Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I'm also willing to bet that it's good for business. An employee with better relationships at home is more likely to be productive at work in the long term.
How do you know he wouldn't regret stopping work now when he's an old man? You have absolutely no idea. But we can take an educated guess by the motivations and choices he's shown in the past. Which were, to keep working and building his company. Because he probably enjoys it.
My grandfather grew up dirt poor. He built a small real estate business on his own, and continues to come to work every day and he's in his 90's. If he was forced to "take the rest of his life off" not just 20 years ago, but even now, he would without question be less happy as result. He enjoys working. Many people do. Especially those who are founders of businesses.
Many rich business people completely quit business and instead do philanthropy, case in point Bill Gates... Zuck's role model? Facebook is not something positive in the lens of history. It's just a big money maker. Maybe it will still be relevant in 20 years, but eventually it will be seen for what it is... as if it's not already. And all that will be left is the money, of which Zuck has more than enough to do much more worthwhile things with his life. Like perhaps philanthropy. Maybe he can really solve some problems before he dies in 40-50 or so years. Of which maybe the 10-20 next ones will be his prime.
I know a half dozen people who have had children while working at Facebook and all of them have taken all (or almost all) of that time.
I never felt pressure not to take leave. The hardest part was convincing myself that things would keep running without me.
It's also just the right thing to do.
Like, could you, in theory, have a baby making rotation of 3 "girlfriends" with 4 months of paternal leave each per year for an eternal vacation?
I thankfully live in Canada, a civilized country that allows a full year.
I don't know what it would mean if they didn't, though. I think many successful people have trouble believing that their work will be done well in their absence.
There are issues around vacation, especially "unlimited PTO" as a perk, but no one seems shy about paternity and maternity leave.
1) Wal-Mart Stores 2,200,000 2) Yum! Brands 523,000 3) McDonald's 440,000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers_in_t...
IMHO a billionaire taking a two-month leave will not inspire a majority of the top 50 employers to allow their male workforce to take 2-months off. YMMV
If you choose to have a child when your resources are that limited, your non-paternity leave is going to be among the least of the child's problems.
That said, if that's the only measure then only the rich can afford to have children so clearly there has to be more to this.
What if instead, a CEO is only allowed to take time off equal to or less than the average of every other employee.
I'm just saying that if you work at McDonald's, you probably can't afford to have a child.
Yes, there will be accidents, people who fall on hard times, etc., and I actually have no problem with social programs aimed at helping those people out.
But that's not what the OP wants. He wants McDonald's to bear the burden of providing paternity leave for those people.
318M people in the US, 188M above the age of 30. Around 38% of adults (30+) are working for minimum wage and any prospect of having a family would put them below the federal poverty line.
Do we really believe in an environment where 38% of adults shouldn't be afforded the ability to spend time with their child, something every other major-industrialized nation guarantees as a human right?
McDonalds should bear the burden -- I think the $5B in profits last year should allow for a little human decency.
http://www.budget.senate.gov/democratic/public/index.cfm/201...
How we value people has a very serious impact on our economics. We wonder about tepid demand? This is one cause of that tepid demand. When people are valued low enough for them to require help to exist and do basic things, they really can't participate in the same economy that desires strong growth year over year.
After all, they make a nice profit from those people.
Maybe it's better to value people well enough for them to be people, and part of that is forming a family.
Or, maybe McDees isn't on the hook. Fair enough. Then let's make sure those programs actually work and that people can make use of them without all the angst surrounding the use of said programs.
One or the other. I don't care much. But I do care a great deal about the idea of some people being denied the standing and basic dignity of being ordinary people when they are working and adding value to the society they live in.
Children should suffer as little as possible for their parents' mistakes.
I don't always see such intelligence and compassion on HN. Thanks for your comment.
The longer answer is that life doesn't always pan out the way you expect it to and, well, shit happens. Rather than worry about what you think someone should have done, let's focus on the fact that it already happened and how do we make the best of the situation.
Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying (again, with the understanding that there are accidents, people who get laid off from better jobs, etc.)
And I am advocating for fewer people being born into poverty.
Why are you opposed to this?
