7 ms·

If you’re gone for 6 months and everything functions just fine, are you really that important? If you can leave your job in a state that means the next 6 month

If you’re gone for 6 months and everything functions just fine, are you really that important? If you can leave your job in a state that means the next 6 months are problem-free then you are amazing. You've obviously planned ahead, documented things, and foreseen potential problems that you've mitigated ahead of time. Any company would be crazy to lose you. If you leave your job in a state where the problems are fixable then you're pretty good. You haven't foreseen things or left good enough plans, and maybe there's issues with documentation and strategy, but things were in a good state that others can recover from. That's more than most companies ask for. If you leave your job and everything falls apart then there are issues somewhere. You, or people you rely on, are basically winging it, and the company doesn't see that as a problem.

raspyberr 5y ago
>If you’re gone for 6 months and everything functions just fine, are you really that important? I would spin that arguement against the business rather than against people. It's clearly a business-PoV argument. If your business stops functioning after losing a small percentage of employees then it's a poorly planned businesses. It has poor redundancy measures and should fail.
- dusted 5y ago
  This. I'm on a rather long paternity leave as of now, and I really hope everything runs as if I'd never left when I get back, otherwise, the bus factor is too low.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  It also means that the normal day to day operation of the business must have a lot of overhead to have that kind of redundancy though. Redundancy is never free.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Redundancy is never free. This. Austria has generous parental leave policies but the effect of that is that as a woman in your late twenties or early thirties, you will have a hard time changing jobs in highly skilled positions as the employer will expect you'll get pregnant soon and will need to find a temporary replacement for you which is impossible as no highly skilled worker wants to be on a fixed short term contract for the same pay, so many employers who can't or don't want to eat the cost of redundancy will prioritize hiring males instead and spread your workload while you're on leave to the remaining workers, causing them to be overworked for that period. That's the hidden cost.
    - CogitoCogito 5y ago
      Seems like the correct fix is to make sure that men have the exact same rights to parental leave and all the same incentives to take them. If men and women are equally likely to disappear for similar amounts of time, then it becomes a wash. Of course it could then be difficult for men and women of a certain age range to find new employment, but I don't see how you can fix this aspect of things.
      - Aerroon 5y ago
        This is a bit of a problem in Estonia. Estonia has conscription. An employer is not allowed to fire someone that's being conscripted or is doing training for the military after conscription. This means that any business that hires a man that has gone through conscription might have to be able to replace him at extremely short notice (a few days) for the duration of training. I haven't heard of any actual statistics about the problems it causes, but I've heard grumblings from small business owners.
      - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        Equal paternity leave is a thing but it doesn't change the fact that women get pregnant and men don't which is why most employers still discriminate against hiring women and why the salary gap is still a thing. Edit: Don't get why I'm downvoted for saying the truth on how many employers think when hiring. Is stating the hard truth bad or something? I don't like it myself but that's how our society works.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    But “redundant” doesn’t mean “optional” if the fault-tolerance is actually valuable to the business. Sure, pretty much any company could gut payroll if the sole objective was to minimize costs over the next, say, 12 months. They could further minimize costs by ceasing to back up their data and not putting a fire sprinkler system in their new office building.
  - HelloNurse 5y ago
    Normal day to day operation of a business should have enough slack to allow people to spend time on experiments and initiatives, or simply to do a particularly good job, rather than merely struggle with the strictly necessary part of their workload. Abnormal operation in which deadlines can be met by cutting corners and/or everything goes well and/or enough people are overworked appears to be more common. For example, think of the company culture in which multi-month projects can be planned without accounting for vacation time.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    Lacking redundancy is also not free, the resulting downtime can happen unexpectedly, for unknown durations. Paying for the redundancy overhead is insurance against single points of failure.
CPLX 5y ago
I mean, that depends pretty heavily on your job. If your job is highest grossing salesperson in a large team or small forward for the Lakers I'm not sure the above breakdown is really applicable.
goodpoint 5y ago
> If you can leave your job in a state that means the next 6 months are problem-free then you are amazing That's not the point. In high-pressure, competitive environments being out of the loop for 6 months means that you have to catch-up for the next 3 months to get back to speed. It slows down people's careers.
pgwhalen 5y ago
I'm curious what job you're describing where this is the case. It seems like one where extensive long term planning is common, and adaptability is not required. Everyone at my company who is good at their job would have their absence felt over the course of six months. For different positions, it would be different amounts of time, but I can't think of a single role from entry level to executive where someone could be so thoroughly good at their job that the company could ride along fine in their absence.

