IT Crises vs. Vacation: Sometimes It Isn't Pretty

CWmike writes "It's true that IT systems have become essential to business operations, but the successful functioning of the IT department shouldn't rest on any one person's shoulders. All told, vacations serve as mini tests to prove if a department can function when key players are away. That's the theory, anyway. In reality, IT departments sometimes flunk. The results can either be comical or turn out to be a serious wake-up call to organizations that need a better Plan B. To prime your mental pump before your own vacation, Computerworld compiled anecdotes about good vacations gone bad."

Comments

Another reason for vacations: crooked employees

[John Jorsett]

I'm personally aware thru my late father, who was an accountant, of two companies that had employees embezzling funds for years. One telltale sign was that they never took vacations, because their replacements would have discovered what they were up to. Businesses should insist that their personnel take time off, just to make malfeasance easier to detect.

Re:There can be only one...

[Sir_Sri]

I off and on contracted for a place where this was hugely important.

What they'd do is come up with some bullshit reason they were giving a bunch of people 2 or 3 extra weeks of vacation but it must be taken within a short time frame (that quarter or the next two quarters), usually times to align with the summer already planned vacations, and sometimes not entirely bullshit.

Either way, if you were gone for about 3 weeks, and no one really needed you for that time off, your job was going to be axed shortly. Maternity leave? No problem, your job will definitely be here when you get back because we'll try not to fill it at all, and if we don't need it, you're gone as soon as we're legally allowed when you get back.

It's slimy, but it's business.

Fault tolerance is a serious problem. If you only have two people who know a system, both of whom work in the same area, and both get the same infectious disease for a week you have a problem. On the other hand, having 3 or 4 people with redundant skills is a waste of money. I can see the appeal of cloudsourcing to a 3rd party in that regard.

On a personal basis, if you don't have something you, and only you can do until the day you retire you're taking serious risk. That doesn't have to be technical of course, you can be the only one who knows how to deal with the crazy redhead secretary in another department who bothers you all the time, or you could be the only one who knows how stuff in storage is laid out or whatever. It's a tricky balance between 'manpower intensive to replace' and 'crippling the company if you get hit by a bus'.

Re:The real problem

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I used to think like you do. I believed that it is every man for themselves and that money in the bank was the only way to assure my freedom.

But now that I have a ton of money in the bank and am effectively retired and can do as I please, I am not so sure. I am the richest person I know. Everybody else I know still puts in the 9-to-5 (or often 8 to 7 and sometimes weekends) grind.

I don't think it is feasible to expect everyone, or even a simple majority, to achieve what I have achieved. Maybe its because, looking back, I can see that ~90% of my success is due to nothing more than being in the right place and the right time while only 10% is due to my own fortitude. Few people will ever be lucky enough to find themselves in similarly favourable circumstances.

So while I am still strongly in favour of some the things you wrote, like a competitive market for healthcare. I am not so sure that a go it alone approach is ever going to be successful given the array of forces organised against the modern peon.