Ask HN: How do startups/lean teams successfully handle mat/pat leave?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32692016

by jd_illa • 4 years ago

143 125 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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.)

roflyear2• 4 years ago

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.

AnotherGoodName• 4 years ago

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.

alunchbox• 4 years ago

never thought about the latter, lessons to be learned good call out.

hn_throwaway_994• 4 years ago

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".

throwawaysleep• 4 years ago

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."

icelancer• 4 years ago

Your family typically needs your salary as well, so just ignoring your job isn't really the entire solution.

barbazoo• 4 years ago

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.

refurb2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

bogeholm3• 4 years ago

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.

roflyear2• 4 years ago

I can see it, but I don't think it should concern you. That isn't a problem for you to fix.

chucky_z• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

decebalus1• 4 years ago

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.

wbsss4412• 4 years ago

That’s a them problem.

spaghettiToy• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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

chrisseaton• 4 years ago

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.

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

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.

xenospn• 4 years ago

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.

bsima2• 4 years ago

3-4 months leave is "decent"? I only get 6 weeks...

peteradio• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

I've thought about doing this.

elil17• 4 years ago

Companies in the US are required to give a minimum of 12 weeks unpaid parental leave.

hn_throwaway_994• 4 years ago

Or, alternatively, you can get an infinite amount of unpaid leave! See how generous parental leave laws are in the US /s

bsima2• 4 years ago

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.wikipedia.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.

yamtaddle• 4 years ago

I think I've had 2 or 3 weeks with each of mine.

spoils19• 4 years ago

6 weeks is all you need, before you can hand it off to your wife as she should have recovered by then.

SkyPuncher2• 4 years ago

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.

joshgachnang• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

SkyPuncher2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

CodeWriter23• 4 years ago

Haven’t experienced this myself but I was contemplating the possibility of subordinate team members executing well in your absence and ending up with your job. Glad there was a higher place up for you. Where I am I already report to the CEO, the only “up” for me would be some sort of coup.

solarmist• 4 years ago

Saving this comment for later. Excellent game plan.

qprofyeh• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

nithayakumar• 4 years ago

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.)

quelsolaar• 4 years ago

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_994• 4 years ago

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.

0xfaded2• 4 years ago

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.

kmonsen• 4 years ago

Or they didn't really contribute before.

JimmieMcnulty• 4 years ago

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.

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

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.

zikzak• 4 years ago

"If you can't replaced, you can't be promoted" -- sometimes attributed to Lee Iacocca

Don't manage your work from a place of fear. If you really don't want to be promoted, that's fine. I respect people that have that opinion. But don't try to ensure job security by slowing the organization down to reassure yourself you're too essential to replace.

martythemaniak• 4 years ago

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.

cortesoft2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

simonw• 4 years ago

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.

skipants• 4 years ago

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.

baq• 4 years ago

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

qwerpy• 4 years ago

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.

jedberg2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

jedberg2• 4 years ago

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.

bloomzoom• 4 years ago

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.

indymike• 4 years ago

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.

Blackstone4• 4 years ago

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.

throwoway876• 4 years ago

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.

purim• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

michaelt2• 4 years ago

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.

necovek2• 4 years ago

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)

teknopaul• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

rufius2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

rufius2• 4 years ago

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.

ghiculescu3• 4 years ago

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).

temende• 4 years ago

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?

ghiculescu3• 4 years ago

Not for the temporary change - that’s a conversation for when I’m back.

almostarockstar• 4 years ago

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.

ghiculescu3• 4 years ago

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.

rightbyte• 4 years ago

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.

bebop• 4 years ago

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.

vivegi• 4 years ago

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.

toppy• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

maskaler• 4 years ago

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.

awslattery• 4 years ago

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.

campbellmorgan• 4 years ago

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!

mikehollinger• 4 years ago

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.

whispersnow• 4 years ago

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.

bhouston• 4 years ago

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.

Jemaclus• 4 years ago

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.

dangus• 4 years ago

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.

hirundo• 4 years ago

First, get the priorities straight:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/wwpzhh/whe...

Dove• 4 years ago

The place I work now has a really wonderful policy: maternity/paternity leave can be used in a part-time fashion. People who are recent parents frequently come in for a couple days a week, or a few hours a day -- as they think will work best as they try to balance two worlds.

Now, don't get me wrong -- for a few weeks after birth, you're injured and shouldn't be working at all. At all. And for a few months after, you're in an intensive time of bonding and sleep disruption, and outside demands should be kept to a minimum. I found that my time of maximum stress and exhaustion with my three babies occurred when the babies were 3-7 mo old. So be gentle to yourself; it's a marathon. Minimize work commitments. I tell first time parents that all the stuff you want to do, that you want to get back to, that you feel like you lost... you can do it next year. Take a baby year. Nobody ever listens to me, but... ;)

Anyway. Don't threaten any of that with part time work. But if you have a few hours of the day to give to the company, it lets you really get done the stuff only you can do, and gives you a break from baby baby baby all the time to boot. I have found that such an approach forces me to be efficient. Turns off I can hand off some tasks I thought I couldn't, or can scale back some I didn't think were scalable. In turn, I'm a lot more willing to come back to work a lot sooner if it's not for a full day.

jhatemyjob• 4 years ago

Wife should quit the startup and raise the kid

nojvek• 4 years ago

Had a kid at startup. Not much paternity leave, about 2 weeks. I don’t know how new moms could do it. It is pretty intense. Knowing what I know now, I would have probably preferred a large co during this period.

Ask HN: How do startups/lean teams successfully handle mat/pat leave?

Related Stories