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Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put h

• InclinedPlane 8y ago
  What's funny about big corporations is they will always always always ask employees to pitch in, help out, make sacrifices, etc. for the betterment of the corporation: to get work done, to survive lean times, etc. And yet when the shoe is on the other foot they are always the most incredibly reluctant to make any sacrifice, even small ones, to help their employees. And this isn't just a matter of finances, financially it makes sense to retain good employees at almost any cost, because it costs a ton of money to hire and train new employees (sometimes upwards of a year's worth of salary for the position in equivalent costs), and that's aside from the ancillary benefits of retaining employees longer (better work environment, higher skill level workers, more able to reliably execute on challenging projects, etc.) So much of it just comes down to power dynamics.
  • Cofike 8y ago
    You see this at small companies and start ups as well. I've seen it first hand myself.
• sp527 8y ago
  You should name the company, assuming there are no legal barriers to doing so. How can we possibly fight back against abuse if we default to anonymizing the perpetrators out of fear?
• oblong 8y ago
  > let her have her paid 12 month leave 12 months of free money from the company I am screwing over, what a deal!
• dominotw 8y ago
  > After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take severance and leave. How does this also not result in expensive lawsuit.
  • tinbad 8y ago
    Possibly. We were/are lucky in that we both have good job prospects and plenty of opportunities to pursue, at the time we just wanted to enjoy our family time and the last thing we wanted is to engage in a legal battle. I'm sure we could've gotten more out of it had we wanted it (at least financially), not sure if same can be said for the time and energy put in though.
    • skookumchuck 8y ago
      Having been involved in a lawsuit, and despite winning it, they sap the life out of you.
• Analemma_ 8y ago
  The article has a form to fill out to submit additional anecdotes; you should encourage her to do that if she's comfortable. I bet Google would really like NYT readers to think this is only a thing that happens at "other companies" and people need to know that it definitely isn't.
• hotdog97 8y ago
  How many days/months/years between a) joining the company and b) informing of the pregnancy? I know the law doesn't care, but I care. There's a difference between informing your manager one month after you're hired that you're pregnant (been there, felt totally fooled - as the manager, that is) and will need to take time off quite soon, and doing it like a year or so later. The "always positive performance reviews" bit implies some sizeable amount of time before the announcement, which is why I'm asking.
  • newfoundglory 8y ago
    What do you want people to do when they are job searching while pregnant? Are you just wishing you'd been told on her first day on the job?
    • hotdog97 8y ago
      Let me answer this with a counter-question. If you're pregnant and somehow hiding it really well, do you think it makes sense for you to job-hunting six weeks before you're due to give birth?
      • newfoundglory 8y ago
        FUCK yes. Kids cost money. Jobs are how you get money. And I say this as someone who hired a woman who then told us she would give birth in two months, and we were fine.
        • hotdog97 8y ago
          Please excuse me if I'm being too flippant, but I'm trying to make a point here: Another way of making quick money is by robbing a bank. Just making the point here that your logic is lacking, not that pregnant women are bank robbbers.
          • shkkmo 8y ago
            What you seem to be saying is that instead of looking for a job, pregnant women should rob a bank? Honestly, I have no idea what point you are trying to make. The logic of: "Babies are expensive, therefor I cannot stay unemployed for 6 months before I find a job" seems completely sound and reasonable to me. Where is that logic lacking? What practical alternative would you propose?
• s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "EDIT: Let's call the company by name indeed." I'm glad you decided to do this. The practice is not going to change if people don't call it out when it happens.
• tptacek 8y ago
  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.
  • lhorie 8y ago
    Isn't that illegal?
    • knuththetruth 8y ago
      I imagine that Google, famous for their participation in an illegal wage fixing cartel and with its literal army of high-paid attorneys, isn’t too afraid of the legal consequences of discriminating against one woman. Well, so long as the NYTimes doesn’t write about it at least.
