Parents got more time off, then the backlash started
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The Balkanization of benefits is _always_ a way to drive a stake through a cohort of people. Any type of increased leave benefit should be available to all. If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. We’re in an unprecedented time where anxiety and uncertainty is reining. The notion that we have to produce the same amount as before the pandemic is ludicrous and callous.
No one should be taking pay cuts, whether they take more vacation or not, if the underlying health of the business remains strong (in Facebook’s case, for example, it is). Arguably, no one’s marginal value of labor should be changing either, it’s just that their working hours may change, and that should be okay.
We’re just approaching distributed work, right now, all wrong. Commons hours matters less than good, written communication. If folks need to adjust their schedules significantly (more than two hours, here and there), then so be it. It won’t matter in the long run. Especially if leveraging that flexibility means that they don’t have to take PTO days for other reasons.
This right here is what stops most companies from doing most things that benefit the employee more than it does the almighty “revenue”.
This may be cynical, but both are significant for many mobile app businesses.
It would be an interesting experiment to offer half-time positions with half-pay (ignoring fixed costs that make the half-pay/half-time job more expensive). I doubt many people would take that deal.
I’m simultaneously and acutely aware that the exact rationalization above is also used to excuse poor decision making In some companies that has real human consequences that happen to exist parallel with ‘getting a paycheck’ and those consequences and the behavior behind them are no less worthy of critique just because ‘paycheck’.
These are my ethics. You don’t have to share them, I’m not here demanding that you do. I’d just rather dispense with the obviousness of “but that’s how you get paid”. Of course it is.
Obsession with revenue growth is what drives poor staffing decisions: "We can't hire because net new revenue is down", but doing more requires more people.
I’ve worked at two companies that tried genuinely unlimited vacation policies. The theory was that happy and well-rested employees who lived very fulfilling lives outside of the office would be naturally more motivated to do work for the company that granted them this benefit.
For the people who needed flexible schedules (young children at home, caring for aging parents, personal health issues, irregular sleep patterns) this was a success. People who fit this description were overjoyed to find a company willing to accommodate them, and they returned the favor with great, efficient work.
On the other hand, there was a subset of people who approached the system like a game: Just how little work could they do without getting fired? How could they claim the easiest tasks for themselves?
This becomes a major problem when the workload is shared across a team, where one person’s reduced output becomes an increased burden on someone else. The people gaming the system weren’t doing so at the company’s expense. They were doing so at their team member’s expense.
In theory we’d all get the same allowances regardless of the reason. In practice, people are infinitely happier to cover for a hard working coworker who needs an unplanned day off to tend to a sick child than they are to cover for an otherwise unencumbered coworker who simply decided they didn’t feel like working today.
You could argue that the business should be allowed to slow down, but when your competitors are not slowing down and your profit margins aren’t infinite, that’s not a sustainable option. Eventually you need to start cutting headcount to compensate for the reduced productivity, which begins to defeat the purpose of catering to the employees. There is no free lunch.
I wish companies would stop using the word "unlimited" for this. It's unspecified vacation policy, not unlimited.
I’ll put it this way: The company tried the “As long as you get work done, it doesn’t matter how many hours you work” approach.
The problematic part of this equation is that “your work” isn’t a fixed quantity. When we allocate tasks and set weekly goals according to how much people can reasonably accomplish in a week, the “your work” variable becomes a proxy for how much that person is willing to work that week.
The loophole is to minimize the number of tasks assigned to yourself while maximizing the perception of how long it took. The honest team members didn’t play this game and naturally ended up around 40 hours, mostly 9-5ish. It was the people gaming the system who played this game the most, obviously, and they tended to claim off hours and weekends as extra time spent working alone, assuming we couldn’t disprove it.
Whether that rubs up against some idealized mythological puritan work ethic doesn't change the fact of the matter.
Sure, but the larger point would be that the companies call it that way, which would still be dumb even if we didn't get into that discussion right now.
(BTW, was "unlimited" the term that was actually used where you worked?)
> The problematic part of this equation is that “your work” isn’t a fixed quantity. When we allocate tasks and set weekly goals according to how much people can reasonably accomplish in a week, the “your work” variable becomes a proxy for how much that person is willing to work that week.
