5 ms·

We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. If any company is

We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong.

simonsarris 8y ago
This seems like the most obvious dodge. I know plenty of companies, especially small ones, where any person in the company is pretty much the bus factor. When they take vacation the company shuts its doors for a few weeks. This is obviously true for startups and small restaurants, especially ones without gobs of VC funding. Is the solution just to exclude companies that cannot get by without doing this? In other words, make sure certain kinds of startups and small businesses are not possible?
- DavidHm 8y ago
  If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them. If you own in part the business, then imho you take as much or little parental leave as you want/can afford.
  - simonsarris 8y ago
    The reason I used CFO and specialist mechanic is that often companies are utterly reliant not on a single person, but a single person's work or expertise. It may be no problem at all to hire a replacement expert, just like it is easy to hire a new accountant if your accountant dies from a heart attack. But you still hire a new accountant, and in this case, with parental leave, hiring someone to do the leaver's job leads to problems because unlike the dead accountant, they come back! This is the issue, that normally you fulfill a specialist role with another hire.
    - walshemj 8y ago
      you know there is an entire industry of recruitment agencies that specialise in interim directors?
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      > not on a single person, but a single person's work or expertise But this is true for literally everyone in the company, including the owner. It's a rare business that couldn't change ownership and still thrive under the right circumstances. In fact, there's a whole day of the week that has a nickname because people do this so often ("M&A Monday") Your "someone with equivalent skills" condition is equivalent to the "under the right circumstances" condition. So, I'm not sure I see how this is a response to: > If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them.
- krastanov 8y ago
  Does the problem still exist if you start distinguishing between employees and more direct stakeholders? If a "simple" employee is so important that the companies shuts down when they are away, then that employee should be awarded with a true stake in the company and some voting power, not just a salary. Then they can decide for themselves how to deal with such vacations. In that sense I think it is perfectly reasonable to make the kind of businesses or startups from your last paragraph impossible.
- taurath 8y ago
  Thats a bit of a strong statement, but I understand your leaning. A couple things: * The Employment Insurance office pays for it. Yes, the person is going to be on leave, but you're not sitting there paying their salary. Hire a contractor while they're gone? * If they're irreplaceable, yes you're SOL, but they get to make their own choices just as you did about basing your business's viability on one person that planned and had a kid.
  - simonsarris 8y ago
    Thanks. I suppose "use temps/contractors" is probably the answer for most businesses, then, and to me feels like a true answer to the question posed.
    - yardie 8y ago
      If you're fine with using temps/contractors then you are also fine with them not showing up one morning as well. Most temps are looking for full-time employment. And most contractors are after bigger contracts.
- TLC555 8y ago
  Canada can do it because Canada is not the US. In the US, we have too much emphasis on the individual. In other societies, there is more emphasis on the collective. This opinion may not be entirely accurate, but it's worth stating this basic difference.
  - refurb 8y ago
    As a Canadian who lives in the US, the two countries aren’t that different.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    Do you think Canada is more collectivist than individualist?
    - unavoidable 8y ago
      Judging by the temperature of sibling HN comments and the degree of Canada-bashing from US-based individuals, it does indeed seem like there is a difference in degree of individualist mindset.
      - james_s_tayler 8y ago
        Sibling countries bashing each other is common the world over. Is the nature of the bashing such that it is making claims of some sort of collectivist nature? And to what degree does a claim made during some kind of rivalry make something accurate or true? Australians often like to claim New Zealanders have sexual relations with sheep when they engage in good old fashioned country bashing. I would hazard a guess that stunningly few New Zealanders have ever fucked a sheep, though I would assume a handful have and what's more I'd assume the same to be true of Australia too. But it's clearly not like the claim has any sort of merit as it applies to the general population. I don't have deep experience with Canada, so I would be interested to be pointed in the direction of anything that would indicate that collectivism was more prevalent in Canada than Individualism. I have a hard time buying it. I'm from NZ and I've always felt we are much closer to Canada than the US. I've also lived in Australia for a couple of years. Aus and NZ are completely similar along certain dimensions and really different along other ones. But I would venture to say that they're both heavy into Individualism. As is the States and from what I have seen of Canada I assumed I would feel quite at home there. Comparing my experience with Japan over the last 10 years, which is heavily collectivist, I just can't bring myself to the conclusion that personality wise and the types of things that come out of Canadians mouths about how one should conduct oneself in society is closer to that of the Japanese than it is to that of Americans.
natalyarostova 8y ago
