

Confessions of a Pregnant CEO - beardless_sysad
http://fortune.com/2014/12/10/confessions-of-a-pregnant-ceo-3-ways-im-working-differently/

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HorizonXP
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.

~~~
kvanderd
"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.

~~~
HorizonXP
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...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-
business/careers/career-advice/maternity-leave-basics-canada-vs-the-
us/article4197679/)

~~~
curun1r
> 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.

~~~
e12e
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.

------
mystique
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.

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

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

------
cratermoon
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.

------
e12e
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/](http://skye.no/)

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

~~~
e12e
FYI the article is now open, I'm guessing since it's from yesterday.

------
gamesbrainiac
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?

------
CurtMonash
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! :)

------
paulsutter
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

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
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?

~~~
paulsutter
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.

~~~
HorizonXP
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.

------
Mz
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.

~~~
Diamons
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.

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

~~~
Diamons
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.

~~~
Diamons
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](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=effects+of+growing+up+without+a+mother)

~~~
idbehold
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.

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jmspring
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.

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