Yes, of course. What is puzzling to me is - how is this not completely obvious right from the start to everyone involved?
> It was the people gaming the system who played this game the most, obviously, and they tended to claim off hours and weekends as extra time spent working alone, assuming we couldn’t disprove it.
This part sounds more related to "work whenever you want policy" than "work as much as you want". It was obviously the case that people were expected to work 40-ish hours/week and take roughly the same amount of vacation as was the norm before unlimited/unspecified vacation policy.
Deal with the discrepancy by rewarding high output.
I don’t know how to respond to the opportunity comment, I’m not sure I understand your point.
EDIT: added a comma
To the opportunity comment, I thought it was evident, but maybe a thought experiment will be helpful. Let's pretend your company announces a new policy tomorrow - everyone who eats meat at the cafeteria next week gets Friday off. There are cheers around the office at this announcement because hey, Friday off! Except that you're vegan and don't want anything to do with meat for a variety of reasons. Your coworkers look at you and say, "Hey why aren't you happy about this?" You try to explain to them that you're vegan and so you won't get Friday off and this seems like kind of an unfair policy, but your coworkers just brush off your comments and say, "Well look, it's not like you can't eat meat. You've got the same opportunity as everyone else here - eat the meat and get Friday off, so what's the big deal? Just be a team player and support the rest of us."
Just because an opportunity exists that is technically available to everyone doesn't mean it's actually a fair opportunity or that the outcome of it is equal for everyone.
I don't know how it works in the US, but where I live the extended sick leave would be paid by the government, which would leave the company with funds to find a temporary replacement or increase compensation for people who pick up the slack.
Indeed, I think it would be a terrible and absurd system if the company had to continue paying the person on extended sick leave.
Yet that's typically the case in the US. Large companies typically have short-term disability and long-term disability as part of their benefits plans.
Added: From the government side, there is Social Security disability.
The other part of this discussion that gets left out is state vs. company responsibility. In the US, the state has generally failed when it comes to supporting parents, so people have turned to companies to fill the gap. However, it's not clear to me why companies should be the ones to do that. The state needs children and eventually benefits from them. Companies do not.
(This is part of why we all pay for public education)
Overrule companies vacation policy and give all parents extra PTO?
You seem pretty hostile to people having children, why is that?
> I would of course not begrudge a coworker for taking time off to deal with cancer, for example, but when you decide you want kids? That's a different story.
And to be clear, most people, when deciding to have children, assume various things - for example, they assume that there is an education system in place to help shoulder some of the childcare burdens. This is part of what people's taxes are going towards - and many parents also privately spend money on additional/alternative day care.
No one could predict such an unprecedented and global catastrophe that makes all of that unavailable.
I'm not saying that parents should not be given benefits but they should be applied to all employees. Singles are going through depression and would benefit from taking time off to visit their family.
Your metaphor is not at all similar to the real situation parents find themselves in. It's not "oh here, some people who eat meat gets Friday off". It's closer to "because of a situation outside of the company, anybody who ate meat in the last year has to do 2x as many work hours, and no longer has any time off, so in recognition of this, we're going to try and balance this out by giving them certain benefits".
That is the situation parents find themselves in, at least parents of young children.
You seem to be looking at this as a pure benefit to parents. It's not - it's a global catastrophe that has caused a massive problem for parents, and companies that are trying to at least somewhat mitigate that massive problem.
... at the cost of employees that are not parents who have to work more.
Don't adjust the schedule. Increase the pay for anyone who works more.
It’s selfish of them to be resentful. Kids are the ones who will be working when these people retire (whether by then they have children of not).
Society depends on new generations and so I don’t see a problem if parents get a small advantage.
I tend to agree. The it's all about me attitude has become so ingrained in western society that the greater-good is utterly discounted.
The most prominent covid related example of this is mask wearing. An unreasonably high number of people have decided that wearing a mask as a societal benefit isn't as important as their slight inconvenience.
It seems, based on observing reality, that the greater good is far more ingrained. That's why things like public schools, post offices, animal rescues, ambulances, and fire departments are so common and tend to function relatively well.
I see some validity to the argument that "it's all about me" is perhaps gaining ground on "greater-good" but it seems clear that "greater-good" is still the majority.
