
Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies - rafaelc
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/15/business/pregnancy-discrimination.html
======
tinbad
Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive
performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days
later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for
them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit
so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning
she got the choice to do the PIP or take severance and leave. We had twins so
she wasn't going back to work anyway but the fact that they tried left us with
a bad taste.

EDIT: Let's call the company by name indeed.

~~~
tptacek
My wife interviewed at Google and was asked how she'd be able to meet the
requirements of the job while taking care of young children; the
discrimination persists even after pregnancy.

~~~
existencebox
There's something that has always nagged at me in these discussions, and I've
always been somewhat afraid to bring it up lest I misconstrue, but I want to
try and figure this out.

What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become
preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that
would impact workplace performance? We agree, societally, that we shouldn't
discriminate against parents. However, we don't live in a world where a
business is spared the cost incurred by that. That's just not the pragmatic
reality of employment in the US at this time, and my fear is that if unable to
ask "do you have a good track record or gameplan for keeping up with the
unique obligations of childbearing" we'll err on the side of paranoia in
hiring, and the discrimination will occur in seeking to AVOID potential
conflict or discrimination.

A govt stipend was one way I could see this, in that the business doesn't have
to bear the cost and can offload work. I'd still be concerned that a business
might be afraid about context switching/onboarding, but it's a step forward.
Unfortunately, I don't even see that becoming a reality in a country where
paternity leave is still the exception and not the rule.

There almost seems to be a "psychological game theory" question lodged in
there, apologies if I was rambly in stating it.

~~~
rayiner
> However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost
> incurred by that.

We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn’t
a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook’s stock price is
predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people
to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to
businesses that hire parents), but large positive externalities.

We address that situation by categorically prohibiting discrimintion. Yes,
businesses aren’t spared the costs of dealing with peoples’ parental
obligations. But it doesn’t matter because that is a cost all businesses have
to accommodate (just like the cost of providing for bathroom breaks and lunch
breaks and other accommodations for human needs).

~~~
nostrademons
So here's a concrete example of the types of problems existencebox is
highlighting:

My sister was laid off from her employer of 8 years 3 months after her first
child was born. She was a top performer, and they'd been throwing raises and
bonuses at her before she got pregnant. Over the same year or so (there were
3-4 rounds of layoffs), _every single_ pregnant woman or mother with kids
under 2 that she knew at the company was also laid off.

I mention this story, and people ask me "Is that even legal?"

And my response is "Of course it's not, but if you've got a 3 month old
newborn at home, have just been laid off, and are trying to conserve cash so
you don't go bankrupt before getting another job (which, BTW, you will never
get if you sue your former employer), are you really going to sue them? Where
will you find the money? Where will you find the lawyer? Where will you find
the _time_?"

And then even if you do, they are going to trot out a multimillion-$ defense
team who will argue that they laid off 40% of the company, they sold off a
business division, the price of oil was down 2/3 from its peak, and all of the
layoffs were _necessary_ for the survival of the company. All of which might
or might not be true. Look at just a few women's story and it's pretty clear
they're breaking the law, but factor in macroeconomic concerns and you can
muddy in the waters just enough that they might win.

That's the problem. "It's illegal" does not automatically mean that you can't
get away with it. In fact, if you're wealthy and pick the right targets, you
can get away with a damn lot of things that are illegal.

~~~
metiscus
It is free to file a discrimination complaint with the EEOC if you are in the
US. They will investigate your claims and attempt to settle them with your
employer. If your employer is unwilling to settle they can and do often sue on
your behalf to ensure an equitable outcome. Additionally the Department of
Labor will investigate your claims and can bring enforcement actions on your
behalf. Additionally pregnancy is considered disability therefore you can also
lodge an ADA complaint with the DOJ who will investigate your claims and bring
enforcement actions on your behalf.

To say you have no options is incorrect. Bona fide violations of law are
routinely handled by these agencies at no cost to the victim and are very
often successful.

[https://www.eeoc.gov/federal/fed_employees/filing_complaint....](https://www.eeoc.gov/federal/fed_employees/filing_complaint.cfm)

[https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/wysk/conciliation_litigat...](https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/wysk/conciliation_litigation.cfm)

[https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/fmla/13.aspx](https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/fmla/13.aspx)

Edit: ADA to DOJ

[https://www.ada.gov/filing_complaint.htm](https://www.ada.gov/filing_complaint.htm)

~~~
Spooky23
If you work in an incestuous industry like tech, you will be blacklisted in
many circles for going down this path.

~~~
metiscus
Those situations can often be solved in much the same way. If someone is
giving out malicious references due to an enforcement action, you report it to
the EEOC or other agencies. That is also a violation and can result in further
action on your behalf. Many states have statutes on the books against
blacklisting and you may be able to engage the state DOL or other agencies to
help you. These agencies have the full weight of the federal or state
government behind them and are not in the habit of losing enforcement actions.

