6 ms·

The latter half of October, the maintainer goes offline

63 points by keybored 2y ago

loa_in_ 2y ago
Top notch communication skills on display.
donalhunt 2y ago
Testing people outages is a good thing for any team or organization. I always look at multi-week holidays as an opportunity to identify knowledge / skills / activities that I (or another person) provide(s) cover for. None of us will be around forever. Some of our software might be...
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Alternative organization discovers basic organizational concept: vacations.
  - segmondy 2y ago
    Not the same, a vacation is a vacation, most people don't think of it as people outages. Most work will just be queued up until the person comes back or worse the person will be contacted during vacation to answer questions, provide information or do some work. Being hyper aware of this means no contact for the individual while on vacation and watching that work is not being queued up for them. They should not have to catch up to emails and catch up to slack conversations when they get back. A return from vacation should be truly refreshing not overwhelming.
    - fluoridation 2y ago
      Man, I hope that position pay really well for that kind of commitment. If anyone tries to reach me while I'm on vacation I will not even realize it, and I won't be bothering to "catch up" when I return.
      - mystified5016 2y ago
        Then you must not have a very important job. The hypothetical person being discussed here is someone who multiple people depend on. Their work is critical to other processes and blocks other work from happening. They own a lot of institutional knowledge that may not be shared evenly among other employees. That's the point of the exercise: to identify mission critical people and make them not critical to the entire business. If your business hinges on one person who knows everything and works on everything, you're fucked if they disappear and you haven't ensured at least some redundancy.
        flohofwoe 2y ago
        Well yeah, that's why a vacation is a good test, "important job" or not. If the person needs to respond or even check in during vacation, the team needs to fix their process.
        fluoridation 2y ago
        The way the other person phrased it made it seem like that kind of fake vacations are the norm, which is what I was replying to. >Most work [during someone's vacation] will just be queued up until the person comes back or worse the person will be contacted during vacation to answer questions, provide information or do some work. Nothing in that sentence implies that the person is referring exclusively to an especially important position.
        segmondy 2y ago
        You must be lucky, but most people I know and from my own experience end up replying to email, slack or phone calls while on vacation and work piles up for them relative to how long they have been away.
        fluoridation 2y ago
        Like I said, I hope you're compensated accordingly. Off time is off time, and being on call has a price attached to it. If you're being treated like you're on call but without the corresponding pay rise, that's called wage theft.
- nonameiguess 2y ago
  This and insider threat mitigation is exactly why audit standards in regulated industries include mandatory vacations.
  - djbusby 2y ago
    My favorite part of working in banking. Minimum week no contact per year. All these other industries would call me about (trivial) things when I was "off". Regulations forced people to respect (some) time off
    - Atotalnoob 2y ago
      A week is too short. The bank I worked at had mandatory 3 weeks, which did not count against your PTO. 1 week, people can mostly ignore your job function and limp by 2 weeks, people can do ~50% of your job and limp by 3 weeks, you do need someone to complete all/most of your job functions.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      I've never been a manager, but my favorite managers always lead by example - they would take arbitrary time off, and would be completely unreachable during that time. As a senior eng, I try to do the same when I have time off - work notifications are muted, and my away message is typically set to "I'm away for X days. If you to reach me, no, you don't."
