[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do startups/lean teams successfully hand...
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Ask HN: How do startups/lean teams successfully handle mat/pat
leave?
Husband and I are expecting our first kid. We have decent mat/pat
benefits for the US (3-4 mo each) but manage lean teams and are
stressed about the impact our leave will have on our teams & us
when we return. If you're manager of a lean team or startup, how
have you effectively handled your or an employee's mat/pat leave
when in reality, your biz is already short-staffed? Temporary
promotions? Contractors? Spreading the work across the team? (To
be clear, both our companies are supportive of leave, so this isn't
a question about whether to take the leave or working during
leave.)
Author : jd_illa
Score : 122 points
Date : 2022-09-02 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
| mikehollinger wrote:
| Oh! I am just (next week) wrapping up leave! First -
| congratulations! My husband and I just had our first kiddo
| earlier this year and went through a similar "what do we do" sort
| of moment. We managed our time and workload by going to a "one
| week on, one week off" schedule, alternating between the two of
| us. Oh aside from all this - definitely pay money for Huckleberry
| (or an app like it). It will help you just manage your life. :-)
|
| A lot of this is borrowed from Manager Tools "How To Go On
| Vacation" podcast. [1]
|
| Here's what worked and what didn't for me:
|
| What worked:
|
| A. Name a clear "number one." [2] In my case I named two since I
| have a tech leadership role. I called out one of our lead
| architects as my "number one," and my peer director as an HR
| focal.
|
| B. Make a list of everything on your plate, and your team's
| plate. For each item, write down a small summary of it, and then
| figure out who owns it. Tell that person they now own that work
| item. If you don't have a clear owner, the "number one" you chose
| becomes the owner.
|
| C. I gave my team ~6 months (after we told family), a three month
| reminder, a one month reminder, and then "it's go time" when our
| baby showed up three weeks early. :-)
|
| D. I took the list of projects and made a company-wide (not
| public) shared read only doc that had "if you're looking for X,
| contact ___," and put at the top and bottom "if you need anything
| that's not on this list, talk to ___" (your number one).
|
| E. My husband and I both took off the first two weeks, then
| started the "on/off" schedule. I set two different out-of-office
| notifications when I'm out. The _external_ one said I was out for
| paternity leave, promised baby pictures, and had the two contacts
| (my number one and director). The _internal_ one said the same as
| the external, but also had a link to the "coverage doc" that
| explained project-by-project who to reach out to. It also said in
| blunt instructions: "No news is good news. Please make a decision
| without me. If you can't, or need help, contact (number one). If
| you need air cover, contact (director). If we will do irreparable
| harm to the business or you have a business continuity or ethics
| concern, text me. I won't be checking email or slack."
|
| F. Turn off notifications / uninstall email / slack etc on your
| phone. Enjoy those first two weeks. :-)
|
| G Book a "catch up" meeting ahead of time with your number one
| and any key contacts for when you return.
|
| J. Book 1:1's with key contacts for every week you return from
| leave. DEFINITELY DO THIS. YOU WILL BE OUT OF TOUCH. THIS IS A
| WAY TO LESSEN THE PROBLEM AND MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS.
|
| Some warnings:
|
| M. After a few weeks we "got the hang of it," and caved on the "I
| won't check in" rule and started lurking on slack. Once people
| figured it out they started slacking me, which started a feedback
| loop. Don't start the feedback loop.
|
| N. A few times I tried to work a day on my "off" weeks because it
| felt like "I got this!" or something urgent came up. It wasn't a
| good use of time or a good idea. I was out of sync with the team,
| and about 1/3 of the time behind b/c I hadn't scrolled through
| -all- of the slack channels to see that issue X had already been
| addressed.
|
| O. You're pushing work down. That means that folks are going to
| have to push work off of their plates themselves. They should not
| turn around and delegate something you are delegating to them.
| You should expect them to take a task from you, and then stop
| doing one or more other tasks by either delegating those
| "smaller" things to someone else, or dropping them to the floor
| ("Mike's on paternity leave, I'm covering for him, sorry I can't
| do your TPS report" is a fair answer). Emphasize that delegation
| model.
|
| [1] https://www.manager-tools.com/2015/05/how-go-vacation-part-1
|
| [2] You should have a lieutenant / number one anyway just for
| succession planning / hit-by-a-bus reasons.
| [deleted]
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I've done this. I lead a lean team and took parental leave last
| year.
|
| * Start now by trusting your team with absolutely anything you
| can. For about 2 months before my leave, I was extremely explicit
| with my team that I was attempting to deprecate myself. I wanted
| feedback on what they thought were risks.
|
| * Consider using the time for someone else to "test try" your
| job. Think someone would be interested in being a manager, it's
| their time to try it. You will need to be explicitly clear that
| they own your job while you're out and they will need to make
| changes as they see fit.
|
| * Ask your boss or peer to do 1:1's with the person stepping in
| your place
|
| -----
|
| On my team, this was pretty successful. It created an opportunity
| for me to step to the next level and someone else to follow in
| behind me. That situation won't be true for all teams. However,
| startups are intended to grow. Grow your people now, so you're
| ready when you really need them.
| servercobra wrote:
| Thanks for posting this! I'm CTO at a pretty new startup and
| hopefully going to be on paternity leave next year. This makes
| me feel a little bit better about it and seems like a great
| approach.
| jnovek wrote:
| As someone who has been a new CTO before: I suggest you
| practice delegating. It will be great for your parental leave
| and, as you outgrow your current responsibilities, you'll
| need those skills.
|
| This is especially true if you were previously a good team-
| facing manager. When you're accustomed to protecting your
| team's productivity and well-being, delegating can feel very
| unnatural.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Also, if the company does well you absolutely have to be
| able to delegate or you'll quickly become a bottleneck, as
| the company and people who work under you scale out and you
| remain single threaded.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Adding on top my earlier comment.
|
| One of the best things about parental leave was it felt like
| I was coming back to the open slate of a new job, but was
| already familiar with the company/culture/etc.
|
| Since my team had taken over all of my responsibilities, it
| helped me realized what I didn't have to do so I could focus
| on the broader picture.
