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It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a leave (the only

It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a leave (the only way it can really work). Maybe the answer to that problem is that really important employees who make a lot of money shouldn't be hired as normal workers but as contractors. Something like: if you get 3x more average salary then you are important but you only get paid if you work and standard protections don't apply. If you get a normal salary standard protections apply but then we will hopefully be able to find replacement for you at reasonable cost. It would be nice if I at least don't nee to re-hire you after covering big costs of getting your replacement up to speed. If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. If I am hiring a cleaning lady or social media specialist then I won't have problems because I will easily find the replacement on the market and they can be productive from day one. If you think it's immoral, think again. I have responsibilities towards my family to provide for them. I won't take risk which can ruin my source of income for the sake of someone's children. What is immoral is forcing employers to cover that risk.

wvenable 8y ago
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. Anybody can leave at any time for any reason. I had much worse luck young male developers out of school and them leaving after a few months than with a developer leaving on maternity leave and coming back.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  Yeah, but you need to play the odds. If decision A means 5% chance you can't pay for a good college for your kid and decision B means 2% chance of being in that position which one do you choose? If I run 100+ people firm then the cost is small enough that I can eat it for making the world a better and fairer place and I also get benefits of more inclusive work place. If I run a small 2 people business I will weigh every decision in terms of "what is a chance my family well-being being intact if I do that".
  - dwild 8y ago
    So you are saying that you have a higher chance that a young woman will carry a baby than having a young man change for a better paying offer? I'm one of theses young one out of college and I can tell you, based around me, your stats are clearly wrong ;). Most don't care about babies, but they all certainly care about getting more interesting jobs. I'm Canadian too.
    - bluecalm 8y ago
      If someone leaves I can find a replacement and hope they don't leave. If a women has a baby then I will either need to hire a temp which is more difficult than to hire for full time position or suddenly have 2 positions open (I need to have that when my first employee comes back). For a small few people company having 2 positions open instead of one is often unreasonable cost.
      - maxsilver 8y ago
        > I will either need to hire a temp which is more difficult than to hire for full time position We're still talking about programmers, right? Because it is way easier to hire a part-time contract programmer, than it is to hire a full-time programmer. If anything, the best devs are often already freelancing/consulting anyway, and would prefer you hire them this way.
      - wvenable 8y ago
        I had to hire a temp for a one year maternity leave replacement. It wasn't particularly difficult and the person I hired didn't want a longer contract and she is great. In fact, I kept her on as-needed contract basis after. She will be helping me smooth other the transition of another employee who just left for a better paying job.
      - smileysteve 8y ago
        If, in a year, you don't have room to grow your staff by 1, haven't you already failed?
    - 8y ago
bobbyT314 8y ago
Since this is parental leave we're discussing, would you make the same judgements when considering hiring a young man and only hire contractors that don't get the protection of labour laws?
CodeCube 8y ago
> It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost And yet, there they are ... still having small businesses, and consulting shops, and all manner of people continuing operations in the face of such start conditions ;) edit: Holy crap, I hadn't even finished reading your comment > If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. wat ... this is just ... this is a terrible thought process and ideology.
- woodpanel 8y ago
  Don't like the outcome of his thought-process as well but to be fair, it's just logical self-interest which is exactly his #1 job if he's running his own business. The answer to this in my opinion is a job-market with less job-security regulation (so that "getting new workers up to speed" will be the norm not the exception for companies) coupled with a tighter social security net (maternity leave paid for by the government) and of course a right-to-return (although, if "getting up to speed" is the norm, it might not be needed anyways).
  - rytor718 8y ago
    > it's just logical self-interest which is exactly his #1 job if he's running his own business. This is precisely one of the cultural obstacles to correct. Dropping in a 1 year policy without substantial organizational preparation and planning is -- surprise -- doomed to fail. Like every single other aspect of organizational planning. The problem in the US is we simply do not value these kinds of things. We value individuality foremost and I believe its among the top reasons parental leave is incomprehensible to many people.
    - bluecalm 8y ago
      Man, small businesses often don't have any "organizational planning". You work every day and hope the others (maybe one, two or three people) do as well. You go by and hope for the best. Most often you fail or don't really make much. Once you are the stage of "organizational preparation and planning" it's a different ball-game. The problem is that you have to somehow start and most of the world isn't full of VS money where starting means you get a budget of several million. You mostly start with whatever little savings you have and hope your first orders come fast enough so you can pay bills when savings dry up.
markholmes 8y ago
Why is this a gender issue? Both the Gates Foundation program and the Canada law are gender-neutral.
simion314 8y ago
>If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman Men can get parental leave in European countries, so in this case your strategy is not working.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  >>Men can get parental leave in European countries, so in this case your strategy is not working. Depends on the country. In mine women get much more time and men usually take none or just a few weeks at most. I think that's the case in most countries.
  - simion314 8y ago
    I mean one of the parents not both, in my case (I am a man in Romania) my wife could not qualify at that time since she was at university/college and I benefited by the parental leave. The law does not discriminate by the parent gender, so if the man decides to stay at home with the child is fine.
  - erk__ 8y ago
    Men do now have 2 months of parental leave, if they do not use that they lose it. This is per a new EU law from last year.
    - GordonS 8y ago
