4 ms·

> needing to do 2 jobs It seems like either they really assigned all of the leave-taker's job to you, and that seems excessive, or this person was doing a TON

> needing to do 2 jobs It seems like either they really assigned all of the leave-taker's job to you, and that seems excessive, or this person was doing a TON of stuff. Were there no other people who could take over parts of the leave-taker's work?

grayclhn 4y ago
A lot of these questions (not just yours) indicate that bad management is rare… that hasn’t been my experience. :) I’m sure the impact to the parent commentor could have been mitigated, but absolutely sure that it almost always isn’t.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  Sure. And people blame their peers rather than those in power.
- cardiffspaceman 4y ago
  I certainly don't have the opinion that bad management is rare. I was just unclear which form of bad management was happening.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Perhaps I was exaggerating a bit, but saying "I was doing 1.75 jobs" seemed to be in the same ballpark. In this case, the startup was young, and (as is usually the case for startups) we had too much to do as it was. Also, coincidentally, we had a bunch of people having babies around the same time. There were simply not that many other people who could take on the work. I think that's primarily the point I want to make: in a sizable corporation, probably a quarter of the company could disappear for a year or two and it wouldn't make any difference. A young startup just doesn't have that amount of spare capacity, so it's not realistic to think that going on extended leave (for whatever reason) won't have a large impact on the people that remain. PS - if you want to argue that by "one quarter" should really be a third or 20% or 15% or whatever, knock yourself out. Point being that large corporations have a lot more redundancy that small startups, so the impact of someone leaving for an extended period is vastly different.

4 ms·

> needing to do 2 jobs It seems like either they really assigned all of the leave-taker's job to you, and that seems excessive, or this person was doing a TON

by cardiffspaceman 4y ago

grayclhn 4y ago
A lot of these questions (not just yours) indicate that bad management is rare… that hasn’t been my experience. :) I’m sure the impact to the parent commentor could have been mitigated, but absolutely sure that it almost always isn’t.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  Sure. And people blame their peers rather than those in power.
- cardiffspaceman 4y ago
  I certainly don't have the opinion that bad management is rare. I was just unclear which form of bad management was happening.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Perhaps I was exaggerating a bit, but saying "I was doing 1.75 jobs" seemed to be in the same ballpark. In this case, the startup was young, and (as is usually the case for startups) we had too much to do as it was. Also, coincidentally, we had a bunch of people having babies around the same time. There were simply not that many other people who could take on the work. I think that's primarily the point I want to make: in a sizable corporation, probably a quarter of the company could disappear for a year or two and it wouldn't make any difference. A young startup just doesn't have that amount of spare capacity, so it's not realistic to think that going on extended leave (for whatever reason) won't have a large impact on the people that remain. PS - if you want to argue that by "one quarter" should really be a third or 20% or 15% or whatever, knock yourself out. Point being that large corporations have a lot more redundancy that small startups, so the impact of someone leaving for an extended period is vastly different.