~~~
dnomad
This is not likely to be the case. It is not so easy to pursue a retaliation
complaint. I suggest you look at the case law history here. America is not
France where the courts almost always side with employees. It's just the
opposite. There's a very high bar for retaliation complaints and it's getting
higher all the time [1]. These days you basically need a _confession_ from
your employer to establish that the retaliation was the "determinative
factor."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/business/supreme-court-
ra...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/business/supreme-court-raises-bar-
to-prove-job-discrimination.html)

------
habosa
This area is really tough. I feel terrible for women who experience this bias,
but the solution is not nearly as obvious as with
race/gender/age/religious/etc discrimination. In those cases the answer is:
stop being biased.

Let's say you're a small company and you can really only afford to have <10
people on your payroll. Let's say you're considering two candidates of exactly
equal skills and age: a 28yo man and a 28yo woman.

Even if they both plan to have 2 kids in the next 4 years, it's a biological
reality that it will take the woman away from work for longer. She has the 9
months of pregnancy where she may be tired or uncomfortable, then the actual
delivery, then recovery, and then often a period of breast feeding. The man
could be father of the century but there are certain burdens that fall on
women because of their sex.

So while I'd like to force the startup to make the decision without
considering this factor, is that always reasonable?

And before the downvotes come: I am really on the side of pregnant women here.
I want them to get generous leave without any effect on their careers. But I
am questioning if that is always possible.

~~~
jschwartzi
It actually isn't a biological reality that the woman is away from work for
longer. What's actually happening is that the man isn't expected to be away as
long as the woman, so he doesn't take as much leave. It's a form of
discrimination to make it the woman's problem because she's the one laid up in
the hospital.

Just because women are bearing the physical burden of the pregnancy, it
doesn't mean it's solely their burden. We're making the choice that it should
be their burden. We could just as easily provide subsidies and insurance to
companies to cover family leave. If we value childbirth as a society, then we
should put our money where our mouth is and actually pay for it somehow.

~~~
tomp
How can you say this with a straight face?! It's a _fact_ that (some) women
_need_ to stay off work (bed-ridden before birth, in hospital after birth).
It's also a _fact_ that men don't _need_ to.

Obviously, men don't _need_ to work and women don't _need_ to take care of the
kids (above and beyond what's biologically required of them), but (1) on
average, outcomes will be influenced by underlying biological reality, and (2)
it's a fantasy thinking that people _can_ take time off work - e.g. a poor
family with a newborn, you really think that any parent will take off more
time than they absolutely _need_ to, biologically?

Finally (3) yeah there are possible social levers we can use to counter this
biological reality and enforce equality of outcomes, but ultimately, we need
to decide what we want - why is women working more better than women spending
more time with the children? Personally, I look up to Netherlands, one of the
happiest countries on Earth, where many women work just part-time.

~~~
ldp01
> How can you say this with a straight face?! It's a fact that (some) women
> need to stay off work (bed-ridden before birth, in hospital after birth).
> It's also a fact that men don't need to.

You're referring to a timescale of days which a woman will likely need to
spend in hospital. I believe jschwartzi is referring to the weeks/months of
maternity/paternity leave following the initial birth. There isn't a hard
biological reason not to evenly share the load after the immediate medical
concerns are completed.

~~~
adrianN
My mother was bed-bound for several months during pregnancy. It's more common
than you think.

~~~
whatshisface
What you're describing is a special medical scenario, not a universal burden
shared by all women. Health problems can disable people of any gender.

------
rednerrus
One of the solutions to this is matching paternity leave.

If I gave you the choice of two employees, one of whom would take 12 weeks of
paid leave and one who would take 2 weeks of paid leave, which would you
choose?

If you offered both sexes 12 weeks of paid leave, you wouldn't have to make
this decision.

~~~
lovich
You'd have to make it mandatory leave. The social pressure is still tilted
towards women as care givers and men as providers so more men will end up not
using the leave. If it becomes mandatory then it's just a baked in rising to
every employee, _and_ will probably do better for society to have both parents
get time with their children.

