my sunbathing session needing advice on how to fix something. Call is 14 minutes. I'm going to either bill that as an hour, or take another hour off sometime.

Doesn't apply if its because I've done my job badly (ie. didn't properly document some procedure, so now someone else needs help following it).

Totally unacceptable ask in my opinion, for reasons many people have touched on. I would also add that even from the company's point of view, it's a bad deal to ask you to work. The peace of mind you get from taking an unplugged vacation, and also from knowing that your company wants you to fully enjoy that vacation, is going to make you happier and more productive when you return to work. It's going to make you trust your company and think that they have your back as a human being. In the end this is going to be worth infinitely more than the two or three emails you would be expected to answer that week.

Assuming that this is not already covered by your contract, and that you are not going to flatly refuse, it may be worth thinking about possible areas of negotiation.

For example, if you have to be available for 3h per week, you might suggest retaining 1 vacation day of that week. Similarly, you could suggest that you retain the vacation day if you end up working more than one hour on any given day of your vacation.

As well as ensuring you aren't giving away your vacation time for free, this also sets boundaries. The risk here is that your 3h a week effectively turns into you being on call for the vacation.

One way to think about this is traveling to places where connectivity is literally unavailable -- national parks, mountains, etc. Your boss cannot prevent you from traveling to those locations, so even if you aren't somewhere where you are unreachable, why should you be expected to be available?

Most of my bosses have left their contact information for when they are away from the office, but I've never had reason to use it. I would feel bad interrupting someone's time off except in cases of true emergencies, which might happen more often in other company cultures or industries.

Very easy to handle. There's just one word you have to learn.

The magic word is

"No"

Just say the word. That's it.

Compromise. Ask for an extra week of vacation. I got three days for the mere possibility that I would be around in case production went down. It didn't. I was the only engineer on the team at the time. Come to think of it, no different from you. Since you will definitely have to work, a whole week or even longer is completely appropriate. Ask for a bit more and compromise if you have to. But you must get compensated for this well. One day for every hour you need to work seems fair.

I've seen business owners of startups picking specific days to communicate like every Wednesday during a holiday. If you're worried about checking your mail all of the time you just as well could've kept working.

It's your decision ultimately but if it was a nice company otherwise and I could check in only once per week or in case of a "the house is on fire" emergency I probably would accept it.

Also make sure the days they ask you to check in are not counted as days off.

Depends on the situation, you could say he’s wrong based on how people here draw a line, but to just pick and choose their principles it is risky. You didn’t explain enough of the situation, your work culture, boss personality, your relationship with him, and company size for a more accurate assessments. If he’s an ass he could look for ways to push you out, and if you are in certain financial situations you may want to play it a certain way

If its America yes I think its normal you're available for important decisions and emergencies, esp in a small team. 3hrs/week sounds too much though.

It doesn’t matter what other people find acceptable. It only matters whether you find it acceptable. Listen to your own needs, not others.

In a larger company, you have people who can realistically take on your duties. In a company that small, it doesn't seem like anyone can fully. You are a small enough company that you're almost in that realm of nobody really gets a vacation, you just take time off and hope there's not any emergencies that require you jumping back into work.

As a manager for a small team myself, I think an important part of the job is to making sure that no one person on that team is irreplaceable -- including yourself.

Vacations are an incredible forcing function for proper documentation, backups, knowledge, whatever. If there's _anyone_ on the team who can't be 100% offline for a week, that's a problem.

I'd prefer to read and - within limits - respond to emails on vacation over the anxiety coming from being completely out of the loop.

Many companies or departments, especially smaller ones, don't have the capability to make all employees redundant. Not always just because they can't afford to have twice the employees they normally need.

Completely unacceptable.

All of my managers were available during vacation if something truly blows up. But they never planned to dedicate a few hours for work on their vacations.

What your company needs is better processes and policies. iirc, most my managers planned their vacations so that it was not right before or after major releases or other events.

People are saying this is normal. Normal doesn't make it right.

I would check what the local laws for you are regarding this, but I would personally say "no". Work with your team to make sure they know exactly what they need to work on and clear the path of anything that may get in their way, then go enjoy your vacation.

If you are so critical to the company's operations, then can you deduct 3 hrs every week from the PTO you are taking? ie, if you are taking off 40 hours, then only log 37 hours PTO taken, because you're expected to work 3 hrs a week? Not ideal, but at least you will preserve your hard-earned PTO?