| jxramos wrote:
| I second this. When our boss on my team went on maternity leave
| one of the teammates stepped up to take on her role and get
| that slice of managerial experience. It worked pretty well for
| everyone involved and kept the ball rolling.
| bebop wrote:
| I cannot speak to how you live your life, but I find myself very
| invested in my job. This is in general a good thing (I think) as
| it provides me the mental state to try and do the best job that I
| can as working hard is easy. The question you have posed leads me
| to believe you may feel similarly.
|
| That said, my two boys (5 months, 6 years) are the most important
| thing in my life (along with my wife of course). My second son is
| 5 months old now and I just took 3 months off to care for him. I
| wish I had more time, 2 years might be enough. When my first son
| was born I only took two weeks of vacation, which was not even
| close to enough. It is something I still regret.
|
| While I do not like to give parenting advice, I can say with
| certainty, you should take as much time as you possibly can.
| Don't think about work, don't look at work, try not to worry
| about work, it will be there when you return. As a mother, spend
| time to recover physically. No matter how the child is born, the
| process is very physically taxing and your body will change a lot
| in the following weeks/months. Make sure you are keeping an eye
| on your mental health, postpartum depression is not something to
| take lightly. Most important, try to relax (it is hard) and just
| love your child. The first months are wild.
| indymike wrote:
| > If you're manager of a lean team or startup, how have you
| effectively handled your or an employee's mat/pat leave when in
| reality, your biz is already short-staffed? Temporary promotions?
| Contractors? Spreading the work across the team?
|
| I usually make a replacement hire and ask the person returning
| from leave if they want to keep doing what they were doing (this
| is a legal obligation) and if the returnee says yes, I offer to
| move the replacement to a different role (if the replacement is
| redundant and productive). In a small startup, leaves are a great
| way to expand the team - you get a great person back, and have a
| no risk way to try out a new person. You just have to remember
| that people on leave... be it National Guard, maternity or any
| other contractual or legally mandated leave absolutely have to
| get their old job back, and excuses for not doing so will result
| in painful, often losing litigation.
| vivegi wrote:
| Do you have a business continuity plan (for your team) that is
| part of the continuity plan for the overall business? If not, use
| this opportunity to create one. I am guessing based on my past
| experience that a fast moving startup may not have had time to
| fully plan an effective BCP (customer facting processes,
| technology, organization, people and process). So, doing this is
| generally valuable in the long run.
|
| When you start thinking in these terms, you will be able to
| figure out obvious solutions that include rotating
| responsibilities amongst team members, how to handle inter-
| departmental expectations and agreements etc., Involve your team
| members as well so you get a full picture of all the risks and
| you can come up with mitigation plans (or at the least know the
| gaps so that you can go to your manager and have an intelligent
| discussion).
|
| If you have enough time to plan this out, you can consider adding
| a couple of paid interns to the group to help your team members
| with the workload, freeing them up for taking on your tasks while
| you are away. Or if additional hiring is anyway planned for the
| future, you may be able to talk your management into advancing
| one or two hires sooner to help the business sail through this.
|
| Most reasonable business managers will be able to look at things
| wholistically and help you find a solution that helps you and the
| business. There may also be resources from other departments that
| they may be able to borrow to help you, so don't assume anything.
|
| Enjoy your well-deserved timeoff with your family.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| View it as an opportunity for your promising team members to step
| and develop. It will give them space to flourish. Sell it that
| way as a win-win. When you come back, you will hopefully have a
| stronger team and can build on it as you grow.
|
| If you are short-staff try to hire ASAP.
| qprofyeh wrote:
| Depends on the people. I promoted someone from my team, and when
| I came back it was much easier to pick up where I left off. I can
| imagine that that's going to be more of a challenge when the
| company hires someone entirely new to do your job. Several ex
| colleagues who came back, started job hunting after a few weeks
| in, because their expectations changed and less intensive jobs at
| larger companies seemed better paced.
| wjossey wrote:
| I took 5 weeks off from my startup when I had my first, and I'll
| be taking 3 months off for my second who arrives end of the
| month. I'm at a larger organization now in a leadership role, and
| my past startup I was one of three.
|
| As others are already writing, you should take some bonding time
| and adjustment time, regardless of company size. Those first few
| weeks are a huge adjustment, and you need to focus on your
| family, partner, and newborn, more than a company.
|
| How long is appropriate then becomes a question of a number of
| factors. I don't want to make a value judgment on anyone who
| feels like 2 weeks is enough vs someone who says 12 weeks is the
| minimum. Life is complicated and nobody knows your situation
| better than you. But, you should optimize first for your family,
| and then once that is finished, figure out what a return to work
| timeline looks like.
|
| Parenthood is such a wild journey with its own unique set of
| challenges, struggles, and joys. My best to you and your partner.
|
| Godspeed.
| codegeek wrote:
| Few things that would help:
|
| - Find the next best person/team members who could shadow some of
| what you do, if not all. Work closely with them to pick up your
| stuff even before you leave
|
| - Document all the complex stuff you do as much as possible.
| Never underestimate the power of documentation, even if not
| perfect. We maintain an internal Wiki and I am always pushing
| everyone to document whatever they can especially repeating
| processes. No matter how small.
|
| - Start delegating already and do trial runs. For example, you
| run that monthly meeting ? Let the other person run it while you
| are still around and on the meetings.
|
| - Set expectations early on that you will not be available and
| the rest of the team has to work accordingly.
|
| Unfortunately, in lean teams, there is no easy way. But it is
| also true that nothing stops just because 1 person is not
| available even though it can be a bit difficult. Human beings are
| very good at adapting especially when they have no choice.
|
| So do your best and enjoy your time off.
| rufius wrote:
| Generally, everyone should have clear goals - use OKR's if you
| want for this.
|
| If the goals are clear and time bound, then execution be
| straightforward enough. The trick is what to do if things don't
| go according to plan.
|
| I generally ask my team to do a little tabletop for the quarter
| on what "release valves" or alternate routes we have to
| accomplishing the goal.
|
| Also - if you're essential to the team executing, you're already
| behind. Engineers aren't fungible cogs, but part of a leader's
| job is to teach team members how to do their job.
|
| A resilient team can execute without all members because there's
| shared goals and roles/responsibilities.
| freeqaz wrote:
| A quarter is like a decade at an early stage startup though.