Recent research suggests otherwise, at least on average: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/01/productive-owner-managers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/01/pr... >We find that the average premature death of a million-dollar-earning owner causes an 82% decline in firm profits. Granted, this is a slightly different question regarding owner/managers.
shados 8y ago
It's not that they can't thrive in a pinch and more "what do you do when it's normal". Let's also remember that the person can have multiple kids in a row. A long time ago I worked at a company where the VP of a department ended up with 3 kids back to back. By the time they came back it was basically a different company and no one remembered them. The company couldn't tell ahead of time if this was going to keep going or not, so they had a new permanent VP, and no real room for an extra one. They basically split up the department in 2 for no real reason since they had to give the person a similar job back. It was really weird. Obviously those are extreme case. Companies are dealing with it all the time now, and it's pretty normal. They make it work. But there's no real argument that it leads to some really awkward situations sometimes.
- endymi0n 8y ago
  There‘s this nice saying: „People who want to, find ways. People who don‘t want to, find reasons. People here in Germany are on parental leave all the time. I was on parental leave two months as CTO. My cofounder was away almost a year as CRO. You just do what’s obvious: share responsibility, temporarily hire people and/or restructure and make it work. Is it annoying? Sure. Would I want it any other way? Hell, no. I think it makes all the difference if kids are seen as a common investment into the future economy or as a personal luxury.
  - shados 8y ago
    > I was on parental leave two months as CTO. My cofounder was away almost a year as CRO 2 months is nothing. The later example is abit closer. In some of my examples above, we're talking nearly 3 years. That's a whole different level.
prostoalex 8y ago
Large companies have economies of scale and a back bench of qualified labor to step up when necessary. Small companies frequently lack that - for instance, your team members might share responsibility, but are you sure areas such as payroll, legal or facilities are as generously staffed? It's in large companies' interests to get such rules instituted across the board, as it raises the costs to enter the market for a potential disruptor.
bluecalm 8y ago
>>We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. Sounds nice but in practice it means people who don't have children or have less children do more work. As someone who doesn't want to have children I wouldn't want to work for a place where I am expected to do more work when others get pregnant. There is real cost even if government pays for the leave. Either you eat the costs of hiring a new employee (in some businesses it's several months of salary and time to train them) or your other employees have to do more work for the same pay.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Can you actually point out to instances of having to work more in practice due to people taking parental leave? Other countries tend to have much stronger labor protections so the end result, surprisingly, is often that you're not really doing more work especially if the company is prepared. I just went through an example myself where my relatively small team had a senior developer take parental leave for a few months and the expectation wasn't for us to pick up the slack.
  - x0x0 8y ago
    Not leave -- and note that I'm not opposed to the leave policies -- but I worked at a place that involved travel. The parents always managed to get out of it. I ended up leaving because what would have been a reasonable amount of travel split 4 ways was an unreasonable amount split 1 way (me) with 3 parents who did virtually none of it.
    - sbov 8y ago
      Well your original post made no mention of this. I know plenty of people with kids that have to travel for work. And they make it work. FYI, retaliation over parental leave is a thing too. I have a friend who took 2 months parental leave. When he came back he was put on call for a year straight.
      - 8y ago
hello_friendos 8y ago
Yeah, if a company is claiming this is a too large of a hardship to implement all that tells me is that they are running their business poorly.
gammateam 8y ago
> you're simply doing it wrong. In Canada
phil21 8y ago
> If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong. Hacker News - where everyone forgot what an actual startup is. VC funded "startups" with millions in the bank should really be called something else entirely. Only in the past 20 years has that become the norm. Typically a startup is a self-funded enterprise with 1 or 2 key employees for the first few years. During those actual startup phases you likely have a bus factor of 1 or you are likely not doing anything remotely interesting enough to warrant you starting a company. Once you get your VC funding and have 50 employees and a 1 year runway? You're not a startup any longer.
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  Hacker News - where everyone forgot what an actual startup is. During those actual startup phases you likely have a bus factor of 1 or you are likely not doing anything remotely interesting I’m sure you can appreciate why those two statements are not reconcilable. Stop gatekeeping.

simonsarris 8y ago

This seems like the most obvious dodge. I know plenty of companies, especially small ones, where any person in the company is pretty much the bus factor. When they take vacation the company shuts its doors for a few weeks. This is obviously true for startups and small restaurants, especially ones without gobs of VC funding. Is the solution just to exclude companies that cannot get by without doing this? In other words, make sure certain kinds of startups and small businesses are not possible?