I believe some European states solve this by having the state cover ~60% of
your wage while on leave so that it's not a giant burden for companies

~~~
chongli
_You 'd have to make it mandatory leave._

How do you accomplish that without violating the right to privacy? If a man
keeps coming into work and his partner is pregnant, nobody has to know.

~~~
dmayle
A woman doesn't have that possibility, so enabling that also encourages
discrimination.

~~~
chongli
I'm aware of that. This is a case where one right is in conflict with another.
There's no good answer. One group of people is going to lose and another is
going to win.

The disadvantage women have is that they can't hide a pregnancy forever. Men
can go to extreme lengths to hide their relationships. Although rare, it is
not unheard of for a man to have two families at the same time, each one
hidden from the other, and maintain this state of affairs for years before
getting caught (otherwise we'd never hear about it).

~~~
llukas
Society doesn't need to and doesn't have any duty make this kind of
arrangement easier to maintain.

Also multiple marriages are illegal in Western countries.

~~~
chongli
The point about multiple hidden families was an example of the lengths men can
go to in order to hide their relationships, not an endorsement of the
practice.

The fact is, an employer has no right to know what, if any, relationships the
employee has, let alone the pregnancy status of them.

The fact that employers discriminate against pregnant employees is the problem
we should be addressing directly.

------
throwaway81818
It's not just women that experience discrimination. When my wife was pregnant
and I let our CEO and co-founder know (small company, < 15 people) they began
covertly looking for a replacement for me knowing I would take some time off
work for her birth.

Not long after letting them know about the pregnancy/birth, I found a
suspicious/hidden hiring post from the CEO for a position that mirrored mine
although we were "not hiring".

Within the next month or two I had a few suspicious interactions with the
cofounder over things he'd like to see "improved" within my work. Which was
complete bullshit. The guy didn't believe in version control, managed tasks in
a Google Doc and didn't like how I used branches for feature development (why
don't you just commit to master?). Trust me when I say his list of issues were
bullshit (not worth going into all of them, though they may be funny as hell
to hear). His improvements/concerns carried no weight and were obviously a
front for something else.

The CEO became more and more aggressive with me over things that were outside
of my job/position/role. He would go off the handle over them and eventually I
called him out on it. He lost his shit and basically "fired" me. I won't go
into details regarding what happened next, but lets just say I made out very
well :)

Moral of the story, it's not just women that get discriminated against. If
you're a father to be, be careful who you let know and how you handle it. Keep
a record of everything including the timeline of events, it can come in handy
;)

~~~
notadoc
> It's not just women that experience discrimination

> Moral of the story, it's not just women that get discriminated against. If
> you're a father to be, be careful who you let know and how you handle it.

I have heard so many stories along these same lines, I think it's just
accepted as normal in the industry.

------
imh
I wonder if this discrimination is exacerbated in silicon valley where job
tenures are so short and perks are so good. If on average, you keep employees
for two years and offer 6-12 month parental leave, then an employee who uses
it gets paid for two years while actively working for 12-18 months. That's
30-100% higher cost to you the employer per month of active output from the
employee. The shorter the tenures and the longer the leave, the higher this
extra cost.

As a society, it seems like a no brainer to want to allow new parents to spend
lots of time with their kids, but it does incur a way higher cost to the
employer, many of whom can't afford to pay employees 30-100% more. The most
immediate answer seems to be to make society pay and not the employer.
Something like a government funded regional cost-of-living adjusted stipend,
or a capped wage matching?

~~~
MattLaroche
I just switched jobs in San Francisco, and part of my search was parental
leave. I did not see any companies in the 6-12 month paid parental leave
range.

6-20 weeks is the range I saw. Twitter at 20, Square (and I think Facebook) at
16, Google at 12, and most at 6.

I'm totally onboard with it being government funded instead of employer
funded. I think tying it to salary (and what people pay in) makes sense, as
many people are less likely to take it if it's significantly under their
normal income.

~~~
paxys
Netflix gives 12 months for maternity/paternity.

~~~
MattLaroche
Thanks! I didn't check them out because I wasn't interested in leaving the
city (and only included FB because I'd heard theirs was good).

------
randyrand
Being anti discrimination started with not discriminating people for things
they can't control. Race, gender, etc.

Now we're moving into territory of not discriminating against _optional_
things people _choose_ (having children).

This is a very significant change, IMO. I wonder how far it can be taken.

I think there's a fair argument that since pregnancy only affects women then
it counts as gender discrimination. However, if that line of thinking was
applied everywhere then nearly everything would be sexist because few things
affect men and women exactly 50/50\. So in and of itself, that reason cannot
fully explain it.

