
Parents got more time off, then the backlash started - colanderman
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/05/technology/parents-time-off-backlash.html
======
Spartan-S63
I think this backlash is a microcosm for why our welfare programs are always
under attack and identity politics plays so well in our society.

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.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> 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.

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.

~~~
balfirevic
> I’ve worked at two companies that tried genuinely unlimited vacation
> policies.

I wish companies would stop using the word "unlimited" for this. It's
unspecified vacation policy, not unlimited.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
I debated calling it something else to avoid getting pulled into debates about
semantics.

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.

~~~
brandonmenc
> The problematic part of this equation is that “your work” isn’t a fixed
> quantity.

Deal with the discrepancy by rewarding high output.

~~~
sharemywin
How do you define high output. I remember I was in high school and there were
10 homework problems. I goofed off all day and everyone else worked on the
home work. They got 9 of them done. I got interested and solved the 10th. Had
I worked on the 9 problems with them I might not of even had the desire/energy
to look at the 10th.

------
rabeener
One way to solve this is to extend these types of benefits as a way for any
employee to help care for children. If you’re an aunt or uncle and want to
take time off to help care for your nieces and nephews, you should be able to.
That being said, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for employees complaining
about these specific policies. The entire world is in uncharted waters here
and these companies, as well as individual employees, are doing the best they
can with responding. As the article points out, these benefits aren’t meant to
be used for vacation, they were introduced as a way to help employees respond
to a sudden loss of childcare and the collapse of an education system. And to
anyone who thinks this is a vacation, I recommend spending a week in a
household with children who are unable to go to school while still trying to
get work done.

~~~
mc32
I don’t see why childless people are resentful of people who have more
responsibility and a harder situation.

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.

~~~
disown
> It’s selfish of them to be resentful.

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?

~~~
charlesu
I don't have kids. Get rid of the schools.

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.

~~~
disown
> I don't have a car. Get rid of the roads.

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.

~~~
charlesu
Pretty sure no one pays for their own social security at this point.

------
winenbug
This is insane. It's one thing to push for further recognition of folks who
have pulled more than their weight in support of their teammates — which is
deserved and I think the parents would not protest, but it's another thing
entirely to choose to express anger over teammates who are parents.

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.

~~~
jbob2000
Here’s what I don’t understand (childless person); How did parents get by for
thousands of years always having children by their sides?

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?

~~~
throwaway189262
In many respects, it's "modern" parenting behavior.

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

~~~
em-bee
letting babies sleep alone is a modern parenting behavior. kids mostly used to
sleep together with their parents before.

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...

~~~
ghaff
And women were typically in or around the home.

------
onion2k
The expectation that everything should be "fair" in terms of salary and perks
is nonsense, and how you end up with tiered salary and perks tied to job
titles instead of being able to drive your own deal when you're accepting a
job. Things probably should be in the same ballpark for two people doing the
same job but if one person gets a bit more thats OK.

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.

~~~
whatever1
For most of us a job is not a hobby. Also we don’t get a wide gamut of job
opportunities to make the selection based on the benefits. There is no
negotiation, there are only one-two job opportunities (best case scenario)
with the traditional take it as-is or leave option. This is why in the States
fresh graduates end up with almost no Personal Time Off. With no legislation
and no competition for talent (which is the case for most job roles), the
business owners will _ALWAYS_ F their employees.

------
brandonmenc
Most of these companies offer unlimited PTO so what, exactly, is the problem?

"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.

~~~
exotree
I would hope those who report to me feel comfortable, within certain bounds,
to make me aware of personal difficulties so I can manage up, downwards and
across—likely in the way of managing expectations rather than saddling folks
with more work.

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.

~~~
brandonmenc
Clarification:

> 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.

------
jerkstate
I also work at a big tech company who is equalizing their performance-related
bonuses this year. Before the pandemic, I went remote to a place which is not
impacted by the pandemic as much as Silicon Valley, so I have been able to
continue to make use of most of normal childcare facilities. During these past
7 months or so my output has increased as I put in extra hours to pick up the
slack of my colleagues who have had to deal with their life situations in
hard-hit areas, child related and non-child-related, while I am in an area
where life has continued relatively normally. Now I find out my annual bonus
this year will be capped to what everybody else gets. So this doesn't just
impact the childfree - it impacts SV expats as well.

