This is exactly how you get guilted into working during vacation; everything is sold as an exception.
Some lines of work simply require you to be working when everyone else is on vacation.
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.
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.
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.
Endless crunch is a problem, and I don't crunch to meet made up internal deadlines or for work that is administrative nonsense.
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."
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.
The tax deadline is predictable. A two-month restriction from holidays is relatively reasonable. The deadline is not realistically controllable. (Your employer cannot eliminate tax filing.)
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[1]: So that's at least two ideas that you obviously have; putting the lie to your "I have no idea".
Yeah, that's idiotic. But only about as much as your version.
Structuring your life completely around anything is a fools errand — work, video games, family, food, etc.
Unless it’s not. Maybe the only thing you care about in the world is your family and you’ll ignore everything else. Maybe video games are your truest passion and you’ll do whatever it takes to play them 80 hours a week.
Maybe I love CRUD apps and Jira as much as my next door neighbor loves his wife. Who’s to say?
If you want to devote your entire life to one thing, go nuts. It’s probably going to have some consequences whether that thing is work or not.
Even if you are a large equity partner it's at best short-sighted. I have written about this before[1] but the gist of it is that even when individual heroics saves a project it has robbed the project manager of valuable feedback regarding how the planning was deficit.
I have had managers say things like: "this could be the last job we ever work" as if none of us are capable of doing math.
That said we are all a bit prideful so exhausting yourself to get that fleeting feeling of having achieved something clever and good is definitely on the table.
Most startups unless you are founding team this is not the case.
Certainly sub-1% ownership is far from large.
A situation where you have sub-$1M equity that is illiquid for a decade until a hoped-for exit is not large equity.
No. It's not.
I interpret that as "This is the job that kills you."
Communicate your holiday plans, arrange coverage, put it team calendars, do hand-offs.. and then take it. Projects come & go, dates slip on their own. If you move holidays for project dates you will never take holidays.
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.