Confessions of a Pregnant CEO | Hacker News Reader

Confessions of a Pregnant CEO

fortune.com

As a male, I found this horrifying to read.

I'm planning to be CEO of a company, and I'm planning to have a child with my wife in the next two years or so. I intend to take a month or 2 off with her to tend to her and my future newborn's needs. I have 2 years to plan for that, so I will build the company to ensure that I'm covered to take that time off.

By virtue of circumstance, I will never understand what a mother has to deal with in these circumstances, trying to balance work with family. I also don't need to take extended time off to recover. But it's scary to me to think that women feel the need to make these types of sacrifices, and not take care of their family.

If the author feels her company is more valuable than her child, that's her choice. But I intend to build my company so that every employee, including my co-founders (one of whom happens to be female) can expect full maternity leave, without pressure from our company. You should be able to take care of yourself and your family, without having to worry if your company is ok, or if your job is still there.

Truly astounding that people are ok with this practice. I get that it's more difficult being CEO of your own company, but it's still horrifying to me.

Agree that the read was horrifying based on my family's experience, but we should try to reserve judgement because as males we won't ever have to make quite the same decision that the author made. I doubt the author "feels her company is more valuable than her child". I think more likely she just wound up in an impossible situation. Also, keep in mind that people can't always perfectly time when a pregnancy will begin/end.

In addition, if she is a good CEO she probably feels responsible for her employee's well being. They're not her children nor are they helpless infants, but it is another responsibility that each person values differently in her position.

FWIW, I am a woman and I was a full time mom for many years. Here is my comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8732852

This comment touches on an important issue. Hypercompetition at work[1], in other words, leads to local, not globsl maximization.

[1] You stop to tie your shoelaces and someone will subtly hint your contributions to the company are in marked decline this quarter. etc

> as males we won't ever have to make quite the same decision that the author made

Millions of men--gay and straight--all over the world take care of their children by themselves, and face exactly the same choices the author does. So why anyone would ever suggest that men don't face these choices or have to make these decisions is entirely unclear.

Men are parents too. Many men are single parents. Many married men are as or more involved in care-giving than their partner. We are in a minority, but times change.

Fifteen or twenty years ago I was frequently the only man at the pool or the park with small children. Today I'm gratified to see lots of young men--often heavily tattooed and looking like they'd happily go a few rounds with a grizzly bear for fun--out with their wee ones.

One day we might even imagine a world were everyone doesn't assume that simply because I'm a man I don't know how to change a diaper or cook a nutritious meal or comfort a crying child.

Men are enormously short-changed by this attitude that somehow we aren't and can't ever be the primary care-giver for our children. It diminishes us and limits our choices and pushes our lives into narrow, sterile, avenues.

I forgot about this perspective, and I'm glad you described, since it does resonate with me.

However, the fact is, we do not have the anatomy required to actually bear children. Everything you identified is certainly true, but there are definitely certain aspects to child bearing that are uniquely female in nature. Those are things that I can do my best to understand, but that's difficult being a male.

The parent comment to yours is certainly correct: a pregnant female is in a different position than a male parent. There are certainly parallels and similarities, but some things are unique to a mother.

"But it's scary to me to think that women feel the need to make these types of sacrifices, and not take care of their family."

Hmmmm ... the United States does not offer paid maternity leave. So if you needed the money, and weren't a CEO, you would have to go back to work anyway. She is making a choice, but for many other women the choice has been made for them. The US is the only developed country without laws providing paid maternity leave.

The United States doesn't _require_ companies offer paid maternity leave (at least at a federal level, some states do). That's not the same thing at all as not having maternity leave. Personally I think this is something which can be dealt with most effectively in employment negotiations, with perhaps some regulation at the state level.

Employment negotiations with a union, right? Hard to see how a clerk or factory worker would have enough leverage to get a fair shake.

And to me, that's barbaric. We're punishing women for following every animal's instinct to procreate. Men don't get equivalently "punished" when they have a child, women have to shoulder that burden. As a society, we need women to bear children. Why do we force her to choose between work and family?

In Canada, we provide 17-52 weeks of maternity leave for new mothers, depending on a few factors. Moreover, we allow for 15 weeks of paid leave for pregnant employees or new mothers, with another 35 weeks of 55% paid parental leave. [1]

In the US, up to 12 weeks of leave is allowed, but there are conditions and exemptions, one of which is that if you're a company of less than 50 employees, you don't have to allow leave.

