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If you are a manager taking leave then you need someone else to manage the team while you are out. Often there is nobody on the team who is really ready to mana

by lacker 4y ago

If you are a manager taking leave then you need someone else to manage the team while you are out. Often there is nobody on the team who is really ready to manage it. Then you'll need to get help from elsewhere; perhaps your manager can help out, or perhaps a manager elsewhere in the organization can assist. It can be a tough situation because as a manager and a leader you have to take responsibility for what happens when you are on leave. Sometimes the replacement manager leads a mess and you are left responsible for it. Sometimes things will improve without you and company leadership won't want you to resume your old job when you return. Personally, and as a father, I was fortunate to work at a company which was very flexible about paternity leave. I really preferred taking a couple weeks off at the start, and then returning to work but just working 4 days a week for a while (and not very long hours). It was approximately the same amount of leave but just structured differently. I really advocate this (for men taking paternity leave, whose wife is going to take full time leave) if you can swing it. There are two reasons. One is that it works out better at home. Honestly as a father with a young baby and a wife who is taking leave, your wife and child do not need you in the house 24/7. A day a week to catch up on errands is great. Leaving work in time to make dinner is great. More than that, you just run out of useful stuff to do. And a six month old baby is really just about as much work as a three month old baby! Having five Fridays off to run errands with a six month old baby is more useful than using those same days of leave to take a whole week off with a three month old baby. The second reason is that it works out better at work. If your manager is only working four days a week for a while and not working late, it's basically fine, as long as you aren't at some super intense startup. It isn't disruptive to your team, you're still available to help people, you're still in touch with what's happening at work.

michaelt 4y ago
> then returning to work but just working 4 days a week for a while (and not very long hours). Kinda depends on the structure of your job and whether you're able to shift a proportional amount of work to other people. When I've worked 4-day weeks, people have 'helpfully' rescheduled all the meetings from that day over to days when I'm working, giving me just as much work to do but less time to do it.
- necovek 4y ago
  It seems that you are saying your rescheduled meetings were taking time away from work: if you are a manager, meetings are, usually, the work you need to be doing. What you probably wanted to say is that you were part of a bunch of useless meetings: you should have solved this in a different way even before switching to 4-day weeks: stop attending them (if they were useless for you) or stop the team from having them (if they were useless for everybody else too)
  - michaelt 4y ago
    Eh, it's not unusual for a manager to have some meetings where their attendance is appreciated but not critical - and a wealth of important non-meeting work. The site safety group needs the imprimatur of a senior leader as important safety matters deserve to be taken seriously - but half their time is spent on carpark speed limits and toasters setting the fire alarm off. Less experienced managers need a forum where, if there's a part of the management role they're not familiar with, they can get advice. That forum needs some veteran managers - but it needn't be me every week. Meanwhile, plenty of non-meeting work is very important - a manager also needs to chase up resources their subordinates need. Explain corporate policies and procedures. Approve holidays and expense claims. Review resumes and perform interviews. Evaluate and improve operating procedures. Gather data to support prioritisation decisions. Plan for promotions and raises. And be available for ad-hoc consultation on technical and workplace questions. Make sure employees are filling out their timesheets and doing their mandatory training. And of course answer whatever chat messages or e-mails come in from the guy who signs my raise letters. And that's for a nontechnical manager - if the manager also wants to be making architectural decisions, doing code reviews, approving production change requests and planning the future roadmap for the product? Well, that's all more non-meeting work.
    - necovek 4y ago
      I am not saying non-meeting work is not important, but that meetings (or rather, communication) is equally important, but that there are usually meetings where we should be more considerate of everybody's time. As I said, I think you just phrased it awkwardly, since I doubt all your non-critical meetings were exactly on the day you stopped working in your workweek.

by lacker 4y ago

michaelt 4y ago

> then returning to work but just working 4 days a week for a while (and not very long hours). Kinda depends on the structure of your job and whether you're able to shift a proportional amount of work to other people. When I've worked 4-day weeks, people have 'helpfully' rescheduled all the meetings from that day over to days when I'm working, giving me just as much work to do but less time to do it.

necovek 4y ago
It seems that you are saying your rescheduled meetings were taking time away from work: if you are a manager, meetings are, usually, the work you need to be doing. What you probably wanted to say is that you were part of a bunch of useless meetings: you should have solved this in a different way even before switching to 4-day weeks: stop attending them (if they were useless for you) or stop the team from having them (if they were useless for everybody else too)
- michaelt 4y ago
  Eh, it's not unusual for a manager to have some meetings where their attendance is appreciated but not critical - and a wealth of important non-meeting work. The site safety group needs the imprimatur of a senior leader as important safety matters deserve to be taken seriously - but half their time is spent on carpark speed limits and toasters setting the fire alarm off. Less experienced managers need a forum where, if there's a part of the management role they're not familiar with, they can get advice. That forum needs some veteran managers - but it needn't be me every week. Meanwhile, plenty of non-meeting work is very important - a manager also needs to chase up resources their subordinates need. Explain corporate policies and procedures. Approve holidays and expense claims. Review resumes and perform interviews. Evaluate and improve operating procedures. Gather data to support prioritisation decisions. Plan for promotions and raises. And be available for ad-hoc consultation on technical and workplace questions. Make sure employees are filling out their timesheets and doing their mandatory training. And of course answer whatever chat messages or e-mails come in from the guy who signs my raise letters. And that's for a nontechnical manager - if the manager also wants to be making architectural decisions, doing code reviews, approving production change requests and planning the future roadmap for the product? Well, that's all more non-meeting work.
  - necovek 4y ago
    I am not saying non-meeting work is not important, but that meetings (or rather, communication) is equally important, but that there are usually meetings where we should be more considerate of everybody's time. As I said, I think you just phrased it awkwardly, since I doubt all your non-critical meetings were exactly on the day you stopped working in your workweek.