7 ms·

Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

• beilabs 10y ago
  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.
  • xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
    Jesus. That's haunting. I'm sorry you experienced​ that. I imagine you won't name the company, but can you comment on its size?
    • beilabs 10y ago
      Well funded startup 3-5 million with traction. About 5-10 employees at the time. Also, it's not like I would be the one doing all the hard work, that would be up to my wife.
  • dandr01d 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      Not HR; CEO.
  • metaphorm 10y ago
    wow they're begging for a lawsuit
• softawre 10y ago
  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?
  • fulafel 10y ago
    You should at least get the same amount of overtime off after the crunch.
  • ioquatix 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      That's why you have one stay at home parent.
      • Ascetik 10y ago
        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 10y ago
          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?
          • Ascetik 10y ago
• cableshaft 10y ago
  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.
• spike021 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
• payne92 10y ago
  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.
  • devmunchies 10y ago
    Seems about right. My company is HQ'd in (typically family friendly) Utah (I'm in Seattle office) and the CEO is a family guy. The culture has pretty healthy expectations.
    • seajones 10y ago
      I always think this a naive view. There are plenty of ways to be incredibly sleep deprived without a child.
      • rootusrootus 10y ago
        I imagine it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, not a blanket statement that being a parent is the only way to become seriously sleep-deprived. More like it's one of the most common ways a regular person will experience significant sleep deprivation, so the experience resonates with a lot of folks. Also, in my limited experience (two kids), the sleep deprivation part isn't really all that bad, unless you're mom. She usually gets the brunt of it. And in any case the newborn phase is done in less than a year for most kids and you settle into an easier rhythm of just mild sleep deprivation :)
      • ksenzee 10y ago
        You have to make a serious effort to be as sleep-deprived as a new parent. You could sign up to have the CIA torture you, for example. But unless you're being kept awake by guys with guns, or you have fatal familial insomnia, you've got nothing on the parent of a newborn. Especially a newborn with colic.
  • tyingq 10y ago
• sparrish 10y ago
  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."
  • Danihan 10y ago
    You're the most successful person on HN.
  • Ascetik 10y ago
    Well done sir. I plan on doing the same, but I have 2 and another on the way. My daughter's God-father has 8 kids and works as an engineer from home and his wife home-schools. The kids are the happiest you'll ever meet and super smart.
  • usaphp 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        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.
• nommm-nommm 10y ago
  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?
• known 10y ago
  When the company is sitting on pile of cash
• nugget 10y ago
  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?
  • yannyu 10y ago
    If you look at the spreadsheet, it lays out some of the criteria: Work time Family services "Flexible (yes/no)" Additional time off (yes/no) "Allow remote (yes/no)" Mandatory hourly presence (in hours per day) "Weekends off (yes/no)" "Kindergarten in or close to company offices (yes/no)" "Can you bring your child to your work place (yes/no)" "Company doctor (yes/no)"
  • metaphorm 10y ago
    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.
• nofinator 10y ago
  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.
  • troxwalt 10y ago
    Amen.
  • ksenzee 10y ago
    No, we have a national unpaid leave policy (FMLA). What we don't have, and desperately need, is a paid leave policy.
• stumacd 10y ago
  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 10y ago
  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.
• codathroway 10y ago
  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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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!
• Mz 10y ago
  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.
• gesman 10y ago
  Add Splunk. Super friendly.
• shanemhansen 10y ago
  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.
• nakedsushi 10y ago
  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.