From [1]: "If a mother has to rush back to work after giving birth because she cannot afford the lack of a paycheck, she may not be as effective at her job compared to if she was rested and had her family life settled."

I would rather have a kickass employee, male or female, be happy to come back to work after their home and family has settled.

If we hire in the US, I'd like to provide equivalent benefits to them as if they were in Canada. Hopefully I can make that happen, but that's an issue for future me to deal with since it's a long ways out.

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/ca...

> As a society, we need women to bear children. Why do we force her to choose between work and family?

That's not strictly true. We need some women to bear children, but we don't need nearly as many as currently do it. We have a shortage of many things on this earth, but human beings aren't one of them. Why should society be encouraging women to have children when it's objectively better for society if most of them don't?

Strict population controls, like China's one-child policy, are probably a step too far, but not encouraging parenthood seems like a reasonable middle ground.

I suspect the argument there is that not offering maternity leave discourages working women from procreating while there is no such disincentive for those not working. And so those often without the means of supporting a child will be the ones having the children.

Eh... while I agree that overpopulation (on a global scale) is a real problem, it is also true that most highly educated/industrial societies have problems with too few children being born. I seem to recall that the average needs to be around 2.4 children/family for population to not decrease.

The US overall might not exhibit the typical traits of an educated society (family planning) -- I've not looked up the numbers. But with poor social mobility, there would still be a problem.

As for looking at the issues from a global perspective: do we really think importing children from third world countries is a viable, moral and/or sensible approach? If not, the sane plan for the future, is to encourage sustainable family planning everywhere: more children in the rich/highly educated part of the world, better access to contraceptives etc in the poor/less educated parts.

> Men don't get equivalently "punished" when they have a child

How long is the average paternity leave for new fathers? Or are you suggesting that fathers don't have a right to paternity leave and thus raise their children?

Many states (e.g. California) do provide paid family leave.

Yes, they do. It is called Family Temporary Disability Insurance. More here: http://www.edd.ca.gov/disability/paid_family_leave.htm

Very well said. I am in a very similar position, although at least a few months apart, if not more. Just out of curiosity: where you will build your company, and what will the company do?

We're building the company in Toronto and SF Bay Area, and we're building an operating system for commercial buildings.

By virtue of circumstance, I will never understand what a mother has to deal with in these circumstances...

"By virtue of circumstances, I will never understand what a comet is like." <- said no one ever after we landed a robot on one.

This attitude is anti-intellectualism. It denies the ability to gain understanding about the world by gathering information and reasoning.

It's a bit scary that anti-intellectualism has become almost a social necessity when discussing many important topics. If intellectualism were permitted, I wonder what we might learn?

I was just trying to say that I have a penis, and because I don't have a vagina, I cannot bear children and experience the physical and emotional roller coaster that entails.

Of course I can do my best to gain understanding about it. That's why my wife is my life partner. She'll definitely do her best to make me "understand" it. :-)

Just FYI, being home around the first few months isn't that important. If I were doing it over again, I'd take the first few weeks off to help my wife, then a longer month or so when the baby is a little older (3-9mo).

Really the baby is barely conscious of its surroundings for the first 3 months. Humans have a 12 month gestational period, it's just they get pushed out 3 months early because otherwise our big heads wouldn't fit...

Exactly, and this is not something many first time parents would realise. Early on, your child is still developing sight so your opportunities to interact with them (besides nuzzling, helping your partner, etc) are quite limited. Your baby will be sleeping or feeding at the breast of your partner. You will be able to help out with nappy changes or bottle feeding from expressed milk, but other than that, your leave might be better saved for later months (or even years) when they can make out your expressions or grasp objects at least.

As a female and ambitious person whose first pregnancy wasn't at a "convenient" time, I totally get it.

I wasn't the CEO of the company I worked at, but Architect (and Director) and we were working on major overhaul of our product. My son was born right around the Release timeframe. All I could do was design and plan and prepare my team for any last minute emergencies. Like her, my energy levels in last 2 months also were not what I wanted. Everyone in my team had worked our asses off and I felt guilty of not being productive enough in last 2 months and being away right when they would need me if things went downhill. Many of the design decisions were mine and if things went wrong I did not want my team to be hounded by our customers and execs.