- drzzhan 2y ago
  Wow. Good insight! I have never viewed vacation this way. I always thought the only reason vacation exists is because companies have to give vacation due to laws and well being of their employee. So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something.
  - chmod775 2y ago
    > So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something. Do you feel guilty when they pay you too? Paid vacation is a form of compensation. Every day of your ~30 days of vacation which you do not use, they likely have to pay you out as a full day's worth of wages anyways. Most will prefer you take a month or two each year off, recuperate, and come back refreshed and productive, rather than having to deal with the bookkeeping and tax hassle of paying you extra.
  - keybored 2y ago
    I hope you’re being sarcastic.
  - nasmorn 2y ago
    You feel guilty that the law doesn’t allow you to give your entire time to a corporation? I can ease your conscience, the law is simply an equilibrium where capitals long term exploitation of labor and the risk of violent revolution are carefully balanced.
therealmarv 2y ago
Not familiar with Kernel maintainers but do some never take full 2-week long holidays??
- playingalong 2y ago
  If in US, that'd be once in a lifetime - e.g. for your honey (half) moon.
  - teekert 2y ago
    Here in the Netherlands most people take 3 weeks in the summer. Then a week in fall, one around Christmas and then perhaps you just buy some extra days (meaning it’s unpaid time off) for a skiing trip in February. And then we have Easter, Pentecost, ascension day, Christmas, New Year’s Day. All public days off. Personally for a long time my contract was 36 hours, get you 1 more day off every 2 weeks. That American system sounds so depressing, but I guess you get used to anything.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  In the US, a decent company will give you three weeks total vacation. To get more than that can require decades of service (eg four weeks after 10 years with the company). To “squander” two thirds of the allotment in one go is rare.
  - silisili 2y ago
    Was at a boring company for a long time, because it paid well enough and I had 6 weeks PTO that rolled over and even paid out when maxed. I turned down a lot of job offers because I valued that. As you can imagine with the enshittification of literally everything in my lifetime, that moved to use it or lose it eventually. Then two years later, getting rid of it for 'unlimited PTO, how cool is that guys?' Needless to say, that was the end of my run there.
  - ctm92 2y ago
    Crazy how this is normal, in Germany you won't even find anybody to work for you if you offered less than 30 days of vacation
Lerc 2y ago
It's nice to see this happen, Being a good maintainer requires a particular mindset. I do not have this mindset. I am a maintainer. I have been absent from one of my projects for 9 months. People actually use this thing. That eats me up inside. That anxiety is partially why it's difficult to start up again. I am the kind of person who makes things, unfortunately when you make things you become the maintainer by default. It's not easy to hand over maintainership either though, you want to ensure the project is in good hands. One of my old projects has been absorbed into Linux Mint and that's quite gratifying to see that a project I made maybe a decade ago get a Catalan translation in just the last few months.
- rtpg 2y ago
  I do maintenance on a library and while often I feel bad about not looking at it for months at a time, I’ll try to counterbalance it by just sitting down one evening , swallowing my pride, and just chew through some of the issues. In the end, it’s always a bit satisfying to do. Still not a great situation but I’m trying at least.
- keybored 2y ago
  This is their dayjob.

