Some of you may wonder why leave is not granted, and what's the big deal about granting leave. You may wonder why leave request must be submitted well in advance, etc. Some of you are young enough to think "But obviously I must get leave during Diwali to go home -- everyone gets leave during the Diwali week!!!"

Here is a case of a leave request from one engineer on T&M who wanted a few days leave during Diwali. The quoted response is from Kishan. At the time of writing, Srinivasa Rao is the team lead for this T&M team, and Kishan is referring to Srinivasa in his reply, and explaining the issues.

About granting the leave, I will ask Srinivasa to review the requirements. Not everyone will be granted leave by default. First come-first serve will also not be accepted. Leave may have to be scheduled in such a way that at least a few engineers are always present. Also, if there is urgent project work, then that engineer will not be able to avail of leave at that moment.

Those who have spent higher time at the client site, and have not been able to take leave for longer time will be given higher precedence. Those who are planning to take leave in near future after Diwali or those who have taken leave quite recently will be given lower priority.

Those who cannot get the longer leave this time will be given precedence next time, or will be given opportunity to take longer leave at later date.

At any point of time, at least 3 guys (including one out of Srinivasa or Amol) will have to be present.

Srinivasa, please work out a suitable schedule after discussing it with rest of the team and clients and let me know.

Kishan

This example has been given here to let you know how leave requests have to be processed very carefully in many cases and why your request may not be granted.