      EU bloke here (well, for now, pending Brexit...) - do you have any more info on this? I think last time I took paternity leave it was only 2 weeks on full pay, and a further 2 weeks on half pay. Is the 2 months you mention on full pay?
      - dependsontheq 8y ago
        No it’s still decided on a country level, sounds like the German law.
      - erk__ 8y ago
celticninja 8y ago
Maternity/Paternity leave is the norm all over Europe and it works. The USA is not a special case, it would take a law to require it though because businesses are never going to add things like maternity leave with it being mandated by the government. Your admission of sexism leads me to believe that your family consists of male children. If you had a daughter perhaps you would realise that "not giving a job to a young woman because she may decide to get pregnant" is pretty much the worst reason to refuse someone employment, regardless of the law, you are happy to discriminate against a person just because of their genitalia. That's a sad state of affairs for you, your company and your family.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  >>Maternity/Paternity leave is the norm all over Europe and it works. It doesn't really work that well. Young women face blatant discrimination in hiring and small employers and sadly it's for good reasons as here a lot of women go on medical 2months into pregnancy and then take the full leave. >>. If you had a daughter perhaps you would realise that "not giving a job to a young woman because she may decide to get pregnant" is pretty much the worst reason to refuse someone employment, regardless of the law, you are happy to discriminate against a person just because of their genitalia. That's a sad state of affairs for you, your company and your family. I hear your moral outrage but I put well-being of my family first. I prefer to be sexists if my children don't need to worry about food and good school than being gender neutral and worrying about how I am going to pay for a good school or for the treatment if they get sick.
  - celticninja 8y ago
    Yet you call out others for sexist behaviour and then behave that way yourself.
    - bluecalm 8y ago
      That's the problem. The laws are set in a way that I am either sexist or put my children well being below someone's else. The incentives are there to be sexists maybe let's think how to set them right.
NikolaNovak 8y ago
>>If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. Umm, all other moral and ethical considerations aside, this approach fails spectacularly when the young man takes paternity leave instead :-D
eertami 8y ago
>I will not risk hiring a young woman Not everyone wants or will have children.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  I am not allowed to ask though. That's the whole point: extended maternal leaves cause discrimination when hiring women. I would love to be able to hire on merits alone but if I am facing much higher risk of not being able to put my children in a good school when hiring a women then I won't do that. No amount of moral outrage is going to put someone's children above my own. If you want me to not discriminate then please make laws which remove incentives to do so.
  - eropple 8y ago
    An equally effective way to remove that incentive is to break your business in half when you decide to avail yourself of it. It is unfortunate that we have, as a collection of societies, largely forgotten that the fictitious entity that is your company exists at and only at the sufferance of the society that decides it's a good idea to let it exist--and that we-the-society can demand that you play ball with the society that grants you your charter.
    - bluecalm 8y ago
      I am playing ball. I am working 10-12 hours a day. I don't take any benefits when I am sick. I am paying huge amount in taxes while almost not using very little infrastructure my country provides. It's of great benefit for people of my country to have me doing business here and yet the laws are such that my choices are either to be sexist when hiring, sacrifice my family well-being or not hire at all. I am currently doing the 3rd options because "the society demands". They get less in taxes and someone misses on a really good job. If I need anything I just hire contractors, usually living abroad so I don't have to deal with the nonsense. Great deal the demanding society got, truly.
      - pertymcpert 8y ago
WorldMaker 8y ago
Do you make the same tough decision and avoid hiring members of the US National Guard, or the Army/Navy/Air Force Reserve, as well, simply because they may be called away for a year or so to serve their country and similarly expect their job to be there when they return? (This is not a facetious question. I think that these are comparable and at least equably honorable. Parental leave is a form of serving your country by investing in the foundations of the future of your country.)
- CloudNetworking 8y ago
  Or humans. Does he hire humans? humans can and do fall sick from time to time. Ew.
  - slenk 8y ago
    He may be one of the bosses that believes if you're conscious you're healthy enough to be at work
  - acid__ 8y ago
    Maybe he recognizes that different humans have different probabilities of being suddenly unable to work for extended periods of time, and is able to weigh various factors (rationally or not, fairly or not) instead of being a 100% all-or-nothing strawman.
    - CloudNetworking 8y ago
      I've got the same probabilities as my wife to go on parental leave. It so happens that when she has a son, I've got a son too! MAGIC
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 8y ago
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty. Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gender. And these days, youth is not essentially to being a parent (even a natural parent, but parental leave policies usually apply to adoptive parents as well.)
- bluecalm 8y ago
  >>So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty. Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. Oh the choices... I think I am taking the lawsuit, especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee. >>Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gender. Maybe in theory, if you looks at statistics of what actually happens in most European countries you will see that women take much longer leaves and often several months medicals during pregnancy as well. I mean I live in one and my male friends usually take at most several days while women usually take close to a year if you count medical leave during pregnancy. I know exactly one couple who split the leave equally. It worked for them but it's definitely not usually happens.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. I don't think you've researched the costs of the kind of lawsuit at issue for your business if you think that it's less than you'd lose by having the employee in the position take a year off on job-protected leave.
    - jstanley 8y ago
      Risk = Probability * Consequence I don't think he (or she!) is saying that the consequence is low, just that the risk of suffering that consequence is low enough to outweigh it.
celticninja 8y ago
Your cognitive dissonance must be impressive. You have recently wrote: >She is openly racist and sexist so good riddance > I think it's very reasonable to be against Islam because of its stance on gay rights, women rights And here you are being sexist and ignoring the right of women to not be discriminated against because of their gender. How do you reconcile these positions inside your own head?
