

Yahoo is now giving eight weeks of paternity leave - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/marissa-mayers-potentially-revolutionary-paternity-leave-policy/275468/

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Samuel_Michon
Earlier discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633954>

Let’s not forget that 8 weeks of paternity leave is still way below what the
law provides in other countries, on average. Have a look at this graph:
[http://childrenschances.org/global-maps/parents-and-
children...](http://childrenschances.org/global-maps/parents-and-children/is-
paid-leave-available-for-fathers-of-infants/)

Paid leave from work for mothers of infants: Canada 50 weeks, Mexico 12 weeks,
USA zero.

Paid leave from work for fathers of infants: Canada 35 weeks, Cuba 40 weeks,
USA zero.

In several European countries, fathers get _3 years_ paid leave – that’s 20
times more than what Yahoo is offering.

~~~
greghinch
From an entrepreneur's perspective, those policies are scary. When you have a
company of 5 people, if you have to let one of them take 3 years paid leave at
some point, you might as well close the doors and cease operations.

~~~
purplelobster
I don't know where the 3 year figure comes from, never heard of anything like
it. More likely is that you'll see the father taking 2-5 months and the mother
7-10 months. The parental leave you have is also available during the first
few years, so many don't take the full duration right away. I also believe the
money comes from the state, not that the company has to pay during that time.

~~~
greghinch
I only know about the UK policies, where I believe the first few months are
covered by the state, but there is a period that the company has to cover as
well.

Also the money is only part of the problem; if you have 5 people in a company,
every one of them is a key, integral part of that company. Having one away for
7 months would be disastrous.

~~~
dagw
Ideally you'll get 4-6 month of warning, which should be plenty of time to
find some sort of arrangement. How much warning would you get if one of your
employees get headhunted by Google, burns out and quits or even gets hit by
that proverbial bus, and how would that be any different?

Contingency planning is a big part of running a company, and the question what
happens if one of my employees doesn't show up for work tomorrow, really
should be a question you can answer

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pavs
I like what she has been doing recently. One of the thing
Google/apple/facebook does good is that these companies make people talk about
them even when they are not actively trying to. Good or bad or whatever, but
mostly good. It gives the sense that they are still relevant still hanging
around doing things, trying new things.

When people are talking about you, most of the times, it means they care about
what you do. For the longest time nobody cared about what yahoo did, Marissa
is bringing back yahoo to the conversation again.

Something that was sorely missing with yahoo for a long time.

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orangethirty
I'm tired of the Yahoo policies PR fluff. When will we see any real software
changes? Its Marissa this, Marissa that. Enough. Show me something from the
Yahoo engineering team.

 _Edit_ This is also not groundbreaking or even new. The PR team is trying to
spin the shitty telecommuting change of policy with an improved
maternity/paternity leave. Not that an improvement is a bad thing itself.

~~~
greghinch
You mean like the Flickr, Mail, and Weather app updates?

I do hope you realize that building software takes time, particularly across a
large co. like Yahoo. The policy changes are immediate effects which help
formulate the company culture; the long term results are the products that
will show up in the coming months and years.

~~~
orangethirty
Those are just updates that were underway already. There has been nothing in
terms of software ever since Marissa took over. She has done a lot of policy
changes that have affected engineering. In a way that hurt morale. She has to
have them ship something new developed under her administration. That will
allow them to build trust between engineering and management. All I hear from
Yahoo hackers is that they don't trust her. Shipping code can help that.

~~~
m_darkTemplar
Still in school, but when I visited Yahoo! Headquarters for a recruitment
event everyone seemed to be in good morale. Of course it was for recruitment
so they would be showing the best, but people there seemed happy and I saw a
fairly wide range of offices. I saw changes to the food service in making it
free and higher quality (which I can attest was excellent), and they were
redesigning the offices while I was there, removing the cubicles and making a
more open layout that you see at a lot of newer tech companies.

Everyone I talked to legitimately thought that Marissa is bringing some much
needed change to the company as far as I could tell, and I spoke to mostly
software engineers, not PR people. Obviously opinions probably vary across the
company and it's fairly large though.