Your method is that poor people should not have kids due to their inability to easily provide for those kids. In not having kids, they bring less people into an impoverished social standing that is hard to break out of. By this reasoning, should people with less desirable traits (history of heart disease, cancer, etc) not have kids to help eradicate those traits? There is a chance their child will not have those specific traits or htey will take, like there is a chance that a child will move out of poverty.
Of course not, that's absurd.
Other than the self regulation of impoverished people to not have kids to help eradicate poverty, which is what you are describing, I would rather see social means to help those people escape poverty.
I'm not trying to pose a rhetorical question. I think this is literally a choice that societies have to make. On one extreme, society does not have to cater to anyone. We could collect no taxes and have no shared services. We could have no rules about how companies should interact with their employees or society at large. At the other extreme we could make everything a shared service and have society dictate how people get access to things.
Of course neither of these extremes is desirable for most people. We have to decide where to draw the line and what we think is good for our society. Your comment seems to imply that the choice in this case is obvious: if you can't afford children you shouldn't have them. However, I think you can imagine the suffering that could impose upon people who have little chance of being able to support a family by their own means.
Is a child a luxury like new shoes? Or is something that we want everyone (regardless of class or wealth) to be able to have (understanding that society will have to foot the bill)?
Even though I have couched the question in a slightly loaded way, you might be surprised that I am personally torn by this issue and can see huge drawbacks for both approaches.
It would be nice if we could actually make that choice. Better still, it would be nice if we had a whole lot of societies which made different choices and people were free to move between them, so we could individually make a choice.
Instead though we've got a lowest-common-denominator society.
The internet is a lot like that. Maybe someday this can be a model for the world at large.
They too might have kids right out of high school and skip going to college - because that's what their parents did. This is how you get generational poverty.
EDIT: I think I have a different opinion on this. I say if a human being in a wealthy nation like USA is only capable of a job that pays minimum wage, this is a problem with the system, and not with the individual. If we just discounted all people for where they have ended up, we will never be curious enough to explore how they got there and how to prevent it in the future.
You are saying 1 out of 4 American workers shouldn't have kids[1].
If everybody followed your advice, a lot of pretty influential people wouldn't have been born: Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Larry Ellison (OK maybe that works in your argument's favor). Jay Z. Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama.
I wouldn't be here, either; my dad was a short-order fry cook when I was born. He worked a second job as a night janitor at PG&E when I was young.
So yeah, you'd better think long and hard about the financial aspects of having kids, but that actually applies whether you flip burgers at Mickey D's for minimum wage or flip bits at Facebook for a $150k annual salary.
Even if the financial aspects are hard, that actually isn't the hardest part of raising kids, even for poor people. And growing up poor isn't nearly as hard on kids as is growing up with bad parents.
If you want kids, the only reason you shouldn't have them is if you aren't up to the task of raising them -- for whatever reason.
That reason could certainly be financial; I'm not sure that I myself would have chosen to have kids if I was a short-order fry cook, instead of a highly-paid tech worker who is married to another one.
But I know plenty of low-income people who are awesome parents and whose examples I strive to live up to with my own kids.
>>If you want kids, the only reason you shouldn't have them is if you aren't up to the task of raising them -- for whatever reason.
As I read it, this submission is about paternity leave and associated Zuckerberg/Facebook, not whether people should have children.
1) You can't know what the world would like if person XYZ hadn't been born. It's pure science fiction. Somebody else would probably have invented the iPhone, or figured out relativity, etc. Or they wouldn't have. There's no reasonable argument to be made here. The world would be different in ways that cannot be predicted.
2) It implies that you are withholding from your fellow man by failing to reproduce more more more, because each could be the next potential Jobs, Rowling, etc.
I also think it's a little bit ugly to point at the conclusions of difficult lives and say "hey, what a good thing that was!" Maya Angelou wrote beautiful poetry, does that mean we should congratulate slavery and racism? I'd happily live in a world without Jay Z's music if it means kids don't have to grow up in housing projects with single mothers abandoned by their fathers and 12 year olds aren't shooting their brothers over stolen jewelry.
Nobody else here is talking about what you are talking about. It isn't logically connected to what I said.
I used the familiar names just because they are familiar, not for any reason of those people being more or less valuable to society. (Sorry if my joke about Larry Ellison made it seem otherwise.)
Most of us are familiar enough with those folks' stories that we can surmise that they were happy that their parents didn't follow Turing_Machine's theory, and therefore, that they were born.