| I'm not sure how many employees OPs company has though, so
| maybe they're at a bigger stage.
|
| We're at 4 people currently and it would be extremely difficult
| to set goals that span 3 months. There is too much in flux.
| rufius wrote:
| The goals don't need to be minute and fine grained.
|
| They could be as simple as "onboard 20 new customers by
| December 15".
|
| From there, you build whatever is necessary to capture 20 new
| customers.
| hirundo wrote:
| First, get the priorities straight:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/wwpzhh/whe...
| throwoway876 wrote:
| > If you're manager of a lean team or startup, how have you
| effectively handled your or an employee's mat/pat leave when in
| reality, your biz is already short-staffed? Temporary promotions?
| Contractors? Spreading the work across the team?
|
| I took two months of paternity leave in my funded startup of 2
| people. I told my colleague (an experienced guy but nonetheless
| my subordinate) to take a 2 month vacation and said nothing to
| anyone else. It was fine. My wife is in a profession with 65hr
| actual weeks and it was the maximum time she had.
|
| The reality is that in places that are big enough to have
| subordinates / tiers with enough autonomy, it doesn't really
| matter.
|
| Your work is going to seem so easy compared to the baby.
| Especially because you go from working like 10-20 real hours to
| 70.
|
| That said, now is the time to find another job. Especially if you
| are going to start your leave before delivery. There is so much
| discrimination in workplaces against this "change of
| arrangement." Every high powered intelligent new mom I know who
| came to their own conclusion to seek new work was delighted she
| did so.
| nithayakumar wrote:
| I cofounded a company and had my first kid 4 months later - it
| was brutal. I took 2 weeks off completely but then had to take a
| bunch of days after because babies are hard work.
|
| What I would do next time:
|
| - Take more than 2 weeks (lol)
|
| - Communicate expectations before and during
|
| - Assign out your core responsibilities (start by looking at last
| months meetings and seeing who wouldve been best to replace you)
|
| - Be available via Slack and E-mail when needed
|
| - Put wife and baby first (this means slack/emails only get
| tended to when baby is napping and your not cooking/cleaning,
| etc.)
| whispersnow wrote:
| It depends on how long this leave takes. 6wks, 12wks, 6 months?
|
| All your current work loads can be categorized into A)urgent
| -important; B) urgent - not-important; C) not urgent- important
| and though we thought for startups, there won't be D) not-urgent
| and not-important, but there could be - if you question those
| tasks really hard lol.
|
| I would recommend treat ABCD with different approaches. For
| A)Have the plan and directions, hand over to a current colleague
| you trust, or your manager. B) Hire an immediate contract for
| this, or ignore it for now. C) Have a thought and plan on this,
| have your stake on this, but depends on how long you are leaving
| - this could be the best re-entry task for your coming back! D)
| the key take away for D is really to identify those and then
| cross them.
|
| Hope this helps.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| Im the CTO of a company that got funded, about the first time i
| became a parent. In the year since i have been promoted to CEO.
| Living in Sweden i have access to generous paternity leave, but
| taking it out would kill my company.
|
| Some how im making it work and am pretty close to an equal
| parent. You learn tricks, like you best friend is a headset.
| Keyboard time is extremely valuable, so i try to use it for code,
| and use voice for a lot of communication. I love my job so if i
| can spend 8h working and 8h with my son life is good and i dont
| need more, if i can do both like taking a meeting when in the
| park things are stellar.
|
| Dont get me wrong its hard, but loving what you do is the key to
| doing anything that is hard.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't really agree with the other comments so far, as they
| minimize the impact that your leave will have on your remaining
| team members. "They will self manage and someone else will step
| up." But the corollary there is that if your teams can handle
| just as well _without_ you as _with_ you, then the rational
| decision would be for your company to just fire you if you aren
| 't raising the output or success probabilities of your team.
|
| First off, yes, I agree with the notion that you should take the
| leave, and that being with your children at this time is much
| more important than work. That said, here is how I've seen other
| folks handle it:
|
| 1. If possible, especially for paternity leave, I think it's a
| good idea for both your team _and_ your family if you can break
| up some of your time, e.g. take a month or two now, then come
| back to work for a month or two, then go back off for a month or
| two. Many folks have family that will help with the kids in the
| early days, so it was helpful to always have a extra pair of
| hands at home for the mom during the first half year or so.
|
| 2. Your team _will_ feel the burden of extra work when you 're on
| leave, but I think it's good just to recognize that and set
| things up as best as possible beforehand. Sometimes people get
| sick, or people leave for other reasons. Mat/pat leave is just
| one more thing people and businesses need to learn to handle, and
| (and I say this as someone without kids), even a small team will
| have to learn to deal with these "curve balls" at one point or
| another. You shouldn't feel guilty for taking your leave, just
| like one shouldn't feel guilty for getting sick.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| _> But the corollary there is that if your teams can handle
| just as well without you as with you, then the rational
| decision would be for your company to just fire you if you aren
| 't raising the output or success probabilities of your team._
|
| IMO, anyone who deprecates themselves from an important role
| within a team has successfully scaled themselves in a very
| interesting way (same output, but person is free to do other
| things). Such a person would seem very valuable and destined to
| scale in even more interesting ways.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| If a good doctor cures their patients to no longer need them,
| should they be fired?
|
| Absolutely not. The jobs that are the most respectable are
| the ones where your job is to put yourself out of a job.
| Management can be a noble profession because of this.
|
| I 100% agree they have scaled / transcended their "job" at
| that point.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Or they didn't really contribute before.
| JimmieMcnulty wrote:
| That's just manager talk for "we weren't needed here". For
| example, you say "important role" but who called it
| important? Were the engineers demanding someone do this job,
| or was it presumed to be an important job when someone was
| building out the team?
|
| If someone came into a highly-demanded (by the team itself)
| role and turned the responsibilities around into work the
| team can take care of on its own, that's valuable work for
| sure. But if this was just a role created by an executive as
| a result of, "We've always needed one of these", then maybe
| not so much.
| woah wrote:
| If you can have the team work well without you, you could
| probably spend the same time that you used to on one team
| on five teams. If you're not getting promoted to the level
| that you can do that, you should probably find a different
| place to work.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| I've personally done something similar through mentorship.