Being an employee who is responsible only for himself/herself vs. being responsible for a team(s) is different and if you were not able to time your absence in the right way, it feels even worse.

I have come to realize that our cultural norms have a big role to play in how we (females) treat ourselves. We don't expect/want any special favors at work, but we also expect ourselves to do everything our moms and grandmoms did. It's all about being able to figure out what makes us happy and work to achieve that. It took me a while but I know that I will be miserable if I did not work the way I do and that will not be good for my son either.

For me, it's dejavu again as I just learned today that I am 3 months pregnant. And I joined a startup 4 months ago, and we drafted up a release plan of our first major version to be 6 months from now. Go figure.

Why does it take getting pregnant before a CEO decides "Gee, maybe some flexibility at work would be useful?"

Do you mean like removing the ability to work remotely (Yahoo/Mayer)?

She's privileged to be able to do things like take off in the middle of the day to go the gym or set her own schedule with no meetings before noon and sleeping in and rolling into the office after lunch.

This reminded me that yesterday the leading newspaper on business news in Norway, Dagens Næringsliv, announced this years "gazelle winner" -- young companies/start-ups that have leapt ahead in terms of valuation/profit in the past (few) year(s).

The winner this time was Skye[1] a small SAP consulting company. The article[2] is sadly pay-walled (and in Norwegian) -- but the title reads "Would prefer to hire pregnant [women]". In the article, the (male) CEO states that mothers of young children are great at getting things done, and at being organized (by virtue of necessity). And that making a "great consultant" takes three years and costs 1MNOK (~140K USD), and that the maternity leave (9 months) pass quickly.

Thought it might be an interesting anecdote, despite the inaccessible sources.

[1] http://skye.no/

[2] http://www.dn.no/gasellene/2014/12/09/2147/IT/vil-helst-anse...

FYI the article is now open, I'm guessing since it's from yesterday.

Is it me or have we put work too high up on our priorities? Think about it, one is not only an employee but, also a father/mother, a sister/brother, and son/daughter, a citizen, a friend and so much more. If work consumes so much of our time, when will we be able to take care of our social responsibilities?

My son-in-law is a start-up CEO. He took a couple of weeks of paternity leave after my stepdaughter had an emergency C-section, and in general has his productivity compromised by the demands of having a baby. So be it.

Admittedly, his company is doing fewer, bigger things than the authors' (earlier stage, B2B product). But were things different in that regard, I'm sure his plan would still be to delegate, to devote as much time to helping his team as he could, and to not beat himself up about participating less in the company than he otherwise would want to.

I also hope that my assumptions are eventually tested; I want him to have a hugely successful company and I also want more grandchildren! :)

The only thing horrifying in this story are the comments on this page. They indicate 0% comprehension of the challenges the author has overcome.

> If the author feels her company is more valuable than her child, that's her choice.

> Why does it take getting pregnant before a CEO decides "Gee, maybe some flexibility at work would be useful?"

> She's privileged to be able to do things like take off in the middle of the day to go the gym or set her own schedule with no meetings before noon and sleeping in and rolling into the office after lunch.

Founding a company is an all-consuming battle. The author is to be commended. She has achieved significant flexibility, and that can only have occurred through excellent staffing and management skill

She is choosing to pay other people to raise her children so she can pursue more money. Why is this commendable? Why wouldn't raising a family be more commendable?

A better quesiton is why she would attempt to do both at once. I delayed children by 20 years to be a startup founder, and I'm very happy about that. But that's her personal choice.

She's not working longer hours to increase her income. When you found a startup, the outcome is either zero, or something good. It takes 8-10 years to find out.

Deprioritizing family to pursue a gamble is even less commendable.

The problem for women is that they also have to deal with their biological clock. Unless they start a company in their 20s and then have kids in their 30s, it becomes difficult to make this decision.

I found her attitude sort of annoying. She tells women to ask for accommodation rather than suggesting what companies can do to be supportive of pregnant employees and why they should be more supportive.

We currently kind of ask women to choose one or the other: Serious career or motherhood. And it dooms lots of women to poverty for having reproduced and it means a lot of women who do have careers and are successful never have kids. And I feel like that's just a really, really terrible societal policy. It seems to me that it means our next generation is strongly skewed towards coming from the bottom of society. And we wonder why we have problems that seem unresolvable.

