1. Manager (my peer) is going out for Pat Leave.
2. He fields new requests pretty much until his last day. He's generally pretty busy.
3. We do high level training on 5 things I'm covering for him. I check all of his files and use cases, refresh them myself a few times. We seem all good.
4. His first day gone compounds 2 things I'm covering for him (one done once a month and the second done once a week), along with a day where I present to leadership as part of my normal job.
5. I'm online for 2 hours last night prepping for my meeting.
6. Get online at 7 am to prep his once a week deliverable. And his Power Query doesn't work (tried for 1.5 hours), also doesn't work for 2 other peers. Might be a step we didn't cover since the month turned. I have to call him and he hops online and refreshes in 15 minutes. I still cannot, so I'll need to solve.
7. I'm able to finish that work and when presenting to the VP, he changes a ton. He's a new VP (for 2 months), so this is my first actual 1:1 meeting with him. He turns a 30 min meeting over this material into 1 hr 15 mins making changes to the file that I didn't think was done bespoke for every meeting, and about half the time just crapping on my teams dashboards and reporting files.
8. The 30 min meeting was supposed to give me an hour and a half to turn his work for his presentation to leadership. Since it ran long, I get 1/3 that time. He also asks me to refresh another file for the meeting. I say okay.
9. It takes so long to refresh that file that I get behind on 2 last steps on how we share this data with the larger audience. So it's 10 mins before the meeting, I give him the file he requested. He calls me telling me that I need to do the final steps nOW!!!
10. During this call with the VP, another manager is pinging me asking Qs that the COO is asking him. I tell him I'm on with our VP. He says he needs them. I give them to him and one of the numbers was wrong (my mistake saying 2.7 instead of 2.3 when the number was 2.269). He gets all pithy asking several follow up Qs on how it happened.

To boot, my director (direct manager) has been out 2 weeks, all he said was we are losing my peer for 2 months, I should use the next 2 weeks to understand everything he does in-depth.

There has been so many changes at this company that it's driving me nuts. The VP I reported and the other I directly supported were both let go 2 months ago. The person on Pat Leave also keeps taking PTO into his Pat Leave. He did a one month stint in Jan, but also took off the week of Christmas. He took off today and Friday going into 2 months of Pat Leave. Just frustrating when it compounded on my deliverables.

Tough day.

But what I hear there is your team desperately needs to automate and standardize stuff.

1. It's just a job don't stress too much. Do your best but more problems will be there for everyone tomorrow. People think their meetings are actually saving lives when they usually are not.
2. Sometimes it's best to just say something is not ready yet. I typically take this position with finance reporting.
3. Keep your head up you will be fine.

Sounds like the company added a nice benefit at some point (paternity leave) without any forethought to the cost. I'd try to not hold it against your team member. It is a problem that should be flowed up for HR to consider and solve, imo.

Camo said:

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tough situation.

1. Your peer (manager) on pat leave should have pulled you into the 1:1 meeting prior to him leaving so you could see expectations of the recipient. And had you run the reports while he was still there to identify any issues you may run into.

2. VP only being in his role for 2 months means he himself is still evaluating current process and gaps in the company, probably still formulating his own expectations. Unfortunately, you are the whipping boy

sorry, friend

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You lost me at "he going out for paternity leave".

sounds like your performance review is going to tank b/c of the coworker being out for so much time.

completely unfair, but this is your time to shine and make sure EVERY person in that building knows you are doing two jobs.

stallion6 said:

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Camo said:

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tough situation.

1. Your peer (manager) on pat leave should have pulled you into the 1:1 meeting prior to him leaving so you could see expectations of the recipient. And had you run the reports while he was still there to identify any issues you may run into.

2. VP only being in his role for 2 months means he himself is still evaluating current process and gaps in the company, probably still formulating his own expectations. Unfortunately, you are the whipping boy

sorry, friend

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You lost me at "he going out for paternity leave".

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I now get 16 weeks of fully paid paternity leave... its crazy. I took 2. Large consulting firm in the US.

Gem of a day today too. A peer and I fixed the data issue from yesterday.

But another refresh issue with different data, some data is being pulled in partially - which makes the data pulls incorrect in aggregate. VP tells me my work is unacceptable. Keeps saying that "my files" are ridiculous. Doesn't understand why I don't know the ins and outs of all of my peers materials. These files are very complex, and took weeks to build. I used to work in investment banking, I'm not an Excel noob. He's literally all over the place, and keeps saying we aren't sending out wrong numbers (says like 5x). He asks me how long I've been with the company. I literally started smirking because he was spazzing so, so badly. Been a long time since I've seen someone lose their composure to that extent. I stay online until 7 investigating, and grabbing data from another source. Might not be my choice at this point, but I was already on the fence with this company, but I think today was the last straw. Horrible job market, but it's time to dust off the resume.

Mind you I have tried to talk my boss into documenting and putting data governance in place. We have repeatedly put our data in a key man risk position, and every attempt to discuss a data dictionary gets balked at. The response is always, it changes too often. And I'm like, you're making my point for me. Just insane. The company has a material competitive advantage because one of the founders went back to his home country and set up shop to hire a lower cost workforce for my current company. We could pay someone that's good, $35k to keep us out of this mess.