~~~
somecontext
The phenomenon you describe is not new. Discrimination law differs by
jurisdiction, but there are various protected classes that may be seen as "
_optional_ things people _choose_ ". People will not agree on precisely which
such classes truly reflect choice, but some examples may include religion,
familial/marital status (and related), political activity/affiliation (and
related), pregnancy (and related), military/veteran status,
matriculation/student status, place of residence/business, whistleblowing
("anti-retaliation"), source of income, smoking, and participation in lawful
activities during non-work hours. (Some people believe even more class
membership reflects choice; indeed, this is often a factor in their reasoning
about whether the classes should be protected.)

Some of these classes are protected in the United States as of the Civil
rights acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as other federal laws from 1974 and
1978. (The protection of different religions is, of course, a founding
principle of the United States. However, many people do not believe religion
is a choice.)

The following webpage was helpful in assembling this list and includes a few
amusing items such as membership in the Communist party (not protected in
Nebraska) as well as having a degree in theology (protected in Oregon):
[http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-
employment/discrimina...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-
employment/discrimination-employment.aspx)

~~~
randyrand
This is a good comment.

I'm less concerned with the law and more curiou what people actually think
about those various types of discrimination, and why. Its a fascinating moral
question.

------
porjo
To play devil's advocate - a personal anecdote: in a previous job, a newly
hired manager announced she was pregnant and going on maternity leave in 6
months - threw our department into chaos. To me it seemed clear that in her
mind, getting the job was a green light for getting pregnant - at the expense
of the company! I can't blame companies for being nervous about these kinds of
scenarios.

------
fixermark
Fundamentally, this is one of those places where if we want to change policy,
the government needs to step in.

If we want companies to honor paternity and maternity leave, then when a
parent takes such leave, the government needs to soak the employee's salary
and benefits. 100%, no questions asked, full stop.

Any less is incentive for every company in the marketplace to find every
excuse to cut parents out of the loop for costing more per-hour-unit-of-work
than an equivalent employee with no children.

~~~
ryanobjc
So what do you do when you have high risk scenarios that are semi-rare but
semi-predictable, combined with a high loss when they happen?

It's called insurance.

That's the private/"market" based solution to privatizing and sharing risk
across a pool. Given it's kind of an impossible thing to fake, there isn't
much risk of false claims.

~~~
chii
insurance doesn't work when the event is controllable (like pregnancy) and
happens regularly to everyone.

Imagine an insurance company offering to sell to a business a plan for each
employee, which covers their salary while they take leave.

The premium of this plan must be lower than their total cost in salary while
they are on leave, since if it was higher, the business can just pay the
salary!

Therefore, the insurance company must cover the cost by taking on the risk
that some employee don't take parental leave (and thus, profit off those
premiums).

But in aggregate, "everybody" reproduces. Therefore, there'd be nobody to
"earn" the premium from. So the only remaining possibility to profit is from
making interest from the premiums not yet paid out (which, while significant,
can't really be as profitable as any existing insurance product).

~~~
ryanobjc
You’ve just also proven health insurance doesn’t work!

~~~
chii
yep. Health insurance shouldn't be called insurance. It should be called a
levy, and all citizens making more than a certain amount have to pay into it,
and all healthcare costs paid for by this fund. Insurance companies are
middlemen that don't provide real value.

------
skizm
Thought experiment: a scrappy startup is struggling to stay profitable, they
literally (and not figuratively) can't afford their developers leaving for
extended amounts of time and they are very upfront about this in interviews.
Are they legally allowed to discriminate against candidates that are pregnant
or expressed a desire to have children in the near future since it has the
potential to kill their business if they hire them?

~~~
MattLaroche
What they should do is say "These are our parental leave policies" (which will
be at least legal minimum) and go from there. (Ideally, these should be
reasonable leave time government policies and paid by the government, but
let's assume we're not going to fix that soon)

It's then up to the candidate to accept it or not.

It'd be entirely shitty of a company to say "here are our policies" and then
reject a candidate who would exercise those policies.