We're all in this together. Failure to sympathize with childfree people is a problem. Resentment for that failing is not.
I don't have a great solution. This is hard on everyone but in completely different ways. I'd be happy to compensate for my lower output with a pay cut to be given to those who are pulling the load for me. It would take away some guilt at not putting out what I'm used to. But I would need that pay cut to come with an understanding that it's an exchange for less responsibility.
However, it still demonstrates an unsurprising failure to properly empathize with childfree people.
Implicit in this solution is the assumption that childfree people need to justify their value for equal access to personal time off to people with entirely different (and more orthodox) personal values.
The best solution would be to give everyone the option to take extra time off with partial pay redistributed to active team members.
Childfree people aren't a hegemony with the same values and problem as people with children. They have more diverse values, or lack of values, and more diverse problems intensified by a pandemic which shouldn't need to be justified to coworkers with different personal priorities.
Have you considered, for example, the daily impact of a pandemic on people who derived meaning in life from time with friends and activities they can no longer see and enjoy? You might not think these are important as children (and if those people had children they might agree). But the fact is that they don't have children and these are the most meaningful things in their life. For them, their children may as well have died in the pandemic.
You won't hear them express this because it's terribly unorthodox. But it's true. Equal access to equal benefits matters.
Why should I give up my social life and free time for someone else that has kids?
Why should I do more work so they can take time off to care for their kids?
The way I see it, having kids is optional in life. They knew or should have known the added responsibilities for when they had kids.
https://www.workplacefairness.org/marital-status-state-law
https://www.abetterbalance.org/resources/family-status-and-c...
It is your decision.
Isn't it more selfish to expect preferential treatment, privileges and time off just for having kids?
> Kids are the ones who will be working when these people retire (whether by then they have children of not).
Yes and won't the retired child-free people be paying for the work these kids provide? Or are you saying these kids should work for free to provide for the retired child-free people?
> Society depends on new generations and so I don’t see a problem if parents get a small advantage.
Well then you are free to give most of your paycheck to them. But why insist or force others to sacrifice?
I don't have a car. Get rid of the roads.
I'm not old. Get rid of social security.
I live in a neighborhood with a security force. Get rid of the police department.
So you don't have a car. Should you pay for other people's car maintenance? Should you pay for other people's gasoline and the gas tax? You do know that the gas tax pays for the roads right? If you don't have a car or drive, you don't pay to build or maintain the roads. Car owners pay for it via the gas tax.
I don't have a kid, but I have to pay for your kid? Is that the logic? How about people pay for their own kids, cars, homes, etc? Fair?
> I'm not old. Get rid of social security.
People pay for their own social security. You don't pay for my social security, I don't pay for yours.
I don't smoke, so fuck anyone that needs lung cancer treatment.
I don't drink so fuck anyone that comes to ER with alcohol poisoning.
I work out, so fuck anyone with back/wrist/whatever problem from being sedentary.
I have friends and go out, so fuck anyone with depression/anxiety.
I have a car, so fuck anyone that takes a bus/metro.
I have two working legs, so fuck any ramp for wheelchair users.
I have enough money so fuck all the old people (and younger ones getting there) on social security.
Fuck, I am strong and crazy enough, so fuck anyone that thinks they should be able to walk at night and not be beaten up/robbed. Fuck them right? How much do you even lift bro?
Being selfish is the number one problem in the world today, the lack of empathy, understanding of others situations, is bringing this world to a dark dark place, and unless we (or most of HN readers) understand that and be in a privilege position to try and change that, we will see everyone going even more into a dark path,
This same problem exists with every preferential policy (group policies, welfare, etc.) -- if society doesn't agree on the difficulties encountered by X group (or worse, sees people cheating the system in some way [1]), resentment triggers AND work productivity drops. See also problems with communism.
> would not be scoring employees on job performance for the first half of 2020 because there was “so much change in our lives and our work.”
This gets.. a bit problematic, as it is reducing the incentive for the people who did put a lot in. While the article notes everyone gets a higher bonus, it's unclear if this can result in promotions not happening for people who worked more hours during H1 -- that would trigger lots of resentment if it's the case. A more middle-ground approach might be setting a floor to ensure no one gets fired over weak productivity during covid, but still nonetheless rewarding those who put in more work time.