~~~
orangethirty
I talk to a lot of them through email and they are not very convinced of the
new management. They are just scared that she will go on a firing bent when
financial goals are not acquired. They won't cut the management fluff or even
take pay cuts. They will fire the people that write the code.

~~~
greghinch
Do they have any basis for those fears? I mean founded in her actions since
coming on board. Clearly past Yahoo policies would justify those fears, but I
don't see any signs that she would just arbitrarily cut engineering over
management to meet financial goals.

The one "negative" thing she's done since coming on board is cut remote
working, and I'm not convinced that was really so bad. Yahoo needed fix some
internal stuff about the culture, and it would be hard to do that when your
talented people are spread out all over the place. I agree that the management
fluff needs a serious trimming there, so hopefully by bringing all the
engineering talent in house, and theoretically trimming management, they can
adjust the culture to be more engineering focused, which is what everyone
wants.

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aidenn0
It seems in the US we are seeing a huge increase in inequality with regards to
presence of fathers. On one end, some fathers are becoming much more involved
in their children's life, on the other end it seems like I'm seeing more and
more single mothers where the father isn't present at all.

My intuition is that this gap follows socio-economic lines (i.e. lower-class
poor fathers are less present, while higher-class wealthier fathers can either
afford to take unpaid leave, or land a job with policies like this) but I
don't have any data to back that up.

~~~
w1ntermute
The 2010 census reported that 27% of children live with 1 parent.

> Not surprisingly, single mothers with dependent children have the highest
> rate of poverty across all demographic groups (Olson & Banyard, 1993).
> Approximately 60 percent of U.S. children living in mother-only families are
> impoverished, compared with only 11 percent of two-parent families.

<http://www3.uakron.edu/schulze/401/readings/singleparfam.htm>

~~~
aidenn0
Good to know;

Some math from that will partly answer my question (only partly because there
is likely a causal relationship where being a single parent increases your
chances of falling into poverty, so we can't say how much of this is "poor
people end up as single parents" and how much is "single parents end up poor"

    
    
                 Poverty | Not Poverty
        Single     16%   |   11%
        Not Single  8%   |   65%
    

So knowing that a child is in an impoverished household, you would say they
are twice as likely to have a single parent, whereas knowing that they are
not, then they are nearly 6 times as likely to not have a single parent.

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mpim
Facebook gives 4 months of paternal & maternal leave.

I really appreciate it being equal because then both men & women on my team
are absent for the same amount of time (and there's no stigma about taking all
of it)

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endtime
It's nice for Yahoos, but I don't know if it's revolutionary. I think Google
gives 7 weeks.

~~~
masklinn
And a number of european countries provide extensive paternity leave (Italy 13
weeks, Iceland 12 weeks) and/or shared parental leave (Estonia 62 weeks,
Germany 52 weeks, Iceland provides 12 weeks shared parental leave on top of 12
weeks exclusive for each parent, Luxembourg 2*26 weeks) possibly with
mandatory share to ensure the father will get to take some of it (in Norway,
parental leaves are 56 weeks @80% salary or 46 @100%, the mother gets 9
exclusive weeks and the father gets 12, the rest of the 25/35 weeks is shared
as deemed fit)

~~~
hko
I realize this is a subtle point but I think the more accurate verb in this
case is mandate rather than provide. I.e. countries don't provide
maternity/paternity leave; they require employers to provide it.

~~~
masklinn
It depends both the point of view and the country:

* to employees, countries provide parental or paternity leave, that this is through a mandate on the employer is an implementation detail

* a number of countries pay (either in part or in full) for leaves through their social security system, the employer involvement (aside from "normal" social charges and not having the employee during the leave) may well be nil

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mpr3
The most interesting thing is that now she can make company policy changes and
people engage in lengthy debates about how revolutionary (or not) each
decision is. This seems to be pretty important in positioning her has a strong
leader who is willing to do things that haven't been tried before.

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hrktb
This is of course good news. Now I'd really like to know how exactly this
policynis phrased, or at least look at an official yahoo statement, but this
article doesn't have non paraphrased source as well.

In a different branch of yahoo under some conditions, it was possible for any
new parent to extend parental leave (stay away from work but take a salary cut
during that time). There was also work hour arrangment or going down to half
time for up to one year and half if wanted.

I am curious about how the new policy affects various cases (the new mother
can't take care of the baby for e.g.). Or if t is really phrased in 'mother'
and 'father' terms, and not in more specific terms accomodating for different
combinations.

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mumbaidosas
I feel that it would be better if men and women got the same amount of leave,
12 weeks. Which in itself is not too long.

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jasonlingx
I wonder what their international employees get, particularly those in less
developed countries.

~~~
IndianEngineer
Not sure about yahoo, typically in India, women get 3 months of paid leave,
which can be extended by another 3 months of unpaid leave. Men typically don't
get much ( probably a few days if the employer is generous enough).