------
lsd5you
Is this really surprising? We cannot have meritocracy and a system where some
people will go missing for a year at a time (and perhaps come back with
completely different motivations). There is a fundamental mismatch, and as
much as some people want to frame careers as lifestyle and entitlement, the
primary purpose is to get things done and produce value. The situation is even
more stark for smaller companies, many of which would be bankrupt if they lose
one employee for a year.

The unintended and inevitable consequence of trying to legislate something as
massive as this away is it promotes what I call wankerism. Where by the more
law abiding individuals are put at a further disadvantage as they try to
follow onerous laws, whilst the people who are happy to skirt and bend them
will do so and get ahead. After all there is almost never going to be a
smoking gun and to the extent than you can tighten the rules against laying
off pregnant women, then it moves on to hiring discrimination against women of
a certain age range and effecting even more people, where its practically
impossible to prove discrimination.

Maybe the government and increased maternity pay is part of the solution, but
no formula is going to capture the career costs and simultaneously be fair to
the lower paid. Maybe it is the responsibility of the parents to make it right
between them, in as much as that is practical and in as much as they believe
in operating like that.

~~~
AchieveLife
The system that you are proposing is anti-human. We are not machines and time
does not directly equal productivity.

Diversity is a proven cultural milestone that increases the efficacy of
organizations.

I'm curious what you would say to this. What about individuals who have mental
or physical disorders and need a reduced work schedule?

~~~
randyrand
People have very different goals for society. Solving inequality is not
everyone's top priority and it is weighed against many others.

------
vfc1
The obvious solution that brings many other benefits is to allow people to
work from home.

By simply removing the long commute the problem is already nearly solved, as
all of a sudden people have two extra hours of productive work in many cases.

If a kid wakes you up at 3 AM, it helps to only have to wake up at 8AM instead
of 6AM. Also, the levels of stress while working from home make for much more
productive workers.

There are many other benefits, but making it easier to reconcile parenting
with a full time job is one of the biggest.

------
rocqua
Isn't the case of physical labor justified? Here I refer to where the article
states that pregnant women doing physical labor often face discrimination upon
asking not to lift too much weight.

This is an example where pregnancy directly makes someone less able to do
their job. That seems like a valid reason to want to pay them less, or to no
longer hire them. Unlike the more general call of equal pay for equal work
(regarding the wage gap) here the demand is essentially equal pay for worse
work. I assume the argument is that affirmative action is needed to get more
women at the top. However, not taking affirmative action is rather different
from active discrimination.

I'd like to qualify that I tend to support affirmative action, but I do not
think that forced affirmative action works. If we force companies into such
action by law, they have every reason to follow the letter to the least amount
possible, and totally ignore the spirit of the law.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
My partner works at a small startup of ~12 people. They employ some 8 ladies
all but one of whom became pregnant in recent years, while working at the
company. The company kept going without any damage to its business. At some
point, they had a bad turn and had to downsize so they fired most of the
working mothers, who tended to hold the most expendable positions, I guess.
Eventually, the company's fortunes turned again, at which point they re-hired
all the people they had laid off (or offered to- some had moved on). They seem
to be doing fine now, in any case they have plenty of business.

I'm just saying: pregnancy does exactly zero harm to a company's bottom line
or a woman's ability to hold down a job and perform at her role. And even if
it did, we're talking about a tiny startup of a dozen people. If it can handle
most of its staff being pregnant or with kids, then a big corp like Walmart or
Merck has no excuse not to. No excuse at all.

------
amriksohata
On one side companies want to do more to get women into tech then on the other
side they are not supporting them when they need to do what families want,
have babies. This is upto the government to protect women against layoffs and
redundancies after pregnancy. Especially if that woman has had a reasonable
tenure leading upto the pregnancy.

------
treyfitty
I’ve discussed how pregnancy discrimination impacted me (male) before
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745)

Lawyered up, lawyer said “it’s not worth it to me, nor you.” This is the world
we live in now, folks.

------
acd
In the age of companies wanting to expand on an exponential pace and
globalization. I get the feeling that there is no longer any compassion for
things that are normal. It is normal for women to have children and have
parental leave. It is good for a countries GDP that women have equal
opportunity to take part of the work force. If women would not participate
working the economy GDP of the country would be half of what it could be. Is
is also good for dads to take equal long parental leave as women.

Thus it is short sighted by companies and the economy as general only to see
the very short term.

------
desireco42
Pregnancy, having kids, both for dads and moms, having a life, being older,
experienced, all things that will count against you.

