5 ms·

>The only exceptions would be if you are in a role with seasonality and its generally understood end of year / end of quarter / tax time / something is well kno

>The only exceptions would be if you are in a role with seasonality and its generally understood end of year / end of quarter / tax time / something is well known busy season and its in poor taste to disappear during it. This is exactly how you get guilted into working during vacation; everything is sold as an exception.

Dalewyn 2y ago
I think the point there is vacation schedules can differ wildly from the seeming social norm depending on the occupation. Some lines of work simply require you to be working when everyone else is on vacation.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  This is fine IMO if you get compensated. For example my old job I got double baseline pay for Sundays and holiday work. This was fair. Nowadays working in software I sometimes do stuff on the weekend - but only because I know I can take longer breaks during the week since part of the work is already done. “Good enough” is my goal and it should be generally. IMO Norway has the best working culture in that regard, although I only know if from the outside/stories.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Right it's not about moving holidays its about planning them for a reasonable time if you have strong seasonality to your job. If your job is some giant e-commerce retailer and you probably shouldn't take Black Friday or the week before Christmas off. If you work in accounting or some operations role then quarter end is likely bad. If you work in tax, then late March thru April probably bad. Etc. There's plenty of time in the year to take off around whatever your jobs regular busy season is. Don't set yourself up for failure.
rciorba 2y ago
The seasonality is not an exception. It's not a case of "just this once". It's a well understood thing of "every year, before the tax deadline we have crunch-time, so don't plan on going on holiday in that time". The repeated, unplanned, "just this once" exceptions are a whole different thing.
- hinkley 2y ago
  If your whole year depends on you having a product ready to sell on August 1 and you don’t finish it until the middle of July, then the company fucked up. If the whole enterprise depends on that date, then the thing should be done well ahead of that date. The remaining time is to handle training and documentation and shipping. Not still working on planned features, or doing bug fixes where the devs played chicken with the drop dead date. These are all management failure, because nine times out of ten you ran out of time because some manager or exec had a great reason why his change was so important that we should break the rules to get it in. Or that what he said isn’t what he meant and now we need to fix it no matter what. This is the sort of exception that makes me upset. The problem is these children in suits don’t understand that “we have 9 months” means you plan for six months of work. Tops. They can’t stand the “waste” because none of them have read a real management book since college, and they only skimmed it for the test.
bcrosby95 2y ago
I don't know if it's normal, but my sister is a CPA and while tax season is a thing, so is working 1-4 hours per day in the summer.
- mikepurvis 2y ago
  That's really the key. I don't resent working into the night if I'm a) engaged by an interesting an worthwhile problem and b) know that I can cut out early next week and go for a bike ride after school with my kids. Endless crunch is a problem, and I don't crunch to meet made up internal deadlines or for work that is administrative nonsense.
pc86 2y ago
We're talking about real seasonality, not "we have to launch this quarter" fake board room seasonality. If you want to do people's taxes for a living you have to acknowledge that Feb/March/April are not times where it is appropriate or acceptable for you to schedule a 3-week vacation. This is not the same as "we do database updates in August so no summer holidays."
- randomdata 2y ago
  I thought we were talking about real seasonality? A tax deadline arbitrarily chosen in the legislative chamber is as much fake seasonality as summer database updates or product launches.
  - OJFord 2y ago
    If that database update is well know to be every August or that product launch is something like Apple's WWDC then sure, that's the distinction people are making. If it's just we want to launch our latest product in the second week of June, because that's the one-off date we came up with when we started the project, that's different. It's not seasonality it's just failing to account for staff availablity/unrealistic planning.
  - peaseagee 2y ago
    If you miss your database update or product launch deadline you can't get arrested for it (in the vast majority of cases). Yes, all deadlines are arbitrary, but the consequences for missing them are different for different deadlines!
    - randomdata 2y ago
      Being arrested is still just the arbitrary choice of people. It's not real in the sense defined earlier. It is not like, say, needing to harvest food before winter sets in.
      - barkbyte 2y ago
mrighele 2y ago
In fact if you are working on a sector with high seasonality nobody is going to have to skip vacation during holidays, because those days you are not going to have vacation to begin with

