
Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly? - johngorse
The other day I talked with a friend who is searching for a new job. His expenses got higher when he got a second child. He went to some interviews and he got an impression that he wouldn&#x27;t handle new job, because he doesn&#x27;t have free time like he used to for studying new frameworks and languages and work hours were from 9 to 6 (or 7). And he would love to spend some time with his family. 
Is your company family friendly? If it is, please help me build a list of companies who offer family friendly jobs.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1WcwFlqppHmLZ1kIqinqPedYjQpsfcGjCXTDF_4tuQEE&#x2F;edit?usp=sharing
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sparrish
I was working for a company that was moving from remote work to full-time in
the office. My former co-worker and I decided to start our own company so we
could stay remote and close to our families. I have 7 kids, he has 8 and we
both homeschool.

That was almost 6 years ago and I've never regretted it. If you value time
with your family, nobody is a better boss than you. It's not unusual for me to
shoot an IM over to my business partner that goes something like "Really nice
weather today. We're headed to the park for an hour or two."

~~~
usaphp
How do your kids adapt to social interactions with kids of their age, spending
24/7 with your family might be tiring and in young age there is a big
difference between 3 and 5 year olds, I think they need to interact with kids
of their age and different cultures to be better adapt in future life, that's
just my opinion, I might be wrong?

~~~
Mz
I am a former homeschool parent whose oldest will soon be 30.

You are entirely wrong. Homeschooled kids typically have stronger
relationships and better social skills.

~~~
jstandard
I'll need to make the decision about homeschooling in a few years. Do you have
any studies you can share that support that conclusion?

At face value, it seems more difficult to socialize children than at
traditional school with hundreds of daily social interactions from a wide
variety of backgrounds, personalities, and teamwork opportunities.

~~~
Mz
No, I do not have studies. Tokenadult
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tokenadult](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tokenadult)
might have something like that. He worked in public schools for many years and
ran/runs the website Learn in Freedom, one of the early pro homeschooling
sites ([http://learninfreedom.org/](http://learninfreedom.org/)).

My knowledge of this is rooted in having been involved in the online gifted
homeschoolers community. I was briefly Director of Community Life for The Tag
Project. [http://www.tagfam.org/](http://www.tagfam.org/) So, you can take my
word for it as a SME or you can contact Tokenadult and see if he can hook you
up.

I do think your assumptions are in error. Good socialization is not about a
wide variety of superficial relationships. It is about having positive
interactions that teach one what one needs to know. I do know that studies
show that kids who go off to boarding school do best if they figure out how to
artificially replace the natural family unit with a close group of caring
friends. But I don't have links to anything. That is just remembered off the
top of my head.

Best.

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beilabs
I once declined a job as it wasn't a good fit.

The company that I did go with had some great childcare attached with the
position; Anyhow, upon declining i mentioned that we were planning on having a
kid in the future and this childcare was a nice bonus.

The response from the company that I declined? 'If we had known you were going
to have a child then we would not have made an offer'.

Bullet dodged.

~~~
dandr01d
I can't believe anyone would be dumb enough to say something like that, after
you already declined. This is an Uber HR-tier response.

~~~
beilabs
Not HR; CEO.

------
payne92
My anecdotal experience: companies are much more "family friendly" when the
CEO and senior managers themselves have families.

Stated differently, paraphrasing the CEO that just had their first kid: "holy
crap, this is a lot of work!!!!" You have not truly experienced sleep
deprivation until you have had sustained, parental sleep deprivation.

~~~
tyingq
I'm not sure having a family by itself is a good indicator that the company
will be family friendly. Marissa Mayer might be a good example. She has twins,
so she should understand. But...

 _" If you go in on a Saturday afternoon, I can tell you which startups will
succeed...Being there on the weekend is a huge indicator of success, mostly
because these companies don't just happen. They happen because of really hard
work."_

~~~
twobyfour
Well, Marissa Mayer can afford to pay someone to take care of her twins. The
typical small company or early stage startup exec, not so much.

~~~
tyingq
Not unusual, though, for a lower end CEO to foist off all parenting on their
spouse.

~~~
twobyfour
Good point.

------
codathroway
Created a throwaway to name my company: Castlight Health. Our company is
definitely family friendly. Our CEO threw a birthday party for his son and
invited the company and all their family members; it was essentially a party
for company kids. Most of our social events are during company hours so you
don't feel the pressure of having to hang out with coworkers during your free
time. Many company events are family friendly.