      • kentm 8y ago
        I doubt the lawyers would OK such a thing, even if they weren't afraid of the legal consequences. Interviewers are just employees on the loop with minimal training, and as such you're likely to run into a non-trivial portion that do dumb things in the interviews.
      • lhorie 8y ago
        Google isn't a person and high-paid attorneys aren't antibodies. It's much more likely that people doing the interviews don't have a clue how to do it (likely because their expertise is software engineering, not recruiting) The sooner we stop blaming faceless corporations and start acknowledging that each person involved in recruiting (including you and me) needs to take training and ethics more seriously, the better.
        • PinballWizard 8y ago
          As a previous hiring manager, it's easy to getting stuck in the mindset that when you are doing shitty things for that faceless Corp that it isn't you doing that shitty thing, it's you doing what the Corp wants. It's hard to have the presence of mind to realize you are doing something for a entity that rarely is moral, but many times is amoral or even immoral
• AchieveLife 8y ago
  That's disgustingly unethical.
• Consultant32452 8y ago
  I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand you were totally in the right and should have sued if they persisted. At the same time I have a hard time being emotionally upset at a company/manager behaving rationally. The fact that your wife didn't go back to work will subconsciously reinforce the idea to not hire birthing age women. This is also a huge problem in the UK if anecdotes from my friends are any indication, women of birthing age have a very hard time finding work because employers don't want to be saddled with paying massive leave and then severance.
  • MattLaroche 8y ago
    A good argument for parental leave not being tied to employer, and instead being tied paid by the state. I've heard of moms before who would rather tell the truth that they're not coming back after leave, but there's little upside and a lot of risk.
    • Consultant32452 8y ago
      I'm not sure the paid leave and severance is really the primary issue. Sure, money is money, but it's very expensive to find a good employee. When someone goes on leave like that you can't fill the position. Since they can't fill your position your team is stuck having to work extra to pick up the slack, and then if 90% of women don't wind up coming back it's just that much longer before you can find someone decent to fill the position.
      • MattLaroche 8y ago
        90% of moms not coming back is an exaggeration for the bay area. Part of what we're not talking about here (in this whole thread) is the cost of child care. Child care in SF is over $1700 a month, and hard to find for 3 month olds, which is why a lot of parents quit after leave. I reckon we'll get a lot more parents staying in the workforce if the government helped more with childcare across all income ranges. Childcare comes at a lower income time of life, often when around when people have recently purchased a home. We're also likely to have fewer parents drop out of the workforce if they can get their infants to 6+ months with a parent. Childcare is easier to find for 6 month olds than 3 month olds.
• dilyevsky 8y ago
  My manager at said company once said to me that my planned paternity leave "is untimely" with a straight face.
  • eps 8y ago
    What's wrong with them saying that?
    • fabatka 8y ago
      Because the timeliness of paternity/maternity leave is determined by the childbirth's date, not by anything else.
      • eps 8y ago
        That's obvious to anyone who knows how humans replicate. The sentiment of the comment was that the timing was unfortunate because the kid was born in the same period that had presumably something else going on on the work side. Not that the child was born. So either the OP had some prior "history" with his manager, which changed the literal meaning of the comment, or he is reading too much into it.
      • mbrameld 8y ago
        What is the childbirth's date roughly determined by? There's an event that must occur before childbirth is even possible.
        • rosser 8y ago
          Are you legit suggesting that people should do their family planning around their employer's convenience?
          • mbrameld 8y ago
            Is that how you read my comment? Odd, because that's not what I wrote at all. The comment I replied to suggested that the timing of a child's birth was completely random and unpredictable. I suggested that's not the case. I don't know how you got from what I wrote to what you read, that's quite a mental leap!
• goldenchrome 8y ago
  What level was your wife? I hypothesize that the higher your level the more insulated you are from being mistreated. I've seen quite a few L5+ (Senior) go on maternity leave and come back seemingly without issue, but then again I don't know for sure.
