No work is going to be tolerable if you don't enjoy it. If you got into programming or IT or any industry simply for the money you can earn doing it, you're in for a BAD TIME.

I love computers, linux, programming, configuration, automation, and problem solving. So I love what I do. I am currently three weeks into 13 weeks of parental leave, and I have been having dreams about work at night.

The best piece of advice I can offer to someone who has trouble getting motivated is: make sure to like it first.

Story #1: So I took a month of parental leave. And was planning to extend it a little longer to deal with my final exams. I was planning to spend lots of quality time with my wife and newborn son. Little did I know... It turns out that out of 5 OoO weeks I was looking forward I actually had 3 at most. The rest I've spent working remotely as I was insisted to deploy a brand new and poorly tested feature to PROD 2 days before my paternity leave. So I spent 2 weeks debugging things in PROD. Remotely. Needless to say that did suck.

Story #2: After story #1 I've learnt my lesson. This summer I took 3 weeks annual leave to renovate my apartment. I asked to not to be disturbed unless there's an emergency. And an emergency it was. One of our app users had a planned hi-load batch job lasting for 2-3 months. Hundreds of thousands of items had to be created and processed. It turns out the _processing_ algo had some flaws and was acting out. I was called out and asked to assist. I knew this sort of debugging is going to take a lot of my time so this time I put my conditions on the table: I will assist but I'll extend my leave by 1.5 the time I spend working now. They took the deal. Instead of 3 weeks I had 5 weeks of vacation!

I don't care that much about my salary. I prefer to exchange it for my time off hence I didn't ask for compensations.

Bottom line: NEVER EVER underestimate or undersell your time and effort. You are a valuable asset and if the team/client needs you on your day off -- make it count. Your time off is YOUR time. Never forget it.

Being asked (or more accurately made!) to travel Mon-Fri (i.e. staying away from home) for at least 2 months to a customer's site to work on a completely insane project that had no design, formal requirements, preparation or support. It was just a "friendly side project" 2 friendly managers concocted.

After some research, the project wasn't actually technically possible, but the customer wanted it so I had to try to find a solution.

The complication for me was that my wife was almost 8 months pregnant with our first kid and I made it clear I really wanted to be at home. Was left to feel I had little choice but to go. Project runs over but damnit I'm taking my 3 weeks parental leave entitlement.

Day before I'm due to go back to work, I get an email saying "You'll be travelling tomorrow for the next few weeks". At that point, I replied with the most angry work email I've ever sent and threatened that if that was the case I wouldn't be back. Plans were changed.

I ended up leaving within a couple of months anyway.

I know you folks in Europe and elsewhere in the world probably take this sort of thing for granted, but it is really unusual here in the US. When our daughter is born next month, I will be entitled to 12 weeks of paid leave, which my boss (great guy, btw) has encouraged me to take fully.

My concern is that I have projects, and twelve weeks is enough time that they would probably die on the vine, even if/when I hand them off to someone else.

It's stressful, and I need a way to deal with it.

So I'm returning from parental leave on next week...
One of the projects I'm involved in, was at 10% progress when I left, had planning and documentation made by me, development environment and test suite setup by me and had tests and was being reviewed.
Right now it should be arround 75% progress, no longer is being reviewed, planning is not being followed and no tests have been made since I've left...
Why bother with dumb ass devs!

So, my CS teacher has gone on paternity (?), or rather, parental leave until September.

Awesome.
That basically ruins my mondays and wednesdays.

Actually now that I think of it...
Fuck it, free time.
And we don't even get a substitute teacher.
Heh.