I've heard a related thing about US workers resenting colleagues for taking paid time off for similar reasons, and it's just as weird to my European eyes. The difference a decent labour movement (or the legacy of one) can make to industrial relations is stark
If a team can’t handle someone losing velocity due to the challenges of parenting during a once in a century pandemic, then it needs new leadership, period.
The second part of comment is asinine trolling. No one is ready for once-in-a-century thing by definition. If once in a century flood leaves the team stranded and water still does not drain away after 6 months it has nothing to do with management. There are no continuity plans for disasters that keep happening for such a long time.
Employers should pay for the amount that humans are capable of putting out on average in the long run, which is probably not the same as a neat number like 40hrs a week. Pretending that we can ignore human limits and ask for more is not only a recipe for burnout, but probably not even in the businesses interest due to mistakes and retention concerns.
No, nobody saw a pandemic coming, that wasn’t even my point. My point is that not expecting people to slow down during this is genuinely stupid, and any company (that can work remotely) that can’t handle that change in velocity isn’t well led. It doesn’t take a once in a century pandemic for a team’s availability to change; all it takes is a key developer leaving, someone having a child, or even a car wreck to suddenly pull employees out of the regular rotation. All plans should have error bars on them to compensate for these uncertainties as best as possible; the answer is not to expect the remaining teammates to pick up the slack to avoid missing a deadline that very well might be arbitrary, especially if it’ll cause resentment or burnout among your other employees.
If you give a tax rebate to anyone who's last name starts with A, are the other people not allowed to be annoyed, given that they have to pay more taxes to make up for the rebate?
"Why can't you just be happy for the A people?" feels weird.
Just pay those not taking time off for the time they would've taken off. It's not a complicated concept, it shows appreciation for them working harder than they'd need to if their colleagues were around.
In your “tax rebate” example you should be upset with whoever decided to issue rebates in that way, not the people who received the rebate.
I'll take Things That Will Never Happen for 500, Alex.
> In your “tax rebate” example you should be upset with whoever decided to issue rebates in that way, not the people who received the rebate.
Or you could point out that it's unjust to favor some people in that regard, which everyone would do, and the receivers of the tax break would report feeling a growing resentment over their privileged treatment. Because at the end of the day, the taxes have to be paid. If some are cutting their taxes, others must step up.
I get it, double incomes are great, paying for child care sucks, and reducing hours sucks too (because less income), so if coworkers could just pick up the slack without compensation, that'd be great. But that's essentially just asking the colleagues to finance the chosen lifestyle.
I place the blame with the people you have worked for, though, not you.
You could just kill all of the people whose name starts with “A” or whatever but that still won’t get you the tax rebate. The people who made that rule would absolutely love it if you did blame the people who got the rebate though, because they’re the ones who should take the blame and if you ignore their role then they get away with it.
Favoritism isn't always some kind of hidden "divide and conquer" system. Sometimes it's just favoritism. And nobody wants to kill all the tax-rebate people, they just want the tax rebate reversed (or applied to all tax payers) so everyone pays their fair share.
Exactly as how the government would be to blame in the ludicrous tax hypothetical (which falsely compares an accommodation with a benefit).
That's exactly what I would expect to happen in my company. We do weekly sprint planning, and we assign work to each person based on how many hours they have to work that week, not based on the team's needs in a given timeframe.
If they have to cut salaries because they spent all the money on magic beans do you get mad at the beans?
When the company continues to produce the same output, their salaries are the same, they get their equity bonus, and undoubtedly they expect their promotions not to be affected, what are they losing?
"I can't do this weekly midnight call" should really be enough. That makes things better for everyone: it means the people without kids can also say they won't attend, even if that's because they've got something planned in a bar. Adding in the details of kids is because the labour relationship is already wrong.
Covid has surely shown that when required to companies can suddenly be incredibly flexible in all sorts of ways that were "never happen" before. This "you must work for us at midnight too" is just another example.
