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Comment by timsally | Hacker News Reader

> But I still believe that whenever you have an office you are creating a community of employees who will have a different relationship to those who are working remotely.

Fully concur. Senior leadership needs to lead by example, whether it be remote work, taking paternity leave, or using a healthy amount of vacation. As some have pointed out, remote work as some companies has the potential to become the new "Unlimited Vacation"-- i.e. technically the policy but employees worried about advancement are unlikely to take advantage.

Props to Quora leadership for leading by example.

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>Senior leadership needs to lead by example

I was having dinner with a friend of mine who is a senior manager at a well-known SV company that has "unlimited vacation." He was telling me that the CEO absolutely sets an example of taking unplugged vacations. In fact, he told me that they had a PR person a while back who just couldn't deal with the CEO being out of pocket for an extended time to the point where they just quit.

I don't know, I don't really personally need "leading by example". That would mean a leading position getting into the details of the code and that's not going to happen. I need clearly defined goals though and freedom to choose technology to achieve them. That is possible remotely the same as in an office, only that in an office costs me time unnecessarily, which is frustrating.

"Leading by example" does not mean a leader doing the same job as you.

OK, that's fair and constructive criticism, I take that! You got a point there.

Now it would be great to know, in what aspects a leading person can act in certain ways, that I can copy while doing my job. It also needs to be things, that I don't already do. That would be even more constructive criticism.

You got a point though, and I will think about what those things could be, that someone in a leading position does, that I could copy as behaviors, that are ethically good and also good for the job.

I think the context here is that if a company advertises perks like unlimited vacation, and remote work, then you want to see that employees who take advantage of the perks are not at a disadvantage when it comes to the work they do or advancement in the company. If company leadership is taking frequent vacations and working from home often, it's a better sign that you won't be disadvantaged for doing that than if the company leadership was always working and always in the office.

My first question after someone mentions unlimited vacation is "how much vacation did the boss use last year?". If it's less than 4 weeks, I would view that company as being dishonest about their vacation policy.

The same thing applies to the number of hours worked. I value work-life balance and so if my boss is working 60 hours a week, I will know that company is not for me, because the boss would view me and my insistence on working 40 hours or less as uncommitted to company goals.

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