Starting your business sometimes seems like the only way to get things right
for you.

~~~
notadoc
> Pregnancy, having kids, both for dads and moms, having a life, being older,
> experienced, all things that will count against you.

This is so true, at least in the tech industry and startup world.

The bottom line is that if you're a parent, parent-to-be, or older, the
apparent assumption is that you have a life outside of work, and thus you will
likely not make work your life, so you will be working less than a childless
early 20-something, and you'll probably actually use the health insurance,
take vacation time, and maybe work reasonable hours. This, I suspect, is a big
component of age discrimination as well.

------
cobbzilla
To reproduce this error:

1\. Create a law that penalizes companies for activities against current
employees with attribute X (or who might have attribute X in the future)

2\. Watch as companies ride the grey-line getting away with as much as they
can whilst (a) staying within the letter of the law and (b) creatively
discriminating to avoid hiring anyone who has (or might in the future have)
attribute X.

I'm not making a moral judgement, but when you set the system up like this can
you really be surprised by the results?

~~~
ryanobjc
I hate these kind of sophisticate-cynical arguments.

Yes you are technically correct, and thus get to revel in Being Right.
Drinking a celebratory champaign.

Yet we are still having negative outcomes that are highly problematic. And you
have contributed nothing except, what, smugness?

~~~
cobbzilla
Where you see smugness, I ask you to see reality.

If you want a system that works, design the incentives to align correctly.
This is not happening here.

If you leave a T-bone steak on your porch before you sleep, can you really be
surprised in the morning to discover the raccoons have gotten it? Do you then
blame the raccoons and call them evil? That might feel good but it's not going
to solve anything.

------
overton
I'll fully get behind mat leave if it's taken as bonus paid vacation time
that's available to everyone. Having a child is a choice, and a selfish one at
that, the world being as overpopulated as it is. No problem with that. You
want a kid, I want to take time off to make music and travel.

------
matz1
I guess this is good for me, I don't have plan to have kids. This can
potentially give me slight competitive advantage since the employer doesn't
have to worry about me taking long paid time off.

------
throw2016
Decades of Neoliberal economics and systemic propaganda by self serving
libertarians nostalgic for settler ideology and 'freedom' it seems has
resulted in a corporate 'business only' society that is completely divorced
from the practical realities of humanity.

Many of the commentators seem to be arguing against their own existence like
they are robots who just turned up, no one had to give birth to them or bring
them up. And its not just their parents, there is a whole infrastructure
around you that took hundreds of years to build that we call civilization and
culture that allowed them and you to get you to where you are.

I don't see how you can value or discuss culture or have any kind of shared
existence and commonality with other human beings without acknowledging the
entirety of the human condition.

------
fixermark
Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children
during an interview, there's an unfortunate side-effect the market has adapted
to: under-the-hood discrimination against young woman candidates.

All other factors being equal, an employer knows a young woman _could_ get
pregnant and will _probably_ quit to take care of the kids (going by
statistics alone). So since they can't explicitly ask those things, the market
prices in the risk by devaluing woman candidates in every legal way possible.

It's downright insidious.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children
> during an interview

It's not illegal to ask about these things, but it's illegal to make a hiring
decision based on these factors and asking during an interview would be pretty
strong evidence of using the information in hiring.

------
iliasku
this would be unthinkable here in Iceland. we are looking for sw eng and sre
here : [https://jobs.netapp.com/job/Greenqloud%2C-Iceland-
Office-%28...](https://jobs.netapp.com/job/Greenqloud%2C-Iceland-Office-%28RE-
Site-Reliability-Engineer/440991800/)

------
jonathanoliver
I have a few honest and open questions as a US-based small business with a
handful of women who have recently had children or who are pregnant.

Do you guys have any advice for how to balance the impact to the results that
we receive from those having children prior to vs after pregnancy and/or
having children?

Example:

One individual is a phenomenal front-end website engineer. Her input has been
critical in helping us solve a lot of engineering challenges and more forward
in significant ways. When she became pregnant she had debilitating morning
sickness so much so she could hardly function on a personal level. This
morning sickness persisted for the last 5 months through the present day to
the point where she's only be able to come to work (or even work from
home/remotely) for perhaps 15 days sprinkled throughout the 5 months. We all
value her opinion and expertise highly. We try to schedule meetings around
when she might available (to the point of even having spontaneous "she's
available" meetings) but even she doesn't know when she'll be able to work or
operate productively. Further, her ability to code/design/be productive has
plummeted to perhaps 5% of her original capacity. Do you guys have any tips on
how to handle this situation? We thought about starting her maternity leave
early (during pregnancy), but she'll definitely need that leave AFTER she has
the baby. Perhaps we start the paid maternity leave during her pregnancy and
then a leave-of-absence (unpaid) after the child is born? Is that fair to her?
Is that fair to us? In many regards, we have a paid member of the team but
without any of the capacity.

Another example:

We have another woman who is very detail-oriented. For years, her projects
always came out flawlessly. She has an amazing talent to see all the different
ways a project could go wrong and then she would plan accordingly to keep
things on track. However, since her first child was born move than a year ago,
she's been a completely different person. Her child still isn't sleeping
through the night. She's sleep deprived in a big way. On many days, she's
almost a zombie. Previously she was punctual, reliable, and focused. We're not
sure what to do. We have offered to pay for sleep training for her baby which
she has refused (and that's her right as a mother of her child), but we would
like to have some form of productivity capacity from her. We don't want to let
her go because we know what she is capable of. For the last 18 months, we've
been struggling to balance what we can reasonably expect from her vs the
demands/results that her role requires. Letting her go sounds like horrible,
insensitive, and possibly illegal. Is reducing her compensation a fair trade?
Ultimately, we're paying value to be delivered and that has been slashed to a
fraction of her previous state.

Are there any tips, tricks, ideas, or ways of thinking that can help us be
fair and equitable with these individuals in their unique circumstances while
at the same time allowing ourselves to expect a reasonable amount of value
from them in exchange for the compensation they receive?

A few other notes: 1\. We offer 4+ months of paid maternity leave for
having/adopting children. 2\. We also offer paid paternity leave for male
employees for having/adopting children.

