18 ms·

Parents got more time off, then the backlash started

76 points by colanderman 6y ago

byoung2 6y ago
This debate has been going on since before the pandemic. Parents have always taken sick days to care for kids, or show up late to attend parent teacher conferences, or knave early to go to soccer games or school plays.
- KindOne 6y ago
  The pandemic has been making it a lot more noticeable.
fortran77 6y ago
I can understand the backlash. Perhaps the companies should allow people who need more time to handle things time off with benefits but no pay or reduced hours (work a 30 hour week) with a pay cut and full benefits for the duration of the pandemic. This way nobody loses.
- spoiler 6y ago
  > The backlash here is justified. The companies should allow people who need more time to handle things time off with benefits but no pay or reduced hours (work a 30 hour week) with a pay cut and full benefits for the duration of the pandemic. This way nobody loses. I can agree with this. > That being said, these companies brought these problems onto themselves, by allowing internal message gripe boards and the policy that "all voices and opinions are valid." So... In essence, your policy is that only people _you_ (or someone in the company) select have valid opinions? What if you're not in this category? Would you advocate it then? What if someone told you "Your opinion is invalid, nobody cares what you have to say?"
- throwaway713 6y ago
  > The companies should allow people who need more time to handle things time off with benefits but no pay or reduced hours So how do you feel about maternity leave for pregnant women?
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Exactly. There is a narrow focus on what is fair at the corporate level and less focus on what is actually good for society as a whole like in other countries.
  - anon9001 6y ago
    I'll take the bait. I feel bad about maternity leave. You can choose to have a baby or not, and I don't see why you should get special treatment at work because of that decision. I understand meritocracy is an illusion at best, but it's an important illusion to maintain. If someone is pulling less weight, they should receive less compensation. They certainly shouldn't be rewarded for taking weeks or months off to work on on side projects, which is essentially what a baby is. But maybe I'm just being harsh by thinking of children as side projects, and I should be more sensitive. Fine, let's say that having a baby is a medical condition. For any other medical condition, your options are burn all your PTO or go on short-term disability. Why should having a baby be any different?
    - znpy 6y ago
      > But maybe I'm just being harsh by thinking of children as side projects yup, you definitely are. a lot, too. > Why should having a baby be any different? maybe because the society literally can't go forward without babies?
      - anon9001 6y ago
        > maybe because the society literally can't go forward without babies? Technically true, but practically nonsense. We're at no danger of under-population. And if we were, it would be the government's job to subsidize having children, not Facebook's. People who work in tech and choose to have babies are doing it as a luxury, not to push society forward.
        znpy 6y ago
        > People who work in tech and choose to have babies are doing it as a luxury, not to push society forward. So now having babies is a luxury. Jesus christ this is so wrong on so many levels.
brandonmenc 6y ago
Most of these companies offer unlimited PTO so what, exactly, is the problem? "I'm taking PTO and I don't need to justify it or tell anyone why" should be the process. As your co-worker or manager, I don't need to know that you or your kid or your dog or your parent is sick, or if you're really just sick of working and need some time to zone out. If someone is taking so much PTO that their work suffers, address it in private with HR. > We’ve added more support for all of our employees and encourage everyone to have open discussions about the challenges they’re facing Please don't. I don't need to hear my co-workers sob stories, and I don't want to burden them with mine. And I certainly don't want to feel compelled to overshare. Offer private counseling through HR or the health plan.
- exotree 6y ago
  I would hope those who report to me feel comfortable, within certain bounds, to make me aware of personal difficulties so I can manage up, downwards and across—likely in the way of managing expectations rather than saddling folks with more work. Being kind goes a long way in not just being empathetic, but also in keeping employees retained. Everyone, at some point, will face issues that will drag on their performance. I hope I’m extended the same grace eventually.
  - ryoshu 6y ago
    This. As a people manager I want to know if someone is struggling as long as they are comfortable sharing. I want to make sure we can make reasonable accommodations and provide support so the person can deal with the issues and come back with a healthy mindset when the problems have been dealt with. We are in unprecedented times and empathy goes a long way.
  - brandonmenc 6y ago
    Clarification: > As your co-worker or manager, I don't need to know That came off harsh, particularly when I said "as a manager", but the key word there is need. I mean that we shouldn't feel compelled to justify why we need to take advantage of our already unlimited PTO - particularly laterally, to teammates - and that not revealing those details should be the default. Confiding in a manager, mentor, close work friend, and definitely to HR is fine. But encouraging and thereby creating an expectation of oversharing across all levels just seems like a recipe for disaster. A likely end result being employees resenting one another for taking time off for reasons they don't think are "serious" enough, or feeling like their need or desire to take time off is unjustified because their personal situation isn't bad compared to their co-workers'. And people who don't want to share now feel antisocial for trying to keep their personal and work lives separate. If we want to normalize the act of taking time off, imo we'd be better served if everyone just took their PTO without explanation and let HR handle coordinating extended time off for life events.
briandear 6y ago
Fascinating discussion and rather ironic. There are people at tech companies that object to people that don’t have kids being forced to effectively subsidize other people who “aren’t pulling their weight.” And yet the majority of people at those companies vote for leftist economic policies that do that very same thing.
- alibarber 6y ago
  It's not really related, and I'm sure that the majority do. However I do wonder sometimes, everyone is keen to loudly declare their love and support for the 'correct' party when around others in a hyper liberal workplace - but in the privacy of the voting booth it might not be the same, and that is the place it matters most. (I'm stating this based off of my experience in the UK only)
- ginko 6y ago
  The difference is that on the country level, subsidizing families to have children is arguably in the interest of the state. That's not the case on the company level.
  - briandear 6y ago
    And the difference is that if you don’t like a policy at a company, you don’t have to work there. A bit harder to escape a country. But most often in these cases, people want benefits but they want someone else to pay for them.
- pbourke 6y ago
  > And yet the majority of people at those companies vote for leftist economic policies that do that very same thing. And you’ve decided that the people complaining about the new corporate policies are the same that vote for leftist economic policies, rather than the minority who you claim don’t support them?
animationwill 6y ago
> reflecting a sentiment voiced at several companies, complained that the policy seemed to put parents’ needs ahead of theirs. So much for caring about others. As someone who doesn't have children, this still sounds really selfish of them to complain. Instead, the childless should petition HR for a complementary benefit (additional PTO) when the pandemic is over or a bonus (cash) now for picking up the slack. Complaining without solutions will fall on deaf ears
- mdorazio 6y ago
  Additional PTO at many companies is a joke because there's no mandate to actually use it, and definitely no compensation for leftover. Usually the opposite, in fact - the culture strongly encourages people to use as little PTO as possible. Monetary rewards are really the only way people are going to be ok with different treatment.
  - MacsHeadroom 6y ago
    California mandates paying for unused PTO.
    - mdorazio 6y ago
      Have you not worked in California? This is sidestepped by offering "unlimited PTO" at every company I've worked at in the last 10 years. I can only think of one friend here who actually got paid out for unused PTO.
      - wuunderbar 6y ago
