Comment by lsd5you | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsd5you | Hacker News Reader

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Is this really surprising? We cannot have meritocracy and a system where some people will go missing for a year at a time (and perhaps come back with completely different motivations). There is a fundamental mismatch, and as much as some people want to frame careers as lifestyle and entitlement, the primary purpose is to get things done and produce value. The situation is even more stark for smaller companies, many of which would be bankrupt if they lose one employee for a year.

The unintended and inevitable consequence of trying to legislate something as massive as this away is it promotes what I call wankerism. Where by the more law abiding individuals are put at a further disadvantage as they try to follow onerous laws, whilst the people who are happy to skirt and bend them will do so and get ahead. After all there is almost never going to be a smoking gun and to the extent than you can tighten the rules against laying off pregnant women, then it moves on to hiring discrimination against women of a certain age range and effecting even more people, where its practically impossible to prove discrimination.

Maybe the government and increased maternity pay is part of the solution, but no formula is going to capture the career costs and simultaneously be fair to the lower paid. Maybe it is the responsibility of the parents to make it right between them, in as much as that is practical and in as much as they believe in operating like that.

"Unfunded Mandate": A too-seldom used term for this class of government policy failure. Legislatures decide it would be kind to help out some disadvantaged cohort, but don't want to dip into their own budget to pay for it, so they pass a law to make someone else pay case-by-case -- irrespective of ability to pay.

Results are as you say: evasion by the cynical, contempt for government among the honest, litigation by opportunists.

Other examples: "No Child Left Behind" Act, age discrimination and minimum wage laws.

The system that you are proposing is anti-human. We are not machines and time does not directly equal productivity.

Diversity is a proven cultural milestone that increases the efficacy of organizations.

I'm curious what you would say to this. What about individuals who have mental or physical disorders and need a reduced work schedule?

People have very different goals for society. Solving inequality is not everyone's top priority and it is weighed against many others.

We cannot have meritocracy and a system where some people will go missing for a year at a time

We don't have "meritocracy" already, so this isn't a useful objection.

And when you consider that companies constantly complain about how difficult it is to find, hire and retain good people, you'd think once they've found one they'd want to, y'know, actually work to retain that person long-term. That would, after all, be what a meritorious company would do, and by setting that example word would get round and other good people would want to work for them.

In fact, perhaps you should consider that your entire view of this is precisely the opposite way round of where it ought to be.

We don't have "meritocracy" already, so this isn't a useful objection.

Groan. Well it's all degrees, and for the purposes of this discussion, the reason fertile women are discriminated against is because of lost productivity, no other reason is posited (it's not sexism per se, even though that does exist to some degree in places).

In fact, perhaps you should consider that your entire view of this is precisely the opposite way round of where it ought to be.

You are unlikely to fully understand my view. Especially given that you are prone to uncharitable reading of things.

If we can make provisions for permanently disabled people to have jobs, then we can make provisions for temporarily disabled people to also have jobs.

The article you are commenting on largely deals with large employers (Merck, Walmart), so your complaint about small companies is best directed elsewhere. Exceptions for small companies can be codified into law - GDPR does this, for instance, by letting small companies simply update their terms of service and avoid having to do some of the more onerous revisions to data collection.

And there is a simple formula to leveling the playing field for those people who do want to work, regardless of their bodies (if you are female and would like to have children naturally, you have no choice in the matter - your body will need some accommodations).

1. Increased parental leave (not just maternity), which enables gay parents to have equal rights, and which allows working moms and working dads to work out between themselves how they'll adjust to the baby, according to each of their preferences. It also accommodates the cases of single dads, single moms, etc.

2. Federally funded and regulated daycare. We can look to countries that largely required female manpower to get back to speed after WWII (specifically, Germany and Eastern block countries with high male casualty rates). They had no choice but to figure out how to get the highest percentage of women back to work AND producing children or risk economy collapse and a drastic decline in their population further than already suffered. The solution was efficient, state-wide, state-regulated daycare.

Actually, as an aside - such a daycare system used to exist in the United States, as well, but was revoked. Some speculate an aversion to anything vaguely resembling what the "communists" were doing as why. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31051633

If we can make provisions for permanently disabled people to have jobs, then we can make provisions for temporarily disabled people to also have jobs.

Provisions are made for pregnant people. Just many people are not satisified that it is sufficient. Disabled people, can sometimes have careers not compromised by their disability (since many jobs are sitting down), other than that they probably have a very unsatisfactory work situation overall, that in noway would satisfy these kind of complaints which are actually an order of magnitude less challenging. I think in the UK 50% of blind people are completely unemployed (nevermind derailed from a certain favorite career). This is not true of women who have had children and want to work.

More daycare would be a good thing. Problem is the rather extreme regulation has made it so costly in many western countries (and not necessarily so much better).

Rather than merely downvoting perhaps people can actually try to argue the point and answer the difficult questions. What are the unintended consequences of this kind of legislation? Should the domain of women just be in big companies and government? What is the relative cost of losing jobs due to pregnancy (with some compensation from the government) vs not being hired for certain jobs in the first place. Do we end up favoring the less law abiding managers with more legislation? I believe so and indeed for this kind of morally dubious individual it makes sense to promote these kind of unenforceable laws.

It all boils down to "I'm above your argument but I can't defend myself, and I'm anonymous, so I'll let you know I think you're wrong with a single click".

It's tribalism, and it has become absolutely rampant on this site recently.

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