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

[bouchardm]

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.

[cjbprime]

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."

[bouchardm]

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

I will look up the law to be sure !

[smcphile]

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.

[bobflorian]

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.

[mcv]

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.

[bobflorian]

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.

[setr]

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.

[ljm]

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.

[seasoup]

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.

[quickthrower2]

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.

[brandon272]

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.

[sloaken]

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).

[jameshush]

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.

[pestaa]

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

[SamWhited]

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).

[nepthar]

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.

[mjayhn]

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?

[em-bee]

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.

[blaser-waffle]

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).

[munchbunny]

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.

[jameshush]

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.

[CretinDesAlpes]

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

[bouchardm]

That's my feeling

[GiorgioG]

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.

[ozychhi]

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.

[DoofusOfDeath]

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.

[bogomipz]

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.

[NDizzle]

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

[alexwebb2]

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.

[blaser-waffle]

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.

[dumbfoundded]

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

[quirkot]

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?"

[mytailorisrich]

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...

[bailey1541]

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.

[hrgvdbhsdnjsk]

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.

[curryst]

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.

[undecisive]

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.

[kellenmurphy]

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...