More importantly I have seen many colleagues and managers take the 4 pm BART
home to deal with kids issues. We also have a much more diverse age set of
engineers - half of the engineers in my seating area are over 50. If you've
experience Silicon Valley ageism please check us out because we definitely
like to hire experienced engineers.

I linger around hacker news and it's weird hearing about toxic company
cultures around this area as I've started to take for granted my perks. While
I'm somewhat young (30) and without a family, I'm used to (and appreciate)
working with folks who started coding before PCs even existed. I like that I
can easily take the day off when I have a friend visiting and my colleagues
can do the same for a school activity. I appreciate that my free time isn't
monopolized through forced company social events and I can have a clear
separation between work and play.

I can't imagine ever working at a place where every one looked exactly like
me, drank the cool aid, and embraced "work hard play hard" (which usually
means just work hard).

------
jeremymcanally
I'm working at the most family friendly company I've ever worked for right now
([http://planning.center](http://planning.center)).

We're very remote friendly, which is a big plus. They pay for my whole
family's healthcare (even though it's just my wife and I right now). We have a
"family week" every year where they pay for our S.O. to come with us to an in-
office week (and we're welcome to bring kiddos) for a week in town where they
keep them entertained during the work day and do some special events for the
whole fam at night. The best thing though is that during the summer we get
every Friday off. Paid. So that's a whole day a week for the entire course of
the summer to spend with your family (and that's what it's meant for).

There are other companies that offer different benefits that we don't (due to
size or whatever), but I feel like we offer an incredible set of benefits for
someone with a family.

~~~
faitswulff
Can confirm. My cousin started working onsite, but transitioned to remote at
Planning Center. Seems like a nice setup.

PS, I'm Kin's cousin!

------
spike021
Probably depends on your friend's location and the number of companies he's
interviewing with.

I'm single, but at my company (at least on my team) the start and end hours
are pretty flexible as long as you're getting work done. For instance, I
generally get in about 10-15 minutes before 9AM, and then I can usually leave
either around 4:25PM or 5PM (depending on which train I'm taking back home)
and I'll take a 30-60 minute lunch break.

I know not all companies are so flexible, but I'm sure there are still quite a
few that are.

~~~
marianov
You are doing 9 to 5 and being allowed to eat. Where is the flexibility?
That's normal office hours. As a manager I considre flexible to allow people
in or out or WFH as long as they put some solid hours every day and deliver.
If it works for the project and the company allows it I have no problem with
WFH. I've met too many managers who say they have flexible schedules when they
mean "sure, go home an hour early today, you can go one hour later tomorrow".
Man hour accountants.

~~~
spike021
Well, not really? A full time day is typically 9 hours with one hour of unpaid
lunch and maybe two 15 minute breaks (at least I think that's the California
law). What I described is basically an 8 hour day including a lunch break. As
far as WFH, I mean, the poster didn't mention that explicitly.

If it comes to that, for my team we can WFH if needed without advance notice
and if anything comes up during work hours we're able to leave for the errand
or need, even for an hour or two, without being required to "make up" the time
per se. As long as we are getting work done, etc.

------
cableshaft
Not sure what you mean by additional time off, so not sure how to answer that.

While my company doesn't strictly fit several of those things, I do think it's
generally pretty good for people with families. Most people in my department
are raising families (including the management), and there is some
flexibility. But really we're just one office in part of a much larger company
too.

It's 8-5, where it's rare that people work overtime (unless they're architects
or higher, they tend to work about 45-50 hours), if you need to take a couple
hours off here and there it's not usually a problem if you let them know ahead
of time. There is a remote work program but it's not a remote culture company,
yet. There are a few employees that work remotely, though, including the CTO.

Oh, the healthcare benefits aren't very good though (used to be, until we got
swallowed up by the larger company and were forced to switch to their plans).
Several people have left because of it. Yeah, nevermind. I'll leave it off
this list.

------
nofinator
It would be helpful to add a maternity/paternity leave column to your great
spreadsheet.

Staggeringly, the United States still lacks a national unpaid leave policy.
Plus companies in other countries on your spreadsheet might offer additional
leave than what is required.

~~~
ksenzee
No, we have a national unpaid leave policy (FMLA). What we don't have, and
desperately need, is a paid leave policy.

------
nakedsushi
I've been lucky that most of companies (all startups) I've worked for, while
not explicitly stating its family-friendly policy, have been very family
friendly even without them explicitly saying they are.

