Hacker News Reader

Comment by radicalriddler | Hacker News Reader

Slightly unrelated, but it says that Buffer gives 3 months of leave time to parents ANNUALLY. That seems a little bit excessive, and surely gives a little bit of bias against hiring parents for Buffer...

View on HN

So this may be very unpopular and controversial. I think as great as paid paternity/maternity leaves are for parents, it's a somewhat an indirect penalty against people who don't have children during their tenure. Those people are literally expected to work more hours and days for the same level of pay and responsibility, and if someone has multiple kids during their career it can really add up vs. someone who choose to not have kids.

I don't have an answer for it because I think giving time off to new parents are super important, but in the name of fairness, maybe X months per Y years "paid leave time" should be universally granted to all employees?

Meh. I mostly see it as a regression to the mean. Over the years, Silicon Valley has shown itself as being willing to bend over backwards to the young and childless, sponsoring conference tickets, corporate getaways to tropical islands, happy hours, etc. All of those things are a material benefit to a certain type of person in an earlier stage of life, but are of limited or negative value to a new parent.

It's funny if you think that paid time off for the new parent is "holiday", usually you come back of it way more tired (but you develop lot of new skills)

Think of it as a way to preserve the species. Or as a deep training session.

We really don't need to be incentivizing people to reproduce. The world isnt having a human shortage.

But you need to give incentive for parents to care and educate their kids. It comes with time.

As others hinted https://wanna-joke.com/parents-after-a-long-weekend/ is what just about every single parent will confirm.

And to expand on also hinted growth of skills. Having kids - gives one abundance of opportunity to practice growing others.

Obviously you won't be around your kids all the time, nor be there for them forever. So after initial "micromanagement" phase with babies. With toddlers and older you start switching towards mentoring and coaching.

Which overlaps (not specific things, but concepts) with managers/leaders growing employees.

FWIW I agree with you.

This may be a controversial or unpopular opinion, but if you are expected to work more because a coworker is unavailable you are bad at managing expectations and controlling your career. When a coworker is suddenly unavailable, you may need to switch priorities but you should never allow a company to tell you to work more to cover for them. Shifting priorites can be an effort or morale drain but these things can happen for a multitude of reasons regardless of coworkers and should be managed the same way regardless. If jane got hit by a bus or joe left the company would your project survive? In any scenario you are expected to pick up the slack, you should be making it very clear the terms necessary for you to continue to be successful and especially clear what isn’t going to get done by changing priorities. This is especially true for things like increased on call rotation. Making it clear that that will effect other things and that your time is not free is crucial for managing expectations.

> bias against hiring parents

How would you know?

Well of course I can't know, and I'm also not saying that it DOES, just that it seems like a likely effect. By the design of how businesses operate in a capitalistic environment (with a profit motive), why wouldn't this cause a bias for companies hiring parents?

What you're really pointing out is that it creates a disincentive to hiring parents. Whether there is a corresponding bias is unknown.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com