MRB10 said:

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I'm at 8 weeks. It's incredibly helpful in dual income situations when there are 2+ kids in the mix already.

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Take it off if you got it. I have no issues with people who take it. My wife stays at home and we have 4 kids. I would have taken more if needed but everything was squared away and I can work from home so had a ton of flexibility. 16 weeks can be quite the disruptor though. In consulting it's not so bad as we just restaff as needed, but good luck hitting your sales targets at the director and above levels if you step out of all the sales activities for 4 months.

I absolutely do not blame my peer. It's on the table, take it. Him and his wife work for our company. She got 4 months. He got 3. They took M1 off together, she took off 3 by herself. Now he's taking his final 2 to get the baby to 6 months for more regular daycare. They also both work from home. The fact that HR and our managers allowed this kind of flexibility is insane to me though. She works on a side of the company that is fairly easy to restaff, but our team runs very lean - 4 managers and no analysts (previously had 4, but 2 attrits and 2 moved to different roles in the company). So when 1 goes out, it's felt. Arguably him being felt the most.

I can say it's okay for a person to use 3 months if 3 months are there, and also say it's odd to have 3 months be policy and that he can cut it up into 2 or 3 different stints.

It's like a rich person on their taxes. If they can take advantage of a break, I'm not going to blame them. But, I can also point to that break being allowed in the first place being odd.

To your point though, this is much more a failure in process and documentation.

My last company was the same. The father could take I think 4 months of paternity leave up to 1 year after the birth of the baby. So he could wait until the baby was 11 months and 29 days old, then take 4 months paternity leave.

AJ02 said:

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My last company was the same. The father could take I think 4 months of paternity leave up to 1 year after the birth of the baby. So he could wait until the baby was 11 months and 29 days old, then take 4 months paternity leave.

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I don't believe that's how most companies write their policy. The time generally must be used wtihin a time frame post-birth. Not just started.

Nope. My boss was able to take advantage of it within a year after his daughter was born.

AJ02 said:

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Nope. My boss was able to take advantage of it within a year after his daughter was born.

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Our policy is the same. Use it however you want, whenever within the year.

I delayed mine so I could take it over the summer when our older daughter was out of school so we could spend time as a family. I was initially nervous about taking that much time, but my boss essentially told me I was stupid if I didn't take it.

This sounds like my every day, but without the paternity leave, constant fire drills

Glad I'm not alone

Paternity leave…. The greatest generation is rolling over in their graves at the sissies that have taken their place in less than a century. Imagine being in a fox hole in Belgium and telling the guy next to you "Hey Joe, when this whole war thing is over, I think us Dad's should get 4 months off from work when our kids are born."

Heisenberg01 said:

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Paternity leave…. The greatest generation is rolling over in their graves at the sissies that have taken their place in less than a century. Imagine being in a fox hole in Belgium and telling the guy next to you "Hey Joe, when this whole war thing is over, I think us Dad's should get 4 months off from work when our kids are born."

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That says a lot about your part time approach to parenting, but I'm sure you'll be glad you spent more time at work and not with your kids.


...and they'll be glad to probate your will.

Heisenberg01 said:

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Paternity leave…. The greatest generation is rolling over in their graves at the sissies that have taken their place in less than a century. Imagine being in a fox hole in Belgium and telling the guy next to you "Hey Joe, when this whole war thing is over, I think us Dad's should get 4 months off from work when our kids are born."

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I'm with you dog.

2012Ag said:

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Heisenberg01 said:

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Paternity leave…. The greatest generation is rolling over in their graves at the sissies that have taken their place in less than a century. Imagine being in a fox hole in Belgium and telling the guy next to you "Hey Joe, when this whole war thing is over, I think us Dad's should get 4 months off from work when our kids are born."

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I hope they get comfortable with rolling. Ill gladly take any time i can with my children. I feel sorry for you thinking being an employee trumps being a present father.

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If you honestly think changing a few more diapers during the day when they are 2 weeks old makes you a present father, then you honestly know very little about parenting. For decades dads were still up till their elbows changing diapers when they were home and helping moms with whatever was needed, while still handling their jobs. In the last 5 years or so, the dads of today have decided they can't handle both.

Back to the original question, are you able to take the convoluted update process, blow it up, and make it better? I inherited some crap processes when I started my current job, and was able to vastly simplify everything that was being done. I now have better data than accounting department (it is a small company, though). If new dad's process can't be replicated easily by others, seems like something that's ready for you to improve upon. Make the process work well and then brag about it during your review. Might also be easier for you to change things more quickly at the VP's request if you built it. Probably a lot of extra work now, but might be better than 2 months of pain til daddy-o gets back.

harge57 said:

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1. It's just a job don't stress too much. Do your best but more problems will be there for everyone tomorrow. People think their meetings are actually saving lives when they usually are not.
2. Sometimes it's best to just say something is not ready yet. I typically take this position with finance reporting.
3. Keep your head up you will be fine.

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This isn't my thread, but this is great advice. It took me a while to understand the whole "it's just a job" thing.

I was laid off (re-org'd) earlier this week. Sucks.

500,000ags said:

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I was laid off (re-org'd) earlier this week. Sucks.

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After all that they got rid of you? What about the guy on leave?

Kept him, and he reports to someone else now.