We could also presume that for most of them at least, the parents were also likely to be glad they had them, too.
Thus, the two stakeholders referenced in Turing_Machine's post would probably disagree with him in those cases (and, I am trying to imply, countless thousands of other cases).
I certainly did not propose that we should judge whether or not people should breed based on their usefulness to society. That road leads straight to Adolf Hitler.
BOOM! I think we can cite Godwin now and close this branch of the thread.
So finally it all depends on parenting and the values they instil on their kids which require no money. It just needs some thinking and common sense which is available to both the rich and the poor.
The odds of achieving greatness in sports is very low. If you come from a rich background, and want to maximize your chances of having a well-paying career, you do not go into sports. You go into law, or medicine, or banking, etc. Sure, the top players get paid well, but then look at what, say, minor league players get.
But if you come from a poor family, then sports is one of the ways to get out of poverty, because even if you can't go pro, there's still the chance of college athlete funding or becoming a coach for a school.
Engineering is similar, though less so.
This is true. In India for example engineering and medicine are the ways to get out of poverty. Hence there is an over representation.
Barack Obama? You're citing Barack OBAMA? That would be the same Barack Obama who was raised by his banker grandparents, sent to a fancy private school (current tuition: $22,000/year), then through Columbia and Harvard?
Yep. McDonald's all the way, there, dude.
In any case, citing people who overcame poverty does not refute the overall point. In fact, the only reason we tell stories about these people is because they are rare exceptions. I mean, Stevie Wonder is a great musician who happens to be blind. That doesn't mean we should intentionally make more people blind in the hope of producing more Stevie Wonders. Neither should we encourage people living in poverty to have children that they cannot afford.
If I am to take this to its logical conclusion, I guess there are entire nations, indeed probably most of the human population, who you think should just not reproduce.
"If I am to take this to its logical conclusion, I guess there are entire nations, indeed probably most of the human population, who you think should just not reproduce."
Yeah, pretty much. Why are you advocating that children be born into a life of misery?
ps: I don't believe that all lower income people and their children live in misery. Seems like you would rather they just not live?
Who's going to produce the goods and services you intend to purchase in your retirement?
First world birth rates are already low. Under your guidance we'd have a demographic crisis like you wouldn't believe.
Sure, there's immigration, but I don't see why your rule doesn't apply to poor people in other countries.
Also, it doesn't matter what economic system you're using, if your ratio of working people to non-working people decreases, your quality of life will also decrease.
Lastly, what I said doesn't require the population to grow, only to stay constant. If you want to reduce the population because it's somehow bad for the planet, you can do it gradually.
That's a fair comment. However, it's countered by the fact that an awful lot of people are going to be doing basic labors. The basic labors need to get done, and someone is going to be doing them too.
Given that, it's it realistic for very large fractions of us simply not having kids?
Does not seem that way to me.
Anecdotally, the janitor at my school as a kid was not a smart man. Not dumb, just not intellectual. But, he was a pretty great dad and his family did well. They didn't have much, but they turned out just fine. Some of his kids ended up moving up and out on to better things too. I've often thought about that dynamic.
We never know how this stuff turns out. I, myself, grew up in relative poverty. Not just lacking luxuries, but sometimes basic needs. Honestly, didn't do me any real harm, and I'm sure glad I'm here as are my peers and family.
To me, the problem is one of how we value people rather than their decision to start families. People always start families. This is primal. Inherent feature. We need families. Most of us do anyway. Some of us don't. But that doesn't align with the job / value problem.
We need the janitor. Somebody is going to do that work, and what basis is that for denying them basic human dignity? Or, maybe we don't really need the janitor? Ok, that means we do a lot more ourselves. Wouldn't some people make the case they are wasting their time having to do that stuff?
Of course! As they should, and that is precisely why we need to value the janitor. The labor isn't sexy, but it serves an important purpose, even if that purpose is to free some research scientists to cure cancer faster.
If somebody is working full time, maybe that needs to somehow be enough to live a modest life, and to me, that life includes a family. Maybe both parents work. That's OK.
Should we actually put weight behind that idea of waiting to have kids in a time of relative financial security, quite frankly, way too many of us won't be having kids! Worse, that means way too many of us are deemed unworthy somehow, and is that really the right thing to do?