- akamel 8y ago
  Holy Crap!
- bluecalm 8y ago
  There is a difference between saying things like women are worse employees or don't deserve same rights as men and being put in position to choose between being sexist when hiring and putting someone's else children above well-being of your family. I hope you can understand the difference.
  - celticninja 8y ago
    Talk the talk, just don't walk the walk. I understand.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    I'm sure the typical person you'd say "good riddance" about also is doing the best for their family. Is it correct for people to say "good riddance" about your opinion? And being sexist when hiring is saying they're a worse employee and don't deserve the same rights.
  - pertymcpert 8y ago
    Beginning to think your business doesn't deserve to exist.
simion314 8y ago
Isn't SV culture encourages to not stay more then 2 years in one place and always keep an eye for an opportunity, how do you screen for people that are a "risk" of leaving not at home to take care of a child but at a new company to get a salary bump and work on something new and shiny?
empath75 8y ago
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. If you’re involved in hiring decisions in pretty much any western country you’ve just opened yourself to potential lawsuits.
nasalgoat 8y ago
My partner worked at a 10-person company and took the year off for parental leave. They hired a temp to fill her role, who left when she came back. I work for a 15-person company and we had a developer take a year off. We hired a temp developer who left when the other dev came back. Not sure why this is hard to understand?
- bluecalm 8y ago
  It's sometimes doable sure. 10-person company is 5x bigger than mine though so it's way easier there. It's also the case that some areas require specialized knowledge and some don't. If I hire someone even very competent it will a few months till they are productive because we work in a very niche area. If you need someone who programs a CRUD website then yeah, it is easier. Just because something is doable in your 10 or 15 person company doesn't mean it's doable for others in their <5 people businesses.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    when it comes to a social policy question like parental leave there is no size fits all solution, so we need to ask what we prioritize. I respect people who want to run very small businesses, but we can't realistically make policy for them if we want to guarantee some basic welfare and labour protection. Small businesses are often so unprofitable, have so little savings, and are so exposed to risk (as in this pregnancy case), that you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them. So the answer to the question of how to combine very small business and paternal leave is quite simple, you really can't. It's a policy that favours middle-sized and large businesses who generate more profit, suffer less from a few workers dropping out, and can organise these benefits.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      > you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them. And why not do so for them specifically? If you still have protections apply to larger companies, then it becomes a matter of choice for employees to choose small or large. But if you apply to everybody, and it kills small businesses, you're strictly worse off - if you can't land a job at one of those larger places, you're outright unemployed.
woodpanel 8y ago
While I can relate to your logic, I wonder: Since men are increasingly considering taking maternity leave as well, wouldn't it be a good alternative to focus on people older than say 40? What would keep you from hiring them?
- GordonS 8y ago
  Not trying to be a dick, but for info, male 'baby leave' is called "paternity leave"
  - woodpanel 8y ago
    no offense taken, I'll claim the always forgivable "not-a-native -peaker" ;-)
- p1esk 8y ago
  people older than say 40? What would keep you from hiring them? They are expensive :)
  - woodpanel 8y ago
    Is it really that? I've come to think that it's rather the expectation that they are expensive. It is expected by employers as well as the old employees themselves, so if they would demand a lower than expected wage it would come across as fishy (did he serve time? an underachiever?). Another thing might be that with experience comes less naiveness. As you become more resilient against corporate BS you become equally unformable (as in "Thanks, but no 'chakka' for me please").
    - p1esk 8y ago
      Have you hired many 40+ year olds who are both good and cheap?
      - ionised 8y ago
        Why would you expect someone good to be cheap as well?
neffy 8y ago
If you're looking for a 3rd programmer, you're looking for somebody who can commit to the short term future of the company with - if you're wise - an explicit guarantee of long term rewards. Excluding half the population from that search will absolutely ensure that you don't get unlucky hiring a man who, develop schizophrenia (symptoms occur typically in younger males), runs off with your IP, decides he doesn't want to stick the long hours, his wife/girlfriend has a child and he wants a more stable position, can't stand your attitude, or all the other reasons that make people, male and female leave small companies run by people who make bad decisions. In the grand scheme of things that can go horribly wrong for startup companies, female pregnancy is actually the least of your worries.
dependsontheq 8y ago
I have a small business (15) and a lot of my employees are young women in Germany, so I think I understand the situation from different perspectives (young father). You just try to work with it, of course the situation for me would be easier in the US, but since all my competitors have the same problem and my customers have the same problem it is not a competitive problem. It is actually a problem for a company in a certain size, so you try to stay out of this size or grow out of it pretty fast. But st the end, it’s a value discussion, my business partner took parental and I’m fine with that , it doesn’t make it easier but it’s definitely better for the kids and I don’t value my personal financial success higher than the chances for these kids.
lhorie 8y ago
