Cruising is finally coming into this century
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@Dashrender said:
@david.wiese said:
my dad is like that where he cannot disconnect for any length of time. When he goes on "vacation" to aruba he connects home via vpn and works 4-5hrs per day. I try to cut him off but he just can't let things go. Granted he was a small business owner at the time, now he works for a different company so we will see this year what he does.
It's completely different when you OWN the company or are some very high position in the company versus being the IT guy. In my case we have a consulting company on standby for when I'm unavailable or need help.
Yes. At VP or higher, the company pretty much owns you.
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@alexntg said:
@Dashrender said:
@david.wiese said:
my dad is like that where he cannot disconnect for any length of time. When he goes on "vacation" to aruba he connects home via vpn and works 4-5hrs per day. I try to cut him off but he just can't let things go. Granted he was a small business owner at the time, now he works for a different company so we will see this year what he does.
It's completely different when you OWN the company or are some very high position in the company versus being the IT guy. In my case we have a consulting company on standby for when I'm unavailable or need help.
Yes. At VP or higher, the company pretty much owns you.
I am the IT guy for the company (obligated since he is my father) and i tell him i won't help him until he gets back. It is the son in me that is doing that so he actually relaxes. He then tends to find his own ways around it and i end up spending a weekend undoing those loopholes. So in reality i should just help him so i don't create more work for myself
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It's not a vacation to me if I can't be reached and have no means of knowing if things are okay. Talk about screwing a vacation - making me worry constantly and spend port time trying to check in. No way. I need to know that everything is good so that I can relax. No connectivity = no vacation to me.
Do you not have a backup minion? Anyone cross trained enough to pick up where you leave off for a short period of time?
I've worked for Fortune 10s with IT teams with over 100,000 people and they can't do that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It's not a vacation to me if I can't be reached and have no means of knowing if things are okay. Talk about screwing a vacation - making me worry constantly and spend port time trying to check in. No way. I need to know that everything is good so that I can relax. No connectivity = no vacation to me.
Do you not have a backup minion? Anyone cross trained enough to pick up where you leave off for a short period of time?
I've worked for Fortune 10s with IT teams with over 100,000 people and they can't do that.
Sounds dysfunctional.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller said:
And being online doesn't equal work. Lots of people don't want severed from their personal lives either. I don't want to lose the ability to talk to family and friends. I don't want a vacation from people that I like.
And things that I enjoy doing often happen online. Without being online a cruise sounds insanely boring and stressful to me. Being online makes it sounds relaxing and fun.
I completely understand that if you are staying connected for pleasure, but it's the work part that I was referring to. Do you leave that alone while on vacation and have someone just check in with you?
No need. That doesn't cause me any stress or effort. Why bother having people reach out. When you move what you do taking a vacation from it is rarely fun.
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@alexntg said:
@Minion-Queen said:
He does have backup minions. And would not have to do anything when he was on vacation however the worrying about the possibility is the issue. Not the actually having to do anything. But my whole team is like that. I have a minion or 2 who don't take vacation time as ordered
Most of your team, perhaps? When I'm on vacation, I'm unplugged. Not doing so burned me out a few years ago, and I'm still losing the weight i gained from it.
Opposite for me. Force me to unplug and I'll burn out FAST.
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@Dashrender said:
@david.wiese said:
my dad is like that where he cannot disconnect for any length of time. When he goes on "vacation" to aruba he connects home via vpn and works 4-5hrs per day. I try to cut him off but he just can't let things go. Granted he was a small business owner at the time, now he works for a different company so we will see this year what he does.
It's completely different when you OWN the company or are some very high position in the company versus being the IT guy. In my case we have a consulting company on standby for when I'm unavailable or need help.
In many companies, IT is about as high as it gets. Few jobs are more important.
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It's far more than work. Life is connected today. The idea isn't just disconnecting from work but from life. I like my life, I'm not looking to escape it.
One of the things I have worked hard to do is to love my job as well as have my job and life be tightly integrated. Disconnecting from one means disconnecting from the other.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dominica said:
That's an unrealistic view for someone who is running or is vital to a company, especially a small one. One important person being unreachable for any length of time could be catastrophic.
Any businessman, sales person, marketing or critical IT staffer would be eliminated instantly. Pretty much no mid level or higher business position would want to be completely cut off. Too much risk, too much stress for no reason.
Even in large Fortune 100s, once you are out of the trenches, you need to be reachable.
Huh?
You know who I work for, no one cog is so critical that they can never go on vacation or be unaccessable.
Any business worth it's salt can easily spread the load between others to ensure coverage. SPOF is bad, bad, bad. Or you can be like me during my Spherion years, I made the network hum so well I could go away for a month without having a single issue.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's far more than work. Life is connected today. The idea isn't just disconnecting from work but from life. I like my life, I'm not looking to escape it.
One of the things I have worked hard to do is to love my job as well as have my job and life be tightly integrated. Disconnecting from one means disconnecting from the other.
See I love being connected but if i'm going on vacation i want to leave all of that behind and just decompress. Go old school if you will where the only way to get in contact with me is by calling the resort I am staying at. When I am in Aruba, my phone is off and in the safe. If there is an emergency our parents know where to get a hold of us. Granted I am married and don't have any kids so that might be the deciding factor here.
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@PSX_Defector said:
Any business worth it's salt can easily spread the load between others to ensure coverage. SPOF is bad, bad, bad.
No one implied SPOF. It is simply that the cost of mitigation for key staff can be far too high. Cheaper to give you another vacation than keep excess human capacity around when you can avoid it.