~~~
jacquesm
The tips and tricks that I can give you as a former employer (and present
employer as well but not on the same scale) is that you're just going to have
to suck it up. Yep, that's right. The burden you perceive is people no longer
performing _above_ normal, this is normal. So you're going to have to learn
how to deal with that, be loyal to your employees and then when things in
their lives are more manageable again they will pay you back in spades, or,
alternatively you could see the past as them having built up credit.

 _Every_ employer is in this boat, except for the ones that do illegal stuff.
So take it as a fact of life that not every employee is able to give you 100%
100% of the time.

If you want to extract the last bit of something you might want to go into the
lemon juice business, people aren't lemons and it is perfectly normal for them
to occasionally have periods of lower productivity, and for some those periods
can last quite long. I've been there myself - even as the employer - and it is
always a great feeling to see the rest of the company around you pick up the
slack and to know that things will end well.

On another note, it sounds as though you have very little in terms of
redundancy built into your company, you may want to look at that in some more
detail, it may be that you are one disease or a car-accident away from a real
problem.

Thank you for trying to do the right thing, I hope some experience and a few
more years will show you these things are not nearly as hard to deal with as
they seem to be right now, there is a certain size company (> 10 and < 40 or
so) where these problems can hit harder because there are enough people that
synchronous events can happen but not enough of them to take up the slack.

------
Micrococonut
"Wahh why can't I disappear from a company for a year to pursue my personal
life goals without any consequences"

~~~
sctb
We ban accounts that post like this, so please read the guidelines and comment
civilly and substantively instead.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
pertymcpert
I'm really surprised by the number of comments here that support this kind of
discrimination. I thought we were better than this.