(This is all-too-similar to how people sometimes still talk about accessibility requirements. "The self-righteousness of people demanding ramps everywhere! We already added a lift from the back alley basement entrance which usually works, and that hurt profits that month. They knew the building was like this when they took the job")
At the end this comes down to - some people are providing more value and want to be compensated appropriately; or more specifically some people are now providing less value and don't want their compensation to reflect that.
The game is rigged in the favour of the employers here, and it's so cleverly rigged they have employees blaming each other.
The only people taking midnight calls should be those who are willing to, and who are appropriately compensated for it.
Why are you assuming it's not that?
I don't have any but seeing how difficult it is for friends right now who do I am perfectly fine with picking up some extra work.
I wish we could stop treating this like an individual issue, as we do everything nowadays, which is probably why we're getting so screwed by this virus to begin with.
That’s cool. Seems like not everybody agrees with you
> I'm perfectly fine with working more than people with children right now,...
At the end of the day, everyone's human, so there should be a little bit of slack in the staffing - long term - so that when someone's unavailable, nobody is drowning.
I once as a very junior programmer asked a lead why we kept planning 75% of our capacity every month when we were hitting - and exceeding - our deliverables like clockwork.
Then one month we had to do a death march to build features that had some $$$ tied to them. Did I ever learn why a little slack was critical.
Besides, I am talking about a drop in output for a given employee, so the comparison to other employees is pointless. If my productivity dropped by 25%, I'd hear about it pretty quickly, and I doubt my explanation would matter much in my performance review.
Never seemed okay for non-smokers to take these breaks in the Army
I don't think this has to be explicitly stated.
Not necessarily due to just the parental policies, but I do believe Covid negatively affected my career progression as someone in my early career. I wouldn’t take my anger out on parents and would instead direct it at my company’s policies (and not just regarding parental leave). But I can see why someone might see others on their immediate team “benefitting” from the pandemic - not that they truly are, but that they are doing less work directly for the company - and take out their frustrations on them
I, personally, wouldn't work overtime regularly without overtime pay. I've worked three software jobs when overtime was needed the overtime was paid. I also don't make SV-level salary though.
If the problem is chronic isn't that a stronger indication that you're facing a management problem?
It's a global pandemic, by definition it's not a chronic problem.
I mean, look, we had this problem solved. That's what public education, daycare facilities, child care contractors, grandparents, etc... are for. And this system worked. And it's been disrupted.
That loss is real, but it's not the parents' fault that the pandemic happened either. Why should they be (per your analysis) the ones to bear the costs of the disruption to their particular (and extremely common!) lifestyle?
Every place has its particular culture, I guess.
Im writing next part as a parent of two.
We have in team people who take multiple days off due to taking care of children, often not even counting it as taking a day off. Management doesnt care and expects people who do not “exploit” their privilages to do work for 2-3-4 people.
Its also not the way to go, but any comment about that is a hard “stop being so selfish”.
What to do in such a situation? Start doing the same to make company bleed money while frozen?
My team is really struggling with the challenges that have come along with this global pandemic. Everyone is doing their best given the situation, but we aren't able to deliver the same level of productivity on a consistent basis. Can we setup a call to discuss adjusting expectations and shifting workloads in order to keep everything running as smoothly as possible?
Sincerely,
pojzon
There is an email template for you.
I will remind you that this is what kicked off the conversation. Forcing a pay cut on people who can't reach their normal level of productivity is a perfectly reasonable choice. To do it during a global pandemic if the survival of the business is not on the line is a choice that lacks empathy and compassion, but it is a choice that management can make. At least then it will be clear who is at fault for the decision. Refusing to do anything and letting your employees fight about it amongst themselves due to your own lack of management initiative is a cowardly way to lead.
(Then you load up the "Who's Hiring" thread from last week on this site and line up a few juicy offers)
So why offer such a thing to management?
Out of curiosity, why is "just don't" not an option. You do what work you are capable of, maybe push a little harder because we're all pushing a little harder, and that's that. Things don't get done because there's less manpower doing it (people taking time off for kids; people taking time off for sickness; people working less efficiently because they're now working on the kitchen table etc).
Everyone takes a hit because of covid; that includes parents, non-parents, AND companies.