Personal Days Are Sacred
Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash
You expect some nonsense as a software developer — vague tickets, meetings that could’ve been emails, people confusing “done” with “done-done.”
But what I didn’t expect? A senior developer, with zero management responsibilities, publicly suggested that I log in on my personal day to attend a sales pitch.
Not a production fire. Not a user outage. A sales pitch.
This is the kind of thing that makes you question whether “time off” really means anything in tech anymore.
I Shouldn’t Be Surprised
Yes, you read that correctly. This wasn’t an emergency, a critical production issue or something that would justify (effectively) working for free.
It turned out that they wanted me to attend a sales pitch for a third-party software solution for part of our authentication flow. The same authentication flow that had been reworked by that software developer last year and is owned by their team.
Not only that, but this was something said in front of the team. We are remote, so it was simply a “Maybe you could log on and view the session”, which would amount to two hours on a personal day.
Excuse me? I dislike confrontations and that goes double when there is an audience in place.
My Response? A Simple Reality Check
I could have ignored it. I could have given a half-hearted excuse. But the reality was something that could add impact.
“I have a reservation for my mother’s birthday lunch that genuinely can’t be moved.”
Polite. Direct. Because here’s the thing, a personal day is called a personal day for a reason. It is not a placeholder for “optional work” or “if you’re available” nonsense. I consider the number of personal days to be part of my compensation package (because, frankly, they are), so giving an extra couple of hours here would be donating my time to the company.
It’s a weird situation, this one. I wasn’t speaking to my manager (who wasn’t there). This was just some senior developer who thought their interest in this software meant I should sacrifice my time off. Who gave them the authority to dictate how my personal day should be spent? They asked in public to make sure I would look like the one lacking dedication if I said no. Overall it was an annoying situation.
The Expectation of ‘Always Being Available’
This isn’t just about one ridiculous request. It’s about the unspoken expectation in many companies that you should always be available. That even when you’re off, you’re still on call even if it isn’t “official” (because you will not get paid for that time). If you set boundaries, you risk not being a team player.
This is a common issue where companies feel like they own their staff in some sense. I’ve worked at companies where the following happened:
People schedule meetings over lunch because they assume you’re at your desk anyway.
PTO means “just answer a few emails, it’s not real work.”
Senior developers who believe their enthusiasm is everyone else’s priority.
On-call work is unpaid and just part of your normal job compensation.
Releases on a Friday need to be successful, and you need to fix issues even if they extend into the weekend.
This kind of behavior creates toxic work environments where people feel guilty for taking time off. And I refuse to play that game.
Would They Have Done This to a Manager?
I guarantee that if this was a manager, they wouldn’t have even asked. But developers? Oh, we’re flexible! We’re passionate! We love working outside of hours! Right?
No. Some of us actually enjoy having a life outside of Jira tickets and API calls. And if I’m taking a personal day, it’s because I need that time for my life — not for your enthusiasm about some third-party software I didn’t even get a say in choosing.
The fact that the software is trivial, the meeting is a sales pitch, and my contribution likely nothing. Those are all side issues.
This is simply the way people feel that they can treat software developers, and how our personal boundaries are seldom respected.
If It’s So Important, Schedule It Properly
If this meeting was actually critical, it would have been scheduled for a day when we were all there (we have a shared vacation calendar, after all). The fact that someone thought it was fine to schedule this without thought of who might be there is a demonstration of the non-importance of the job.
Conclusion
You know the worst part of this sorry tale? I’m still annoyed about it. Not because I missed the meeting (I don’t care), but because it represents a deeper issue in tech, the expectation that your time is never really your own.
When is it going to change, and when will we get our lives back? I guess when the AI bots take over our jobs, that is when.