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Comment by temporallobe | Hacker News Reader

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

This struck a chord with me. I recently had a “vacation” where I still had to participate in and do work on an RFP and then be in the RFP presentation itself. I ended up working 3-4 hours every day. In addition, when I got back (officially), I was expected to simply “catch up” with the work I couldn’t do during the week I was off. It was actually one of the most stressful vacations I had ever been on because I was torn between trying to relax and spend time with my family and the duty to my job. I justified it by saying to myself that I was at least having some fun, but it actually ended up being worse than if I hadn’t taken vacation at all.

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You need to quit this job. As soon as you possibly can. Start working on it right away.

This is not a job for humans.

You do not have a "duty to your job". Employers love it when they can get their workers to think that way because it raises the threshold amount they can overwork and over-stress you before you've had enough and quit. You have to protect your personal time and your mental and emotional health. (I have had to learn this lesson a couple of times in 40+ years as a software dev.)

> I recently had a “vacation” [...] I ended up working 3-4 hours every day.

You got used by your employer.

They owe you comp time equal to the length of your "vacation". You deserve that and should not hesitate to ask for it.

I work with a great manager, she has worked no joke 100 hour weeks for the last 7? months. There have been days she has just broken down. She is finally on a 2 week vacation and she has had to work every day of the vacation so far. It is insane. We work at a unicorn startup.

> a great manager, she has worked no joke 100 hour weeks for the last 7? months

She sounds dedicated but hardly "great". In my mind great employees don't need to spend 100 hours working any week, let alone 7 months in a row. That's a death march. There's only 168 hours in a week.

If someone has had to work every day it hardly sounds like a vacation, what sort of arrangement is in place that would have someone put up with something like this?

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