63 points by keybored 2y ago

Top notch communication skills on display.

Testing people outages is a good thing for any team or organization. I always look at multi-week holidays as an opportunity to identify knowledge / skills / activities that I (or another person) provide(s) cover for. None of us will be around forever. Some of our software might be...

TZubiri 2y ago
Alternative organization discovers basic organizational concept: vacations.
- segmondy 2y ago
  Not the same, a vacation is a vacation, most people don't think of it as people outages. Most work will just be queued up until the person comes back or worse the person will be contacted during vacation to answer questions, provide information or do some work. Being hyper aware of this means no contact for the individual while on vacation and watching that work is not being queued up for them. They should not have to catch up to emails and catch up to slack conversations when they get back. A return from vacation should be truly refreshing not overwhelming.
  - fluoridation 2y ago
    Man, I hope that position pay really well for that kind of commitment. If anyone tries to reach me while I'm on vacation I will not even realize it, and I won't be bothering to "catch up" when I return.
    - mystified5016 2y ago
      Then you must not have a very important job. The hypothetical person being discussed here is someone who multiple people depend on. Their work is critical to other processes and blocks other work from happening. They own a lot of institutional knowledge that may not be shared evenly among other employees. That's the point of the exercise: to identify mission critical people and make them not critical to the entire business. If your business hinges on one person who knows everything and works on everything, you're fucked if they disappear and you haven't ensured at least some redundancy.
      - flohofwoe 2y ago
        Well yeah, that's why a vacation is a good test, "important job" or not. If the person needs to respond or even check in during vacation, the team needs to fix their process.
      - fluoridation 2y ago
        The way the other person phrased it made it seem like that kind of fake vacations are the norm, which is what I was replying to. >Most work [during someone's vacation] will just be queued up until the person comes back or worse the person will be contacted during vacation to answer questions, provide information or do some work. Nothing in that sentence implies that the person is referring exclusively to an especially important position.
        segmondy 2y ago
        You must be lucky, but most people I know and from my own experience end up replying to email, slack or phone calls while on vacation and work piles up for them relative to how long they have been away.
        fluoridation 2y ago
        Like I said, I hope you're compensated accordingly. Off time is off time, and being on call has a price attached to it. If you're being treated like you're on call but without the corresponding pay rise, that's called wage theft.
nonameiguess 2y ago
This and insider threat mitigation is exactly why audit standards in regulated industries include mandatory vacations.
- djbusby 2y ago
  My favorite part of working in banking. Minimum week no contact per year. All these other industries would call me about (trivial) things when I was "off". Regulations forced people to respect (some) time off
  - Atotalnoob 2y ago
    A week is too short. The bank I worked at had mandatory 3 weeks, which did not count against your PTO. 1 week, people can mostly ignore your job function and limp by 2 weeks, people can do ~50% of your job and limp by 3 weeks, you do need someone to complete all/most of your job functions.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    I've never been a manager, but my favorite managers always lead by example - they would take arbitrary time off, and would be completely unreachable during that time. As a senior eng, I try to do the same when I have time off - work notifications are muted, and my away message is typically set to "I'm away for X days. If you to reach me, no, you don't."
drzzhan 2y ago
Wow. Good insight! I have never viewed vacation this way. I always thought the only reason vacation exists is because companies have to give vacation due to laws and well being of their employee. So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something.
- chmod775 2y ago
  > So when I get some days off, I always feel a bit guilty because the company is losing out something. Do you feel guilty when they pay you too? Paid vacation is a form of compensation. Every day of your ~30 days of vacation which you do not use, they likely have to pay you out as a full day's worth of wages anyways. Most will prefer you take a month or two each year off, recuperate, and come back refreshed and productive, rather than having to deal with the bookkeeping and tax hassle of paying you extra.
- keybored 2y ago
  I hope you’re being sarcastic.
- nasmorn 2y ago
  You feel guilty that the law doesn’t allow you to give your entire time to a corporation? I can ease your conscience, the law is simply an equilibrium where capitals long term exploitation of labor and the risk of violent revolution are carefully balanced.

therealmarv 2y ago

Not familiar with Kernel maintainers but do some never take full 2-week long holidays??

playingalong 2y ago
If in US, that'd be once in a lifetime - e.g. for your honey (half) moon.
- teekert 2y ago
  Here in the Netherlands most people take 3 weeks in the summer. Then a week in fall, one around Christmas and then perhaps you just buy some extra days (meaning it’s unpaid time off) for a skiing trip in February. And then we have Easter, Pentecost, ascension day, Christmas, New Year’s Day. All public days off. Personally for a long time my contract was 36 hours, get you 1 more day off every 2 weeks. That American system sounds so depressing, but I guess you get used to anything.
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
In the US, a decent company will give you three weeks total vacation. To get more than that can require decades of service (eg four weeks after 10 years with the company). To “squander” two thirds of the allotment in one go is rare.
- silisili 2y ago
  Was at a boring company for a long time, because it paid well enough and I had 6 weeks PTO that rolled over and even paid out when maxed. I turned down a lot of job offers because I valued that. As you can imagine with the enshittification of literally everything in my lifetime, that moved to use it or lose it eventually. Then two years later, getting rid of it for 'unlimited PTO, how cool is that guys?' Needless to say, that was the end of my run there.
- ctm92 2y ago
  Crazy how this is normal, in Germany you won't even find anybody to work for you if you offered less than 30 days of vacation

Lerc 2y ago

It's nice to see this happen, Being a good maintainer requires a particular mindset. I do not have this mindset. I am a maintainer. I have been absent from one of my projects for 9 months. People actually use this thing. That eats me up inside. That anxiety is partially why it's difficult to start up again. I am the kind of person who makes things, unfortunately when you make things you become the maintainer by default. It's not easy to hand over maintainership either though, you want to ensure the project is in good hands. One of my old projects has been absorbed into Linux Mint and that's quite gratifying to see that a project I made maybe a decade ago get a Catalan translation in just the last few months.

rtpg 2y ago
I do maintenance on a library and while often I feel bad about not looking at it for months at a time, I’ll try to counterbalance it by just sitting down one evening , swallowing my pride, and just chew through some of the issues. In the end, it’s always a bit satisfying to do. Still not a great situation but I’m trying at least.
keybored 2y ago
This is their dayjob.