        This is just very reflective of hip start-ups. A large amount of tech companies (i.e., more established ones) have standard 15-21 day PTO accrual policies. I've gotten paid out twice for my PTO and one of them actually happened to be a "hip start-up" who didn't believe in "unlimited PTO".
        6y ago
jerkstate 6y ago
I also work at a big tech company who is equalizing their performance-related bonuses this year. Before the pandemic, I went remote to a place which is not impacted by the pandemic as much as Silicon Valley, so I have been able to continue to make use of most of normal childcare facilities. During these past 7 months or so my output has increased as I put in extra hours to pick up the slack of my colleagues who have had to deal with their life situations in hard-hit areas, child related and non-child-related, while I am in an area where life has continued relatively normally. Now I find out my annual bonus this year will be capped to what everybody else gets. So this doesn't just impact the childfree - it impacts SV expats as well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hyeomans 6y ago
  What region/state/country was this? Vietnam?
  - alibarber 6y ago
    'Lockdown' in the developed European country I'm living in (Finland) consisted of closing the border to non-residents, and bars, restaurants, theatres and cinemas for a couple of months. All of those are now open - apart from the border, with some restrictions but honestly I wouldn't know what they are because for my usage of them it all seems pretty normal...
    - LeanderK 6y ago
      > apart from the border In germany it's a mandatory corona-test and quarantine until the results come back if you entered the country from a high-risk region (to avoid the spread through travelling). No restrictions as far as I know if the region is not considered a high-risk one. I guess it's similar in Finland.
- CincinnatiMan 6y ago
  Question, in what manner is your work level impacted by your coworkers' work level? This is different from where I work where if somebody goes on vacation, we adjust our sprint capacity accordingly during our planning.
rabeener 6y ago
One way to solve this is to extend these types of benefits as a way for any employee to help care for children. If you’re an aunt or uncle and want to take time off to help care for your nieces and nephews, you should be able to. That being said, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for employees complaining about these specific policies. The entire world is in uncharted waters here and these companies, as well as individual employees, are doing the best they can with responding. As the article points out, these benefits aren’t meant to be used for vacation, they were introduced as a way to help employees respond to a sudden loss of childcare and the collapse of an education system. And to anyone who thinks this is a vacation, I recommend spending a week in a household with children who are unable to go to school while still trying to get work done.
- mc32 6y ago
  I don’t see why childless people are resentful of people who have more responsibility and a harder situation. It’s selfish of them to be resentful. Kids are the ones who will be working when these people retire (whether by then they have children of not). Society depends on new generations and so I don’t see a problem if parents get a small advantage.
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    > It’s selfish of them to be resentful. I tend to agree. The it's all about me attitude has become so ingrained in western society that the greater-good is utterly discounted. The most prominent covid related example of this is mask wearing. An unreasonably high number of people have decided that wearing a mask as a societal benefit isn't as important as their slight inconvenience.
    - shuntress 6y ago
      This "it's all about me attitude" is definitely present in western society but I disagree that it is "so ingrained ... That the greater good is utterly discounted" It seems, based on observing reality, that the greater good is far more ingrained. That's why things like public schools, post offices, animal rescues, ambulances, and fire departments are so common and tend to function relatively well. I see some validity to the argument that "it's all about me" is perhaps gaining ground on "greater-good" but it seems clear that "greater-good" is still the majority.
viburnum 6y ago
A friend works for Microsoft in the Netherlands and apparently the way it works there is everybody can dial their working hours up or down as they see fit. When he had a newborn he worked 70%, then 80%, then 90%. Averaging a half day once a week is enough for all the sick days and other child-related emergencies.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  It would be interesting, if it could even be measured, to see how productivity varies over the variation in work hours. I'd guess for many it would go up as you went down to about 80%. As in 80-95%+ attendance would produce more output than 100% attendance. Anyone seen stats or have input on that?
Spartan-S63 6y ago
I think this backlash is a microcosm for why our welfare programs are always under attack and identity politics plays so well in our society. The Balkanization of benefits is _always_ a way to drive a stake through a cohort of people. Any type of increased leave benefit should be available to all. If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. We’re in an unprecedented time where anxiety and uncertainty is reining. The notion that we have to produce the same amount as before the pandemic is ludicrous and callous. No one should be taking pay cuts, whether they take more vacation or not, if the underlying health of the business remains strong (in Facebook’s case, for example, it is). Arguably, no one’s marginal value of labor should be changing either, it’s just that their working hours may change, and that should be okay. We’re just approaching distributed work, right now, all wrong. Commons hours matters less than good, written communication. If folks need to adjust their schedules significantly (more than two hours, here and there), then so be it. It won’t matter in the long run. Especially if leveraging that flexibility means that they don’t have to take PTO days for other reasons.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. This right here is what stops most companies from doing most things that benefit the employee more than it does the almighty “revenue”.
  - Spartan-S63 6y ago
    But most software companies, nowadays, are supported by subscription revenue, so this should be less of a concern than ever before.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Absolutely agree. Should be. In your experience is it the case?
    - vnorilo 6y ago
      What portion of those "subscriptions" are just first payments of a trial users forgot to cancel, and what percentage of employee time is devoted to tweaking the funnel to get more of the same (conversion rate)? This may be cynical, but both are significant for many mobile app businesses.
onion2k 6y ago
The expectation that everything should be "fair" in terms of salary and perks is nonsense, and how you end up with tiered salary and perks tied to job titles instead of being able to drive your own deal when you're accepting a job. Things probably should be in the same ballpark for two people doing the same job but if one person gets a bit more thats OK. Paid time off for whatever reason is a benefit you and the company negotiate for. If the company decides to grant parents time off that non-parents don't get that's fine. That's just the company's opening position when they're negotiating with people who are parents, in much the same way that people who drive to the office might negotiate for a parking space or people who have a long commute might negotiate more hours working from home. What you get in return for your hours is basically nothing to do with other people, and what they get is nothing to do with you.
- whatever1 6y ago
  For most of us a job is not a hobby. Also we don’t get a wide gamut of job opportunities to make the selection based on the benefits. There is no negotiation, there are only one-two job opportunities (best case scenario) with the traditional take it as-is or leave option. This is why in the States fresh graduates end up with almost no Personal Time Off. With no legislation and no competition for talent (which is the case for most job roles), the business owners will ALWAYS F their employees.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    Why dont you start a business then? Would that mean you will f* your employees too? What a mean person you must be.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  It sounds great in theory until you realize it leads to paying women and minorities less for the same work. Meanwhile it means those in positions of power can arrange for myriad benefits (I’ll need a private helicopter between meetings and summers in the Hamptons) while Americans are guaranteed literally 0 days of vacation leave.
harikb 6y ago
When companies gave free lunch, dinner, breakfast, hair cutting, laundry etc, weren’t those things favoring the young? For people who had family, at least for some of them, it wasn’t practical to make use of it. Now that pandemic has reversed the table...