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman Ignoring the fact that this kind of discrimination is flat out illegal, you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even logically consistent. Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professionals to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to imagine a small business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost". I could get interns to be productive in a day or two. In many fields of work, such as early education, there are standardized accreditations so an employer can basically just pick and choose from a pool of qualified individuals who will be ready-to-work on day 1. As the other poster said, standard fare in parental leaves is to hire a contractor for a 1 year contract. By the end of the year, worst case is your business grew 0%, you get your full-time employee back and it's business as usual. A more realistic scenario is your business grew by some amount that now allows you to hire the temp person full time.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  >you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even logically consistent. But they are much less likely to take this parental leave. >Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professionals to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to imagine a small business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost". Well, everyone else doesn't get to always run wildly successful small businesses. Most small businesses fail. I imagine that if you yank out a significant portion of their workforce that they'll be even more likely to fail. >By the end of the year, worst case is your business grew 0%, you get your full-time employee back and it's business as usual. Aka your small business shuts its doors, because the market has moved on and you couldn't keep up. Half the businesses fail within the first 5 years. Only a third of businesses survive 10 years.
  - lhorie 8y ago
    > But they are much less likely to take this parental leave If you want to talk about likelihoods, consider that in most companies, the chance that an employee of any gender will leave for a random reason is much higher than someone of any gender taking parental leave. Trying to skirt the law to "optimize" for least parental leaves is kinda like sending a memo to your employees telling them to always run red lights and jaywalk to get to work faster. It's one of those "not even wrong" kinds of things. > Most small businesses fail This is a non sequitur. Businesses fail for all sorts of reasons. Your restaurant staff ghosting you, not enough clients, spending stupidly after raising money, etc. If your business fails due to a parental leave of all things, let me tell you, you were probably severely delusional about its viability to begin with. > Aka your small business shuts its doors I believe I mentioned a fitting example where this could not be farther from the truth (early education)
Certhas 8y ago
Wow. Just wow. So, in many European countries, fathers and mothers have a right to substantial amounts of parental leave. Like a year or more. In all of these places small businesses exist. In Sweden, with very extensive parental leave [1], there is a large number of start ups. So obviously, empirically, you must be missing something. Generally speaking, if your employees care about your business (and getting their job back after the leave) they will not take decisions that destroy this business. Some laws will also vary depending on company size, though parental leave is just such an obvious fundamental need and right that I am not aware of a country where it does. You might not think of yourself as immoral, but your post is definitely sexist, and I find the viewpoint you take towards your potential employers deeply unethical. Because people like you sometimes end up with power we need democratic states to fight back and keep a sense of perspective. [1] "New parents in Sweden are entitled to 480 days of leave at 80% of their normal pay. That’s on top of the 18 weeks reserved just for mothers, after which the parents can split up the time however they choose. Swedish dads also get 90 paid paternity days reserved just for them. Out of these 480 days, 60 must be taken by the father or else all are lost. This leave can be taken by the month, week, day or even by the hour." So fathers are forced to take more paternal leave in Sweden than mothers get in the US. https://www.dailyscandinavian.com/parental-leave-working-scandinavia/ https://www.dailyscandinavian.com/parental-leave-working-sca...
- bluecalm 8y ago
  I want to support women having babies. I just think current regulations put too much burden on the employers especially small ones. I also think it's unfair that a women who decided to have kids just after college doesn't get any (or way less) help that a women who found a job and get pregnant right after. A system set that way encourages women to have children later in life because they will get more benefits then. I think it's backwards and we are all paying the price already. I just want incentives to be aligned in a way that it doesn't make sense to make sexist decisions when hiring and it doesn't encourage women to postpone motherhood because of how benefits are set.
  - room271 8y ago
    That's reasonable. But you still have to obey the law in the meantime.
fipple 8y ago
I had a company with roughly 10 engineers give or take over its lifetime. The two younger women never left. The men, younger and older, left at various times, one after 4 months, and one with 4 hours’ notice.
mattnewton 8y ago
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. IANAL but my understanding is this is very illegal in the US. Personally I think this is also terrible reasoning; there are many un-gendered life events that people will go on leave for.
belorn 8y ago
In a small company the buck always ends with the owner. If the company fails if someone leaves then that is either a failure of the owners ability to manage different aspect of the work or poorly run company. An employee can at any time get a medical condition that puts them out of action with month long recovery time. A car crash, a bike accident, or any other problem that results in surgery. Maybe they get serious sick. Its quite rare that people are perfect healthy and remains so for decades, so it doesn't make any sense to risk operating a company on that condition.
bobthepanda 8y ago
Most leave laws don't apply to a company as small as three people. So this is just a hypothetical situation that is so absurd that it would never happen.
ncallaway 8y ago
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman You've just created far more financial risk for your company by doing this. It's flat out illegal, and if you're caught doing this the punishment will probably bankrupt your company. Further, it's disgusting and any small business owner that does this deserves to have their business destroyed.
- Noumenon72 8y ago
  You, who do not have to bear the cost of the policy, should be less harsh with the people who do. For example, we might make a law saying mothers shouldn't leave their children alone at home. Then we could say "You horrible mother, you left your kids alone, you're going to jail". But we are not the ones who have to spend our whole day watching the kids, trapped and exhausted. We should recognize the higher contribution we're asking from the mothers by saying "Unfortunately, for the sake of the children, we have this penalty for having left them alone. We understand that one can be in a rush, so next time we encourage you to team up with other mothers to watch each other's children." For one thing, the harsh reactions keep the people you're regulating from even being able to let you know how hard it is on them.
  - ncallaway 8y ago
    > You, who do not have to bear the cost of the policy, should be less harsh with the people who do You should be less quick to make assumptions. I am the owner of a small business with a handful of employees. I am the that bears the cost of such policies.
room271 8y ago
If your business cannot handle possible parental leave then it is not really profitable in the first place. This 'cost' is not different from any other (taxes, transport costs, rent, etc.).