Given we need those basic labors done?
You've spent too much time in tech/online man, spend some time in the real world.
If I were in his shoes, I'd sell my shares in that website, take a few years off and then go a little Bill Gates, a little Elon Musk.
I guess this is why I'm not a successful businessman.
Probably why you're not.
If he could take two months off he could probably take a few years off, but he would probably just be itching to go back to work on FB the whole time.
Won the lottery, not really. Bill Gates was a harsh businessman who relentlessly fought to kill off competition by all means possible - it was not by mistake that Microsoft became what it is.
And, I'd dare say that it has very little correlation with how "good" he/they were at all. Most Microsoft software was utter crap till recent history compared to the existing alternatives - the fact that they managed to secure the market and third party developers was much more relevant than anything else.
Don't get me wrong. Microsoft software was crap, it's just that the competition was even worse. The quality of modern software is much improved.
I personally disagree about Netscape 4 versus IE 5, and I can remember both.
You assertion about XP being better than Mac OS X, however, is hilarious. If that's true, why did XP die, and why was Mac OS X so radically more secure than Windows for the last 15 years running? Why was it more stable? Why did it work better? Why did it have a shockingly better UI?
XP was crap and we should all be glad it's dead.
Never heard about the Windows NT operating system series?
WinNT series:
WinNT 3.5 (1988-1994, based on VMS a bit on OS/2 designs) -> WinNT 4 -> Win2000 -> WinXP (August 24th 2001) -> WinVista -> Win7 -> Win8x -> Win10 (2015) [exluding all service packs]
MacOS X:
NeXTSTEP (1987-1989, based on Unix) -> OPENSTEP -> Rhapsody (1997) -> Mac OS X Server 1.0 -> Mac OS X Public Beta -> Mac OS X 10.0 (March 24th 2001, this is the first MacOS X you know) -> 10.1 -> 10.2 -> 10.3 -> 10.4 -> 10.5 -> 10.6 -> 10.7 -> 10.8 -> 10.9 -> 10.10 -> 10.11 (= El Capitan, 2015)
You assertion about XP being better than Mac OS X
OS X was a worse platform because it didn't support much software - games in particular. XP was extremely solid, coming after ME in the consumer space (I had switched to W2K after 98, I took until SP2 before I switched).
So no, I don't agree with you. Even today, I think Windows is a better gaming platform and Linux a much better dev platform - OS X is insufficiently similar to Linux to work well when Linux is used in production.
As for third parties software, you had better software on non-Windows machines (Photoshop for example used to be a Mac exclusive), not everything was widely better in a Microsoft environment.
it wasn't but...
>Word won by virtue of being better than WordPerfect. Excel won by being better than lotus
Excel and Word won by virtue of being bundled and thus cheaper than buying Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect separately.
>IE 5 was a better browser than Netscape 4, though in that case its superiority was not why it won
No, because the battle was won by IE 4, by being part of Windows 95.
>Even in the windows vs mac contest windows XP was a much better OS than the contemporary Mac OS, and arguably the best desktop OS of its day.
I don't think that Windows XP (august 2001) was better than Mac OS X (march 2001), Be OS (march 1998) or Linux distributions that were current at that time. But it doesn't matter because at that point Microsoft had complete domination of the PC market, something they got from a deal with IBM.
What Bill Gates was good at was identifying threats early and crushing them before they got too big.
IE 4 vs Netscape 4 was a lot more complicated. They were technically fairly equal but Microsoft did everything it could to kill off Netscape, including many dirty tactics.
Windows XP was dramatically better than the first MacOS X iterations in almost every way except visuals. OS X had awesome graphics but the Mac hardware could hardly cope and it was dog, dog slow. It also had ~no apps and users frequently had to run productivity software in the Classic emulator.
Desktop Linux was a joke at that time and has never caught up. Basic things like "how can I install this program" or "why does my sound not work" were FAQs for Linux users in 2001, and arguably the community never really overcame its internal political issues to solve them.
BeOS had some interesting technical choices but its primary selling point was super-smooth multi tasking, which came at the cost of requiring app developers to all be expert at writing multi-threaded software, as the Be APIs practically required apps to be largely thread-safe. It turned out that requiring all your app developers to be in the upper percentiles of skill meant that you didn't get many apps and those that did exist were often unstable.