- closeparen 6y ago
  Why on earth wouldn’t a parent be able to eat the free lunch? Or drop off the dry cleaning in a box at the office instead of a dedicated storefront along the way? Or get their hair cut between meetings? For us dinner was provided as a courtesy in case we worked late. Some younger people stayed for it every day; it’s true that only a few parents did that (ones with bad commutes waiting for traffic to die down). But there would also be random other parents who happened to work late that day, maybe half the time.
- BobbyJo 6y ago
  They were favoring people with less of a homestead, which tend to be the young. And really I think that only applies to the laundry. From my time at Google, I'd honestly say the demographics present for free meals didn't tend toward any age. Plenty of people starting a family room advantage of the cost savings free meals provided.
- gandutraveler 6y ago
  That's a lame argument. To counter parents would bring their entire family for dinners at my company? Who did it benefit more ?
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
> It wasn’t long before employees without children started to ask: What about us? This entire article is hard to read and honestly a little cringe. I know the millennial gen catches a lot of flack for supposedly acting entitled, but this sort of thing does not help.
- draw_down 6y ago
  Love to call the people not receiving the benefits “entitled”.
- znpy 6y ago
  It's not completely fair to blame it on millenials as well. Most millenials are now old enough to have both kids and a job. Actually, millennials are probably in the age range where kids are not old enough yet to take care of themselves. I don't think this is a millennial-only thing. And by the way the article does not mention the word "millennial" even once.
johnrob 6y ago
Important missing detail: are the non parents being asked to do more work per week specifically because parent coworkers are on leave?
- anon9001 6y ago
  Yes.
- CincinnatiMan 6y ago
  No.
- iaw 6y ago
  Officially, no. in practice, yes when there isn't redundancy and schedules need to be kept.
danmg 6y ago
I grew up as a latchkey kid from the time I was old enough to go to school. I honestly don't see the point in bothering with childcare if they're old enough to be in school. They've either got homework, they can engage in some free play around the neighbourhood, or they can just play on their own. Paying someone hourly to watch over them as if they were made out of glass is just going to infantalize them further.
- usaar333 6y ago
  The most acute problem here is for parents with children age 2-5 getting hit when daycares shut down. Older kids can do online classes on their own somewhat; younger kids? nope.
- em-bee 6y ago
  it's not that easy. kids are not used to the situation. they are not allowed to go outside either. and online learning requires self-discipline that not all kids have. the kids also do not understand that parents being at home doesn't mean that they don't have to work.
znpy 6y ago
It took me some time to fully understand that yes, sometime other people need things that might appear as "preferential treatment" to other people. And we should just STFU about that. A while ago I was talking with some aquaintances about maternity leave and since we were already talking about work it struck me: if I was forced to take 1-2 years off work completely now that I'm not even 30, all of a sudden, it would be pretty much catastrophic for my career. My skills would get mostly outdated given how fast the industry evolves (thank you kubernetes) and I would probably fall a bit out of touch with dealing with coworkers and stuff. I then thought about some of my female colleagues and other female workers I know and how much could they struggle in the future or have struggled in the past. A lot of things started to make sense. I though back to when I was on call an was frequently called in the middle of the night, and how newborn children are probably[0] way heavier on parents. And it kinda dawned on me how important is, often, to "pick up the slack" for other people. So yeah... After these kind of realization my opinion changed a bit. I agreed already with most work-life balance policies but I hadn't had such a strong realization. I now think that it's a good thing that companies allow parents to take time off and deal with both work and personal/family time. Actually, companies should be encouraged/forced to do so on a regular basis. I also think that if you don't agree with me you're piece of shit and you should really go fuck yourself with a cactus. I don't have children of my own now, but I might have in the future. It should really be our background priority to work for better working conditions across all the industry and across other industries too. If you don't want to have children then it's fine (it's your life, do whatever you want) but you're an asshole if you think that everybody should march at your own pace just because you took that decision. --- [0] i'm writing "probably" just because i haven't had kids of my own yet, so i don't really know what i'm talking about. I can imagine, but I don't really know.
- eesmith 6y ago
  > My skills would get mostly outdated given how fast the industry evolves Except ... it doesn't. There's plenty of stories about people who took substantial time off before coming back to software development who say there wasn't much real change. There's substantial churn, absolutely. How many popular web frameworks have there been? But substantial change that would be catastrophic for a career? No. As one reference point, the list of topics to study as background before going to a tech interview hasn't really changed much in a long time. That knowledge doesn't disappear after a year or two. As another reference point, Sweden has 480 days of parental leave where 90 days is exclusively for each of the parents. Many people in software development take over a year off, without it being catastrophic to their career.
erikerikson 6y ago
Even the childless are benefited by the continuation of society that children manifest. Parents pay far more costs than the childless in capital, time, attention, freedom, happiness, et cetera. Having children is increasingly a choice but replacement reproduction is also a requirement (although I could imagine a world that would invalidate this, that is not our current state). However, because it is a choice the argument that parents should take responsibility for the consequences can seem sensible. At some point and scale it gets entangled in everyone's well-being. Everyone able to make these arguments has benefited from the sensible and self-interested arrangements having been a child themselves. While I understand and have had the objections myself, they represent a rejection of the deal we were all forced into: that society will support us to grow in value and we in turn pull up the following generations who will soon shoulder the load in their own middle lives when we become more dependent on them for our care.
- spider-sandlet 6y ago
  I realize that expectation for elderly care varies across cultures, but even in industrialized Western countries, there's some expectation of adult children taking care of their elderly parents. So the argument that we should all pay for the next generation because we rely on them to take care of us rings a bit hollow. Is my neighbor's kids going to look after me when I get Alzheimers? I imagine not. I'll have to live with whatever service I can afford with my retirement account. For the childless, it's a choice they make to prioritize present comfort over future security. Parents are making the opposite tradeoff, but expect the childless to subsidize their present loss in time/money/leisure. How does that seem fair?
  - erikerikson 6y ago
    > I'll have to live with whatever service I can afford with my retirement account. Exactly the point. If the supply of labor is sufficiently reduced due to a reduced population of able bodied people, your retirement capital will not go far. To clarify my comment, I wasn't discussing the intergenerational support between related peoples but the intergenerational support provided via any source but conventionally by the marketplace through care homes.
bsg75 6y ago
I wonder how often in "normal" companies (not FAANG), workloads shift to non-parents due to typical inability of management to alter timelines along with the realities of a situation? For example, if parents are given a bit of slack or simply have more sick days due to real life responsibilities, but project plans are not altered accordingly, are those without children feeling the pressure to compensate? I have a suspicion this is a problem in companies where investors have expectations of quarterly growth, returns or exit plans, and not much of an outlook to create a healthy long term business. Disclosure: Am manager, not parent.
marktangotango 6y ago
