People who take lots of time off, how do you do it and get away with it?
I don't take much time off at all, but it's always amazed me to see people take 8+ weeks off a year even working at Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. They think they're cool keeping it a mystery, so I figured forum users would be more frank. People who take lots of time off, what do you do? Have an unusually close relationship with your manager, or is your team severely underloaded with work?
Just stay on top of my work. Make sure my manager knows me being out won’t have any negative effect on our department goal. And over time of doing it trust was earned
Debated it... Because my WLB is pretty sweet right now I decided not to
It was kind of an inside joke. What he meant was that you are already using Amazon lingo. "Earn Trust" is one of the 14 leadership principles. And people here love to include leadership principles in their communication.
Be available over email that way you are not cut off completely.
Most of the companies allow to carry over your vacation days, so maybe 8 weeks in one year means they took almost no vacation in previous year(s). For example, at Microsoft we have about 3 weeks (17 days) of vacation before you work for 5+ or 6+ years. 2 years ago I took almost no vacation and about 5 weeks the last year.
For the first 3 years I worked at MS I never booked a vacation day. I took vacation - but I never booked it. Our org leader once sent an email to us all asking all of us to put in at least one day each so he wouldn’t look so bad. Then I got a shitty manager who tracked every second of work I did or didn’t do because his boss didn’t like me.
Are you sure it’s a mystery or the answer is staring you in your face? Do you see people being punished for taking time off from work ? If so, why do you want to continue working there?
Thanks for the clarification. I took a month off in October and November that included some “work” time to attend a conference. Does that qualify as significant time off? I did notice that my manager had distributed tasks that I like to other folks which I turn has motivated me to do something new. My biggest takeaway is that I have to live my life and i won’t let others around me control what I want to do. I understand the mafias part, I just don’t have the fight in me to put up with that poop but instead just do what I need to do.
What are Indian "mafias"?
Iv done this before. I did it by combining "working from home" and performing at a much higher level than the rest of my team
I do this all the time. I request my vacation days before every one else so I'm not giving my team too much work.
People that perform are given lots more leeway. These people most likely negotiated some $$ for more days off as well. I’ve done that in the past and I’ll keep doing that. Mixing in wfh days where you don’t spend much time doing stuff is another one.
8 weeks? That's more than I've ever seen.
I took four 2-week vacations, and made sure to front load and backload a lot of work around each trip. I also checked email every day while on vacation and made sure all delegated tasks were being completed in my absence.
Checking email every day on a vacation is not a vacation.
Agreed with mwAj27 - I actually refuse to check email or do any work when on vacation. Vacations are the time to decompress and enjoy life away from work - take full advantage of that.
I would ‘work from home’ for sometime when I did that