If you are a "delivery driven" person who cancels holidays to keep working, I would say to you, from own experience: stop being stupid.
I know, that, specially when you get recognised for the hard work it is hard, but you will regret every minute.
If you work for a company that counts on your holidays and vacation to sell their products, you are helping to create the problematic world with have today.
If many do that, more will need to do. If none do it, and act like it is an absurd to request it (and it is) nobody is forced to do it and the company is forced to do real estimates even if that hurts your fav CEO pocket
Unless you are getting the economics of saving the day (you are a large equity holder / partner) then structuring your life completely around work is a fools errand.
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.
> Unless you are getting the economics of saving the day (you are a large equity holder / partner) ...
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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!
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.
Look, I love Baudrillard as much as anyone, and we can talk about simulacra all day, but it's simply not germane. We're not talking about whether these restrictions are societal constructs but rather whether they are predictable, reasonable, and controllable.
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.)
How is one of those more real? They are both actions that people undertake to accomplish an objective, but there is nothing tangible or factual about either, which appears to be your working definition.
What makes you think any are more real than any other? If you had taken the time to read the thread you would have learned that the whole idea of a fake deadline is nonsensical.
You had the idea that "the whole idea of a fake deadline is nonsensical". That could only have come to you because your idea of what a fake deadline is is wrong.[1] Because they exist, so the idea of them is not "nonsensical". HTH!
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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".
"I thought we were talking about real seasonality? A climate deadline arbitrarily chosen by the Sun and Earth's orbit around it is as much fake seasonality as any whim by a corporate executive."
Yeah, that's idiotic. But only about as much as your version.
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.
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
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.
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.
> structuring your life completely around work is a fools errand.
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.
Its useful to do the math around what your equity would be worth, if you are the 50th hire you are probably getting less than .1%, so even a crazy moonshot billion dollar acquisition would leave you with a few 100k at most. Grinding yourself down for a slim chance at making that amount isn't worth it.
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.
Companies will also never remember your hard work when it comes to layoffs. My cousin worked until 1am almost every day from September 2023-January 2024 to complete a poorly managed project. He only had Christmas off because the director thought employees would sue as it is a religious holiday. He missed important events and lost about 20 pounds, because of stress.
The company had a hard deadline to move over to a brand new system. They had 5 years notice and decided not to start it until the year before. If they didn't make the deadline, it would mean millions of dollars in costs because it was outside the contract.
Him and his team made the deadline. His reward was being laid off a few weeks later as his position was eliminated. Now he's over 50 and trying to find work in a terrible time to look for a job.
It’s not that I have nothing else to do. It’s that the dopamine hit of fixing a thing that affects my team often outweighs any other choice.
Working out frequently, getting a family, getting a side project off the ramp, and reducing to part-time have all helped me with my addiction to feeling valuable and important when nothing else is gained than becoming known for fixing stuff in weekends free of charge.
> It’s not that I have nothing else to do. It’s that the dopamine hit of fixing a thing that affects my team often outweighs any other choice.
I know first hand about the "fixer" mindset that a lot of engineering-minded men have.
Do yourself a favor and fix things mostly for your family/friends, and your company a distant third. Every single person will be better off in this scenario. It's a hard learned sometimes counter-intuitive lesson, but it must be learned.
I will help you. The truth is that you are an asset. Even if they make you feel important, you are as important as a good chair. They will replace you without thinking twice if they want.
This is not a great take. I have plenty of things to do outside of work and I will still do what's "right" in my mind, especially if there's enough evidence that it will make my and other people's life easier in the long run.
There are plenty of people like that in a company but they normally don't cluster together, so it feels like "nobody else cares". That's false. At times that's how exactly how products, or even entire companies, are saved. Because a bunch of individuals who think like that get together and work hard to accomplish something.
Whether that effort is recognized or not depends on the company. If it's not then, I agree, it would be irrational to keep pushing. But you can't know until you try.
(Edit: to be clear, I'm not advocating prioritizing work over anything else, that really depends on you, but there's a fine line between "working hard" and being obsessed. The latter will more often than not result in a net negative in most cases. The same level of effort and/or prioritization should be applied to all areas of life)
I come from a country where work culture has gotten to the point where no one cares. It's a self-fullfilling prophecy of delays, lies, and lower compensation.
The correct approach is to be flexible, recognise that your family is worth more than the company, but still give a shit about your work and getting it done.
Own product is great, although it becomes difficult to justify bikeshedding variable names and a possible 3rd Rust rewrite when you should be grinding out more hours on marketing and sales.
I remember a company meeting where a series of employee recognition awards were given out, and the story for about four awards in a row was an employee who spent nights and weekends heroically fixing a giant mess, at least enough to make a deadline. In a couple of cases the employee who got the award was also partly responsible for the mess. After about the fourth one the top managers in the room finally got it that the company had a problem.
I remember an awards occasion where the employees who received the recognition for actually heroically fixing a mess could not make it to the stage because they had been laid off.
[edit: I retract my comment that it's bad advice to not cancel holidays to work hard. I misread the comment that I replied to -- I had thought the commenter was saying don't work extra hard in your role as it's never worth it. That's not what the commenter said though. In my experience, people who produce more value in the world are more valuable and get rewarded more than those who don't.]