> “A question that we might ask the employees who are feeling some frustration about their co-workers being on leave is what do you think is going to happen if that person quits?” she said. “You’re going to actually be stretched further.” This is the actual calculus; it’s not the companies role to ensure or subsidize child care. It’s a societal problem that both parents are expected, indeed required in a lot of cases, to work. Everyone should vote appropriate to their belief in November! Explicitly, the choice for working parents is for one parent to quit. Single people or couples with no school age children don’t face this choice.
tilolebo 6y ago
Did anyone in this thread try to see the situation from a child POV? School closed, extra scholar activities canceled, not allowed to meet friends, working parents. And then some childfree employees complain that the company allow parents to take care of their own children because no one else will? Pretty selfish take...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gandutraveler 6y ago
  It's also a pretty selfish take to not talk about the other sides argument.
awinder 6y ago
“At Twitter, a fight erupted on an internal message board after a worker who didn’t have children at home accused another employee, who was taking a leave to care for a child, of not pulling his weight.” Well that’s pretty beyond the pale. What’s going on with your coworkers is not your business (other than whatever personal/professional relationship you're maintaining). If 1 worker taking leave is putting undo strain on you, that’s a business problem. Go tell your manager that he needs headcount and then go do your job. This is a root-level issue that cyclically results from & continues the uneven benefits. When workers spend time slap-fighting with each other, it makes it even easier for management to means-test benefits like this
- alexpetralia 6y ago
  Agreed, these seems painfully obvious. Need to set boundaries.
iaw 6y ago
There seems to be two schools of thought in opposition here: 1) For parents that have excessive obligations to their children outside of work it makes sense for the company to provide them additional time at this time to ease that burden. The time off is not a vacation. 2) For employees that do not have children (possibly by conscious choice) they feel that it's offensive to be forced to effectively do more work so that their parent colleagues can take time off (regardless that the time is not a pleasant vacation) I don't have a good opinion, I see validity in both sides. I don't see an easy solution because any benefit differentially applied to the childless would raise similar concerns from parents.
- spicyusername 6y ago
  Why are they doing more work? Their project planning should account for available resources.
  - iaw 6y ago
    Maybe at some employers but what I've seen is deadlines moved forward because of Covid and the need to adapt. So not only is there less staffing but more work to do overall in a shorter period of time. Mind you, I'm not arguing against the status quo here but just looking at both sides.
winenbug 6y ago
This is insane. It's one thing to push for further recognition of folks who have pulled more than their weight in support of their teammates — which is deserved and I think the parents would not protest, but it's another thing entirely to choose to express anger over teammates who are parents. I've seen my brother tried to "work" with his kids at home. It's stressful. It's a mess. It's HARD. Many of these people seem to think the parents are getting extra "time off." 24/7 child care is not a freaking vacation. Kids are great, but kids are kids. You can't just ignore them or turn them off. There's not much you can do when a baby is throwing a tantrum and demands attention. Think you are working hard because you're working 20 hours a day? Imagine spending 20 hours a day working but getting very little done because you are a parent and getting constantly pulled out of your focus zone and context switching from "worker" mode to "parent" mode. If this is the thinking that our society is teaching the new work force, I fear for the future of our nation. Japan has already experienced the "not raising a family because it jeopardizes my work life" and they are NOT having a good time.
- tuatoru 6y ago
  > anger over teammates who are parents. I recognise my younger self in that. How stupid I was! Bringing up kids is the most important job in the world, and employers have zero loyalty. Do your eight hours, or however much you need to support your outgoings, and then focus on the important stuff. Edit: This applies whether or not you have kids. Your employer being understaffed or having unrealistic goals is not your problem.
- jbob2000 6y ago
  Here’s what I don’t understand (childless person); How did parents get by for thousands of years always having children by their sides? What is it about the modern world that makes children act like starving cats all the time? Is it the sugary diets? Is it the overstimulation from media? What the heck changed in the last hundred years or so?
  - throwaway189262 6y ago
    In many respects, it's "modern" parenting behavior. Example, if you let a baby cry at night it will usually stop crying after a few weeks. Once kids hit ~7 years old it used to be normal to let them wander around the house and neighborhood unsupervised. In most unwesternized countries it still is. That's how the average family has 6+ kids in some countries. They're only actively caring for a few at a time. Taking such a relaxed view to parenting in the west would get your kids taken away
d0100 6y ago
Parents are literally making the future of a society and of humanity. They deserve more slack than single adults. Parents with more time off will (could) have better educated children and thus make life better for everyone. Taking care of kids isn't a luxury it is something everyone should see as a fundamental human goal.
TedShiller 6y ago
As a childless person, I believe that parents deserve all the time off, flexibility, and additional benefits for raising children. Good on them. However, I deserve all the same benefits even though I don't have children. My goal is to eventually have children. In that sense, even just the time and resources I spend dating, making myself more desirable to a life partner, and seeking a life partner is exactly as important as the time and resources you spend caring for your child, because in order to have a child like you I need time to prepare myself to have child. Life is complicated. I have many family issues, as well as mental and physical health issues that require just as much time and resources to take care of as you need to take care of your children. My needs are not less important, less complicated, or less time consuming than your child-rearing related needs. When I see parents implying that as a childless person I'm spending all of my non-work time relaxing at the pool, I can only say that I wish that were true. Not that there's anything wrong with spending all of my free time relaxing at the pool. If I could, I would. Even then, I would deserve all the same benefits as someone who didn't choose to or can't do that. We should not discriminate against people with children. But we also should not discriminate against people without children.
- rjfjsksuf 6y ago
  This. I don’t want to take away these benefits from parents, I just want to ensure the employee who is caring for a relative/significant other/mental illness/worsened living space/etc to also be supported. I work for a great company with top-tier parental leave benefits like these. But if my non-married partner fell back into major depression and required constant suicide watch as they have in the past, while I’m sure my management would be supportive I’m aware of 0 official leave policies that would support me.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
riverdweller 6y ago
Just give the childless employees the same amount of time off on condition that they use that time to go and help out in daycare centers, old people's homes, or institutions for the disabled. They'll be racing to sign up, I'm sure.
- gandutraveler 6y ago
  Would parents go and help other orphans and volunteer for daycare? Why stop at your own kids ?
  - riverdweller 6y ago
    Well, yes, some parents would. Some simply care about people more than others do. It's a continuum. I know individuals who would gladly take the opportunity of an employer paying them their normal professional salary while volunteering in such places. All these people happen to have their own children (this may be a coincidence, as I am old enough for most of my friends to have had kids by now). The point is that there is, I expect, a strong inverse relationship between bitterness expressed by childless employees who don't receive paid time off their day job and the desire to volunteer to help others.
diebeforei485 6y ago
People without children should also get some extra time off. Perhaps not 10 weeks, but say 2-3 weeks.
tqi 6y ago
NYT is really happy for any excuse to stir up controversy. This is not a tech issue, and the gossipy minute by minute framing of this article is completely lacking in substance.