There's also a deeper question of whether it is the state's responsibility to cover parental leave or individual companies. Most other parents with this predicament had to rely on the state (take unpaid leave - and collect UI)
[1] Anecdotally, I have known people taking long paternity leave to use the time as much for childcare as to figure out their next start-up.
What about people taking care of parents with Alzheimer's? Do they not deserve the leave? I assure you that a parent with Alzheimer's is WAY harder than a child. In addition, the child will eventually get easier; Alzheimer's just gets worse.
The problem is "too little leave for everybody" not "extra leave for parents".
The solution is to set the leave amounts at a fixed amount that accommodates almost everybody. If parents have to burn that to take care of children, so be it. They made that choice.
That's a great angle. Absolutely agreed, caring for young children is basically a second job.
I've seen my brother tried to "work" with his kids at home. It's stressful. It's a mess. It's HARD. Many of these people seem to think the parents are getting extra "time off." 24/7 child care is not a freaking vacation. Kids are great, but kids are kids. You can't just ignore them or turn them off. There's not much you can do when a baby is throwing a tantrum and demands attention.
Think you are working hard because you're working 20 hours a day? Imagine spending 20 hours a day working but getting very little done because you are a parent and getting constantly pulled out of your focus zone and context switching from "worker" mode to "parent" mode.
If this is the thinking that our society is teaching the new work force, I fear for the future of our nation. Japan has already experienced the "not raising a family because it jeopardizes my work life" and they are NOT having a good time.
I recognise my younger self in that. How stupid I was!
Bringing up kids is the most important job in the world, and employers have zero loyalty.
Do your eight hours, or however much you need to support your outgoings, and then focus on the important stuff.
Edit: This applies whether or not you have kids. Your employer being understaffed or having unrealistic goals is not your problem.
What is it about the modern world that makes children act like starving cats all the time? Is it the sugary diets? Is it the overstimulation from media? What the heck changed in the last hundred years or so?
Example, if you let a baby cry at night it will usually stop crying after a few weeks.
Once kids hit ~7 years old it used to be normal to let them wander around the house and neighborhood unsupervised. In most unwesternized countries it still is.
That's how the average family has 6+ kids in some countries. They're only actively caring for a few at a time.
Taking such a relaxed view to parenting in the west would get your kids taken away
aside from that, older kids took care of younger kids, neighborhood groups took care of children together, older relatives who could no longer do hard work supervised the children...
if your work requires focus like writing or programming, then kids are a disruption and you can't do it.
also once factory work was developed, schools for everyone were built too, those developments happened at around the same time.
Also some other reasons:
1. Probably there was more general family help with children - grandparents/town/etc was more involved.
2. For kids that were a bit older, they were effectively part of the workforce - apprenticeships, farmhands, etc.
3. Probably, it was more safe to let kids wander around in many cases - cities are particularly complicated, what with streets full of cars and just generally unsafe areas for kids. In a small town, or a family farm, you could let toddlers run around a lot more.
It is unfair to offer arbitrary benefits to people with children, and then compensate them the same amount as people who are doing more work.
That’s a “I chose to to do something I knew would take up a lot of time, I want work to give me time off to do that, but I also want work to continue to pay me as much as anyone else, including those people who are doing more work”.
P/maternity leave is one thing, arbitrary benefits from that point on is clearly unfair.
If I choose to sign up for 40 hours a week of volunteer work on top of my normal work hours I don’t get to ask for additional time off benefits from my employer, even though my volunteer work is likely to benefit far more people than just my immediate family.
Yes. That's why parents will get before and afterschool child care, daycare, find a relative, or hire a babysitter to take care of the child(ren), etc. so that they can work. When most if not all of that is taken away, then what do you expect?
Also, keep in mind that other than a relative or public school, you usually have to pay quite a bit of money for these services, but I don't see parents arguing that they should be paid more to compensate for those additional expenses so that their income after expenses is comparable to those who don't have children.
However, what about the person who is caring for someone (perhaps an unwed partner friend) with mental illness worsened by the pandemic? Taking care of someone with severe mental illness (e.g. suicidality) can also be extremely draining and time consuming, yet there are almost always 0 official leave benefits for those sorts of situations. And even caring for an elderly parent or sick non-immediate family member tends to receive less support compared to many parental leave policies.