wvenable 8y ago

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. Anybody can leave at any time for any reason. I had much worse luck young male developers out of school and them leaving after a few months than with a developer leaving on maternity leave and coming back.

bluecalm 8y ago
Yeah, but you need to play the odds. If decision A means 5% chance you can't pay for a good college for your kid and decision B means 2% chance of being in that position which one do you choose? If I run 100+ people firm then the cost is small enough that I can eat it for making the world a better and fairer place and I also get benefits of more inclusive work place. If I run a small 2 people business I will weigh every decision in terms of "what is a chance my family well-being being intact if I do that".
- dwild 8y ago
  So you are saying that you have a higher chance that a young woman will carry a baby than having a young man change for a better paying offer? I'm one of theses young one out of college and I can tell you, based around me, your stats are clearly wrong ;). Most don't care about babies, but they all certainly care about getting more interesting jobs. I'm Canadian too.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    If someone leaves I can find a replacement and hope they don't leave. If a women has a baby then I will either need to hire a temp which is more difficult than to hire for full time position or suddenly have 2 positions open (I need to have that when my first employee comes back). For a small few people company having 2 positions open instead of one is often unreasonable cost.
    - maxsilver 8y ago
      > I will either need to hire a temp which is more difficult than to hire for full time position We're still talking about programmers, right? Because it is way easier to hire a part-time contract programmer, than it is to hire a full-time programmer. If anything, the best devs are often already freelancing/consulting anyway, and would prefer you hire them this way.
    - wvenable 8y ago
      I had to hire a temp for a one year maternity leave replacement. It wasn't particularly difficult and the person I hired didn't want a longer contract and she is great. In fact, I kept her on as-needed contract basis after. She will be helping me smooth other the transition of another employee who just left for a better paying job.
    - smileysteve 8y ago
      If, in a year, you don't have room to grow your staff by 1, haven't you already failed?
  - 8y ago

bobbyT314 8y ago

Since this is parental leave we're discussing, would you make the same judgements when considering hiring a young man and only hire contractors that don't get the protection of labour laws?

CodeCube 8y ago

> It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost And yet, there they are ... still having small businesses, and consulting shops, and all manner of people continuing operations in the face of such start conditions ;) edit: Holy crap, I hadn't even finished reading your comment > If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. wat ... this is just ... this is a terrible thought process and ideology.

woodpanel 8y ago
Don't like the outcome of his thought-process as well but to be fair, it's just logical self-interest which is exactly his #1 job if he's running his own business. The answer to this in my opinion is a job-market with less job-security regulation (so that "getting new workers up to speed" will be the norm not the exception for companies) coupled with a tighter social security net (maternity leave paid for by the government) and of course a right-to-return (although, if "getting up to speed" is the norm, it might not be needed anyways).
- rytor718 8y ago
  > it's just logical self-interest which is exactly his #1 job if he's running his own business. This is precisely one of the cultural obstacles to correct. Dropping in a 1 year policy without substantial organizational preparation and planning is -- surprise -- doomed to fail. Like every single other aspect of organizational planning. The problem in the US is we simply do not value these kinds of things. We value individuality foremost and I believe its among the top reasons parental leave is incomprehensible to many people.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    Man, small businesses often don't have any "organizational planning". You work every day and hope the others (maybe one, two or three people) do as well. You go by and hope for the best. Most often you fail or don't really make much. Once you are the stage of "organizational preparation and planning" it's a different ball-game. The problem is that you have to somehow start and most of the world isn't full of VS money where starting means you get a budget of several million. You mostly start with whatever little savings you have and hope your first orders come fast enough so you can pay bills when savings dry up.

markholmes 8y ago

Why is this a gender issue? Both the Gates Foundation program and the Canada law are gender-neutral.

simion314 8y ago

>If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman Men can get parental leave in European countries, so in this case your strategy is not working.

bluecalm 8y ago
>>Men can get parental leave in European countries, so in this case your strategy is not working. Depends on the country. In mine women get much more time and men usually take none or just a few weeks at most. I think that's the case in most countries.
- simion314 8y ago
  I mean one of the parents not both, in my case (I am a man in Romania) my wife could not qualify at that time since she was at university/college and I benefited by the parental leave. The law does not discriminate by the parent gender, so if the man decides to stay at home with the child is fine.
- erk__ 8y ago
  Men do now have 2 months of parental leave, if they do not use that they lose it. This is per a new EU law from last year.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    EU bloke here (well, for now, pending Brexit...) - do you have any more info on this? I think last time I took paternity leave it was only 2 weeks on full pay, and a further 2 weeks on half pay. Is the 2 months you mention on full pay?
    - dependsontheq 8y ago
      No it’s still decided on a country level, sounds like the German law.
    - erk__ 8y ago

celticninja 8y ago

Maternity/Paternity leave is the norm all over Europe and it works. The USA is not a special case, it would take a law to require it though because businesses are never going to add things like maternity leave with it being mandated by the government. Your admission of sexism leads me to believe that your family consists of male children. If you had a daughter perhaps you would realise that "not giving a job to a young woman because she may decide to get pregnant" is pretty much the worst reason to refuse someone employment, regardless of the law, you are happy to discriminate against a person just because of their genitalia. That's a sad state of affairs for you, your company and your family.