76 points by colanderman 6y ago

This debate has been going on since before the pandemic. Parents have always taken sick days to care for kids, or show up late to attend parent teacher conferences, or knave early to go to soccer games or school plays.

KindOne 6y ago
The pandemic has been making it a lot more noticeable.

fortran77 6y ago

I can understand the backlash. Perhaps the companies should allow people who need more time to handle things time off with benefits but no pay or reduced hours (work a 30 hour week) with a pay cut and full benefits for the duration of the pandemic. This way nobody loses.

spoiler 6y ago
> The backlash here is justified. The companies should allow people who need more time to handle things time off with benefits but no pay or reduced hours (work a 30 hour week) with a pay cut and full benefits for the duration of the pandemic. This way nobody loses. I can agree with this. > That being said, these companies brought these problems onto themselves, by allowing internal message gripe boards and the policy that "all voices and opinions are valid." So... In essence, your policy is that only people _you_ (or someone in the company) select have valid opinions? What if you're not in this category? Would you advocate it then? What if someone told you "Your opinion is invalid, nobody cares what you have to say?"
throwaway713 6y ago
> The companies should allow people who need more time to handle things time off with benefits but no pay or reduced hours So how do you feel about maternity leave for pregnant women?
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Exactly. There is a narrow focus on what is fair at the corporate level and less focus on what is actually good for society as a whole like in other countries.
- anon9001 6y ago
  I'll take the bait. I feel bad about maternity leave. You can choose to have a baby or not, and I don't see why you should get special treatment at work because of that decision. I understand meritocracy is an illusion at best, but it's an important illusion to maintain. If someone is pulling less weight, they should receive less compensation. They certainly shouldn't be rewarded for taking weeks or months off to work on on side projects, which is essentially what a baby is. But maybe I'm just being harsh by thinking of children as side projects, and I should be more sensitive. Fine, let's say that having a baby is a medical condition. For any other medical condition, your options are burn all your PTO or go on short-term disability. Why should having a baby be any different?
  - znpy 6y ago
    > But maybe I'm just being harsh by thinking of children as side projects yup, you definitely are. a lot, too. > Why should having a baby be any different? maybe because the society literally can't go forward without babies?
    - anon9001 6y ago
      > maybe because the society literally can't go forward without babies? Technically true, but practically nonsense. We're at no danger of under-population. And if we were, it would be the government's job to subsidize having children, not Facebook's. People who work in tech and choose to have babies are doing it as a luxury, not to push society forward.
      - znpy 6y ago
        > People who work in tech and choose to have babies are doing it as a luxury, not to push society forward. So now having babies is a luxury. Jesus christ this is so wrong on so many levels.

brandonmenc 6y ago

Most of these companies offer unlimited PTO so what, exactly, is the problem? "I'm taking PTO and I don't need to justify it or tell anyone why" should be the process. As your co-worker or manager, I don't need to know that you or your kid or your dog or your parent is sick, or if you're really just sick of working and need some time to zone out. If someone is taking so much PTO that their work suffers, address it in private with HR. > We’ve added more support for all of our employees and encourage everyone to have open discussions about the challenges they’re facing Please don't. I don't need to hear my co-workers sob stories, and I don't want to burden them with mine. And I certainly don't want to feel compelled to overshare. Offer private counseling through HR or the health plan.

exotree 6y ago
I would hope those who report to me feel comfortable, within certain bounds, to make me aware of personal difficulties so I can manage up, downwards and across—likely in the way of managing expectations rather than saddling folks with more work. Being kind goes a long way in not just being empathetic, but also in keeping employees retained. Everyone, at some point, will face issues that will drag on their performance. I hope I’m extended the same grace eventually.
- ryoshu 6y ago
  This. As a people manager I want to know if someone is struggling as long as they are comfortable sharing. I want to make sure we can make reasonable accommodations and provide support so the person can deal with the issues and come back with a healthy mindset when the problems have been dealt with. We are in unprecedented times and empathy goes a long way.
- brandonmenc 6y ago
  Clarification: > As your co-worker or manager, I don't need to know That came off harsh, particularly when I said "as a manager", but the key word there is need. I mean that we shouldn't feel compelled to justify why we need to take advantage of our already unlimited PTO - particularly laterally, to teammates - and that not revealing those details should be the default. Confiding in a manager, mentor, close work friend, and definitely to HR is fine. But encouraging and thereby creating an expectation of oversharing across all levels just seems like a recipe for disaster. A likely end result being employees resenting one another for taking time off for reasons they don't think are "serious" enough, or feeling like their need or desire to take time off is unjustified because their personal situation isn't bad compared to their co-workers'. And people who don't want to share now feel antisocial for trying to keep their personal and work lives separate. If we want to normalize the act of taking time off, imo we'd be better served if everyone just took their PTO without explanation and let HR handle coordinating extended time off for life events.

briandear 6y ago

Fascinating discussion and rather ironic. There are people at tech companies that object to people that don’t have kids being forced to effectively subsidize other people who “aren’t pulling their weight.” And yet the majority of people at those companies vote for leftist economic policies that do that very same thing.

alibarber 6y ago
It's not really related, and I'm sure that the majority do. However I do wonder sometimes, everyone is keen to loudly declare their love and support for the 'correct' party when around others in a hyper liberal workplace - but in the privacy of the voting booth it might not be the same, and that is the place it matters most. (I'm stating this based off of my experience in the UK only)
ginko 6y ago
The difference is that on the country level, subsidizing families to have children is arguably in the interest of the state. That's not the case on the company level.
- briandear 6y ago
  And the difference is that if you don’t like a policy at a company, you don’t have to work there. A bit harder to escape a country. But most often in these cases, people want benefits but they want someone else to pay for them.
pbourke 6y ago
> And yet the majority of people at those companies vote for leftist economic policies that do that very same thing. And you’ve decided that the people complaining about the new corporate policies are the same that vote for leftist economic policies, rather than the minority who you claim don’t support them?

