4 ms·

> 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 fl

by 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)
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    But none of the things you mentioned are different between men and women. Parental leave is simply a risk factor on top of what you mentioned. >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. Let's take an extreme case: a 1 person business. If I, the business owner, take parental leave then my business is pretty much guaranteed to fail. The rate gets lower the more employees and capital you have, because you can mitigate the risk, but many businesses are susceptible to this risk, because they simply don't have the resources to mitigate it. That doesn't really tell you much about the viability of the business. It says much more about the resources the business had available. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - lhorie 8y ago
      I actually have a friend who runs a restaurant with her husband. It's an _extremely low margins_ business with brutally long hours. She got pregnant and eventually took time off (she went back to China for a few months to get her parents to help with the baby). When she came back a few months later, surprise surprise, the business was still there. Did they have worries? Sure, stress from wait staff turnover, an air conditioner that was too expensive to fix, chairs. But leaving for an extended period of time to decompress from work stress was something her husband supported despite the temp long distance relationship and the extra burden on himself because he knew that would help them cope better in the long term. Let's be honest, anyone can come up with ridiculous hypothetical situations where "obviously" parental leave is the only evil in the world and must be banished. But at the end of the day, they're just that: hypotheticals with no basis in reality. I've seen businesses succeed and fail and I've seen parental leaves in these businesses. Parental leaves are simply not as deciding of a factor as one might like to fantasize, and anyone who wants to argue against them might want to look at the silver spoons in their own mouths before casting stones at others.
ThomPete 8y ago
This is an unrealistic description of reality. Most small companies do not actually worry about growth, they worry about staying in business and small things matter.
ben_jones 8y ago
I think the most blatant scenario involves a code-base where only one engineer knows where the skeletons are buried. Yes it's bad architecture, caused by sustained bad development choices, but it is RAMPANT in our industry. If said engineer gets hit by a bus, or goes on parental leave, the company is fucked. They deserve it, but they are still fucked and they are going to kick and scream whatever excuse they can think of to prevent these scenarios from being legislated into higher frequency.
- geofft 8y ago
  Sure, and it's good for society for those companies to fail. That's one thing that I think is missing in many argument about business policy. Many times someone says, with this policy passed, my business will be less productive and might even fail. And we're too scared to say out loud that that's a good thing. Markets works best when there is accurate and open communication of information, and it's generally very difficult to know how a prospective employer really approaches technical debt (or the equivalent for other disciplines) and business risk. I want to work for the company that's willing to confront past mistakes and not drowning in them, and, if possible, the company that made fewer past mistakes in the first place. This company is also more likely to be successful at delivering the very benefits for which society recognizes companies at all (producing goods and services, creating reliable jobs, advancing the state of knowledge, etc.). So, all other things being equal, it's in society's interest for me to find this company accurately, and with a limited labor pool it is almost certainly in society's interest for there to just be one competent company tackling a problem than two companies, one of which is incompetent.
  - ben_jones 8y ago
    Businesses failing can hurt a lot of people. Thousands can be laid off, many of whom might not be in an industry where finding a replacement job is easy. Many organizations arguably exist solely to provide jobs regardless of their inefficiencies (in my view the TSA, and to some extent the US military).
    - geofft 8y ago
wolco 8y ago
Why would you avoid hiring her? It takes 9 months to deliver the baby, plenty of notice to find a replacement. If she just quit you have two weeks notice to find someone. In many ways someone going through that situation is most likely to return and stay long term adding additional value.

by lhorie 8y ago

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)
- Mirioron 8y ago
  But none of the things you mentioned are different between men and women. Parental leave is simply a risk factor on top of what you mentioned. >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. Let's take an extreme case: a 1 person business. If I, the business owner, take parental leave then my business is pretty much guaranteed to fail. The rate gets lower the more employees and capital you have, because you can mitigate the risk, but many businesses are susceptible to this risk, because they simply don't have the resources to mitigate it. That doesn't really tell you much about the viability of the business. It says much more about the resources the business had available. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - lhorie 8y ago
    I actually have a friend who runs a restaurant with her husband. It's an _extremely low margins_ business with brutally long hours. She got pregnant and eventually took time off (she went back to China for a few months to get her parents to help with the baby). When she came back a few months later, surprise surprise, the business was still there. Did they have worries? Sure, stress from wait staff turnover, an air conditioner that was too expensive to fix, chairs. But leaving for an extended period of time to decompress from work stress was something her husband supported despite the temp long distance relationship and the extra burden on himself because he knew that would help them cope better in the long term. Let's be honest, anyone can come up with ridiculous hypothetical situations where "obviously" parental leave is the only evil in the world and must be banished. But at the end of the day, they're just that: hypotheticals with no basis in reality. I've seen businesses succeed and fail and I've seen parental leaves in these businesses. Parental leaves are simply not as deciding of a factor as one might like to fantasize, and anyone who wants to argue against them might want to look at the silver spoons in their own mouths before casting stones at others.

ThomPete 8y ago

This is an unrealistic description of reality. Most small companies do not actually worry about growth, they worry about staying in business and small things matter.

ben_jones 8y ago

I think the most blatant scenario involves a code-base where only one engineer knows where the skeletons are buried. Yes it's bad architecture, caused by sustained bad development choices, but it is RAMPANT in our industry. If said engineer gets hit by a bus, or goes on parental leave, the company is fucked. They deserve it, but they are still fucked and they are going to kick and scream whatever excuse they can think of to prevent these scenarios from being legislated into higher frequency.

geofft 8y ago
Sure, and it's good for society for those companies to fail. That's one thing that I think is missing in many argument about business policy. Many times someone says, with this policy passed, my business will be less productive and might even fail. And we're too scared to say out loud that that's a good thing. Markets works best when there is accurate and open communication of information, and it's generally very difficult to know how a prospective employer really approaches technical debt (or the equivalent for other disciplines) and business risk. I want to work for the company that's willing to confront past mistakes and not drowning in them, and, if possible, the company that made fewer past mistakes in the first place. This company is also more likely to be successful at delivering the very benefits for which society recognizes companies at all (producing goods and services, creating reliable jobs, advancing the state of knowledge, etc.). So, all other things being equal, it's in society's interest for me to find this company accurately, and with a limited labor pool it is almost certainly in society's interest for there to just be one competent company tackling a problem than two companies, one of which is incompetent.
- ben_jones 8y ago
  Businesses failing can hurt a lot of people. Thousands can be laid off, many of whom might not be in an industry where finding a replacement job is easy. Many organizations arguably exist solely to provide jobs regardless of their inefficiencies (in my view the TSA, and to some extent the US military).
  - geofft 8y ago

wolco 8y ago

Why would you avoid hiring her? It takes 9 months to deliver the baby, plenty of notice to find a replacement. If she just quit you have two weeks notice to find someone. In many ways someone going through that situation is most likely to return and stay long term adding additional value.