Paid time off for whatever reason is a benefit you and the company negotiate for. If the company decides to grant parents time off that non-parents don't get that's fine. That's just the company's opening position when they're negotiating with people who are parents, in much the same way that people who drive to the office might negotiate for a parking space or people who have a long commute might negotiate more hours working from home.
What you get in return for your hours is basically nothing to do with other people, and what they get is nothing to do with you.
Still, most of what GP said is still true. People negotiate for their salary and benefits, and paid or unpaid time off is a big part of that (6 weeks paid time off is common in IT).
That of course means better negotiators tend to get better deals. If you don't like that there are places with collective labor agreements, with wages set entirely though negotiations between company and union.
There's also no minimum paid hours, only a minimum hourly wage; which is below the poverty line even for someone fortunate enough to work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks in a year without end.
If employers had more to lose from commiting to an offer of employment, like they do in Germany, then employees might have room to negotiate. The reality is that only a few very exceptional people have that luxury.
The point is when you leave literally everything up to the market as the GP appears to be in favor of then you end up with a bunch of $5 wage slaves who've never heard of a vacation and a well financed class of financiers with boats who help arrange to finance the whole thing. Once you have social programs and policies that insulate from those kinds of things, then sure let people negotiate for additional perks they want.
"I'm taking PTO and I don't need to justify it or tell anyone why" should be the process.
As your co-worker or manager, I don't need to know that you or your kid or your dog or your parent is sick, or if you're really just sick of working and need some time to zone out.
If someone is taking so much PTO that their work suffers, address it in private with HR.
> We’ve added more support for all of our employees and encourage everyone to have open discussions about the challenges they’re facing
Please don't.
I don't need to hear my co-workers sob stories, and I don't want to burden them with mine. And I certainly don't want to feel compelled to overshare.
Offer private counseling through HR or the health plan.
Being kind goes a long way in not just being empathetic, but also in keeping employees retained. Everyone, at some point, will face issues that will drag on their performance. I hope I’m extended the same grace eventually.
> As your co-worker or manager, I don't need to know
That came off harsh, particularly when I said "as a manager", but the key word there is need.
I mean that we shouldn't feel compelled to justify why we need to take advantage of our already unlimited PTO - particularly laterally, to teammates - and that not revealing those details should be the default.
Confiding in a manager, mentor, close work friend, and definitely to HR is fine.
But encouraging and thereby creating an expectation of oversharing across all levels just seems like a recipe for disaster.
A likely end result being employees resenting one another for taking time off for reasons they don't think are "serious" enough, or feeling like their need or desire to take time off is unjustified because their personal situation isn't bad compared to their co-workers'. And people who don't want to share now feel antisocial for trying to keep their personal and work lives separate.
If we want to normalize the act of taking time off, imo we'd be better served if everyone just took their PTO without explanation and let HR handle coordinating extended time off for life events.
I guess it's similar in Finland.
For people who had family, at least for some of them, it wasn’t practical to make use of it.
Now that pandemic has reversed the table...
For us dinner was provided as a courtesy in case we worked late. Some younger people stayed for it every day; it’s true that only a few parents did that (ones with bad commutes waiting for traffic to die down). But there would also be random other parents who happened to work late that day, maybe half the time.
However, I deserve all the same benefits even though I don't have children.
My goal is to eventually have children. In that sense, even just the time and resources I spend dating, making myself more desirable to a life partner, and seeking a life partner is exactly as important as the time and resources you spend caring for your child, because in order to have a child like you I need time to prepare myself to have child.
Life is complicated. I have many family issues, as well as mental and physical health issues that require just as much time and resources to take care of as you need to take care of your children. My needs are not less important, less complicated, or less time consuming than your child-rearing related needs.
When I see parents implying that as a childless person I'm spending all of my non-work time relaxing at the pool, I can only say that I wish that were true. Not that there's anything wrong with spending all of my free time relaxing at the pool. If I could, I would. Even then, I would deserve all the same benefits as someone who didn't choose to or can't do that.
We should not discriminate against people with children. But we also should not discriminate against people without children.