animationwill 6y ago

> reflecting a sentiment voiced at several companies, complained that the policy seemed to put parents’ needs ahead of theirs. So much for caring about others. As someone who doesn't have children, this still sounds really selfish of them to complain. Instead, the childless should petition HR for a complementary benefit (additional PTO) when the pandemic is over or a bonus (cash) now for picking up the slack. Complaining without solutions will fall on deaf ears

mdorazio 6y ago
Additional PTO at many companies is a joke because there's no mandate to actually use it, and definitely no compensation for leftover. Usually the opposite, in fact - the culture strongly encourages people to use as little PTO as possible. Monetary rewards are really the only way people are going to be ok with different treatment.
- MacsHeadroom 6y ago
  California mandates paying for unused PTO.
  - mdorazio 6y ago
    Have you not worked in California? This is sidestepped by offering "unlimited PTO" at every company I've worked at in the last 10 years. I can only think of one friend here who actually got paid out for unused PTO.
    - wuunderbar 6y ago
      This is just very reflective of hip start-ups. A large amount of tech companies (i.e., more established ones) have standard 15-21 day PTO accrual policies. I've gotten paid out twice for my PTO and one of them actually happened to be a "hip start-up" who didn't believe in "unlimited PTO".
      - 6y ago

jerkstate 6y ago

I also work at a big tech company who is equalizing their performance-related bonuses this year. Before the pandemic, I went remote to a place which is not impacted by the pandemic as much as Silicon Valley, so I have been able to continue to make use of most of normal childcare facilities. During these past 7 months or so my output has increased as I put in extra hours to pick up the slack of my colleagues who have had to deal with their life situations in hard-hit areas, child related and non-child-related, while I am in an area where life has continued relatively normally. Now I find out my annual bonus this year will be capped to what everybody else gets. So this doesn't just impact the childfree - it impacts SV expats as well.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hyeomans 6y ago
What region/state/country was this? Vietnam?
- alibarber 6y ago
  'Lockdown' in the developed European country I'm living in (Finland) consisted of closing the border to non-residents, and bars, restaurants, theatres and cinemas for a couple of months. All of those are now open - apart from the border, with some restrictions but honestly I wouldn't know what they are because for my usage of them it all seems pretty normal...
  - LeanderK 6y ago
    > apart from the border In germany it's a mandatory corona-test and quarantine until the results come back if you entered the country from a high-risk region (to avoid the spread through travelling). No restrictions as far as I know if the region is not considered a high-risk one. I guess it's similar in Finland.
CincinnatiMan 6y ago
Question, in what manner is your work level impacted by your coworkers' work level? This is different from where I work where if somebody goes on vacation, we adjust our sprint capacity accordingly during our planning.

rabeener 6y ago

One way to solve this is to extend these types of benefits as a way for any employee to help care for children. If you’re an aunt or uncle and want to take time off to help care for your nieces and nephews, you should be able to. That being said, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for employees complaining about these specific policies. The entire world is in uncharted waters here and these companies, as well as individual employees, are doing the best they can with responding. As the article points out, these benefits aren’t meant to be used for vacation, they were introduced as a way to help employees respond to a sudden loss of childcare and the collapse of an education system. And to anyone who thinks this is a vacation, I recommend spending a week in a household with children who are unable to go to school while still trying to get work done.

mc32 6y ago
I don’t see why childless people are resentful of people who have more responsibility and a harder situation. It’s selfish of them to be resentful. Kids are the ones who will be working when these people retire (whether by then they have children of not). Society depends on new generations and so I don’t see a problem if parents get a small advantage.
- canada_dry 6y ago
  > It’s selfish of them to be resentful. I tend to agree. The it's all about me attitude has become so ingrained in western society that the greater-good is utterly discounted. The most prominent covid related example of this is mask wearing. An unreasonably high number of people have decided that wearing a mask as a societal benefit isn't as important as their slight inconvenience.
  - shuntress 6y ago
    This "it's all about me attitude" is definitely present in western society but I disagree that it is "so ingrained ... That the greater good is utterly discounted" It seems, based on observing reality, that the greater good is far more ingrained. That's why things like public schools, post offices, animal rescues, ambulances, and fire departments are so common and tend to function relatively well. I see some validity to the argument that "it's all about me" is perhaps gaining ground on "greater-good" but it seems clear that "greater-good" is still the majority.

viburnum 6y ago

A friend works for Microsoft in the Netherlands and apparently the way it works there is everybody can dial their working hours up or down as they see fit. When he had a newborn he worked 70%, then 80%, then 90%. Averaging a half day once a week is enough for all the sick days and other child-related emergencies.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
It would be interesting, if it could even be measured, to see how productivity varies over the variation in work hours. I'd guess for many it would go up as you went down to about 80%. As in 80-95%+ attendance would produce more output than 100% attendance. Anyone seen stats or have input on that?

Spartan-S63 6y ago

I think this backlash is a microcosm for why our welfare programs are always under attack and identity politics plays so well in our society. The Balkanization of benefits is _always_ a way to drive a stake through a cohort of people. Any type of increased leave benefit should be available to all. If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. We’re in an unprecedented time where anxiety and uncertainty is reining. The notion that we have to produce the same amount as before the pandemic is ludicrous and callous. No one should be taking pay cuts, whether they take more vacation or not, if the underlying health of the business remains strong (in Facebook’s case, for example, it is). Arguably, no one’s marginal value of labor should be changing either, it’s just that their working hours may change, and that should be okay. We’re just approaching distributed work, right now, all wrong. Commons hours matters less than good, written communication. If folks need to adjust their schedules significantly (more than two hours, here and there), then so be it. It won’t matter in the long run. Especially if leveraging that flexibility means that they don’t have to take PTO days for other reasons.

dvtrn 6y ago
If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. This right here is what stops most companies from doing most things that benefit the employee more than it does the almighty “revenue”.
- Spartan-S63 6y ago
  But most software companies, nowadays, are supported by subscription revenue, so this should be less of a concern than ever before.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Absolutely agree. Should be. In your experience is it the case?
  - vnorilo 6y ago
    What portion of those "subscriptions" are just first payments of a trial users forgot to cancel, and what percentage of employee time is devoted to tweaking the funnel to get more of the same (conversion rate)? This may be cynical, but both are significant for many mobile app businesses.

onion2k 6y ago

The expectation that everything should be "fair" in terms of salary and perks is nonsense, and how you end up with tiered salary and perks tied to job titles instead of being able to drive your own deal when you're accepting a job. Things probably should be in the same ballpark for two people doing the same job but if one person gets a bit more thats OK. Paid time off for whatever reason is a benefit you and the company negotiate for. If the company decides to grant parents time off that non-parents don't get that's fine. That's just the company's opening position when they're negotiating with people who are parents, in much the same way that people who drive to the office might negotiate for a parking space or people who have a long commute might negotiate more hours working from home. What you get in return for your hours is basically nothing to do with other people, and what they get is nothing to do with you.