• xvf22 8y ago
  Same thing happened to my wife at Facebook. They waited a few weeks and then tried to dredge up anything they thought would stick before relenting.
• greesil 8y ago
  Google doesn't offer 12 month paid leave. Are you thinking of a different company? Edit: sorry, this is a U.S. centered viewpoint. Other countries will mandate different leave policies.
• airnomad 8y ago
  "WE had twins so SHE wasn't going back to work anyway" I'd say you were discriminating her way more than Google. Kids are ruinous for women careers but only partly for practice like one described. The other reason is that we as families, partners and society in general accept that kids are, essentially, a woman job.
  • adrianN 8y ago
    Some women actually like taking care of children more than working their job.
• skookumchuck 8y ago
  12 months paid and not having to show up for work? > ... wasn't going back to work anyway ... Adding in severance pay on top of that, sounds like a sweet deal!
  • paxys 8y ago
    Who knows, may have received more in a lawsuit.
• ggg9990 8y ago
  > We had twins so she wasn't going back to work anyway But the company would have still had to keep the position open anyways. Here we see the root causes of pregnancy discrimination.
• doktrin 8y ago
  Interesting. I'm genuinely surprised that a company like Google with both massive financial resources and who actively court a progressive public image would be so shortsighted as to start systematically discriminating against pregnant women.
  • dgacmu 8y ago
    Google isn't that shortsighted. The behavior described in that comment is both disgusting and horribly against policy. (I work there part-time; I get most of the "don't be stupid in this way" training.) But I'm not surprised that in a company of > 70k people, there are some who either shouldn't be involved in hiring, or desperately need more clue. The real question is if on a per-capita basis, Google's managing to make it better over time.
• crunchlibrarian 8y ago
  It's ok to name companies that do bad things, even if it's effectively a powerful company like Google. Especially if it's a powerful company like Google, they are almost a nation-state at this point.
• awinder 8y ago
  > the fact that they tried left us with a bad taste. This is really one of the fundamental reasons that not taking care of mothers & fathers (and in fact: going after them) is just such a boneheaded move. It’s a statement of culture. Companies are full of mothers and fathers, and how you treat expectant mothers is a statement on your corporate values. If you need to put it into financial terms — which you shouldn’t — you will lose more value with a weaker talent pool and higher recruiting costs treating people poorly, than you will by doing the right thing.
• vkbandi 8y ago
  Account deleted
  • kadenshep 8y ago
    This sounds contrived, at the very least extremely anecdotal with a bit of hyperbole sprinkled on top.
    • vkbandi 8y ago
      Account deleted
      • kadenshep 8y ago
        There is both an abnormal amount of promotions that you have somehow personally witnessed -- doesn't sound like you were even involved with, we'll also ignore implicit psychological biases here -- while you happened to overhear THE core group of people involved in some conspiracy to enable your overall incredibly inordinary talking point. There's a word for this: contrived. It is extremely unlikely that such a company would exist in the current landscape, one willing to needlessly promote women, especially when considering their prior or current pregnancy status. I'm having myself a pretty big giggle.
        • vkbandi 8y ago
          Account deleted
          • kadenshep 8y ago
            >I only wanted to highlight there are companies on the other side of the spectrum too. I am fully aware of that, hence some of my statements. I think it's contrived and not being completely honest, at the very least it seems pretty irrelevant.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
• rahimnathwani 8y ago
  I'm not doubting what happened in your wife's situation, but it strikes me as strange that this would happen at a company where both men and women are given longer parental / bonding leave than is required by US law (and, in China, more than is required by Chinese law). The obvious reason why the company would offer this, is because it helps with employee recruitment, retention and productivity over the long term. And, given how hard it is for large companies in the bay area to hire enough people who fit their needs, it seems irrational to let someone go for only this reason.
  • lovich 8y ago
    That helps the company in general, but on individual teams the incentives are different and the manager may have decided it was worth it for him to try and kill this behavior or just get the employee gone now so that he could get in queue for getting a replacement ASAP.