| Learn something interesting and relevant to the company (in
| this case scheduling and convex optimization), build
| something, document, teach others how it works, move on.
|
| You can create organizational chaos by skipping that last
| step, you may even achieve job security. But it's blatantly
| obvious to both your managers and coworkers if you fight to
| keep them off your turf. Don't expect respect or
| admiration.
| baq wrote:
| > But the corollary there is that if your teams can handle just
| as well without you as with you, then the rational decision
| would be for your company to just fire you if you aren't
| raising the output or success probabilities of your team.
|
| if you're indispensable, you're unpromotable
| skipants wrote:
| Hard disagree. This makes the assumption that this person can
| not put on any other hats, which would make me question how
| they got into a startup in the first place.
|
| I can see your point in the case where the person does nothing
| already, leaves, and it has no impact. But in the top-comment
| where this happens specifically _because_ the person deprecated
| themselves then that person has definitely shown how valuable
| they are.
|
| If they can do that well you know they'll fit in anywhere. You
| should definitely fight to find a place for them when they come
| back.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > Many folks have family that will help with the kids in the
| early days, so it was helpful to always have a extra pair of
| hands at home for the mom during the first half year or so.
|
| This is a strange comment, considering the person asking the
| question IS the mom.
|
| Secondly, I feel like your entire argument around the extra
| work the team will face (and the idea that the team being fine
| with them gone means they provide no value) has an unstated
| premise; that the amount of work the team has is constant and
| can't be changed.
|
| When a team member is gone, we expect the team to be less
| productive. The team and company should plan for this, and
| commit to less work during the period. The idea is that the
| team should GRACEFULLY reduce their workload, and not grind to
| a halt completely.
| twblalock wrote:
| > When a team member is gone, we expect the team to be less
| productive. The team and company should plan for this, and
| commit to less work during the period. The idea is that the
| team should GRACEFULLY reduce their workload, and not grind
| to a halt completely.
|
| Good luck making that work at a lean startup or for a team
| that is already understaffed.
| cortesoft wrote:
| What is the alternative? If you have less people, you are
| going to be less productive, period. You have no choice but
| to take a hit to productivity. You can either be smart
| about it and choose which areas to cut back on, or you can
| pretend it won't happen and lose productivity in a critical
| place you can't survive.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| The idea isn't that the team will have an identical quantity
| and quality of output, but that everything will keep working
| smoothly _at an appropriate pace_. Deprecating yourself refers
| to not being a hoarder of information, decisions and all the
| other nasty ways in which people try to make themselves
| indispensable. Your team should always benefit from you being
| there, but your absence should never make the team fall apart
| and stop working effectively.
| simonw wrote:
| If you can coach and build a team to the point where they are
| effective without you being present, when you come back from
| your maternity/paternity leave I would be delighted to have you
| take on that same challenge again but on a bigger and more
| impactful scale.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Counterpoint about breaking up the parental leave into multiple
| chunks: I did this once before (3 chunks) and would not
| recommend it. Each time when I came back, by the time I ramped
| back up and could finally start contributing again, it was time
| to go back on leave. Maybe I'm slow on ramp-up, or my team
| moves very fast, but that was my experience.
| purim wrote:
| That is way too short! Should be at least a year or two imho but
| I can see why more and more companies are covertly avoiding
| hiring women and why professional women avoid pregnancy. In some
| places, taking such leave could affect your career, so much that
| when women get married they opt to not have children or give up
| their careers altogether, leading to decline in birth rates (ex.
| Korea, Japan)
|
| There should be more subsidies and tax incentives for companies
| to provide longer mat/pat leave.
| lacker wrote:
| If you are a manager taking leave then you need someone else to
| manage the team while you are out. Often there is nobody on the
| team who is really ready to manage it. Then you'll need to get
| help from elsewhere; perhaps your manager can help out, or
| perhaps a manager elsewhere in the organization can assist.
|
| It can be a tough situation because as a manager and a leader you
| have to take responsibility for what happens when you are on
| leave. Sometimes the replacement manager leads a mess and you are
| left responsible for it. Sometimes things will improve without
| you and company leadership won't want you to resume your old job
| when you return.
|
| Personally, and as a father, I was fortunate to work at a company
| which was very flexible about paternity leave. I really preferred
| taking a couple weeks off at the start, and then returning to
| work but just working 4 days a week for a while (and not very
| long hours). It was approximately the same amount of leave but
| just structured differently. I really advocate this (for men
| taking paternity leave, whose wife is going to take full time
| leave) if you can swing it.
|
| There are two reasons. One is that it works out better at home.
| Honestly as a father with a young baby and a wife who is taking
| leave, your wife and child do not need you in the house 24/7. A
| day a week to catch up on errands is great. Leaving work in time
| to make dinner is great. More than that, you just run out of
| useful stuff to do. And a six month old baby is really just about
| as much work as a three month old baby! Having five Fridays off
| to run errands with a six month old baby is more useful than
| using those same days of leave to take a whole week off with a
| three month old baby.
|
| The second reason is that it works out better at work. If your
| manager is only working four days a week for a while and not
| working late, it's basically fine, as long as you aren't at some
| super intense startup. It isn't disruptive to your team, you're
| still available to help people, you're still in touch with what's
| happening at work.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> then returning to work but just working 4 days a week for a
| while (and not very long hours)._
|
| Kinda depends on the structure of your job and whether you're
| able to shift a proportional amount of work to other people.
|
| When I've worked 4-day weeks, people have 'helpfully'
| rescheduled all the meetings from that day over to days when
| I'm working, giving me just as much work to do but less time to
| do it.
| necovek wrote:
| It seems that you are saying your rescheduled meetings were
| taking time away from work: if you are a manager, meetings
| are, usually, the work you need to be doing.
|
| What you probably wanted to say is that you were part of a
| bunch of useless meetings: you should have solved this in a
| different way even before switching to 4-day weeks: stop
| attending them (if they were useless for you) or stop the
| team from having them (if they were useless for everybody
| else too)
| roflyear wrote:
| It's just a company. Take your time and spend it with your
| family, and don't stress about it. In a decade you're not going
| to regret bonding with your spouse and child and missing some
| work.