For all its faults and Tellytubby like UI, Windows XP had built on a legacy of slavish devotion to app and hardware compatibility, it hadn't jumped too far ahead of what the hardware was capable of, it was very developer friendly and it didn't have bizarre technical quirks caused by endless techno-ideological wars over packaging file formats and the like. That made it pretty successful.
..by means of not having packaging file formats available at all, in true spirit of Microsoft. Hell people couldn't open zip archives on out-of-the-box XP.
Windows was plain not ready for desktop in 2001, but you use what you have to use.
But I didn't
>Desktop Linux was a joke at that time and has never caught up. Basic things like "how can I install this program" or "why does my sound not work" were FAQs for Linux users in 2001, and arguably the community never really overcame its internal political issues to solve them.
Are we really going to rehash 15 years old arguments? It's a lot easier to give a smooth hardware support experience to the user when you do it for them, if you had to install windows from scratch back then it would have been different.
Windows XP was successful for the same reasons Windows ME, Windows 98 and Windows 95 were successful, backwards compatibility and you got it preinstalled on every computer.
As for parental leave, your kid is only a baby for a remarkably short time, two months is nothing. I was able to take two weeks off for each of my kids, and combining a full time job with small children can be very stressful. You never have enough time for the kids, and at the same time you never have enough time to keep up with your job.
I can't read Zuck's mind or heart and he's clearly passionate about Facebook, but 'connecting everyone in the world' has always struck me as a kind of post-hoc mission statement made once they were already dominant (& the world already well connected) and more vitally, wanted to start making FB a lot less private by default to keep boosting & posting site engagement metrics.
When they started FB, wasn't it basically an unauthorized interactive hack/mashup of the student directory of sorts? It all kinds of fits a pattern, doesn't it? It seems very opportunistic and a lot less like a grand vision, to me. That isn't to diminish the technical, business, and cultural accomplishment that is Facebook or Mark's contributions to it or leadership. I think it is great that he's taking this leave too. His child is his next startup and that's a great thing and a great example.
This reminds of something Vij Rajarajan(big boss in MSFT) told about - "I have realized almost everything in life is a paradox. If you want to grow in your current role you might think you have to not help out others and worry only about your job but in reality you grow by helping out others".
I think this also applies to Mark Zuckeberg - if he had wanted to make money the company would not have grown so much. He focused on the vision and now he has made money.
He gently pricked our arms with ads. When he didn't get much flack; he went hog wild.
This dude is all about the money. Mark didn't want to make a little money--he wanted it all.
Hell, he tried to weasel the original founder's fathers money out of FB. Why--because he wanted the money. Oh, the foreign dude didn't were a hoodie, and a tee shirt to the office?
Exactly what is Mark's vision? It's money. I thought I got him wrong when I heard Internet.org was going to set up as a California nonprofit, but found out that was just rumor. It's not even a Delaware nonprofit. It's for profit! He'll always have complete control.
Personally, I think FB is one of the worst/dictatorial things to happen to the Internet. Will it go away--maybe in certain demographic markets, like the Bay Area. I don't run into people anymore asking me to "FB them.", and when I do go on there a lot of people I know only activate on the weekends. Will the rest of the world ever dislike FB--who knows? They still like disco.
I've hero worshiped very few tech founders. Maybe it's just me, but I always seem to see there worst traights? Maybe because I was screwed over once?
As to all his philanthropic work--it has tax benefits. People lionionize Bill Gates too. I don't get it? We were forced into buying his operating system. It's our money in that nonprofit him, and his wife play God with.
And it's not just between me and my employer. It's an industry-wide problem, albeit not the biggest problem out there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Window...
And surprisingly, the missionary ends up making more money.
In Mark’s case, a long contiguous departure puts a lot on Sheryl Sandberg’s shoulders; she recently lost her husband and has children of her own, so that might not be ideal.
Internally, Mark’s work ethic is… known to be high, and less a model than the many other employees who become parents. Because employees tend to be Facebook-friends with everyone they know internally, you see a lot of baby-photo pictures: that has far more impact on your perception of what is explicitly told to be the right thing for the company, i.e. take all the time you need with your baby.