First one was 7 people when I first started and grew to ~150 while I was still
there. Normal 9-5 work hours, but flexible if I needed to take off early or
head in late because of traffic. I ended up working the last 3 years at the
company remotely because HQ moved to a different city. At that time, I had a
baby, took ~ 3 months maternity leave, come back at 3 days a week remotely,
then full time remotely, and as long as I got my job done and was there during
'core hours,' had a pretty flexible day. Yes, it helps that the CEO also had
young children at the time, but I think it also helps that he was a decent
person and we had decent people as managers who understand work-life balance.

My startup job after that was for a smaller team, still a startup, but still
pretty flexible in terms of taking off early to beat traffic, pick up kids,
coming in late b/c of drop-offs, etc.

My current company is more traditional, but I still leave at a decent time,
WFH a few days a week, and is generally very family friendly.

In general, I think being able to stick up for myself in terms of carving out
personal time and setting boundaries or expectations of when I'm working is
what's been successful for me. Also, making it clear that if they don't
respect that I want to be home to have dinner with my family, I'm not gonna be
a happy camper. It also helps that I'm good at my job and IMO a valuable
player on the team.

------
nommm-nommm
I work as a mid-sized company. My job is family friendly. I have flex time
(which is really, really great!!) and my bosses and coworkers understand if
personal or family issues come up and don't get upset if you have to leave
early to pick up your kids (or friend from the airport, whatever) as long as
you get your hours in and work done. Individual accommodations, when
reasonable, are met. In general its acknowledged we are humans, not machines,
and we have life outside of work. The majority of my coworkers have some sort
of family, though we skew older, we only have a handful of people under 30
right now, maybe 6-7. There's also a few people who have moved to 30 hours a
week (which reduces your pay proportionately) and two that are part time/semi
retired.

I value this over salary.

In general, call me lazy, but I don't want to do unpaid work outside of work.
Sorry, but I spend 40 hours a week coding, that's plenty enough. I want to
spend my free time doing other things. I don't know the details of what my
coworkers do in their spare time but, honestly, I can't think of a single one
who I could see going home and spending any significant amount of time free
time writing code. Our office talk is usually stuff about video games,
vacations, TV shows, family, local businesses, the weather, and weekend
actives, not frameworks.

That's not to say they/we aren't smart or good at our job. I am good at my
job, I like my job, I like writing code, I get good performance reviews, I
have pride in my work, and I do care about the success of our product and our
company. I am just not one dimensional. I like doing other things, I like
spending time with friends and family, I like traveling, and there's just not
unlimited time in my life. Nor do I have unlimited attention span.

I sometimes look at job boards to see if there's an interesting position open.
I'm not really actively looking for a new job but if I find a better deal I'll
take it.

I haven't.

I am interested in remote work because I live in a fairly small-ish quiet-ish
town and I'd like to keep using Java as my primary language. We have industry,
large employers, and jobs here in my town but not as much as a big city, and
I'd like to expand my options. Remote work I see seems to lean sorta-kind
startup-ish. Sometimes their job application/about us makes it clear I'm
expected to make work the only thing in my life and I don't apply. Sometimes I
get to the application and they are like "give us links to your LinkedIn and
Github." I leave these blank, as I don't have a LinkedIn or Github, and I
never get a call back. One didn't even get asked for a resume or what my work
experience was, just a Github link.

Oh well, I don't want to work somewhere that expects me to do work after work.
I'd rather take a non-software job with a massive paycut than spend 90% of my
waking hours writing code.

