[ashtonkem]

Any manager that’s laying out timelines assuming that everyone will work at 100% capacity permanently is being unbelievably naive. People will take vacations, get sick, or need mental breaks. We’re humans, not robots.

If a team can’t handle someone losing velocity due to the challenges of parenting during a once in a century pandemic, then it needs new leadership, period.

[abpavel]

100% pay for 100% work and 16/5 availability. 50% pay for 75% work and 10/3 availability. Are you going to be ok with this on the receiving end?

The second part of comment is asinine trolling. No one is ready for once-in-a-century thing by definition. If once in a century flood leaves the team stranded and water still does not drain away after 6 months it has nothing to do with management. There are no continuity plans for disasters that keep happening for such a long time.

[ashtonkem]

Don’t call me a troll. It’s unhelpful, and turns this from a well meaning discussion into something much more personal and rude. You can disagree without stooping to insults.

Employers should pay for the amount that humans are capable of putting out on average in the long run, which is probably not the same as a neat number like 40hrs a week. Pretending that we can ignore human limits and ask for more is not only a recipe for burnout, but probably not even in the businesses interest due to mistakes and retention concerns.

No, nobody saw a pandemic coming, that wasn’t even my point. My point is that not expecting people to slow down during this is genuinely stupid, and any company (that can work remotely) that can’t handle that change in velocity isn’t well led. It doesn’t take a once in a century pandemic for a team’s availability to change; all it takes is a key developer leaving, someone having a child, or even a car wreck to suddenly pull employees out of the regular rotation. All plans should have error bars on them to compensate for these uncertainties as best as possible; the answer is not to expect the remaining teammates to pick up the slack to avoid missing a deadline that very well might be arbitrary, especially if it’ll cause resentment or burnout among your other employees.