"Prioritizing family over business" would be, say, 30-to-40-hour work weeks - or even just staying home, period - for the next 12-to-18 years.
My point is: even if Zuckerberg only takes half the time he gives to everyone else he's still being very generous to himself as compared to what happens in much of corporate America. I am willing to bet that going on leave like this is probably easier at Facebook, as well.
Good to know though.
Just move! Great and completely realistic solution to the problem of what to do about paternity leave within my company when a kid is on the way. Brilliant! I wish I'd thought of that.
I'm not trying to patronize you, but it sounds like you should be looking for a new job!
Edit: Here's a HN thread where I asked "where should we move to?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10103373
Hyphenated company manages to avoid our state laws on covering infertility treatment by funding its own health plan, thereby taking advantage of a loophole in the state law. I can only believe that such a large company, in the state where it is incorporated, would find ways to put loopholes in any new laws.
"Just move" isn't usually bad advice for a single person, but when you have a family, that's a whole different thing.
Except for the 40 hours part, OP's was exactly my experience. BigCo contracts out to some awful 3rd party that can't get their paperwork straight.
I actually got notice that my leave was "approved" (as if they could disapprove?) AFTER I returned to work, that's how bad their process sucks.
Don't even get me started about straightening out the bill for health insurance -- yeah, you have to pay your employer's share while you're on leave! Surprise! (I guess this might vary from company to company).
Better than nothing I guess, but I think I'd rather have lower taxes and just take straight PTO.
(Edit: note to others reading this who work at startups--employers with < 50 employees don't need to follow FMLA)
I'm getting savings built back up again, and I can afford to miss a few paychecks now, but not at the 6 month level I had a couple of years back. I'll get there again.
And I'm not sure how to parse the whole "not to mention being hirable in the first place" phrase. What exactly are you trying to say?
Young people in general are riskier hires than older people -- they have less of a history, they're more likely to change jobs or move -- having a paid leave policy increases that risk even more and makes it harder for some people to find jobs, especially the kind that involve up-front costs of learning on the job or training, and that have slim margins.
Edit: The flip side is that regulatory enaction of such policies can help protect you from the effects of stupid behavior by other people. For example, the prices of houses, and the wages people negotiate, are in part an artifact of the fact that most people are willing to spend too much of their own money, buying houses they can barely afford and generally living paycheck to paycheck. These people negotiate wages down while pushing prices of goods up, to the detriment of savers. Policies like mandatory retirement savings and parental leave can help insulate people that want to save for retirement and want to take time off when their child is born from these market effects.
Then, sorry to be a bearer of bad news, if they could not afford or save up in advance for three months, how in the world are they going to pay for a child for 18 years?
Children in modern western nations are incredibly expensive. Often more expensive than a house. They are not a decision to be made lightly, and you shouldn't get pity for having them since its common knowledge how expensive they are.
Its probably one of the greatest critical failings of our society in modern terms to pressure people so highly to have kids they cannot afford - its not just bad on a macroeconomic level because it makes those parents dependent on the state, and on average results in poverty stricken kids who have had studies prove growing up poor has a direct and negative impact on intellect, but its bad for individuals because it will destroy otherwise healthy relationships if children are too expensive but they gave into short term peer pressure and got long term consequences.
You hear this all the time, it just doesn't gel with my experience. I'd love to know how the various headlines that say "OMG 250K to raise a child till 18" come to that figure.
Because, really, they don't seem to cost much at all. They eat less (and hopefully for free for at least the first 6 months), their clothes are smaller and cost less (though yes, they do need them more frequently). Depending on where you live (Aus ftw), public schooling can be good and free.
Sure, when they get old they might piss and moan and "Want" various luxuries but that's the key isn't it - needs vs want. And by the age they start "wanting", typically the answer is "get a job".
How could you possibly infer that to be a problem via a plain reading or even an uncharitable reading? Having money in the bank account doesn't help your kids as much as having a house in the right neighborhood.
For the record I also agree with your last paragraph in full.
As for myself...
With my current resources, I could pay all household expenses for three months without being paid. And yes, I have the resources necessary to support my family. In short, I can afford to have this child. However, I choose not to take unpaid leave because, with a child, I have no way of knowing what unforseen expenses may arise (will he have a chronic condition that requires treatment that my insurance will only partially cover? Will my wife have a harder time than expected healing from her surgery and require me to take more time off from work?) I am trying, in my particular case, to protect that cushion of money and grow it as much as I possibly can.