I think this is poor and dangerous advice for anyone who wants to get ahead in life. If you are happy to coast by and not achieve much in life, sure, don’t work hard. But if you want to be one of the few who either rise to the top in your field or to create value in the world, then don’t feel bad about wanting to work hard. People generally learn by doing and those who do a lot learn a lot.
Of course, don’t prioritize it over things that are important to you (physical health, family etc) but don’t feel it’s wrong to prioritize it above stuff isn’t important to you (eg Netflix and YouTube shorts).
I think the difference between someone who "gets ahead in life" and someone who doesn't usually isn't the number of hours spent in the office. Usually its more related to how well you make decisions in your career, and the relationships you build along the way.
Go to therapy. Learn about yourself. Work on your communication skills. Figure out what matters to you and invest in it. (For most people, family and friends are high on that list).
By all means work hard, but be strategic about it. Martyring yourself for your company won't make people respect you.
Agreed but there is a big energetic difference between a future ceo personality working long hours vs a supporting staffer who is just sacrificing themselves inefficiently thinking someone will care. People care about results and the appearance of some effort. Long hours are a basic requirement but healthy emotional boundaries are what get someone to the top.
There's several game studios out there whose last two tweets were "we've just won an industry award for our game!" / "our studio is being shut down immediately".
It's worthwhile working for yourself if you do think you're learning, but in today's corporate environment loyalty is just showing your willingness to be exploited.
What do you mean by "getting ahead in life"? That you pass more time doing stuff at work so you are closer to your death without having done the things you like, spent time with the people you love and visiting the places that fill you with joy? Or do you mean money? I am pretty sure if you are good at your job and you are not in a dying profession there will be enough places that show you the respect you would extend to them.
Shilling for work place abuse and unpaid overtime isn't getting you ahead in life the same way begging for forgivness with an abuser will make your life better.
If your corp can't manage people's time realistically, why would you expect them to manage anything realistically? Get out and go to a real place that knows how to run projects.
Don’t ruin your health for someone else. People who throw themselves on this fire in BigCo don’t get recognition or reward, they get abused by the political animals that will take advantage.
Work hard for yourself to build your own. But don’t think for one moment that death marches will result in a swift rise to the top.
Nothing wrong with working hard, but make sure you get something about of it.
If you’re being asked to cancel a holiday because some clown can’t get anything done without setting realistic timelines, don’t do it.
But if you take a job where your boss says “we need to get this done by this date and we need people who are willing to get it done even if that means sacrificing work-life balance” and you get paid like you should for a job like that, then do it.
I've been the person working stupidly long hours for many years. Eventually I stopped doing it, and I started to set boundaries around my downtime, and I found out something really valuable: Nobody noticed a difference in my productivity. I was doing far less, but nobody noticed. They all assumed I was still as busy, and doing as much, and it's because the things we all do to be super busy and productive ARN'T productive. You might ship some things faster, but the quality suffers, changes are harder to make later and everyone's tired all the time.
So no, "working hard" won't get you ahead. The people who really get that far ahead in life are the ones networking and learning the political games, not really working. And why do you need to "get ahead" to be successful? I'm ambitious, and I love growing in my career. I'm not someone who is happy with the bog standard things, but I've also learned that when all you value is being ahead of your peers, you miss out on more than you gain. And on top of it, you all end up in similar roles anyway.
One can work hard and still not cancel holidays for work. Plenty of people work through holidays and don't "achieve much in life". I've known many people in higher positions who use all of their time off.
> one of the few who either rise to the top in your field or to create value in the world
"rising to the top" is pure ego-inflation
"create value in the world" -- you'd better make sure that you're creating value for the world in something that's important and meaningful to you, not just "create value for shareholders" (who don't give a f about you) which is what "creating value" means 90% of the time if you're in industry
Achieving a lot in life is not necessary about working hard. Its more about working smart or having a bit of luck. None of the successful (money wise) people arround me worked really hard. The working hard sentence is really nonsense.
I don't think it's nonsense but it's incomplete. A lot of people work really hard and achieve nothing notable. A lot of people sort of phone it in and do alright just by shrewd positioning (or luck). There is no substitute for combining both though: work smart and hard.
The trick is to make sure you're always investing in yourself. Even when you're working for others you be either "learning or earning", ideally both.
>I think this is poor and dangerous advice for anyone who wants to get ahead in life.
Oh yeah, every new-comer to the tech world thinks like this, and 99.99% of them don't get any further "ahead" in life than the rest of us. In fact, many end up further behind.
Why should that person sacrifice themselves when they are happy working? Just so other people are not held to that standard? That seems like a management issues. Don't expect the same things from everyone.
I know, that, specially when you get recognised for the hard work it is hard, but you will regret every minute.
If you work for a company that counts on your holidays and vacation to sell their products, you are helping to create the problematic world with have today. If many do that, more will need to do. If none do it, and act like it is an absurd to request it (and it is) nobody is forced to do it and the company is forced to do real estimates even if that hurts your fav CEO pocket