This is exactly why gender roles are so important. Even if a company had a generous 1 year maternal leave, then what? The kid still grows up without a mother for a significant part of the crucial years of growing up.

There is no way to balance the two, you either raise a kid right or you half ass it. You can't half ass a career if you intend to go anywhere and you sure as hell can't half ass raising a kid.

Are you suggesting that my mother did a half assed job raising me because she had a career?

You are at a disadvantage relating to and working with someone of the opposite gender compared to someone who had their mother around more often then not.

I don't see how that answers my question, nor do I see a citation.

Edit: I'd like to point out that my father also had a career. Does that put me at any disadvantage? Did he also do a half assed job raising me?

I didn't answer your question because I already answered your question in my original comment. Your response was your own cognitive dissonance.

As for the citations -- http://lmgtfy.com/?q=effects+of+growing+up+without+a+mother

I didn't grow up without a mother. I have an amazing mother who also happened to have a career. She raised me well enough to not turn out like you, and I can only hope to accomplish as much when raising my own children.

Holy cow. So if I understand you right, you're saying not only that a parent who keeps a steady job is effectively absent, but that for that reason it's important to assign people to one category or the other at birth?

If you're going to make me defend my point of view the least bit of courtesy you can do is read my comment properly.

Sorry, I'm struggling to come up with another reading of "This is exactly why gender roles are so important." I'd love for you to clarify.

If you believe in evolution, you believe that different genders have different traits that make them better suited for different aspects of life.

When you have a child, you make a choice that you will help raise it. You are responsible for another life and that IS your job. When you decide that you want to be responsible for another life but then make choices that directly contradict that like not being around for the majority of the day, you hurt the child's upbringing.

No matter what your reasons are, a child misses out on the growing experience that nature and evolution have designed. The reasons behind that decision may be unavoidable and I don't see the world in black and white but if you want to be a parent you should act like a parent to the best of your ability.

Okay, that's helpful. And do you think, or not, that means people should be classified as either workers or parents at birth?

No, people should have the right to choose. At the least being around sometimes is better than nothing.

Got it. So, if I understand what you're saying now, it should be fine if a mother wants to give birth and keep working while the father takes care of the child full-time?

In which case, I am sorry I overreacted. But WTH do gender roles have to say about this other than that some people who don't want to be parents don't have a choice?

I think there are countless people who manage to balance both with flexible or part-time roles, or assistance from childcare, extended family, etc. And for them and any others, maternity leave is a huge help when it's available.

If the mother is permanently at home while the father is 9-5, does the child struggle to relate to a respective gender as a result, even with your favouring gender roles?

I think there's little doubt that mothers are the primary caretakers of children in the early years.

Okay, for the record, as a former full time mom, I 100% agree that America in specific and the world in general need to do a better job of arranging life such that children are not so totally screwed over by the choices the world forces their parents to make. Having said that, I see no connection here to "gender roles" per se. That framing does suggest what others in this discussion have said: That you are saying that merely being born male or female should determine the answer here.

I am 49. I did the full time mom thing already. I have no desire to repeat the experience. I very much want a real career in my remaining years. I have two adult sons who have said they would help raise a child if I turned up unexpectedly pregnant out of wedlock and the father wasn't good enough in our eyes to keep around. I would also be okay with marrying a man who wanted to very much be a hands-on parent and not just some workaholic who paid the bills while not spending much time with the family. I am totally against spending the rest of my life only raising kids merely because I was born female. I did the right thing by my kids. I have a fantastic relationship to my sons. I deeply resent that life is currently arranged such that women get so screwed here. I very much wanted more out of life and did not get it. Men are generally not given the message that they can either reproduce or have a career. In fact, men are given the message that having a good paycheck is the thing that entitles them to get married and sire children. (Granted, the reality is that some fathers have very little relationship to their kids because they are at work all the time. See my point above about the world needs to do a better job here of helping parents do both. We need more options.)

Three years (give or take) from founding to first pregnancy. The startup is old enough, there should have been better planning and management in place to handle more than a four day maternity leave.

Specifically if the couple was planning for pregnancy, put the proper structure in place. As CEO, two plus years is plenty of time to get the company culture and working parts in place.

It's sad that she thinks "30 days of family bonding" is enough to be proud of.

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