bluecalm 8y ago
>>Maternity/Paternity leave is the norm all over Europe and it works. It doesn't really work that well. Young women face blatant discrimination in hiring and small employers and sadly it's for good reasons as here a lot of women go on medical 2months into pregnancy and then take the full leave. >>. If you had a daughter perhaps you would realise that "not giving a job to a young woman because she may decide to get pregnant" is pretty much the worst reason to refuse someone employment, regardless of the law, you are happy to discriminate against a person just because of their genitalia. That's a sad state of affairs for you, your company and your family. I hear your moral outrage but I put well-being of my family first. I prefer to be sexists if my children don't need to worry about food and good school than being gender neutral and worrying about how I am going to pay for a good school or for the treatment if they get sick.
- celticninja 8y ago
  Yet you call out others for sexist behaviour and then behave that way yourself.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    That's the problem. The laws are set in a way that I am either sexist or put my children well being below someone's else. The incentives are there to be sexists maybe let's think how to set them right.

NikolaNovak 8y ago

>>If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. Umm, all other moral and ethical considerations aside, this approach fails spectacularly when the young man takes paternity leave instead :-D

eertami 8y ago

>I will not risk hiring a young woman Not everyone wants or will have children.

bluecalm 8y ago
I am not allowed to ask though. That's the whole point: extended maternal leaves cause discrimination when hiring women. I would love to be able to hire on merits alone but if I am facing much higher risk of not being able to put my children in a good school when hiring a women then I won't do that. No amount of moral outrage is going to put someone's children above my own. If you want me to not discriminate then please make laws which remove incentives to do so.
- eropple 8y ago
  An equally effective way to remove that incentive is to break your business in half when you decide to avail yourself of it. It is unfortunate that we have, as a collection of societies, largely forgotten that the fictitious entity that is your company exists at and only at the sufferance of the society that decides it's a good idea to let it exist--and that we-the-society can demand that you play ball with the society that grants you your charter.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    I am playing ball. I am working 10-12 hours a day. I don't take any benefits when I am sick. I am paying huge amount in taxes while almost not using very little infrastructure my country provides. It's of great benefit for people of my country to have me doing business here and yet the laws are such that my choices are either to be sexist when hiring, sacrifice my family well-being or not hire at all. I am currently doing the 3rd options because "the society demands". They get less in taxes and someone misses on a really good job. If I need anything I just hire contractors, usually living abroad so I don't have to deal with the nonsense. Great deal the demanding society got, truly.
    - pertymcpert 8y ago

WorldMaker 8y ago

Do you make the same tough decision and avoid hiring members of the US National Guard, or the Army/Navy/Air Force Reserve, as well, simply because they may be called away for a year or so to serve their country and similarly expect their job to be there when they return? (This is not a facetious question. I think that these are comparable and at least equably honorable. Parental leave is a form of serving your country by investing in the foundations of the future of your country.)

CloudNetworking 8y ago
Or humans. Does he hire humans? humans can and do fall sick from time to time. Ew.
- slenk 8y ago
  He may be one of the bosses that believes if you're conscious you're healthy enough to be at work
- acid__ 8y ago
  Maybe he recognizes that different humans have different probabilities of being suddenly unable to work for extended periods of time, and is able to weigh various factors (rationally or not, fairly or not) instead of being a 100% all-or-nothing strawman.
  - CloudNetworking 8y ago
    I've got the same probabilities as my wife to go on parental leave. It so happens that when she has a son, I've got a son too! MAGIC
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dragonwriter 8y ago

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty. Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gender. And these days, youth is not essentially to being a parent (even a natural parent, but parental leave policies usually apply to adoptive parents as well.)

bluecalm 8y ago
>>So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty. Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. Oh the choices... I think I am taking the lawsuit, especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee. >>Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gender. Maybe in theory, if you looks at statistics of what actually happens in most European countries you will see that women take much longer leaves and often several months medicals during pregnancy as well. I mean I live in one and my male friends usually take at most several days while women usually take close to a year if you count medical leave during pregnancy. I know exactly one couple who split the leave equally. It worked for them but it's definitely not usually happens.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. I don't think you've researched the costs of the kind of lawsuit at issue for your business if you think that it's less than you'd lose by having the employee in the position take a year off on job-protected leave.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    Risk = Probability * Consequence I don't think he (or she!) is saying that the consequence is low, just that the risk of suffering that consequence is low enough to outweigh it.

celticninja 8y ago

Your cognitive dissonance must be impressive. You have recently wrote: >She is openly racist and sexist so good riddance > I think it's very reasonable to be against Islam because of its stance on gay rights, women rights And here you are being sexist and ignoring the right of women to not be discriminated against because of their gender. How do you reconcile these positions inside your own head?