~~~
CincinnatiMan
Question, in what manner is your work level impacted by your coworkers' work
level? This is different from where I work where if somebody goes on vacation,
we adjust our sprint capacity accordingly during our planning.

~~~
jerkstate
Having an oncall rotation with fewer people available means the available
people are oncall more often. Committments that are hard to slip for internal
political reasons means that those who are available to work pick up the
slack. Fewer people to spread the constant level of customer support load
over. Knowledge silos where you had an "expert" on subsystems and they are not
available but that subsystem needs a fix so someone new has to go in and learn
the system in order to fix it. I'm happy for you that your team does not
suffer any of these inefficiencies, but these are not uncommon in work of
certain shapes (SRE, for example)

------
harikb
When companies gave free lunch, dinner, breakfast, hair cutting, laundry etc,
weren’t those things favoring the young?

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...

~~~
closeparen
Why on earth wouldn’t a parent be able to eat the free lunch? Or drop off the
dry cleaning in a box at the office instead of a dedicated storefront along
the way? Or get their hair cut between meetings?

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.

------
TedShiller
As a childless person, I believe that parents deserve all the time off,
flexibility, and additional benefits for raising children. Good on them.

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.

~~~
rjfjsksuf
This. I don’t want to take away these benefits from parents, I just want to
ensure the employee who is caring for a relative/significant other/mental
illness/worsened living space/etc to also be supported.

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.

------
animationwill
> reflecting a sentiment voiced at several companies, complained that the
> policy seemed to put parents’ needs ahead of theirs.

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

~~~
mdorazio
Additional PTO at many companies is a joke because there's no mandate to
actually use it, and definitely no compensation for leftover. Usually the
opposite, in fact - the culture strongly encourages people to use as little
PTO as possible. Monetary rewards are really the only way people are going to
be ok with different treatment.

~~~
MacsHeadroom
California mandates paying for unused PTO.

~~~
mdorazio
Have you not worked in California? This is sidestepped by offering "unlimited
PTO" at every company I've worked at in the last 10 years. I can only think of
one friend here who actually got paid out for unused PTO.

~~~
wuunderbar
This is just very reflective of hip start-ups. A large amount of tech
companies (i.e., more established ones) have standard 15-21 day PTO accrual
policies.

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".

~~~
dvtrn
I choose to see your personal anecdote with my own, if you’ll appreciate it as
far as pleasant exchange will allow; the “unlimited vacation” model (or
“Flexible PTO” whatever we want to call it) seems to be becoming less of a
‘hip start-up’ thing, as experienced in my last two jobs-and widely becoming a
recruiting hook in even established enterprises: one was a boring as hell
telecom provider introduced it a year before I departed, the other was an
equally boring as hell real estate software vendor introduced it years before
my arrival.

$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.

------
awinder
“At Twitter, a fight erupted on an internal message board after a worker who
didn’t have children at home accused another employee, who was taking a leave
to care for a child, of not pulling his weight.”

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

~~~
alexpetralia
Agreed, these seems painfully obvious. Need to set boundaries.

------
marktangotango
> “A question that we might ask the employees who are feeling some frustration
> about their co-workers being on leave is what do you think is going to
> happen if that person quits?” she said. “You’re going to actually be
> stretched further.”

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.

------
byoung2
This debate has been going on since before the pandemic. Parents have always
taken sick days to care for kids, or show up late to attend parent teacher
conferences, or knave early to go to soccer games or school plays.

~~~
KindOne
The pandemic has been making it a lot more noticeable.

------
d0100
Parents are literally making the future of a society and of humanity. They
deserve more slack than single adults.

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.

------
znpy
It took me some time to fully understand that yes, sometime other people need
things that might appear as "preferential treatment" to other people. And we
should just STFU about that.

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.

\---

[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.

~~~
eesmith
> My skills would get mostly outdated given how fast the industry evolves

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.

~~~
alibarber
> There's substantial churn, absolutely. How many popular web frameworks have
> there been? But substantial change that would be catastrophic for a career?
> No.

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).

------
danmg
I grew up as a latchkey kid from the time I was old enough to go to school.

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.

~~~
usaar333
The most acute problem here is for parents with children age 2-5 getting hit
when daycares shut down.

Older kids can do online classes on their own somewhat; younger kids? nope.

------
erikerikson
Even the childless are benefited by the continuation of society that children
manifest. Parents pay far more costs than the childless in capital, time,
attention, freedom, happiness, et cetera. Having children is increasingly a
choice but replacement reproduction is also a requirement (although I could
imagine a world that would invalidate this, that is not our current state).
However, because it is a choice the argument that parents should take
responsibility for the consequences can seem sensible. At some point and scale
it gets entangled in everyone's well-being. Everyone able to make these
arguments has benefited from the sensible and self-interested arrangements
having been a child themselves. While I understand and have had the objections
myself, they represent a rejection of the deal we were all forced into: that
society will support us to grow in value and we in turn pull up the following
generations who will soon shoulder the load in their own middle lives when we
become more dependent on them for our care.

