Especially in Tech, it’s usually far easier to simply ask your manager for an extra day off than to cheat the system through sick days. I had a period where I

Especially in Tech, it’s usually far easier to simply ask your manager for an extra day off than to cheat the system through sick days. I had a period where I was going through a severe medical condition which would require me taking a day off at the last moment, and the few days off I took over a span of a few weeks caused far more consternation than the few weeks worth of extra leave that I had taken a couple of years earlier, when a combination of relocation, bereavements in the family, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time meant I ended up taking something like 2 months off in the year, simply because the latter were done with advance notice that allowed my managers and my team to be prepared for the my unavailability and to reach me if there was an emergency (which they did once and even then I had to decline staying in the call since I was in the middle of something).