DavidHm 8y ago
If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them. If you own in part the business, then imho you take as much or little parental leave as you want/can afford.
- simonsarris 8y ago
  The reason I used CFO and specialist mechanic is that often companies are utterly reliant not on a single person, but a single person's work or expertise. It may be no problem at all to hire a replacement expert, just like it is easy to hire a new accountant if your accountant dies from a heart attack. But you still hire a new accountant, and in this case, with parental leave, hiring someone to do the leaver's job leads to problems because unlike the dead accountant, they come back! This is the issue, that normally you fulfill a specialist role with another hire.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    you know there is an entire industry of recruitment agencies that specialise in interim directors?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > not on a single person, but a single person's work or expertise But this is true for literally everyone in the company, including the owner. It's a rare business that couldn't change ownership and still thrive under the right circumstances. In fact, there's a whole day of the week that has a nickname because people do this so often ("M&A Monday") Your "someone with equivalent skills" condition is equivalent to the "under the right circumstances" condition. So, I'm not sure I see how this is a response to: > If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them.
krastanov 8y ago
Does the problem still exist if you start distinguishing between employees and more direct stakeholders? If a "simple" employee is so important that the companies shuts down when they are away, then that employee should be awarded with a true stake in the company and some voting power, not just a salary. Then they can decide for themselves how to deal with such vacations. In that sense I think it is perfectly reasonable to make the kind of businesses or startups from your last paragraph impossible.
taurath 8y ago
Thats a bit of a strong statement, but I understand your leaning. A couple things: * The Employment Insurance office pays for it. Yes, the person is going to be on leave, but you're not sitting there paying their salary. Hire a contractor while they're gone? * If they're irreplaceable, yes you're SOL, but they get to make their own choices just as you did about basing your business's viability on one person that planned and had a kid.
- simonsarris 8y ago
  Thanks. I suppose "use temps/contractors" is probably the answer for most businesses, then, and to me feels like a true answer to the question posed.
  - yardie 8y ago
    If you're fine with using temps/contractors then you are also fine with them not showing up one morning as well. Most temps are looking for full-time employment. And most contractors are after bigger contracts.
TLC555 8y ago
Canada can do it because Canada is not the US. In the US, we have too much emphasis on the individual. In other societies, there is more emphasis on the collective. This opinion may not be entirely accurate, but it's worth stating this basic difference.
- refurb 8y ago
  As a Canadian who lives in the US, the two countries aren’t that different.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Do you think Canada is more collectivist than individualist?
  - unavoidable 8y ago
    Judging by the temperature of sibling HN comments and the degree of Canada-bashing from US-based individuals, it does indeed seem like there is a difference in degree of individualist mindset.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      Sibling countries bashing each other is common the world over. Is the nature of the bashing such that it is making claims of some sort of collectivist nature? And to what degree does a claim made during some kind of rivalry make something accurate or true? Australians often like to claim New Zealanders have sexual relations with sheep when they engage in good old fashioned country bashing. I would hazard a guess that stunningly few New Zealanders have ever fucked a sheep, though I would assume a handful have and what's more I'd assume the same to be true of Australia too. But it's clearly not like the claim has any sort of merit as it applies to the general population. I don't have deep experience with Canada, so I would be interested to be pointed in the direction of anything that would indicate that collectivism was more prevalent in Canada than Individualism. I have a hard time buying it. I'm from NZ and I've always felt we are much closer to Canada than the US. I've also lived in Australia for a couple of years. Aus and NZ are completely similar along certain dimensions and really different along other ones. But I would venture to say that they're both heavy into Individualism. As is the States and from what I have seen of Canada I assumed I would feel quite at home there. Comparing my experience with Japan over the last 10 years, which is heavily collectivist, I just can't bring myself to the conclusion that personality wise and the types of things that come out of Canadians mouths about how one should conduct oneself in society is closer to that of the Japanese than it is to that of Americans.