~~~
spider-sandlet
I realize that expectation for elderly care varies across cultures, but even
in industrialized Western countries, there's some expectation of adult
children taking care of their elderly parents. So the argument that we should
all pay for the next generation because we rely on them to take care of us
rings a bit hollow.

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?

~~~
erikerikson
> I'll have to live with whatever service I can afford with my retirement
> account.

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.

------
viburnum
A friend works for Microsoft in the Netherlands and apparently the way it
works there is everybody can dial their working hours up or down as they see
fit. When he had a newborn he worked 70%, then 80%, then 90%. Averaging a half
day once a week is enough for all the sick days and other child-related
emergencies.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It would be interesting, if it could even be measured, to see how productivity
varies over the variation in work hours. I'd guess for many it would go up as
you went down to about 80%. As in 80-95%+ attendance would produce more output
than 100% attendance.

Anyone seen stats or have input on that?

------
tilolebo
Did anyone in this thread try to see the situation from a child POV?

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...

~~~
gandutraveler
It's also a pretty selfish take to not talk about the other sides argument.

------
iaw
There seems to be two schools of thought in opposition here:

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.

~~~
spicyusername
Why are they doing more work? Their project planning should account for
available resources.

~~~
iaw
Maybe at some employers but what I've seen is deadlines moved forward because
of Covid and the need to adapt. So not only is there less staffing but more
work to do overall in a shorter period of time.

Mind you, I'm not arguing against the status quo here but just looking at both
sides.

------
bsg75
I wonder how often in "normal" companies (not FAANG), workloads shift to non-
parents due to typical inability of management to alter timelines along with
the realities of a situation?

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._

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tqi
NYT is really happy for any excuse to stir up controversy. This is not a tech
issue, and the gossipy minute by minute framing of this article is completely
lacking in substance.

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johnrob
Important missing detail: are the non parents being asked to do more work per
week specifically because parent coworkers are on leave?

~~~
iaw
Officially, no. in practice, yes when there isn't redundancy and schedules
need to be kept.

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diebeforei485
People without children should also get some extra time off. Perhaps not 10
weeks, but say 2-3 weeks.

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riverdweller
Just give the childless employees the same amount of time off on condition
that they use that time to go and help out in daycare centers, old people's
homes, or institutions for the disabled. They'll be racing to sign up, I'm
sure.

~~~
gandutraveler
Would parents go and help other orphans and volunteer for daycare? Why stop at
your own kids ?

~~~
riverdweller
Well, yes, some parents would. Some simply care about people more than others
do. It's a continuum. I know individuals who would gladly take the opportunity
of an employer paying them their normal professional salary while volunteering
in such places. All these people happen to have their own children (this may
be a coincidence, as I am old enough for most of my friends to have had kids
by now).

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.

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fortran77
I can understand the backlash. Perhaps the companies should allow people who
need more time to handle things time off with benefits but no pay or reduced
hours (work a 30 hour week) with a pay cut and full benefits for the duration
of the pandemic. This way nobody loses.

~~~
throwaway713
> The companies should allow people who need more time to handle things time
> off with benefits but no pay or reduced hours

So how do you feel about maternity leave for pregnant women?

~~~
anon9001
I'll take the bait. I feel bad about maternity leave.

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?

~~~
znpy
> But maybe I'm just being harsh by thinking of children as side projects

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?

~~~
anon9001
> 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.

~~~
znpy
> 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.

~~~
anon9001
You don't think wealthy professionals choosing to have 1 or 2 kids is a
luxury? Saying FB employees need to have babies to keep society going makes as
much sense as saying the family shih tzu is necessary as a guard dog.

Sure, maybe technically in some way, but absolutely not in any meaningful
sense.

~~~
znpy
One or two kids is not luxury. Having 16 kids, that's luxury.

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.

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ed25519FUUU
> _It wasn’t long before employees without children started to ask: What about
> us?_

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.

~~~
znpy
It's not completely fair to blame it on millenials as well.

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.

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briandear
Fascinating discussion and rather ironic. There are people at tech companies
that object to people that don’t have kids being forced to effectively
subsidize other people who “aren’t pulling their weight.”

And yet the majority of people at those companies vote for leftist economic
policies that do that very same thing.

~~~
ginko
The difference is that on the country level, subsidizing families to have
children is arguably in the interest of the state. That's not the case on the
company level.

~~~
briandear
And the difference is that if you don’t like a policy at a company, you don’t
have to work there. A bit harder to escape a country. But most often in these
cases, people want benefits but they want someone else to pay for them.