whatever1 6y ago
For most of us a job is not a hobby. Also we don’t get a wide gamut of job opportunities to make the selection based on the benefits. There is no negotiation, there are only one-two job opportunities (best case scenario) with the traditional take it as-is or leave option. This is why in the States fresh graduates end up with almost no Personal Time Off. With no legislation and no competition for talent (which is the case for most job roles), the business owners will ALWAYS F their employees.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  Why dont you start a business then? Would that mean you will f* your employees too? What a mean person you must be.
mrgordon 6y ago
It sounds great in theory until you realize it leads to paying women and minorities less for the same work. Meanwhile it means those in positions of power can arrange for myriad benefits (I’ll need a private helicopter between meetings and summers in the Hamptons) while Americans are guaranteed literally 0 days of vacation leave.

harikb 6y ago

When companies gave free lunch, dinner, breakfast, hair cutting, laundry etc, weren’t those things favoring the young? For people who had family, at least for some of them, it wasn’t practical to make use of it. Now that pandemic has reversed the table...

closeparen 6y ago
Why on earth wouldn’t a parent be able to eat the free lunch? Or drop off the dry cleaning in a box at the office instead of a dedicated storefront along the way? Or get their hair cut between meetings? For us dinner was provided as a courtesy in case we worked late. Some younger people stayed for it every day; it’s true that only a few parents did that (ones with bad commutes waiting for traffic to die down). But there would also be random other parents who happened to work late that day, maybe half the time.
BobbyJo 6y ago
They were favoring people with less of a homestead, which tend to be the young. And really I think that only applies to the laundry. From my time at Google, I'd honestly say the demographics present for free meals didn't tend toward any age. Plenty of people starting a family room advantage of the cost savings free meals provided.
gandutraveler 6y ago
That's a lame argument. To counter parents would bring their entire family for dinners at my company? Who did it benefit more ?

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

> It wasn’t long before employees without children started to ask: What about us? This entire article is hard to read and honestly a little cringe. I know the millennial gen catches a lot of flack for supposedly acting entitled, but this sort of thing does not help.

draw_down 6y ago
Love to call the people not receiving the benefits “entitled”.
znpy 6y ago
It's not completely fair to blame it on millenials as well. Most millenials are now old enough to have both kids and a job. Actually, millennials are probably in the age range where kids are not old enough yet to take care of themselves. I don't think this is a millennial-only thing. And by the way the article does not mention the word "millennial" even once.

johnrob 6y ago

Important missing detail: are the non parents being asked to do more work per week specifically because parent coworkers are on leave?

anon9001 6y ago
Yes.
CincinnatiMan 6y ago
No.
iaw 6y ago
Officially, no. in practice, yes when there isn't redundancy and schedules need to be kept.

danmg 6y ago

I grew up as a latchkey kid from the time I was old enough to go to school. I honestly don't see the point in bothering with childcare if they're old enough to be in school. They've either got homework, they can engage in some free play around the neighbourhood, or they can just play on their own. Paying someone hourly to watch over them as if they were made out of glass is just going to infantalize them further.

usaar333 6y ago
The most acute problem here is for parents with children age 2-5 getting hit when daycares shut down. Older kids can do online classes on their own somewhat; younger kids? nope.
em-bee 6y ago
it's not that easy. kids are not used to the situation. they are not allowed to go outside either. and online learning requires self-discipline that not all kids have. the kids also do not understand that parents being at home doesn't mean that they don't have to work.

znpy 6y ago

It took me some time to fully understand that yes, sometime other people need things that might appear as "preferential treatment" to other people. And we should just STFU about that. A while ago I was talking with some aquaintances about maternity leave and since we were already talking about work it struck me: if I was forced to take 1-2 years off work completely now that I'm not even 30, all of a sudden, it would be pretty much catastrophic for my career. My skills would get mostly outdated given how fast the industry evolves (thank you kubernetes) and I would probably fall a bit out of touch with dealing with coworkers and stuff. I then thought about some of my female colleagues and other female workers I know and how much could they struggle in the future or have struggled in the past. A lot of things started to make sense. I though back to when I was on call an was frequently called in the middle of the night, and how newborn children are probably[0] way heavier on parents. And it kinda dawned on me how important is, often, to "pick up the slack" for other people. So yeah... After these kind of realization my opinion changed a bit. I agreed already with most work-life balance policies but I hadn't had such a strong realization. I now think that it's a good thing that companies allow parents to take time off and deal with both work and personal/family time. Actually, companies should be encouraged/forced to do so on a regular basis. I also think that if you don't agree with me you're piece of shit and you should really go fuck yourself with a cactus. I don't have children of my own now, but I might have in the future. It should really be our background priority to work for better working conditions across all the industry and across other industries too. If you don't want to have children then it's fine (it's your life, do whatever you want) but you're an asshole if you think that everybody should march at your own pace just because you took that decision. --- [0] i'm writing "probably" just because i haven't had kids of my own yet, so i don't really know what i'm talking about. I can imagine, but I don't really know.

eesmith 6y ago
> My skills would get mostly outdated given how fast the industry evolves Except ... it doesn't. There's plenty of stories about people who took substantial time off before coming back to software development who say there wasn't much real change. There's substantial churn, absolutely. How many popular web frameworks have there been? But substantial change that would be catastrophic for a career? No. As one reference point, the list of topics to study as background before going to a tech interview hasn't really changed much in a long time. That knowledge doesn't disappear after a year or two. As another reference point, Sweden has 480 days of parental leave where 90 days is exclusively for each of the parents. Many people in software development take over a year off, without it being catastrophic to their career.

erikerikson 6y ago

Even the childless are benefited by the continuation of society that children manifest. Parents pay far more costs than the childless in capital, time, attention, freedom, happiness, et cetera. Having children is increasingly a choice but replacement reproduction is also a requirement (although I could imagine a world that would invalidate this, that is not our current state). However, because it is a choice the argument that parents should take responsibility for the consequences can seem sensible. At some point and scale it gets entangled in everyone's well-being. Everyone able to make these arguments has benefited from the sensible and self-interested arrangements having been a child themselves. While I understand and have had the objections myself, they represent a rejection of the deal we were all forced into: that society will support us to grow in value and we in turn pull up the following generations who will soon shoulder the load in their own middle lives when we become more dependent on them for our care.