natalyarostova 8y ago

Recent research suggests otherwise, at least on average: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/01/productive-owner-managers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/01/pr... >We find that the average premature death of a million-dollar-earning owner causes an 82% decline in firm profits. Granted, this is a slightly different question regarding owner/managers.

shados 8y ago

It's not that they can't thrive in a pinch and more "what do you do when it's normal". Let's also remember that the person can have multiple kids in a row. A long time ago I worked at a company where the VP of a department ended up with 3 kids back to back. By the time they came back it was basically a different company and no one remembered them. The company couldn't tell ahead of time if this was going to keep going or not, so they had a new permanent VP, and no real room for an extra one. They basically split up the department in 2 for no real reason since they had to give the person a similar job back. It was really weird. Obviously those are extreme case. Companies are dealing with it all the time now, and it's pretty normal. They make it work. But there's no real argument that it leads to some really awkward situations sometimes.

endymi0n 8y ago
There‘s this nice saying: „People who want to, find ways. People who don‘t want to, find reasons. People here in Germany are on parental leave all the time. I was on parental leave two months as CTO. My cofounder was away almost a year as CRO. You just do what’s obvious: share responsibility, temporarily hire people and/or restructure and make it work. Is it annoying? Sure. Would I want it any other way? Hell, no. I think it makes all the difference if kids are seen as a common investment into the future economy or as a personal luxury.
- shados 8y ago
  > I was on parental leave two months as CTO. My cofounder was away almost a year as CRO 2 months is nothing. The later example is abit closer. In some of my examples above, we're talking nearly 3 years. That's a whole different level.

prostoalex 8y ago

Large companies have economies of scale and a back bench of qualified labor to step up when necessary. Small companies frequently lack that - for instance, your team members might share responsibility, but are you sure areas such as payroll, legal or facilities are as generously staffed? It's in large companies' interests to get such rules instituted across the board, as it raises the costs to enter the market for a potential disruptor.

bluecalm 8y ago

>>We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. Sounds nice but in practice it means people who don't have children or have less children do more work. As someone who doesn't want to have children I wouldn't want to work for a place where I am expected to do more work when others get pregnant. There is real cost even if government pays for the leave. Either you eat the costs of hiring a new employee (in some businesses it's several months of salary and time to train them) or your other employees have to do more work for the same pay.

fzeroracer 8y ago
Can you actually point out to instances of having to work more in practice due to people taking parental leave? Other countries tend to have much stronger labor protections so the end result, surprisingly, is often that you're not really doing more work especially if the company is prepared. I just went through an example myself where my relatively small team had a senior developer take parental leave for a few months and the expectation wasn't for us to pick up the slack.
- x0x0 8y ago
  Not leave -- and note that I'm not opposed to the leave policies -- but I worked at a place that involved travel. The parents always managed to get out of it. I ended up leaving because what would have been a reasonable amount of travel split 4 ways was an unreasonable amount split 1 way (me) with 3 parents who did virtually none of it.
  - sbov 8y ago
    Well your original post made no mention of this. I know plenty of people with kids that have to travel for work. And they make it work. FYI, retaliation over parental leave is a thing too. I have a friend who took 2 months parental leave. When he came back he was put on call for a year straight.
    - 8y ago

hello_friendos 8y ago

Yeah, if a company is claiming this is a too large of a hardship to implement all that tells me is that they are running their business poorly.

gammateam 8y ago

> you're simply doing it wrong. In Canada

phil21 8y ago

> If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong. Hacker News - where everyone forgot what an actual startup is. VC funded "startups" with millions in the bank should really be called something else entirely. Only in the past 20 years has that become the norm. Typically a startup is a self-funded enterprise with 1 or 2 key employees for the first few years. During those actual startup phases you likely have a bus factor of 1 or you are likely not doing anything remotely interesting enough to warrant you starting a company. Once you get your VC funding and have 50 employees and a 1 year runway? You're not a startup any longer.

matthewmacleod 8y ago
Hacker News - where everyone forgot what an actual startup is. During those actual startup phases you likely have a bus factor of 1 or you are likely not doing anything remotely interesting I’m sure you can appreciate why those two statements are not reconcilable. Stop gatekeeping.