Dalewyn 2y ago

I think the point there is vacation schedules can differ wildly from the seeming social norm depending on the occupation. Some lines of work simply require you to be working when everyone else is on vacation.

portaouflop 2y ago
This is fine IMO if you get compensated. For example my old job I got double baseline pay for Sundays and holiday work. This was fair. Nowadays working in software I sometimes do stuff on the weekend - but only because I know I can take longer breaks during the week since part of the work is already done. “Good enough” is my goal and it should be generally. IMO Norway has the best working culture in that regard, although I only know if from the outside/stories.
steveBK123 2y ago
Right it's not about moving holidays its about planning them for a reasonable time if you have strong seasonality to your job. If your job is some giant e-commerce retailer and you probably shouldn't take Black Friday or the week before Christmas off. If you work in accounting or some operations role then quarter end is likely bad. If you work in tax, then late March thru April probably bad. Etc. There's plenty of time in the year to take off around whatever your jobs regular busy season is. Don't set yourself up for failure.

rciorba 2y ago

The seasonality is not an exception. It's not a case of "just this once". It's a well understood thing of "every year, before the tax deadline we have crunch-time, so don't plan on going on holiday in that time". The repeated, unplanned, "just this once" exceptions are a whole different thing.

hinkley 2y ago
If your whole year depends on you having a product ready to sell on August 1 and you don’t finish it until the middle of July, then the company fucked up. If the whole enterprise depends on that date, then the thing should be done well ahead of that date. The remaining time is to handle training and documentation and shipping. Not still working on planned features, or doing bug fixes where the devs played chicken with the drop dead date. These are all management failure, because nine times out of ten you ran out of time because some manager or exec had a great reason why his change was so important that we should break the rules to get it in. Or that what he said isn’t what he meant and now we need to fix it no matter what. This is the sort of exception that makes me upset. The problem is these children in suits don’t understand that “we have 9 months” means you plan for six months of work. Tops. They can’t stand the “waste” because none of them have read a real management book since college, and they only skimmed it for the test.

bcrosby95 2y ago

I don't know if it's normal, but my sister is a CPA and while tax season is a thing, so is working 1-4 hours per day in the summer.

mikepurvis 2y ago
That's really the key. I don't resent working into the night if I'm a) engaged by an interesting an worthwhile problem and b) know that I can cut out early next week and go for a bike ride after school with my kids. Endless crunch is a problem, and I don't crunch to meet made up internal deadlines or for work that is administrative nonsense.

pc86 2y ago

We're talking about real seasonality, not "we have to launch this quarter" fake board room seasonality. If you want to do people's taxes for a living you have to acknowledge that Feb/March/April are not times where it is appropriate or acceptable for you to schedule a 3-week vacation. This is not the same as "we do database updates in August so no summer holidays."

randomdata 2y ago
I thought we were talking about real seasonality? A tax deadline arbitrarily chosen in the legislative chamber is as much fake seasonality as summer database updates or product launches.
- OJFord 2y ago
  If that database update is well know to be every August or that product launch is something like Apple's WWDC then sure, that's the distinction people are making. If it's just we want to launch our latest product in the second week of June, because that's the one-off date we came up with when we started the project, that's different. It's not seasonality it's just failing to account for staff availablity/unrealistic planning.
- peaseagee 2y ago
  If you miss your database update or product launch deadline you can't get arrested for it (in the vast majority of cases). Yes, all deadlines are arbitrary, but the consequences for missing them are different for different deadlines!
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Being arrested is still just the arbitrary choice of people. It's not real in the sense defined earlier. It is not like, say, needing to harvest food before winter sets in.
    - barkbyte 2y ago

mrighele 2y ago

In fact if you are working on a sector with high seasonality nobody is going to have to skip vacation during holidays, because those days you are not going to have vacation to begin with