I understand the words just fine. It's the motivation I find incomprehensible. In particular:
> If you go on vacation [...] Often your only option is to declare chat room bankruptcy which means missing out on important discussions and big decisions.
So what? That's what vacations are for. The whole point is to miss things. It's good for both the person and the organization to miss things. "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
There's some unstated motivation behind the post. But whatever it is makes no sense to me. The options I can think of fall in a range from absurd to self-defeating.
>> If you go on vacation [...] Often your only option
>> is to declare chat room bankruptcy which means missing
>> out on important discussions and big decisions.
> That's what vacations are for. The whole point is to
> miss things.
That may be an effect of vacations, but that is not their driving purpose, which may be: to get away, recharge, do something different, travel (remember when that was a thing?), visit friends, and so on.
A big part of coming back from a vacation is catching up. Vacations can feel a lot better when it is easier to get back in the groove when you get back.
There are chat/messaging systems that make catching up much easier than Slack. I really like Zulip, for example.
>> That's what vacations are for. The whole point is to miss things.
> That may be an effect of vacations, but that is not their driving purpose
That all depends. A confucian official was apparently required to take a two year mourning period following the death of his father. I have read the theory that one purpose this practice may have served (intentionally or not) was ensuring that no one could usurp too much power.
More recently, I have read that some bank employees are legally required to take a certain amount of vacation, with an explicit justification being the idea that if you are using your position in the bank to engage in a lot of financial fraud, you may find it more difficult to keep the fraud going while on your legally-mandated vacation.
You're definitely correct about bank employees. I know people who've been required to take vacations as a matter of policy, and fraud prevention is how they explained it.
No, the purpose is to give people time to do what they think best. For them to no longer have the demands of the organization paramount. That is, to miss things.
> If you go on vacation [...] Often your only option is to declare chat room bankruptcy which means missing out on important discussions and big decisions.
So what? That's what vacations are for. The whole point is to miss things. It's good for both the person and the organization to miss things. "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
There's some unstated motivation behind the post. But whatever it is makes no sense to me. The options I can think of fall in a range from absurd to self-defeating.