| refurb wrote:
| This 100%.
|
| You're not indispensable. Your team will be fine if you come up
| with a plan. Your manage should step up to fill the gap.
|
| Go spend time with you family.
| ketzo wrote:
| > if you come up with a plan
|
| that's explicitly the point of this post -- OP is asking what
| their plan should be.
|
| this, and the GP comment, are super annoyingly missing the
| point.
|
| OP is already planning to take 3-4 months off. they ARE going
| to spend time with their family.
|
| they're just asking for advice on the transition, and half
| the comments are totally ignoring them, lol
| alberth wrote:
| While I completely agree with your comment, I have also seen
| repeatedly in my career where colleagues quickly became
| disgruntled towards the person taking mat/pat leave because
| that meant more workload for them while the other person was
| out.
| chucky_z wrote:
| I'm at a point in my career and as an individual where if
| someone is on mat/pat leave all my complaints go out the
| window. It's just about understanding the situation, and
| maybe all of us can explain to those individuals complaining
| that even if they never have children, that them giving the
| parents space to raise a well-balanced individual is a net
| benefit for all of society.
| jrockway wrote:
| This has to be at larger companies, right? "Sorry, we don't
| have resources for a backfill," and no middle manager has the
| authority to change that. "Do extra work for free," is
| terrible management, and big companies basically exist to
| have terrible management. At a startup, 100% of the employees
| becoming disgruntled is an existential threat to the company,
| and the founders exist to own that and fix it, or their dream
| of a successful startup is over. That's different than large
| companies, where if some random department 300 levels down
| the org chart is unhappy, it doesn't matter, so the CEO is
| not going to step in and work extra hours while someone is
| away. It just doesn't matter to the company that one
| department is disgruntled, the company can do fine without
| them.
|
| If taking advantage of your benefits is going to kill the
| company, then the company probably wasn't meant to exist.
| After you get your kid off to a good start in life, begin the
| job search. The market isn't quite as bad as the gossip blogs
| say. Companies still need people to write software and people
| to manage the teams that do that.
|
| I really don't think any of this is going to happen to the
| OP. Their manager will handle 1:1s. Someone on the team can
| run meetings. Some decisions will be made while they're away,
| and they'll have to accept them even if they disagree. That's
| the worst case, but that's management in general.
| bogeholm wrote:
| > disgruntled towards the person taking mat/pat leave
|
| If management are worth their salt, this sort of behavior
| won't be tolerated. If it's tolerated, you have poor
| managers.
|
| Not much more to say about that.
| chrsig wrote:
| then perhaps when the person taking the leave is a manager,
| "just take the leave and don't stress about it" isn't the
| best advice?
|
| They need to do prep work before leave so that the team
| doesn't become disgruntled to begin with.
|
| If the behavior is exhibited at all, you have poor
| managers. If not tolerating it takes any other form than
| helping to ease tension, you have very poor managers.
| dijit wrote:
| You have three levers to pull as a manger in this
| situation.
|
| 1) increase the workload for who remains
|
| 2) decrease the workload and delay the deadline (which
| could affect other parts of the company, the pnl)
|
| 3) find a contractor or two to pick up the slack, this may
| take a while and can still fail or cause the rest of the
| team to stall while that person/people onboards.
|
| Depending on your situation money can be tight or deadlines
| can be tight or both. Meaning the only appreciable option
| may be #1: which is part of why it's harder to work in
| startups where both of the above may be true.
|
| I don't think it's entirely fair to blame management, but
| it can be arbitrary limitations imposed by management for
| sure.
| bogeholm wrote:
| Look, if Company, Inc. offers benefit X, and employee A
| chooses to exercise their contractual right to that, then
| A and A's colleagues can have a reasonable expectation
| that their manager(s) have a plan for the situation.
|
| Otherwise Company, Inc. shouldn't have offered the
| benefit in the first place.
| jrumbut wrote:
| The problem isn't increased workload, or people having
| challenges or bad feelings about adapting to increased
| workload, it's spreading discontentment over someone
| taking maternity/paternity leave.
|
| A manager and everyone else should be establishing that
| as much as their contributions are missed it's not a
| problem that they had a child or took the leave they are
| entitled to.
| dijit wrote:
| Are you saying it's ok to feel bad as long as you don't
| inform or allow the person taking leave that you feel
| bad?
|
| I'm not sure how I feel about that honestly.
|
| On the one hand it makes people feel more free and feel
| less bad in themselves.
|
| On the other it will become an open secret among everyone
| including those who may eventually take leave and then be
| aware of it, passive aggression may ensure even if it's
| not permitted, and of course on some level it's
| dishonest.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > Are you saying it's ok to feel bad as long as you don't
| inform or allow the person taking leave that you feel
| bad?
|
| You are reading it wrong.
|
| It's not just about the individual taking the leave, it's
| about spreading discontent throughout the entire team
| because someone is taking advantage of a benefit they are
| entitled to.
|
| Basically, you are advocating for the idea that someone
| using a benefit they have is bad.
|
| i.e. I'm allowed to spread discontent on the team and
| make you feel bad for taking a salary.
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| The funny thing is that everyone agrees that it
| explicitly is a problem - it's impacting everyone else at
| the business negatively - the definition of a problem.
| It's also explicitly unfair in that there's no
| corresponding benefit for someone that is either unable
| to or chooses not to have a child. But we're all going to
| pretend that it's 100% OK.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| So don't work at companies that offer these benefits.
|
| Because you do benefit from those benefits even if you
| choose not to have a child. The people working there
| would most likely not work there if these benefits didn't
| exist.
|
| > it's impacting everyone else at the business negatively
|
| Clearly it's not. The companies offering this clearly
| prefer the type of people that benefit from this. And you
| do as well, as the people taking advantage of this are
| clearly important to your job satisfaction.
| djohnston wrote:
| > And you do as well, as the people taking advantage of
| this are clearly important to your job satisfaction.
|
| Isn't his point that the asymmetric benefit is unfair for
| non-parents and thus contributing to a lack of job
| satisfaction for everyone left picking up the slack?
| bogeholm wrote:
| > asymmetric benefit is unfair for non-parents and thus
| contributing to a lack of job satisfaction
|
| Solution: work somewhere else, where another benefit
| structure is offered
| djohnston wrote:
| Agreed, I'm only pointing out the discrepancy between
| what he's saying and the idea that he somehow has job
| satisfaction because of it.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| _His_ (and you can sure it's a him) point is that he's a
| busy navel gazing in contemplation of problems he doesn't
| have.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Arguably, the problem is that there's not enough "slack"
| in the system to tolerate someone being out. You'd have
| the same issue if the person on leave got hit by a bus
| instead---or just quit!
|
| Plus, benefits are often "unfair" in that they help some
| employees more than others. A sickly coworker gets more
| out of the health plan than someone who is as fit as a
| fiddle. Not needing glasses, I get literally nothing out
| of half of the "vision and dental" package. The tuition
| benefit does nothing if you're unable or choose not to
| take a course.
