Startup Fathers Need to Start Taking Parental Leave | Hacker News Reader

Startup Fathers Need to Start Taking Parental Leave

blog.ltse.com

76 pointscoloneltcb18 comments

Unfortunately, this concept is antithetical to most startups. They usually don't have the capital required to cater towards long term goals like "happy families make happy employees". Instead, they try to convince their employees to work 12 hour days and nights and weekends on call, in exchange for a chance at making millions of dollars when the startup sells out.

Let's face it. Most startups are straight up toxic. Been there, done that. Never again.

On the flip side, though, if I saw a startup that enforced a proper work/life balance for their employees, while fairly compensating them with pay, healthcare, and clearly defined Vacation/PTO policies (none of that "unlimited vacation" bullshit trap that startups like to pull), and perks like 7 weeks of PTO for new fathers/mothers, then I would actually consider working for a startup like that.

Same here. Working slave hours with a newborn is the single most damaging thing that has ever happened to me-- and I have had MRSA, a serious head injury, been separated, and died once before in an accident, and had a serious head injury (snicker).

I was working 12-14 hours a day and coming home to take care of my wife, and then the wife and a baby. Two hours of sleep a night was a godsend. After a year of this, I was toast. Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

If I may ask-- what are you doing for work now? I have not yet answered this question.

I'm still programming, but I now work for a company that encourages proper work/life balance. It was one of the things that most attracted me to them.

Tiho (OP) here. I hear you. I went through a bad example of not taking parental time off (largely self-inflicted) at my previous startup.

One way to screen startups would be to see how founders and startup investors behave. I was greatly encouraged at LTSE by our CEO's example and saw one of our investors (Alexis Ohanian) publicly champion better and more sustainable work-effort and also take parental time off.

I encountered an exception. It was a government contractor that billed the government to do various tasks. Federal contracting law includes requirements for overtime pay.

I think the worst legal behavior would be to demand 7 hours and 59 minutes of unpaid overtime per week. Past that, federal law steps in. So at worst you'd be working a tiny bit less than 48 hours per week... or you'd get paid more, which is a solid disincentive for the company.

That's only true if the employees get a large enough stake in the company and it's structured in such a way that they can't get screwed by the owners.

If you are expecting or planning to have a child, don't join a startup. Startups take a huge amount of time by their nature, and that is time you should be spending with your spouse & child. I know this sounds harsh, but I made this call myself and don't regret it at all. If you haven't worked in a larger company with more generous benefits/time off policies vs small startups, you might not understand how much higher your new family's quality of life will be.

CEO of the startup I worked at had a child early in the process, and it was indeed incredibly hard for them individuallly and strained the marriage. After a few years of struggle, the startup was acquired, which was followed by a few years of comparatively relaxed (golden-handcuffed) work at the company that bought us. It paid for a new house that fit their family in an area with one of the best school systems in the country. I’m certain that he and his wife don’t regret it. He had worked for big companies before, had an insight about the industry he could bet on, so it was his maybe best shot at fulfilling a NEED to build a new company like his heroes did. It happened to ‘succeed’ in the financial sense, but his wife gets it either way, and his kid will benefit from growing up with confident, driven, risk-taking people as parents.

It’s hard for me to understand how most people in this thread, who I presume are super rigorous regarding their degrees of uncertainty about various things at work, have a clear answer for what everyone else should do in some barely specified situation.

You understand of course that 1) that you're talking about the CEO and 2) it was a successful acquisition.

I get your point, and different strokes for different folks. I'll stand by what I said as being generally correct.

Not every startup is that way, as this post highlights, and there are plenty of big companies that will pressure fathers to be back at work the next week too. "Be selective about where you work" seems like better advice.

Background info: I'm a CTO for a US startup.

I completely agree that father's should also take leave.

I took two weeks paternity leave. It was one of the toughest but best things I've done. My wife absolutely needed some extra support and help around the house. As I is, even with my help I don't know how she did what she did. She's amazing (as are many mothers).