It's both hubris on the part of large companies to even remotely think that small ones can afford that and insulting to IT to believe that corporate operational infrastructure is so often so trivial.
Many companies don't have "cog" IT and need things to keep working.
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@david.wiese said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It's far more than work. Life is connected today. The idea isn't just disconnecting from work but from life. I like my life, I'm not looking to escape it.
One of the things I have worked hard to do is to love my job as well as have my job and life be tightly integrated. Disconnecting from one means disconnecting from the other.
See I love being connected but if i'm going on vacation i want to leave all of that behind and just decompress. Go old school if you will where the only way to get in contact with me is by calling the resort I am staying at. When I am in Aruba, my phone is off and in the safe. If there is an emergency our parents know where to get a hold of us. Granted I am married and don't have any kids so that might be the deciding factor here.
Kids are definitely a big factor. They like to share their vacation with family that isn't there.
And it works both ways. If I'm connected I know no one is injured and no house has burned down back home. But likewise our family knows that we are okay too rather than watching the news to see if a plane crashed or a boat sunk.
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@scottalanmiller said:
One of the things I have worked hard to do is to love my job as well as have my job and life be tightly integrated. Disconnecting from one means disconnecting from the other.
@alexntg said it best. You are addicted to working. If you can't let something go coughSWcough that means you have a completely unhealthy relationship. And it brings up megalomania, narcissism, or any number of personality disorders. The existential truth of the matter is that you are not that important. No one is. If a company folds because someone went on vacation means that the company was badly run.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@PSX_Defector said:
Any business worth it's salt can easily spread the load between others to ensure coverage. SPOF is bad, bad, bad.
No one implied SPOF. It is simply that the cost of mitigation for key staff can be far too high. Cheaper to give you another vacation than keep excess human capacity around when you can avoid it.
What good is that extra vacation if you cannot ever take it and be unavailable for any amount of time shorter than a nanosecond?
By saying you cannot take a vacation without being connected means YOU have become that single point of failure. Once again, you are just not that important.
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@PSX_Defector said:
@scottalanmiller said:
One of the things I have worked hard to do is to love my job as well as have my job and life be tightly integrated. Disconnecting from one means disconnecting from the other.
@alexntg said it best. You are addicted to working. If you can't let something go coughSWcough that means you have a completely unhealthy relationship. And it brings up megalomania, narcissism, or any number of personality disorders. The existential truth of the matter is that you are not that important. No one is. If a company folds because someone went on vacation means that the company was badly run.
That what people who hate their lives say. I think the opposite. If you live to escape the daily challenges you are not living a happy life. It's not addiction to enjoy what you do and it's not narcissism to take on senior roles that have dependencies.
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@PSX_Defector said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@PSX_Defector said:
Any business worth it's salt can easily spread the load between others to ensure coverage. SPOF is bad, bad, bad.
No one implied SPOF. It is simply that the cost of mitigation for key staff can be far too high. Cheaper to give you another vacation than keep excess human capacity around when you can avoid it.
What good is that extra vacation if you cannot ever take it and be unavailable for any amount of time shorter than a nanosecond?
By saying you cannot take a vacation without being connected means YOU have become that single point of failure. Once again, you are just not that important.
No one mentioned not taking vacation. The conversation is about being cut off without access to anything, work or otherwise.
You can keep saying SPOF to make being important sound bad but it just shows that you are missing the big picture. If you are lone IT or a CEO...... Are you really saying that they aren't that important?
This is why IT often takes flak from the business side - ignoring obvious business needs and acting like it doesn't matter.
I get lots of vacation now, finally. If I have to work during it, I get more. I don't lose vacation by being contacted but I get to be a lot more senior because I understand business needs and aren't insane about having to be off of the grid.
A trivial amount of consideration on my side makes me way more valuable to an organization.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's not addiction to enjoy what you do and it's not narcissism to take on senior roles that have dependencies.
Can you let go of work? Smells like addiction to me.
It's narcissism when you think you are so critical that you and only you can possibly be involved with things.
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There are jobs out there, even for IT, that are large enough and do enough overlapping work that you really can get to be "just a cog" which a lot if people will really like. It has a lot of advantages. And those jobs have the capacity to completely eliminate key man risk, for those jobs in that category, when the companies are large enough. That's great for then. But no SMB is in that category, no financial, no hospital.... 90% of the post-helpdesk world of IT isn't like that.
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@PSX_Defector said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It's not addiction to enjoy what you do and it's not narcissism to take on senior roles that have dependencies.
Can you let go of work? Smells like addiction to me.
It's narcissism when you think you are so critical that you and only you can possibly be involved with things.
You said that, not me. I said it was too costly to have replace my resources engaged just so that I can disconnect - which would just be extra stress and reduce the point of vacationing.
Addicted to work and losing massive value by being unwilling to be a little flexible are very different things.
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@scottalanmiller said:
If you are lone IT or a CEO...... Are you really saying that they aren't that important?
Yes. Ultimately, yes.
CEOs do no work. A CEO could go missing or die and an organization will still function. See August Bush IV, who was too busy letting chicks die in his bed than to run the organization, yet attracted and safely had a merger with InBev.
A lone IT guy will either stay a lone IT guy burned out by the entire situation or does as I did make the entire environment hum to remove the need for the person. It's infinitely unhealthy to be in the former, and infinitely boring in the latter.
A paraphrase of the safety credo from AT&T would fit best. No service is so critical and no service so important that we cannot take the time and find a backup for your position.