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Good point. You know, I have a colleague who took two
| weeks off this August to spend time in the outer banks.
|
| It impacted the business having him be absent for two
| weeks - I was forced to attend two meetings on his behalf
| and had to answer a bunch of email.
|
| He could have chosen to man up and not take a vacation,
| or could have taken his laptop and attend meetings
| remotely and answered email. What a jerk.
| [deleted]
| roflyear wrote:
| I can see it, but I don't think it should concern you. That
| isn't a problem for you to fix.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| That's a them problem.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > colleagues quickly became disgruntled towards the person
| taking mat/pat leave because that meant more workload for
| them
|
| That's not really a place you'd want to work anyway, as this
| reeks of both bad management and bad colleagues. Would the
| same colleagues be disgruntled toward that person if said
| person had a death in the family? I mean shit happens and
| management needs to step up with better planning and scaling
| down the workload to account for the time off of the
| employee. If colleagues are disgruntled towards the employee
| taking time off and not at management for making them work
| more, they're either assholes or idiots.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| You'll also be surprised at how well people step up. You're
| going to be doing two productive things here: Bonding and
| giving room for growth to others.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Going to push back on this a little. I've been at multiple
| startups, and of course there is eventually people who take
| paternity leave.
|
| As someone who did have to "step up", I think I did a fine
| job, but I wasn't exactly thrilled about needing to do 2 jobs
| now: my old job and the job of the person out on leave. For
| no additional pay.
|
| I _absolutely_ believe parents should take leave, and while
| the exact amount may be up for debate, I think that,
| generally, paid leave in the US is woefully short. But I
| think it 's really shitty to just pretend the extra burden on
| your colleagues doesn't exist when someone takes leave, or
| that they'll necessarily see it as a great "opportunity".
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| > _needing to do 2 jobs_
|
| It seems like either they really assigned all of the leave-
| taker's job to you, and that seems excessive, or this
| person was doing a TON of stuff. Were there no other people
| who could take over parts of the leave-taker's work?
| grayclhn wrote:
| A lot of these questions (not just yours) indicate that
| bad management is rare... that hasn't been my experience.
| :)
|
| I'm sure the impact to the parent commentor could have
| been mitigated, but absolutely sure that it almost always
| isn't.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| I certainly don't have the opinion that bad management is
| rare. I was just unclear which form of bad management was
| happening.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Sure. And people blame their peers rather than those in
| power.
| alunchbox wrote:
| never thought about the latter, lessons to be learned good
| call out.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Be careful depending on this. I am on a team where this
| happened and while he was on leave for 2 months, not one
| ticket was delivered as nobody wanted to step up. Granted,
| this is not a startup and the team is very unmotivated, but
| literally every ticket with every ambiguity was thrown into
| "blocked."
| eega wrote:
| That's a team I'd never want to work in ...
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It's just a company.
|
| But it's not just a company. It's also your family's income.
| It's how you're feeding the baby you now have.
| spaghettiToy wrote:
| Imo, I'd rather have 3 months off when they are 1 to 3 years
| old. Those first few months are a slog.
|
| I understand for moms, nursing is the real benefit.
| HuwFulcher wrote:
| As someone who had their first child the last couple of years
| I would really recommend taking the time off when they're
| first born. Those are special moments but hard to appreciate
| through the sleep deprivation. Having more time to be present
| and not worry about work the better
| [deleted]
| icelancer wrote:
| Your family typically needs your salary as well, so just
| ignoring your job isn't really the entire solution.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's not "ignoring your job" when you take advantage of a
| policy set by your company (mat/pat leave). Give plenty of
| notice and work with your team as best as you can to help
| with the transition.
| jlokier wrote:
| A lot of small startups don't have a mat/pat policy yet,
| maybe not a well developed vacation policy either nor a
| generous one, and the employment may be "at will" meaning
| they can let you go for no reason, just because they decide
| "why keep paying?"
|
| On top of that, the startup may find it difficult to pay
| someone else while still paying you. If you're an early
| employee, there may also be financial incentives to the
| company letting you go, such as not having to pay out the
| higher rate or higher equity you negotiated as an early
| joiner.
|
| You can take the time off but in some cases are risking
| losing your job by doing so for long. If you need the
| money, that's a tought spot. Even if you're good at getting
| new jobs (many people aren't), getting a new job can be a
| full time job in itself which you don't have time to do if
| you're seriously on mat/pat, and anyway few companies will
| hire you while you're still unavailable.
| dangus wrote:
| If you're a manager, and you're not director or c-suite (i.e.,
| you don't control the budget), this isn't your problem.
|
| Go to _your_ manager and present the situation, and see what they
| have available to you. Do _they_ have budget for contractors, new
| hires, etc? Because, if they don 't, you don't have any real
| options besides dumping the work on one or more people, or
| allowing deadlines to be pushed back.
|
| They either have/make headcount or they don't.
|
| If your business is already short staffed, the employees are
| already being exploited.
|
| Let me repeat: Perpetual short staffing is exploitation. "Running
| lean" isn't a real thing, it's just a fancy way to say that the
| company is making compromises that an established business
| wouldn't make. You either need staff or you don't.
|
| The business will miss deadlines and that's fine. Unless you own
| the company, it's not your problem.
|
| Take your entire leave. Do not check email or Slack while you're
| on leave. Take your entire leave. Do not check email or Slack
| while you're on leave. Take your entire leave. Do not check email
| or Slack while you're on leave.