I wanted to take four weeks but I couldn't get it approved. Even though I have 4 weeks a year vacation (in theory). As it is, the two weeks was really tough to swing. No matter how many times a startup CEO says "take all the time you need"... they usually don't mean it. And with good reason; capital is very limited.

She worked for a large company and she worked until 1 week before the baby and went back 4 weeks later. She wanted six but we couldn't afford it.

As it is my current company does consulting to pay the bills and our president is already freaking out about one of our employees who is pregnant, expecting people work overtime to fill the gap.

Edit:

To add a little bit more detail. I find the 7 weeks in this article insane (awesome but insane). I could have never pulled that off.

Also, my wife's experience by different than that graph. She makes more now than when she had our daughter. With that said, she also finished her master's degree in Biomedical Engineering (part time, took her years) right before the kid so the degree offset the earnings drop she would have probably had.

"Capital is very limited" is such a corporatist excuse for not treating employees humanely. Corporations of course want perfect worker bee cogs that never take time off, or have families at all ideally. It is on workers to band together and push back on these unreasonable expectations, since we can't do it successfully individually.

In small companies if you run out of capital you go out of business and all your employees are out of a job. What about the humanity of those people who would lose their job? We're not talking public companies where executives make bonuses... we're talking companies where the bank account can barely pay salary for the next month never-mind pay a bonus.

If a company can't afford to give its employees humane leave, it can't afford to have employees. That's sad for the company, but it's how capitalism works.

I'm sure this seems exaggerated in startups —because everything in startups is taken to the nth extreme— but this is true across the board.

All professionals, regardless of gender, with a defined career track feel compelled to "get to that next phase". To raise funding, to become a manager, to sell the company, to pass the next set of exams, to become a consultant. It's what they've been working toward for years. It's all they know. They also think it'll somehow be easier after they've reached that goal, but it just loops into the next goal.

So it's that much harder for them to step back.

The difference is society expects women to stop and look after their kids. We need to start expecting the same from fathers and that'll only happen when a few brave sausages step up and regularly take some time off in the week to keep the house upright.

Speaking as a self-employed developer with needy clients, and father, I've probably found doing this easier than most, but it's also really rewarding to influence your child's development. Money isn't everything.

Sweden is a great country which is showing the way in fathers taking paternity leave, for example this piece:

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/07/e...

Finland is also somewhat similar, though there are still surprises. For example I took my son to his 10-month checkup when I was taking my own paternity leave and the very first question I was asked when I got into the doctor's office was "Where is his mother?" sigh.

My old boss's kid (well, prolly his wife, the kid was pretty young, but the kid gave it to him) bought him a nice clock for his desk... So he'd know when to come home.

Not hating on the guy, he was a really hard worker and afaict a great father, but something has gotta give. He eventually left for a less demanding job at a larger outfit.

Take care of yourselves.

/throwaway

I'd suggest an alternative way of looking at this:

Know how many kids you can handle / afford. Is one enough? Two? You can have a family, pass on your traditions / genes without creating too large a financial / time burden.

If you're successful enough to work at / start a startup, you can probably afford a nanny. If one of you can work from home, you can have a nanny w/o having to worry about leaving your kids with a (near) stranger. Even for people with middling careers, two incomes + nanny expenses is usually better than one income, one full time parent.

My wife and I both work, a lot. We have demanding careers. We've had the exact number of children that we're confident we can afford long term without compromises. We have a nanny. I work from home to supervise the nanny and make sure our children are ok.

We have an awesome relationship with our children and are involved in their lives as much as anyone else. There is a bit of juggling e.g., taking turns attending school meetings but that's not really a big deal.

Both of our incomes have increased since we started having children. Neither of us saw a dip in income. My wife did not have to choose family vs career.

If you're thinking there's no way you could do / afford this then seriously consider foregoing the "let's get rich" startup or children. The idea that everyone thinks they can have everything is absurd. That's harsh reality but reality nevertheless.

Unless you're wealthy or live off of the government, children and startups are a luxury. Stop whining about what you don't get. We all have choices. No one has to have kids or work at a startup.

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