I work for a great company with top-tier parental leave benefits like these. But if my non-married partner fell back into major depression and required constant suicide watch as they have in the past, while I’m sure my management would be supportive I’m aware of 0 official leave policies that would support me.
So much for caring about others. As someone who doesn't have children, this still sounds really selfish of them to complain. Instead, the childless should petition HR for a complementary benefit (additional PTO) when the pandemic is over or a bonus (cash) now for picking up the slack. Complaining without solutions will fall on deaf ears
I've gotten paid out twice for my PTO and one of them actually happened to be a "hip start-up" who didn't believe in "unlimited PTO".
$currentEmployer is announcing with rolling it out next year, they themselves are a rather boring healthcare systems provider.
Maybe the difference lies in how the two of us define ‘hip start-up’, though.
Well that’s pretty beyond the pale. What’s going on with your coworkers is not your business (other than whatever personal/professional relationship you're maintaining). If 1 worker taking leave is putting undo strain on you, that’s a business problem. Go tell your manager that he needs headcount and then go do your job.
This is a root-level issue that cyclically results from & continues the uneven benefits. When workers spend time slap-fighting with each other, it makes it even easier for management to means-test benefits like this
This is the actual calculus; it’s not the companies role to ensure or subsidize child care. It’s a societal problem that both parents are expected, indeed required in a lot of cases, to work. Everyone should vote appropriate to their belief in November!
Explicitly, the choice for working parents is for one parent to quit. Single people or couples with no school age children don’t face this choice.
Parents with more time off will (could) have better educated children and thus make life better for everyone.
Taking care of kids isn't a luxury it is something everyone should see as a fundamental human goal.
A while ago I was talking with some aquaintances about maternity leave and since we were already talking about work it struck me: if I was forced to take 1-2 years off work completely now that I'm not even 30, all of a sudden, it would be pretty much catastrophic for my career. My skills would get mostly outdated given how fast the industry evolves (thank you kubernetes) and I would probably fall a bit out of touch with dealing with coworkers and stuff.
I then thought about some of my female colleagues and other female workers I know and how much could they struggle in the future or have struggled in the past.
A lot of things started to make sense. I though back to when I was on call an was frequently called in the middle of the night, and how newborn children are probably[0] way heavier on parents.
And it kinda dawned on me how important is, often, to "pick up the slack" for other people.
So yeah... After these kind of realization my opinion changed a bit. I agreed already with most work-life balance policies but I hadn't had such a strong realization. I now think that it's a good thing that companies allow parents to take time off and deal with both work and personal/family time. Actually, companies should be encouraged/forced to do so on a regular basis. I also think that if you don't agree with me you're piece of shit and you should really go fuck yourself with a cactus.
I don't have children of my own now, but I might have in the future. It should really be our background priority to work for better working conditions across all the industry and across other industries too. If you don't want to have children then it's fine (it's your life, do whatever you want) but you're an asshole if you think that everybody should march at your own pace just because you took that decision.
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[0] i'm writing "probably" just because i haven't had kids of my own yet, so i don't really know what i'm talking about. I can imagine, but I don't really know.
Except ... it doesn't. There's plenty of stories about people who took substantial time off before coming back to software development who say there wasn't much real change.
There's substantial churn, absolutely. How many popular web frameworks have there been? But substantial change that would be catastrophic for a career? No.
As one reference point, the list of topics to study as background before going to a tech interview hasn't really changed much in a long time. That knowledge doesn't disappear after a year or two.
As another reference point, Sweden has 480 days of parental leave where 90 days is exclusively for each of the parents. Many people in software development take over a year off, without it being catastrophic to their career.
Finally! In my whole career so far, I could maybe name you about 2 frameworks that I'm both a) actively aware of and b) know when would be a good idea to use. I have not struggled to find work.
What I consider to be _real_ skills, such as knowing how to work to a deadline, prioritise, work with difficult people, research, communicate, knowlege of good coding standards some good solid fundamental CS understanding, only seem to improve with time.
I'm not saying to stop being curious about whatever floats your boat, but it's not like you're going to miss out on 'the next big thing' by sitting out a year (or, in the case of some of the best engineers / managers I know, moving careers for a decade).
I honestly don't see the point in bothering with childcare if they're old enough to be in school. They've either got homework, they can engage in some free play around the neighbourhood, or they can just play on their own. Paying someone hourly to watch over them as if they were made out of glass is just going to infantalize them further.
