Director-level here. Given enough notice (let's say weeks, not days -- but hopefully you have months of notice!), I will figure something out. This is not your

Director-level here. Given enough notice (let's say weeks, not days -- but hopefully you have months of notice!), I will figure something out. This is not your problem -- it's my problem. I always encourage people taking mat/pat leave to take the entire time alotted by the company. It's just a job. I can deal without you. If I can't deal without you, then I haven't been doing my job. As a leader of a lean organization, I am constantly thinking about the bus factor. It's not just mat/pat leave, but what if you got COVID and were out for a week? What if you had an emergency health situation and had to be out for six weeks? What if you just straight up quit tomorrow? How would I handle that? Well, it turns out that's the same way I would handle mat/pat leave. If we're down, we have to fill in the gap somehow. We'll manage. We have to. Maybe that means hiring contractors temporarily. I've done that. It's a fine solution. But truth is that the only true thing to do is to work to make sure the workload is distributed across other people, deprioritize the least important things and put them in the backlog, and make sure that everyone is aware that any projects this person is responsible for will move slower until either this person returns or we can bring more resources to bear on the project. We can't overload the rest of the team, but we also can't operate at 100% capacity -- the business needs to realize that. And if they don't, then that's a Big Problem that has nothing to do with your paid family leave. Right now there are currently 2-3 people in my org that are so critical that if something happened, we'd be totally boned. Fortunately, they are all healthy and happy and not expecting children at the moment, so it's not an urgent emergency, but I am still spending a chunk of my time getting some cross-training in with other team members to make sure that the bus factor is at an acceptable level. Long story short: it's not your problem if your teams can't handle your absence, it's your manager's problem. And if they can't handle that... well, it's just a job. There are other jobs out there. You can find one that treats you like a human being worthy of respect and time and energy. I wouldn't stress out too much about it, honestly.