akamel 8y ago
Holy Crap!
bluecalm 8y ago
There is a difference between saying things like women are worse employees or don't deserve same rights as men and being put in position to choose between being sexist when hiring and putting someone's else children above well-being of your family. I hope you can understand the difference.
- celticninja 8y ago
  Talk the talk, just don't walk the walk. I understand.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  I'm sure the typical person you'd say "good riddance" about also is doing the best for their family. Is it correct for people to say "good riddance" about your opinion? And being sexist when hiring is saying they're a worse employee and don't deserve the same rights.
- pertymcpert 8y ago
  Beginning to think your business doesn't deserve to exist.

simion314 8y ago

Isn't SV culture encourages to not stay more then 2 years in one place and always keep an eye for an opportunity, how do you screen for people that are a "risk" of leaving not at home to take care of a child but at a new company to get a salary bump and work on something new and shiny?

empath75 8y ago

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. If you’re involved in hiring decisions in pretty much any western country you’ve just opened yourself to potential lawsuits.

nasalgoat 8y ago

My partner worked at a 10-person company and took the year off for parental leave. They hired a temp to fill her role, who left when she came back. I work for a 15-person company and we had a developer take a year off. We hired a temp developer who left when the other dev came back. Not sure why this is hard to understand?

bluecalm 8y ago
It's sometimes doable sure. 10-person company is 5x bigger than mine though so it's way easier there. It's also the case that some areas require specialized knowledge and some don't. If I hire someone even very competent it will a few months till they are productive because we work in a very niche area. If you need someone who programs a CRUD website then yeah, it is easier. Just because something is doable in your 10 or 15 person company doesn't mean it's doable for others in their <5 people businesses.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  when it comes to a social policy question like parental leave there is no size fits all solution, so we need to ask what we prioritize. I respect people who want to run very small businesses, but we can't realistically make policy for them if we want to guarantee some basic welfare and labour protection. Small businesses are often so unprofitable, have so little savings, and are so exposed to risk (as in this pregnancy case), that you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them. So the answer to the question of how to combine very small business and paternal leave is quite simple, you really can't. It's a policy that favours middle-sized and large businesses who generate more profit, suffer less from a few workers dropping out, and can organise these benefits.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    > you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them. And why not do so for them specifically? If you still have protections apply to larger companies, then it becomes a matter of choice for employees to choose small or large. But if you apply to everybody, and it kills small businesses, you're strictly worse off - if you can't land a job at one of those larger places, you're outright unemployed.

woodpanel 8y ago

While I can relate to your logic, I wonder: Since men are increasingly considering taking maternity leave as well, wouldn't it be a good alternative to focus on people older than say 40? What would keep you from hiring them?

GordonS 8y ago
Not trying to be a dick, but for info, male 'baby leave' is called "paternity leave"
- woodpanel 8y ago
  no offense taken, I'll claim the always forgivable "not-a-native -peaker" ;-)
p1esk 8y ago
people older than say 40? What would keep you from hiring them? They are expensive :)
- woodpanel 8y ago
  Is it really that? I've come to think that it's rather the expectation that they are expensive. It is expected by employers as well as the old employees themselves, so if they would demand a lower than expected wage it would come across as fishy (did he serve time? an underachiever?). Another thing might be that with experience comes less naiveness. As you become more resilient against corporate BS you become equally unformable (as in "Thanks, but no 'chakka' for me please").
  - p1esk 8y ago
    Have you hired many 40+ year olds who are both good and cheap?
    - ionised 8y ago
      Why would you expect someone good to be cheap as well?

neffy 8y ago

If you're looking for a 3rd programmer, you're looking for somebody who can commit to the short term future of the company with - if you're wise - an explicit guarantee of long term rewards. Excluding half the population from that search will absolutely ensure that you don't get unlucky hiring a man who, develop schizophrenia (symptoms occur typically in younger males), runs off with your IP, decides he doesn't want to stick the long hours, his wife/girlfriend has a child and he wants a more stable position, can't stand your attitude, or all the other reasons that make people, male and female leave small companies run by people who make bad decisions. In the grand scheme of things that can go horribly wrong for startup companies, female pregnancy is actually the least of your worries.

dependsontheq 8y ago

I have a small business (15) and a lot of my employees are young women in Germany, so I think I understand the situation from different perspectives (young father). You just try to work with it, of course the situation for me would be easier in the US, but since all my competitors have the same problem and my customers have the same problem it is not a competitive problem. It is actually a problem for a company in a certain size, so you try to stay out of this size or grow out of it pretty fast. But st the end, it’s a value discussion, my business partner took parental and I’m fine with that , it doesn’t make it easier but it’s definitely better for the kids and I don’t value my personal financial success higher than the chances for these kids.

lhorie 8y ago

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman Ignoring the fact that this kind of discrimination is flat out illegal, you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even logically consistent. Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professionals to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to imagine a small business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost". I could get interns to be productive in a day or two. In many fields of work, such as early education, there are standardized accreditations so an employer can basically just pick and choose from a pool of qualified individuals who will be ready-to-work on day 1. As the other poster said, standard fare in parental leaves is to hire a contractor for a 1 year contract. By the end of the year, worst case is your business grew 0%, you get your full-time employee back and it's business as usual. A more realistic scenario is your business grew by some amount that now allows you to hire the temp person full time.