Older kids can do online classes on their own somewhat; younger kids? nope.
the kids also do not understand that parents being at home doesn't mean that they don't have to work.
Is my neighbor's kids going to look after me when I get Alzheimers? I imagine not. I'll have to live with whatever service I can afford with my retirement account. For the childless, it's a choice they make to prioritize present comfort over future security. Parents are making the opposite tradeoff, but expect the childless to subsidize their present loss in time/money/leisure. How does that seem fair?
Exactly the point. If the supply of labor is sufficiently reduced due to a reduced population of able bodied people, your retirement capital will not go far.
To clarify my comment, I wasn't discussing the intergenerational support between related peoples but the intergenerational support provided via any source but conventionally by the marketplace through care homes.
Anyone seen stats or have input on that?
School closed, extra scholar activities canceled, not allowed to meet friends, working parents.
And then some childfree employees complain that the company allow parents to take care of their own children because no one else will?
Pretty selfish take...
1) For parents that have excessive obligations to their children outside of work it makes sense for the company to provide them additional time at this time to ease that burden. The time off is not a vacation.
2) For employees that do not have children (possibly by conscious choice) they feel that it's offensive to be forced to effectively do more work so that their parent colleagues can take time off (regardless that the time is not a pleasant vacation)
I don't have a good opinion, I see validity in both sides. I don't see an easy solution because any benefit differentially applied to the childless would raise similar concerns from parents.
Mind you, I'm not arguing against the status quo here but just looking at both sides.
For example, if parents are given a bit of slack or simply have more sick days due to real life responsibilities, but project plans are not altered accordingly, are those without children feeling the pressure to compensate?
I have a suspicion this is a problem in companies where investors have expectations of quarterly growth, returns or exit plans, and not much of an outlook to create a healthy long term business.
Disclosure: Am manager, not parent.
The point is that there is, I expect, a strong inverse relationship between bitterness expressed by childless employees who don't receive paid time off their day job and the desire to volunteer to help others.
I can agree with this.
> That being said, these companies brought these problems onto themselves, by allowing internal message gripe boards and the policy that "all voices and opinions are valid."
So... In essence, your policy is that only people _you_ (or someone in the company) select have valid opinions? What if you're not in this category? Would you advocate it then? What if someone told you "Your opinion is invalid, nobody cares what you have to say?"
So how do you feel about maternity leave for pregnant women?
You can choose to have a baby or not, and I don't see why you should get special treatment at work because of that decision.
I understand meritocracy is an illusion at best, but it's an important illusion to maintain. If someone is pulling less weight, they should receive less compensation. They certainly shouldn't be rewarded for taking weeks or months off to work on on side projects, which is essentially what a baby is.
But maybe I'm just being harsh by thinking of children as side projects, and I should be more sensitive. Fine, let's say that having a baby is a medical condition. For any other medical condition, your options are burn all your PTO or go on short-term disability. Why should having a baby be any different?
yup, you definitely are. a lot, too.
> Why should having a baby be any different?
maybe because the society literally can't go forward without babies?
Technically true, but practically nonsense. We're at no danger of under-population. And if we were, it would be the government's job to subsidize having children, not Facebook's.
People who work in tech and choose to have babies are doing it as a luxury, not to push society forward.
So now having babies is a luxury. Jesus christ this is so wrong on so many levels.
Sure, maybe technically in some way, but absolutely not in any meaningful sense.
I'm not saying that FB employees need to have babies to keep society going, I said that everybody needs to have babies to keep society going.
This entire article is hard to read and honestly a little cringe. I know the millennial gen catches a lot of flack for supposedly acting entitled, but this sort of thing does not help.
Most millenials are now old enough to have both kids and a job.
Actually, millennials are probably in the age range where kids are not old enough yet to take care of themselves.
I don't think this is a millennial-only thing. And by the way the article does not mention the word "millennial" even once.
And yet the majority of people at those companies vote for leftist economic policies that do that very same thing.
(I'm stating this based off of my experience in the UK only)
And you’ve decided that the people complaining about the new corporate policies are the same that vote for leftist economic policies, rather than the minority who you claim don’t support them?