| bhouston wrote:
| I've done on parental leave twice as a founder. Each time was
| very different and it was dependent upon the size and stage of
| the company.
|
| The first time was when the company has 8 employees, and I was
| handling all sales/customer relationships. I took 2 days prior to
| my wife giving birth and then 4 days afterwards. The team was
| prepared and handled it well. I was then part-time for the next
| month or so. I did all nighttime feedings and then handed off our
| little girl to my parents at 7am (who come to our house during
| the day) and sleep until around 12 noon and then went to work on
| site until 5/6pm. This was pre-pandemic of course.
|
| The second time around the company has grown to 100 employees and
| we have raised a few rounds of financing and we have a well
| developed management team. This time I am taking 12 weeks fully
| off. It is quite nice to know that the company is now scalable. I
| am currently 3 weeks into the 12 weeks.
| toppy wrote:
| Not quite connected to the main topic but Mat & Pat (originally
| 'Pat & Mat') [1] was the cult bedtime cartoon in the 70s and 80s
| in communist block countries. As the main (and only) two
| characters were great tinkerers I thought you might like it. Just
| to get a taste [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_%26_Mat [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXbwF38gYB8
| johnsonap wrote:
| I've done this and we have someone currently out on leave (both
| of us founders). We do 2 weeks of radio silence, 1 week working
| half time remote, 1 week of full time remote, then back in the
| office. The two weeks is tough but we've been able to spread the
| workload to other members of the team.
| campbellmorgan wrote:
| If you are an essential part of your startup as, for example CTOs
| are in very early stage startups, you may find it difficult to
| completely detach for more than a few weeks especially if the
| business is negotiating a complicated part of its development.
|
| There is much good advice here but I would add a few things that
| I have not seen in other comments. My advice is not for people
| who are employees as I believe they should take at a minimum
| their entire statutory allowance, but for founders with a greater
| stake in the success of the business:
|
| - although the first few weeks are certainly the most challenging
| especially if you end up staying on in hospital for a few days,
| there will be many challenges over the entire first year unless
| you have excellent family (ie grandmother) help - so pace
| yourself and your team's expectation of your involvement.
|
| - Plan to be completely absent for the first few weeks and adjust
| your team's expectations accordingly, but then optimise
| asynchronous communication of all but the most pressing issues
| from that point on. This helps if your business is remote because
| it's likely you will already be successfully using asynchronous
| communication through tickets / slack / email.
|
| - While it would have been great to spend my downtime watching
| series, early infancy tends to give you a lot of time at
| unexpected hours and it can actually end up being quite painless
| to put in 2-3 hours of problem solving or pull request reviews.
| These can make the difference between a team heading radically
| off path and staying on track.
|
| - If you can (ie if you're not the one breastfeeding -- that's
| totally consuming and you won't be able to do anything) try and
| distribute some of your leave later because babies get more
| engaging every extra day they are out of the womb!
|
| Good luck!
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Take the leave.
|
| It is already hard enough to adjust to parenthood. Use it or you
| will regret it in the future.
|
| You should not be worrying about your teams. If you did your job
| right, they will self-manage and someone will step up to help
| call the shots while you're out.
|
| Take the hit to productivity of not having another person on the
| team for the duration of your leave. The world will go on without
| you.
| maskaler wrote:
| It's a job. There are others. If your team is worth its salt its
| members will be supportive, excited, and will yearn for your
| return.
|
| With regards to time off in general, writing shit down is my best
| advice. Get people used to searching some knowledge store before
| asking you. That way you won't be missed when it comes to
| explaining to individuals what you've already told fifteen people
| in separate one on one conversations. You're left to innovate.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| Director-level here. Given enough notice (let's say weeks, not
| days -- but hopefully you have months of notice!), I will figure
| something out. This is not your problem -- it's my problem.
|
| I always encourage people taking mat/pat leave to take the entire
| time alotted by the company. It's just a job. I can deal without
| you. If I can't deal without you, then I haven't been doing my
| job. As a leader of a lean organization, I am constantly thinking
| about the bus factor.
|
| It's not just mat/pat leave, but what if you got COVID and were
| out for a week? What if you had an emergency health situation and
| had to be out for six weeks? What if you just straight up quit
| tomorrow? How would I handle that? Well, it turns out that's the
| same way I would handle mat/pat leave. If we're down, we have to
| fill in the gap somehow. We'll manage. We have to.
|
| Maybe that means hiring contractors temporarily. I've done that.
| It's a fine solution. But truth is that the only true thing to do
| is to work to make sure the workload is distributed across other
| people, deprioritize the least important things and put them in
| the backlog, and make sure that everyone is aware that any
| projects this person is responsible for will move slower until
| either this person returns or we can bring more resources to bear
| on the project. We can't overload the rest of the team, but we
| also can't operate at 100% capacity -- the business needs to
| realize that. And if they don't, then that's a Big Problem that
| has _nothing_ to do with your paid family leave.
|
| Right now there are currently 2-3 people in my org that are so
| critical that if something happened, we'd be totally boned.
| Fortunately, they are all healthy and happy and not expecting
| children at the moment, so it's not an urgent emergency, but I am
| still spending a chunk of my time getting some cross-training in
| with other team members to make sure that the bus factor is at an
| acceptable level.
|
| Long story short: it's not _your_ problem if your teams can 't
| handle your absence, it's your _manager 's_ problem. And if they
| can't handle that... well, it's just a job. There are other jobs
| out there. You can find one that treats you like a human being
| worthy of respect and time and energy.
|
| I wouldn't stress out too much about it, honestly.
| jedberg wrote:
| My friend is the CEO of a small startup. Her husband is basically
| the COO. They didn't really take mat/pat leave. They pulled back
| on their work a bit, stopped doing 1 on 1's for a while, and
| stopped traveling, but they were still both taking important
| meetings.
|
| She did however have the benefit of both sets of grandparents
| being able to live with her during the first few months, so she
| had a lot of help.
|
| So I guess the big tip here is, if you can get full time live in
| help take advantage of it?
|
| Sorry if this isn't super helpful, but just another data point
| for you.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Doesn't sound like a great life choice, but rather a symptom of
| terrible work/life balance.