Mirioron 8y ago
>you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even logically consistent. But they are much less likely to take this parental leave. >Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professionals to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to imagine a small business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost". Well, everyone else doesn't get to always run wildly successful small businesses. Most small businesses fail. I imagine that if you yank out a significant portion of their workforce that they'll be even more likely to fail. >By the end of the year, worst case is your business grew 0%, you get your full-time employee back and it's business as usual. Aka your small business shuts its doors, because the market has moved on and you couldn't keep up. Half the businesses fail within the first 5 years. Only a third of businesses survive 10 years.
- lhorie 8y ago
  > But they are much less likely to take this parental leave If you want to talk about likelihoods, consider that in most companies, the chance that an employee of any gender will leave for a random reason is much higher than someone of any gender taking parental leave. Trying to skirt the law to "optimize" for least parental leaves is kinda like sending a memo to your employees telling them to always run red lights and jaywalk to get to work faster. It's one of those "not even wrong" kinds of things. > Most small businesses fail This is a non sequitur. Businesses fail for all sorts of reasons. Your restaurant staff ghosting you, not enough clients, spending stupidly after raising money, etc. If your business fails due to a parental leave of all things, let me tell you, you were probably severely delusional about its viability to begin with. > Aka your small business shuts its doors I believe I mentioned a fitting example where this could not be farther from the truth (early education)

Certhas 8y ago

Wow. Just wow. So, in many European countries, fathers and mothers have a right to substantial amounts of parental leave. Like a year or more. In all of these places small businesses exist. In Sweden, with very extensive parental leave [1], there is a large number of start ups. So obviously, empirically, you must be missing something. Generally speaking, if your employees care about your business (and getting their job back after the leave) they will not take decisions that destroy this business. Some laws will also vary depending on company size, though parental leave is just such an obvious fundamental need and right that I am not aware of a country where it does. You might not think of yourself as immoral, but your post is definitely sexist, and I find the viewpoint you take towards your potential employers deeply unethical. Because people like you sometimes end up with power we need democratic states to fight back and keep a sense of perspective. [1] "New parents in Sweden are entitled to 480 days of leave at 80% of their normal pay. That’s on top of the 18 weeks reserved just for mothers, after which the parents can split up the time however they choose. Swedish dads also get 90 paid paternity days reserved just for them. Out of these 480 days, 60 must be taken by the father or else all are lost. This leave can be taken by the month, week, day or even by the hour." So fathers are forced to take more paternal leave in Sweden than mothers get in the US. https://www.dailyscandinavian.com/parental-leave-working-scandinavia/ https://www.dailyscandinavian.com/parental-leave-working-sca...

bluecalm 8y ago
I want to support women having babies. I just think current regulations put too much burden on the employers especially small ones. I also think it's unfair that a women who decided to have kids just after college doesn't get any (or way less) help that a women who found a job and get pregnant right after. A system set that way encourages women to have children later in life because they will get more benefits then. I think it's backwards and we are all paying the price already. I just want incentives to be aligned in a way that it doesn't make sense to make sexist decisions when hiring and it doesn't encourage women to postpone motherhood because of how benefits are set.
- room271 8y ago
  That's reasonable. But you still have to obey the law in the meantime.

fipple 8y ago

I had a company with roughly 10 engineers give or take over its lifetime. The two younger women never left. The men, younger and older, left at various times, one after 4 months, and one with 4 hours’ notice.

mattnewton 8y ago

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost. IANAL but my understanding is this is very illegal in the US. Personally I think this is also terrible reasoning; there are many un-gendered life events that people will go on leave for.

belorn 8y ago

In a small company the buck always ends with the owner. If the company fails if someone leaves then that is either a failure of the owners ability to manage different aspect of the work or poorly run company. An employee can at any time get a medical condition that puts them out of action with month long recovery time. A car crash, a bike accident, or any other problem that results in surgery. Maybe they get serious sick. Its quite rare that people are perfect healthy and remains so for decades, so it doesn't make any sense to risk operating a company on that condition.

bobthepanda 8y ago

Most leave laws don't apply to a company as small as three people. So this is just a hypothetical situation that is so absurd that it would never happen.

ncallaway 8y ago

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman You've just created far more financial risk for your company by doing this. It's flat out illegal, and if you're caught doing this the punishment will probably bankrupt your company. Further, it's disgusting and any small business owner that does this deserves to have their business destroyed.

Noumenon72 8y ago
You, who do not have to bear the cost of the policy, should be less harsh with the people who do. For example, we might make a law saying mothers shouldn't leave their children alone at home. Then we could say "You horrible mother, you left your kids alone, you're going to jail". But we are not the ones who have to spend our whole day watching the kids, trapped and exhausted. We should recognize the higher contribution we're asking from the mothers by saying "Unfortunately, for the sake of the children, we have this penalty for having left them alone. We understand that one can be in a rush, so next time we encourage you to team up with other mothers to watch each other's children." For one thing, the harsh reactions keep the people you're regulating from even being able to let you know how hard it is on them.
- ncallaway 8y ago
  > You, who do not have to bear the cost of the policy, should be less harsh with the people who do You should be less quick to make assumptions. I am the owner of a small business with a handful of employees. I am the that bears the cost of such policies.

room271 8y ago

If your business cannot handle possible parental leave then it is not really profitable in the first place. This 'cost' is not different from any other (taxes, transport costs, rent, etc.).