I've been a tech manager for most of my career now in some form or another, going on 33 years now. Mostly IT infrastructure or security. I started working as a Sr. Manager at a pretty large (5000+ employees) company 3 months ago.
Some of the shit my team has been telling me just blows my mind. Maybe my second week there, one of my most senior engineers sends me a fucking essay asking to take a day off. He's been at the company for 26 years now. I honestly thought he was fucking with me.
I called him up and informed him that I had a simple formula for coverage requirements when it came to PTO and he only needed to inform me of when he was taking time off, never ask for permission. He legit didn't believe me. It took me almost an hour with the whole team to get them to understand that their vacation days belonged to them, not me.
My rules are simple: You're not on call, you've handed off your deliverables, you've canceled any meetings on your day(s) off, and we have at least one person in your area of expertise as a backup when you're gone. (ie. all 3 of my network engineers can't be on PTO at the same time). That's it.
The previous manager required permission to take sick days and FORBADE the operations team from talking to the engineering design squad. How the fuck do people work under bosses like that?