I also know, far more than most people, just how serious of a decision having children is. Because of medical issues for both me and my wife, we had to have IVF to even conceive, and our first IVF baby died at 21 weeks gestation.
If your monthly expenses increase by ~$100-$400 a month at first, that's reasonably survivable for the majority of couples, and other increases can be planned for.
If your month income suddenly declines by $10000 a month as in your example, you're probably fucked.
I will use some banked compensatory time to make my leave last about six weeks.
You have my heartfelt sympathy. 40hrs is pathetic, insulting, and the process for you to get it is frankly dehumanizing. Fortunately those scumbags will pale into insignificance as you get to know your son.
Your comment touched a nerve: it was a dramatically emotional time, and I just got shivers thinking how I'd have felt having to do a day's paperwork just to get out of the office. I was very lucky.
Instead of bitching on HN, get off your ass and find a better employer.
As I've said earlier, I have more leave to take than this because I have banked overtime that I can draw upon, and I have a fantastic boss who helped me make a plan to take the (paid) leave I need.
All that does not mean that I can't comment on a relevant experience I have that most likely reflects the experiences of many in corporate America.
With everything else set well, why would I disrupt my family again? I already moved in 2014 to escape an employer that was pretty much pure evil and really would have damaged my family and marriage. Don't you think, that having gone through that, I have learned how to protect my family?
In short, your public lecture, as the other commenter pointed out, does seem a bit arrogant to me.
Very surprised by the reactionary thinking I'm seeing about this.
I hate it when top CEOs try to prove that love "work-life" balance when in reality once you reach the top, its always easy to do the "right thing" in any circumstance.
If she would have been pregnant when he just started FB, then would have taken more than 2 days off?
"United Continental Holdings Inc's (UAL.N) new chief executive has suffered a heart attack, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, barely a month after he took on the job of improving the airline's profitability and reputation."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/16/us-unitedairlines-...
Nope. One, it is impossible for somebody of his prominence to take two months off work and not have it be noticed. And two, his point here isn't to take two months off. It's to signal to every one of his employees that it's ok.
One of my current boss's best habits is going home on time. And occasionally he'll go home early when he's worn down and unproductive, saying, "Man, I'm not getting anything useful done; I'm going to go home now." Not only is this a smart thing for anybody to do, but it's great in a boss because it gives everybody implicit permission to do the same when necessary.
He could have, but doing this publicly sets an example. There are a lot of companies where employees are officially allowed to take leave but in practice face disdain from their coworkers if they do; having the CEO publicly take such a leave helps to provide social license to everybody else in the company.
Really, that's rich.
Unlimited vacation policies are intended to make people act more like Canada or Europe where 4-6 weeks paid vacation is common. Most civilized countries have employer benefits plans that cover most of your salary as a parent for 12-16 weeks, and by the government (up to ~$50k annually) for 52 weeks shared between parents.
Mark is doing what most Dads do, and it's a good example.
This is like the unspoken mantra of "unlimited vacation" really being only 2 - 2.5 weeks.
It becomes a badge of honor to let unused vacation expire at the end of the year because you just didn't have time to take it.
I've seen it more than once.
What this really means is, no acquisitions for Facebook once leave starts (except maybe the ones he's already greenlit). At the CEO level, you focus on direction, strategy, and top-level execution of said direction and strategy. You're not designing and doing grunt work. If anyone can step back from a large corporation and watch things keep on humming along, it's the CEO.
Zuck may be doing something similar.
I think it depends on your company and management chain. When I worked at Netflix I took more vacation than every before. I'm not even sure how much, since it was untracked, but definitely more than 4 weeks a year.
Our management made sure to set a good example by taking plenty of vacation.
Kickstarter removed it's "unlimited vacation" policy because it found that employees were not taking enough vacation. This seems to be a strong statement from the company that they want to encourage vacation taking.
I can find no evidence that most companies with "unlimited vacation" policies are trying to limit the amount of vacation for its employees. It would be great if you could furnish it, as I'm interested in this topic.