Nope. Speak to your Trade Union about this. If you're on the clock, you're not on leave and you need to be paid for it.

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.

Tell him no and start looking for a new job. If you go along, your manager is just taking advantage of you. If you don't, I expect that you'll have a really hard time especially in a business this small and with a manager this bad.

Tell your boss that if they are willing to pay 2x your normal hour rate for work done during your vacation then that's OK. If they are not then clearly the work isn't important enough for your vacation to be interrupted.

It's getting more blurred since the flue.

Remote work vs work from home vs vacation vs time off

In the company where I worked that was expected of professional level staff. We could not afford to lose clients. We typically checked email daily and were available by phone in an emergency. People did not abuse this.

Sounds normal to me.

I've always had to email a little on the weekends when in manager roles.

This is an acceptable ask in the companies I've worked in the U.S., especially for a small business. My experience is that people will email you much less than you expect, and it's just for emergencies

I did this for a company of the same size. I spent 15 minutes each morning (during coffee) answering important emails. The rest I left for when i got back.

Companies value people who are dependable, including being a little bit available on vacation. Its not fair but it's true.

I mean, what if your vacation is 3 weeks hiking in the wild with no reception?

Welp. So that also rules out going to places with no connectivity.

I would say asking for a fixed time commitment is not reasonable, that’s not vacation.

However, as a manager it can be hard to truly disconnect and take vacation without either (a) missing a big decision and not being happy with the decision that was made, or (b) delaying the rest of the team by asking them to wait to make a decision until you get back.

So your options for this are:

(1) Have a designated substitute person who will cover your responsibilities while you are out. As a manager this is an important part of your job actually, succession planning. You should be teaching and grooming someone to replace you when you leave. This should be a person who you trust and who you work with a lot, so whatever decision they make will be okay with you. Then you have to be zen about it and actually accept whatever decisions they make while you were out.

(2) Try to pull forward any decisions that you can, so that everything is settled before you leave. There’s a lot you can probably decide in advance, but obviously that doesn’t help with the random unknown things that can pop up at any time.

If you do both of the above then it really is reasonable to disconnect.

You should be able to tell your boss your goal is to truly disconnect, and he or she should respect that. If your boss pushes back on these things, then you should seek to understand why. Is there a specific meeting or a specific conversation that can only happen during your vacation and your boss really wants you to be there for it?

I don’t think it’s crazy to join in a specific conversation during a longer vacation if it’s something that you really care about and it can’t move. Ask yourself if it’s gonna drive you crazy not knowing what decision was made until you get back :)

However, as everyone else has said, you aren’t really disconnecting if you have some things from work you need to check on during your break. This is a legitimate struggle for managers, and it means that sometimes you take partial breaks where you get some rest but not a full vacation because you can’t completely cut out.

It’s OK to take partial breaks sometimes, but not ideal, you also need full breaks. Therefore is my final suggestion is this:

As a manager you end up scheduling your vacation time around your work. Meaning, you probably know when the team is likely to have a stretch where nothing major is going to happen, and that is when you should take a true disconnect vacation. Obviously you can’t predict the future perfectly, so you need the first two techniques to compensate for whatever unknown things may pop up while you are gone. However, as you get used to being a manager you will start to have a good feel for when you really need to be around and when you don’t, and the best thing to do is to take vacation when you don’t really need to be around. You’re not an IC anymore, so you can’t just peace out and leave your manager to deal with it ;)

I hope this helps. Good luck, and welcome to being a manager :)

Just find a new job, life is to short

Why is this on HN, and why are people upvoting it? Isn't WP.SE a thing any more?

3 hours per week is not a big deal. The higher you go the more you should expect to live the job. If that’s a tough pill then don’t become a manager.

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.

I'm sorry that you've been trained to think this way by current corporate culture, but this is not okay and it has nothing to do with choosing to swallow the manager pill or not or whatever that was supposed to mean.

People should be allowed to have a vacation. Full stop. No conditions.

It is a strength to want W/L separation, not a weakness.

> People should be allowed to have a vacation. Full stop. No conditions.

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.

By definition, you get paid for 0 hours of work during a vacation. Working infinity times as much as you have to is a big deal.

I, and most people in the US paid a salary, continue to get paid during vacation days.

Obviously?

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