Hey Kelly,
Nice to hear from you. Glad you've chimed in.
I know a lot of people on this team. They have all seemed reasonable to me
in addition to being well intentioned. They're competent people. My bet is
that they have this handled, but there's a lag in communication time for
some reason and that they are working on that.
And contributors are enthusiastic about software. Claro que si! This is
obviously a good thing and we very much want to listen to what they have to
say and understand their needs.
I just stepped in at the last minute to see if people were willing to give
them a bit of time. The credit belongs elsewhere, but it's nice to hear
your voice and I hope your new role is going well.
Warmly,
/a
On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Kelly Battles <kbattles(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Anna thank you so much for handling all of this.
You do a great job and I am very appreciative of that...
On Jan 25, 2017, at 3:53 PM, Anna Stillwell
<astillwell(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
You make substantive points, Tim. Thank you.
"An employee should not experience their time off as a period where his
[her/they] work load is just temporarily buffered until his [her/they]
return, but where colleagues will step in and take care of business."
I take this point seriously and don't wish you to think otherwise. In
theory, I absolutely agree. In practice, sometimes we all face
constraints.
There are roughly 300 of us (order of magnitude).
Every now and then,
there
are not enough of us to go around on everything
on a timeline that meets
the legitimate need that you present here. We'll continue to work on
this.
But, to clarify, no one ever said it was a
"useful practice" nor did
anyone
suggest that it was generalized across the org.
What I was wondering about in my previous email and now reiterating in
this
one too, are people willing to grant their
request: a bit of time and
allow
for one person to return to work?
Does that seem like a way to move forward?
Warmly,
/a
On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Tim Landscheidt <tim(a)tim-landscheidt.de
wrote:
> Anna Stillwell <astillwell(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> […]
>
>> I also hear that the pause on the interactive work is temporary. I’ve
> heard
>> them request time. I am comfortable granting that request, but no one
is
>> required to agree with me. They’ve also
said that the person with the
> most
>> information is on vacation. As someone who has seen employees go
through
>> considerable stress in the last years,
the entire executive team is
> working
>> to establish some cultural standards around supporting vacations. We
want
people here to feel comfortable taking proper
vacations and sometimes
that
can even need to happen in a crisis. People often
plan their vacations
well
in advance and may not know that something tricky
will come up. Just so
you
understand one bias I bring to this conversation.
[…]
I concur with DJ in his initial mail that this is not a use-
ful practice, and I doubt very much that it relieves employ-
ees' stress. It conveys the organizational expectation that
employees are SPOFs without any backup. An employee should
not experience their time off as a period where his work
load is just temporarily buffered until his return, but
where colleagues will step in and take care of business.
Especially such a major decision like "pausing" a team
should not depend on the inner thoughts of one employee, but
be backed and explainable by others.
Tim
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Anna Stillwell
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Wikimedia Foundation
415.806.1536
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Director of Culture
Wikimedia Foundation
415.806.1536
*www.wikimediafoundation.org <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>*