Unlimited vacation means no accrual so no balance sheet hit. It's a sketchy way to save money while effectively hinting that you're not supposed to take vacation. At first, people took unlimited vacation at face value. Now, the industry largely knows that it is industry speak for "2-3 weeks vacation but up to manager discretion."
Funny, because neither company I've worked for has that unspoken policy. You should come in and dictate the actual culture to us since you know it so well. I don't need to tell you the companies of course, since you're already well acquainted with them obviously.
This is true.
"Now, the industry largely knows that it is industry speak for "2-3 weeks vacation but up to manager discretion."
This is generally false for a certain size of company (> 1000 employees). In my case, 4 weeks is common, it varies.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI (NSFW. Had seen if shared on HN few years back, can't recall by who)
My company and her school both offered a modest top-up on the government's parental leave benefit, so splitting the year meant we got to double-dip our employee benefits.
So it's not just good family building, it's also good financial sense. It's also the best way to fight the pay gap - an employer wonders which of his female employees will vanish for a year or so. This way, everybody leaves for 6 months or so.
35 weeks
http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/types/maternity_parent...
PS this is the minimum (through the government) many companies provide more (e.g. 1 year)
So, Mom & Dad could both take 15 weeks off (15 x 2), and Mom or Dad takes the remaining 20 off. There are many combinations.
Of course, EI only pays $50k a year max, so many employers will offer benefits packages that match 75-80% of your salary for up to 16 weeks (maternal and/or paternal leave).
Earlier when I was an employee I used to look forward to weekends/holidays/vacations. Not so now. The idea of being away from work for months is unthinkable for me. Local radio on Monday morning has an RJ invariably commenting on Monday-morning-blues. Luckily, I can't relate to that feeling anymore.
Not trying to paint ultra-rosy picture of being a business owner. It does have ups and downs, and it being a roller-coaster ride is well documented by many.
But whatever stage (highs/lows) you may be in. Typically, its hard to keep yourself away from work. Maximum duration of a vacation, I have taken in past 8-9 years, is around a week, and the median is typically 3-4 days.
At the same time, I do understand responsibility towards family. So if somebody needs to do it, I appreciate that, and definitely see myself also doing, but obviously don't wish for it.
Perhaps many others here, may feel similarly.
I can't believe that in the US, paternity/maternity leave is something that is left for 'the market to decide'. I was hoping for Marissa Mayer to lead and set the example for maternity leave... but she took two weeks... I couldn't really believe it, I was pretty disappointed. In my eyes what she did, sent a pretty sad message for women, her employees, and other companies.
I think Mark taking two weeks off, is an example, for everyone. His employees (male, female, etc) and other companies. Hey, maybe even the Government can learn from this.
TD;LR, glad Mark did this. Kudos.
After that, if you stay home doing emails, maybe you should go back to work for real, and keep some time for later in the year...
Not a universal truth, but I liked the love curve over time here: https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_...
He's managed to make his paternity leave a PR opportunity. Acute.
"would you let your kid use internet.org to access the Internt"
and for the record (again), I really live in Africa
the main reason this story qualified as a "news" in the first place is because he's (Mark) is pretty important/influential & with that, normal people like me have questions for them - that's all I did, asked an interesting question (especially from my pov)
thanks
In Germany, you can have this up to 36 months (3 years) for both parants and your employer can't send you a notice to quit.
So, to be honest, I have to laugh at Zuck. Or say it another way: I think, he does not value his kids. I am a shamed of him.
Mark Zuckerberg taking two full months of paternity leave is actually pretty progressive for us. Learn how to context, guy.
It's not that progressive. You'll find more and more states passing family leave laws in the next decade (though I would much prefer something at the federal level besides unpaid job protection).
Shame on Germany for not valuing the kids!
that's called maximizing ROI and in business is called being smart; on the other hand, in personal terms it's perojative. something's off balance.
This entire (arrogant) line of reasoning is ridiculous because it's completely based on an arbitrary cutoff point that you decide is good. What a crazy coincidence that the cutoff point happens to be the same amount of time the geographic region you happen to live in sets as their paternity leave.
Does he have to sell all his Facebook shares and buy them back at the end of his paternity leave? If not, the "paternity leave" is in-name-only, because he will still be the largest shareholder of Facebook.
You can bet Zuckerberg will still be running the show.