raspyberr 5y ago

>If you’re gone for 6 months and everything functions just fine, are you really that important? I would spin that arguement against the business rather than against people. It's clearly a business-PoV argument. If your business stops functioning after losing a small percentage of employees then it's a poorly planned businesses. It has poor redundancy measures and should fail.

dusted 5y ago
This. I'm on a rather long paternity leave as of now, and I really hope everything runs as if I'd never left when I get back, otherwise, the bus factor is too low.
Aerroon 5y ago
It also means that the normal day to day operation of the business must have a lot of overhead to have that kind of redundancy though. Redundancy is never free.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Redundancy is never free. This. Austria has generous parental leave policies but the effect of that is that as a woman in your late twenties or early thirties, you will have a hard time changing jobs in highly skilled positions as the employer will expect you'll get pregnant soon and will need to find a temporary replacement for you which is impossible as no highly skilled worker wants to be on a fixed short term contract for the same pay, so many employers who can't or don't want to eat the cost of redundancy will prioritize hiring males instead and spread your workload while you're on leave to the remaining workers, causing them to be overworked for that period. That's the hidden cost.
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    Seems like the correct fix is to make sure that men have the exact same rights to parental leave and all the same incentives to take them. If men and women are equally likely to disappear for similar amounts of time, then it becomes a wash. Of course it could then be difficult for men and women of a certain age range to find new employment, but I don't see how you can fix this aspect of things.
    - Aerroon 5y ago
      This is a bit of a problem in Estonia. Estonia has conscription. An employer is not allowed to fire someone that's being conscripted or is doing training for the military after conscription. This means that any business that hires a man that has gone through conscription might have to be able to replace him at extremely short notice (a few days) for the duration of training. I haven't heard of any actual statistics about the problems it causes, but I've heard grumblings from small business owners.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Equal paternity leave is a thing but it doesn't change the fact that women get pregnant and men don't which is why most employers still discriminate against hiring women and why the salary gap is still a thing. Edit: Don't get why I'm downvoted for saying the truth on how many employers think when hiring. Is stating the hard truth bad or something? I don't like it myself but that's how our society works.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  But “redundant” doesn’t mean “optional” if the fault-tolerance is actually valuable to the business. Sure, pretty much any company could gut payroll if the sole objective was to minimize costs over the next, say, 12 months. They could further minimize costs by ceasing to back up their data and not putting a fire sprinkler system in their new office building.
- HelloNurse 5y ago
  Normal day to day operation of a business should have enough slack to allow people to spend time on experiments and initiatives, or simply to do a particularly good job, rather than merely struggle with the strictly necessary part of their workload. Abnormal operation in which deadlines can be met by cutting corners and/or everything goes well and/or enough people are overworked appears to be more common. For example, think of the company culture in which multi-month projects can be planned without accounting for vacation time.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Lacking redundancy is also not free, the resulting downtime can happen unexpectedly, for unknown durations. Paying for the redundancy overhead is insurance against single points of failure.

CPLX 5y ago

I mean, that depends pretty heavily on your job. If your job is highest grossing salesperson in a large team or small forward for the Lakers I'm not sure the above breakdown is really applicable.

goodpoint 5y ago

> If you can leave your job in a state that means the next 6 months are problem-free then you are amazing That's not the point. In high-pressure, competitive environments being out of the loop for 6 months means that you have to catch-up for the next 3 months to get back to speed. It slows down people's careers.

pgwhalen 5y ago

I'm curious what job you're describing where this is the case. It seems like one where extensive long term planning is common, and adaptability is not required. Everyone at my company who is good at their job would have their absence felt over the course of six months. For different positions, it would be different amounts of time, but I can't think of a single role from entry level to executive where someone could be so thoroughly good at their job that the company could ride along fine in their absence.