~~~
stevenwoo
It should be expected - the high number of comments that regularly showed up
in support of Damore's scientific (in the sense of being in the ballpark and
selectively referencing some social science work) arguments in his internal
post that got him fired when that was a hot topic was pretty disappointing.

~~~
ryanobjc
"scientific" might be a better way.

I am continually disappointed at people who use the summary of a scientific
article to prop up their justification, along with what I call "the world is a
binary logic puzzle" fallacy.

For example, a lot of arguments positioned nature vs nurture. It's not a
simplistic blend of this or that, or even as simple as "trait X is DNA and
trait Y is societal" \-- if you learned anything about biology the sheer
adaptability of the human body should be it.

Don't forget that every single study hypothesizes a model, then attempts to
build evidence in support of it. All models are wrong, some are occasionally
useful.

I've been extremely disappointed in the 'bay area rationalist' community with
their response to that memo. It's really given me an eye opening view on the
limitations of so-called "rationality" as they practiced it.

------
qop
Don't bite my head off, but is that really discrimination in the sense of what
word actually means?

If you're literally not PRESENT to do the work, is that really a case of the
employer discriminating against you? It's a privilege, not a right, to be paid
to be at home taking care of a child.

I grew up in an area where a lot of discrimination occurred, but it was
racially motivated. I've seen guys smarter than me literally chased out of
stores, had fingers pointed at them while obscene slurs are shouted at them.
I've seen brilliant minds that get trapped in the ""wrong"" bodies. They get
caught in the wrong environment around the wrong people, and the stress and
danger of it all breaks them down. I've seen racism obliterate men that
could've been ANYTHING, rocket scientists or something, if they could've had
the luck to have been born a different color or live in a different
neighborhood.

So, from that perspective it's a bit mind-boggling that women will choose to
pursue children and for some reason expect their employer to just pay them to
be at home, while they aren't completing any work.

Of course it's important to be with your child early on. So do that. But is it
really important that your employer pay for work you didn't do? That is
something that I believe lies on the shoulders of government, not industry.

(And personally, I don't think govts should provide funding for it either, but
that's for each nation to determine, and also cultures can be very different.
It might not work here, but it may work over there.)

Nobody owes you anything because you went and got pregnant. Nobody should
attack you for doing so, either. But to turn around and think that you are
somehow ENTITLED to wages and compensation for that time is absolutely insane.

------
crimsonalucard
Is it unreasonable discrimination or is there a performance degradation
correlated with pregnancy?

------
CryoLogic
Pregnant employees are undoubtably less of an investment for the company when
you consider paid leave. In fact the company might actually lose money on you.

This is a lot different than racial, sex, or age discrimination as a result of
social bias or stereotypes.

So it makes sense there is discrimination from companies and managers -
especially competitive companies where the managers are paid based on their
team performance. In a truly capitalist market you would rarely hire someone
at risk of becoming pregnant.

That leaves me to believe the only good solution is some type of mandatory
leave for both men and women. Rather than trying to avoid the discrimination
(via penalties, laws, etc.), force an equal leave rights for men and women so
the companies no longer have to consider a particular gender over the other.

~~~
lsd5you
Then you'd just be discriminating against the youngish, the married and a
bunch of other factors. I just think these kind of answers are the first
logical steps in trying to address the problem. With more thought and
experience people will arrive at the realisation that there may actually not
be a good mechanism to socially engineer the desired outcome.

Devolving decision making to the business owners and managers, and to
individual workers is what allows the system to work. Attempts to override and
legislate decisions will fail with unintended consequences and ultimately make
things worse in other ways. A complete solution would require totalitarian
control, at which point you may as well just have central planning.

~~~
newfoundglory
People already discriminate against young women based just on the risk they
could get pregnant, doesn't seem like it'd be that bad to spread it across to
young men as well.

------
bitcoinisqueen
I know many cases where small employers were left paying 100k's after taking
on a woman for a position, and just a few months later 'she got pregnant'.

\- employer had to fork over 12 months of pay

\- employer had to disrupt their business and hire another person

The employer struggled to eek out their own profit to feed their own family
and meet their obligations.

This is a common scam that some women will get a job, with the intention of
juicing the parental leave AND then we they are supposed to return to work....
they instead quit.

This scam has cost my friends a lot of money and suffering because these women
are predators and care not of others, but getting something for themselves.

And they scream "mah discrimination".

~~~
techntoke
Do you have the employers names and any documents or court records to show
that this is what was uncovered? Why were your friends not able to determine
the quality of employees during the interview and on-boarding process? Have
you actually read the FMLA? They would have had to work their for quite a bit
of time before requesting leave, and even then there are additional
requirements:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993)

I was denied FMLA when I got full-time custody of my kids. Not saying that you
are, but you come across as a biased person trying to stereotype and
generalize women. FMLA does not only apply to women either.

~~~
bitcoinisqueen
The world does not revolve around US law. Where I live, you just have to
surpass your probationary period to qualify.

My apologies for being biased by sharing a story of how my friends lost
100k's, next time I guess I should bring documentation and court cases before
daring to tell you about something that happened. /s

And why the heck would I tell you the name of my friends business to
effectively give you my identity?

The scam I outlined is common enough and you will hear it happen if you ask.

A variation is that women will take their 12 months pay from a business, and
then a certain percentage decide they do not want to work and then do not go
back to their jobs.

Whether it applies to men or women both under FMLA law has no bearing on the
morality of executing this scam. I'm not sure why you even pointed it out and
what you're trying to say with that information.