|
| I also worked at a startup before where the CEO and her husband
| were both working there, and it led to a terrible dynamic.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's easy to criticize from afar, but in the meantime they
| have a successful growing business that gives them the
| freedom to spend a lot more time with their kid and family
| than most people get, even if it means taking a meeting for
| an hour in the middle of family time.
|
| I think most people would envy their freedom.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Every one should be able to take leave and not kill your project
| at any time. If that's not where you are now the project is at
| risk. Someone might change jobs just as much as mat/pat leave.
| You should make sure that no one person knows how do perform any
| task that is needed.
|
| Even/especially soft skills like being "leader for a day". Or
| being "last word on xxx" for a day. Or driving some change.
|
| If you do that without fail the team is able to cover anyone
| else. Any team of 7 people has one 7th the extra workload when
| someone is absent, but nothing should stop working. When you are
| 7 again, if its the person with knowledge back, you are up to
| speed immediately; if it's someone new, it takes time to get back
| to where you were.
|
| If you work like: this when it's your turn to be off, noone will
| miss you, or curse your absence, and they will be very pleased
| when you are back.
|
| In short "spread the work across the team" and "temporary
| promotions" as everyday practices, before and after expected
| leave.
|
| This approach pays off immediately, shorter absences such as
| plane delays, crisis at school or someone just being late to a
| meeting, are easier to deal with too.
| microtherion wrote:
| So much this. If a team is run so "lean" that an extended
| absence for anyone can create a crisis, that seems evidence
| that the team is run excessively "lean".
|
| And this is not just for parental leave: What if one of the
| singles has a hang gliding accident necessitating a lengthy
| recovery? What if somebody quits?
|
| If that invariably leads to overwork for the remaining team
| members, you risk a cascade of departures/burnout, and even if
| you get lucky and run for a few years with minimal slack and no
| major absences, it's likely that this has consequences for the
| well being of some of the team members.
| rightbyte wrote:
| My experience is that there are no problem. The same oh so
| important bugs are there waiting for you in the bug tracker when
| you come back.
| xenospn wrote:
| I'm originally from israel, and we have very generous maternity
| leave over there (no paternity as far as I know, moved to the US
| back in 2012).
|
| i joined a startup in 2007 and we've had numerous pregnancies
| (one of our team leaders had 4 kids from 2007-2014), each
| followed by 6 months of maternity leave.
|
| how did we handle it? people pick up the slack and it just works,
| it's not even an option so you get by, end of story. it really is
| that simple.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| I am doing this right now (paternity). I did what most of the
| comments suggested: asked someone to take on the essential parts
| of my role (CTO), and scaled back the non-essentials over the
| course of a few months.
|
| It's going extremely well. I think the person who took on my role
| is doing it better than I used to. A spring clean of
| responsibilities was helpful and forced us to document /
| distribute a variety of things that used to fall on me for no
| good reason.
|
| Feel free to email me if you want to discuss more.
|
| And most importantly, congratulations! You're going to love it.
| Whatever you do regarding work, structure it so you don't have to
| think about it when you do 2am feeds (because you really won't
| want to).
| almostarockstar wrote:
| CTO/Founder here. Coming up on 3 years with my co. Baby is 10
| months now. Our tech team is small. Just me and three others.
|
| My experience was very similar. Tried to make a gradual wind-
| down, spent more time documenting and planning while stepping
| away from core functions.
|
| I will say that while "work" continued, "progress" slowed.
| People stepped up to manage, but nobody had the vision or the
| same passion for our product or future. I don't blame them.
| It's not their job.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Good to know. We are a bit more established (~125 people) so
| I'm hoping the vision can keep moving forward without me
| there. Thanks for sharing.
| temende wrote:
| > asked someone to take on the essential parts of my role
| (CTO), and scaled back the non-essentials over the course of a
| few months
|
| Just curious - in this case, do you also increase their
| compensation and/or title to reflect their additional
| responsibilities?
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Not for the temporary change - that's a conversation for when
| I'm back.
| bloomzoom wrote:
| In my experience, people who rush back don't end up staying at
| the job very long. There is resentment created/builds. Especially
| among the moms. There's been a few studies on % who return to
| work...much higher after being allowed to take a clean break for
| a child's birth.
|
| Don't rush it. It's the 4 glass balls and 1 rubber ball rule. The
| only one that won't break is the job.
| bsima wrote:
| 3-4 months leave is "decent"? I only get 6 weeks...
| peteradio wrote:
| I get none or infinity depending on how you look at it (I quit
| my job when my wife gets close to delivery). I'm looking again
| right now!
| anon291 wrote:
| I've thought about doing this.
| elil17 wrote:
| Companies in the US are required to give a minimum of 12 weeks
| unpaid parental leave.
| bsima wrote:
| Huh, looks like you are correct:
| https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/benefits-leave/fmla
|
| This is good info, thank you for sharing.
|
| Edit: Wikipedia has clarification on eligibility https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
|
| > "Highly compensated employees" have limited rights to
| return to their jobs. They are defined as "a salaried
| eligible employee who is among the highest paid 10 percent of
| the employees employed by the employer within 75 miles of the
| facility at which the employee is employed".
|
| I guess I should clarify my 6 weeks is _paid_ time off.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Or, alternatively, you can get an infinite amount of unpaid
| leave! See how generous parental leave laws are in the US /s
| awinder wrote:
| FMLA leave is job-protected and it's illegal to retaliate
| against an employee for taking it. You can be fired when
| you return for reasons not related to the leave but - it's
| also dangerous to play that game if you don't have a
| documented history to support it.
| [deleted]
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think I've had 2 or 3 weeks with each of mine.
| spoils19 wrote:
| 6 weeks is all you need, before you can hand it off to your
| wife as she should have recovered by then.
| awslattery wrote:
| CTO of a 4 person org.
|
| Took 4.5 months of paternity leave, and 1 month of flex-time in
| December 2021.
|
| Worked for us by knowing it was coming to plan ahead for in terms
| of breaking down knowledge silos, dry runs of delegating niche
| tasks, and documenting tasks I became owner of in tenure.
|
| During paternity leave, I was fully disconnected. Upon my return,
| I had a team who grew during that time, and we're more resilient
| as a result of my time away.
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