I wonder if they know what they are losing out on by excluding an entire
demographic? I mean, my coworkers are, for the most part, bright and good at
their jobs. Certainly your life doesn't have to be your job to be good at your
job or to be productive?

~~~
jordanmoconnor
I think by not at least having some github / remote competence, you are
showing remote employers that your aren't in the right mindset.

I'm sure you'd be great at it. But if you want to work remotely, showing you
can collaborate on an online interface would probably help!

------
stumacd
I work in Sweden and struggle to consider working elsewhere. The paternity
leave was amazing and really allowed time to form a strong bond with the kids
and didn't affect seniority at work. Flexible hours mean that I start early
but can dive away at 15:00 to pick up the kids from day care. If the kids are
unwell, I can take care of them without any problem. All the meanwhile having
a challenging rewarding tech job. The thing is that the company I work for is
just like all the other companies in the area, so it makes for nice work life
balance and a pretty happy family :)

------
azaydak
I am single but most of my co-workers have kids. I work at a small startup and
work hour flexibility is huge for me. Generally, as long as my work gets done
and I don't miss meetings I am free to work my own hours within reason. For
example, if I know there is a big snow storm coming I'll take a day or two off
work with just a day's notice to ski. But then I'll work over the weekend. I
think this only works because all of our employees are very dedicated and
motivated. Once we grow think might need to change a little.

------
softawre
9-6 is 40 hours/week with unpaid lunch, and pretty standard in US tech jobs as
far as I know. Asking the team to sometimes work 45 hours during busy times
seems reasonable to me.

I give my team time to learn new stuff on the job. Obviously I strive to hire
smart people so that doesn't take forever.

I am not sure exactly what you are asking for. Companies OK with working 35
hour weeks?

~~~
ioquatix
As a consultant who works from home with two (young) kids, it's hard to
imagine working these kinds of hours. It seems sort of inhumane.

~~~
Danihan
That's why you have one stay at home parent.

~~~
Ascetik
I agree, which is why I upboated you. My wife is a stay at home mom. Makes
life way better for all of us, much less stressful for the children and she
enjoys it. I wish more women would consider it, especially if their husbands
make a living wage. Life isn't all about money.

~~~
twobyfour
Fuck that. I make a living wage too, tyvm, and I like my career. Why shouldn't
the dad be the stay at home parent?

~~~
lanstin
I used my winnings in the dot com explosion to be a stay at home Dad while my
less financially successful wife worked. It was awesome; I think men in
general need to try harder than women to forge a really strong connection as
parents, so stay at home Dad => parenting equality, all else being equal. I
was part time for few years also. Work of course hated it and it was hard to
re-enter. I don't regret it of course, and kids are older and my time at work
is creeping back up. Now I can do tech work sitting next to them doing
homework. The kids tell me their problems and at least listen to my arguments
for being the person that knows the most math in the room, regardless of
career.

There were sacrifices but a lot of the worries I see expressed about work life
balance don't really worry me. With the strong connection to the kids, I can
feel how they are doing: I have that mother's sense of can I work late tonight
or do I need to focus on the people. I feel the parenting skills also have
made me more effective at work, both in cutting out useless activities because
my time is sacred and in seeing the non-verbal emotional sides of people. The
idea of how people can have trouble saying certain important things and how to
respond to that happening is essential when dealing with kids and useful when
dealing with engineers. So I highly recommend staying at home for men that
have the capacity for it. (It is hard and you have to be almost totally self
driven; no one will thank or notice what you do).

~~~
Mz
You qualify for my personal Real Manly Man Award (TM). ;)

My father was a two time veteran and purple heart winner who never changed the
diapers of any of his own kids, but stayed home to care for his first born
grandchild when my brother got divorced and got custody.

My family of origin is really, really big on the idea that kids need a full
time caregiver. Not so much on the "it needs to be the mother," which is
humorous because my parents' marriage was so very old fashioned for so long
that no one would have predicted that grandpa would stay home while grandma
kept working.

#yougoguy #fistbump

------
Mz
I worked at Aflac for over five years. I was not in the IT department, but
they do have one. From what I gather, they are pretty cutting edge, tech-wise,
for the insurance industry. They have a good track for being family-friendly
and generally diverse.

------
shanemhansen
I don't work there or have a ton of details, but twitter has paternity leave
and I was unofficially told that "untracked PTO" was more like "5-6 weeks".
Which as an american seems perfectly generous.

------
gesman
Add Splunk. Super friendly.

------
known
When the company is sitting on pile of cash

------
nugget
What does "family friendly" mean? It's unclear from your post. Does he want to
work fewer hours but get paid more money, or does he just want more
flexibility to schedule his hours?

~~~
metaphorm
I interpreted to mean that the company's policies take into account the needs
of people with families, i.e. husband/wife/partner and potentially children.

Generally I would expect this to translate to a meaningful commitment to
work/life balance, flexible hours, adequate paternity/maternity leave, the
ability to occasionally (or primarily) work-from-home, and some benefits and
incentives that make sense for people with families (such as employer
contributions to life insurance and disability insurance).

the way you phrased your question "Does he want to work fewer hours but get
paid more money" includes a lot of implicit hostility, by the way. I'm not
sure if you meant it that way but that's how it reads.

