Hacker News Reader

Comment by xbeta | Hacker News Reader

For someone who recently lost a mother and still have a badly injured father. This is totally understandable regardless whether he is a CEO of Uber. For a regular employee, he could request for a sabbatical. But as a CEO, that's difficult given there is no CFO, CMO, COO existed.

View on HN

What do you mean by 'sabbatical'? What is this, and how do regular, salaried employees get this?

It's not unusual for BigCos to have a leave of absence policy for regular employees.

I've seen "regular, salaried employees" take sabbaticals for personal reasons more than once. Beyond that, comparing a CEO to a typical employee is ridiculous. You may not like it, but yes, they're viewed as more important by the board and a CEO is more important 99.9% of the time. Devs don't make life or death business decisions and set the cultural tone for the entire company.

Most companies in SV tend to have, in addition to paid maternal/paternal leave, the option to take unpaid leave. I have many friends and colleagues who have taken advantage of this for a variety of reasons. It's really not that uncommon.

It's implicit that as long as your company is hiring your position you can take unpaid leave; the outlier is paid sabbatical.

Oh, and you're at least on par with expected performance.

Depends on the company.

One colleague was able to use sick time at half pay to care for a terminally ill relative. Some companies allow leave without pay.

The FMLA should allow any qualifying employee (has worked there for a year, 50 or more employees at the company) to take job-protected 12 weeks of leave per year to care for a terminally ill nuclear-family relative.

And don't people without "nuclear" family wind up subsidizing this scheme? Not everyone has family, or if they do their family may not be capable or interested in caring for them or vice-versa.

FMLA leave is unpaid leave; anything beyond that is an employer's choice, and/or on the employee to be paying their short-term disability premiums, and claim it. It also covers taking leave to deal with the employee's own illness.

How are you "subsidizing" that?

EDIT: phrasing.

Someone generally has to put in the extra work caused by an absence.

I am reminded of nothing so much as Christopher Hitchens' quip about Libertarianism: "I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough."

If someone is taking FMLA, the overwhelming likelihood is that they or someone they love is dying (or the opposite: they have a brand-new kid). You're worried about working a little bit harder.

Some perspective might be warranted.

As someone who has been asked to chip in many times to make up for the new kid situation (which at least for men it's a choice to take time off), I do feel "worried" about having to work harder. It's not like you get paid overtime these days. Now I (and others on the team) have had to work overtime for someone who was in the hospital for months through no fault of their own. I felt no grudge about having to put in extra work for free there.

Work your forty hours and let the company deal with hiring a temp/contractor if they need to.

If the idea was you could take care of anyone you loved, then I'd agree.

Why does it have to be nuclear family members?

Not everyone has nuclear family members, or defines their family as the father/mother/brother/sister they grew up with.

In my mind, I see this as highly similar to hospitals of the past(and current) not letting members of same-sex couples visit their dying partner, because they aren't direct family or legally married.

its incredibly depressing that this is even being argued, or is American society so myopic as to lack societal compassion nowadays?

Us Americans are all straw bosses. Lots of these company men types talk a big game until they need accomodation.

The subset of Hacker News community I have interacted with is definitely more insular and wannabe-contrarian than the subset of American society I'm familiar with (as an outsider).

The difference that I failed to mention was that they covered the employer covered portion of health insurance for the leave period.

Generally CEOs and low level employees have different perks. You'll also find many companies have different policies.

The best course of action is to ask your employer!

It must be nice to have the money and power to be able to do this. When my mother passed, I missed the first couple weeks of classes and then returned to college (and had a ton of work to catch up on). When my father passed, I took a couple weeks off and then went back to work. I imagine a lot of people wouldn't even have that flexibility.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com