spider-sandlet 6y ago
I realize that expectation for elderly care varies across cultures, but even in industrialized Western countries, there's some expectation of adult children taking care of their elderly parents. So the argument that we should all pay for the next generation because we rely on them to take care of us rings a bit hollow. Is my neighbor's kids going to look after me when I get Alzheimers? I imagine not. I'll have to live with whatever service I can afford with my retirement account. For the childless, it's a choice they make to prioritize present comfort over future security. Parents are making the opposite tradeoff, but expect the childless to subsidize their present loss in time/money/leisure. How does that seem fair?
- erikerikson 6y ago
  > I'll have to live with whatever service I can afford with my retirement account. Exactly the point. If the supply of labor is sufficiently reduced due to a reduced population of able bodied people, your retirement capital will not go far. To clarify my comment, I wasn't discussing the intergenerational support between related peoples but the intergenerational support provided via any source but conventionally by the marketplace through care homes.

bsg75 6y ago

I wonder how often in "normal" companies (not FAANG), workloads shift to non-parents due to typical inability of management to alter timelines along with the realities of a situation? For example, if parents are given a bit of slack or simply have more sick days due to real life responsibilities, but project plans are not altered accordingly, are those without children feeling the pressure to compensate? I have a suspicion this is a problem in companies where investors have expectations of quarterly growth, returns or exit plans, and not much of an outlook to create a healthy long term business. Disclosure: Am manager, not parent.

marktangotango 6y ago

> “A question that we might ask the employees who are feeling some frustration about their co-workers being on leave is what do you think is going to happen if that person quits?” she said. “You’re going to actually be stretched further.” This is the actual calculus; it’s not the companies role to ensure or subsidize child care. It’s a societal problem that both parents are expected, indeed required in a lot of cases, to work. Everyone should vote appropriate to their belief in November! Explicitly, the choice for working parents is for one parent to quit. Single people or couples with no school age children don’t face this choice.

tilolebo 6y ago

Did anyone in this thread try to see the situation from a child POV? School closed, extra scholar activities canceled, not allowed to meet friends, working parents. And then some childfree employees complain that the company allow parents to take care of their own children because no one else will? Pretty selfish take...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gandutraveler 6y ago
It's also a pretty selfish take to not talk about the other sides argument.

awinder 6y ago

“At Twitter, a fight erupted on an internal message board after a worker who didn’t have children at home accused another employee, who was taking a leave to care for a child, of not pulling his weight.” Well that’s pretty beyond the pale. What’s going on with your coworkers is not your business (other than whatever personal/professional relationship you're maintaining). If 1 worker taking leave is putting undo strain on you, that’s a business problem. Go tell your manager that he needs headcount and then go do your job. This is a root-level issue that cyclically results from & continues the uneven benefits. When workers spend time slap-fighting with each other, it makes it even easier for management to means-test benefits like this

alexpetralia 6y ago
Agreed, these seems painfully obvious. Need to set boundaries.

iaw 6y ago

There seems to be two schools of thought in opposition here: 1) For parents that have excessive obligations to their children outside of work it makes sense for the company to provide them additional time at this time to ease that burden. The time off is not a vacation. 2) For employees that do not have children (possibly by conscious choice) they feel that it's offensive to be forced to effectively do more work so that their parent colleagues can take time off (regardless that the time is not a pleasant vacation) I don't have a good opinion, I see validity in both sides. I don't see an easy solution because any benefit differentially applied to the childless would raise similar concerns from parents.

spicyusername 6y ago
Why are they doing more work? Their project planning should account for available resources.
- iaw 6y ago
  Maybe at some employers but what I've seen is deadlines moved forward because of Covid and the need to adapt. So not only is there less staffing but more work to do overall in a shorter period of time. Mind you, I'm not arguing against the status quo here but just looking at both sides.

winenbug 6y ago

This is insane. It's one thing to push for further recognition of folks who have pulled more than their weight in support of their teammates — which is deserved and I think the parents would not protest, but it's another thing entirely to choose to express anger over teammates who are parents. I've seen my brother tried to "work" with his kids at home. It's stressful. It's a mess. It's HARD. Many of these people seem to think the parents are getting extra "time off." 24/7 child care is not a freaking vacation. Kids are great, but kids are kids. You can't just ignore them or turn them off. There's not much you can do when a baby is throwing a tantrum and demands attention. Think you are working hard because you're working 20 hours a day? Imagine spending 20 hours a day working but getting very little done because you are a parent and getting constantly pulled out of your focus zone and context switching from "worker" mode to "parent" mode. If this is the thinking that our society is teaching the new work force, I fear for the future of our nation. Japan has already experienced the "not raising a family because it jeopardizes my work life" and they are NOT having a good time.

tuatoru 6y ago
> anger over teammates who are parents. I recognise my younger self in that. How stupid I was! Bringing up kids is the most important job in the world, and employers have zero loyalty. Do your eight hours, or however much you need to support your outgoings, and then focus on the important stuff. Edit: This applies whether or not you have kids. Your employer being understaffed or having unrealistic goals is not your problem.
jbob2000 6y ago
Here’s what I don’t understand (childless person); How did parents get by for thousands of years always having children by their sides? What is it about the modern world that makes children act like starving cats all the time? Is it the sugary diets? Is it the overstimulation from media? What the heck changed in the last hundred years or so?
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  In many respects, it's "modern" parenting behavior. Example, if you let a baby cry at night it will usually stop crying after a few weeks. Once kids hit ~7 years old it used to be normal to let them wander around the house and neighborhood unsupervised. In most unwesternized countries it still is. That's how the average family has 6+ kids in some countries. They're only actively caring for a few at a time. Taking such a relaxed view to parenting in the west would get your kids taken away

d0100 6y ago

Parents are literally making the future of a society and of humanity. They deserve more slack than single adults. Parents with more time off will (could) have better educated children and thus make life better for everyone. Taking care of kids isn't a luxury it is something everyone should see as a fundamental human goal.

TedShiller 6y ago

As a childless person, I believe that parents deserve all the time off, flexibility, and additional benefits for raising children. Good on them. However, I deserve all the same benefits even though I don't have children. My goal is to eventually have children. In that sense, even just the time and resources I spend dating, making myself more desirable to a life partner, and seeking a life partner is exactly as important as the time and resources you spend caring for your child, because in order to have a child like you I need time to prepare myself to have child. Life is complicated. I have many family issues, as well as mental and physical health issues that require just as much time and resources to take care of as you need to take care of your children. My needs are not less important, less complicated, or less time consuming than your child-rearing related needs. When I see parents implying that as a childless person I'm spending all of my non-work time relaxing at the pool, I can only say that I wish that were true. Not that there's anything wrong with spending all of my free time relaxing at the pool. If I could, I would. Even then, I would deserve all the same benefits as someone who didn't choose to or can't do that. We should not discriminate against people with children. But we also should not discriminate against people without children.

rjfjsksuf 6y ago
This. I don’t want to take away these benefits from parents, I just want to ensure the employee who is caring for a relative/significant other/mental illness/worsened living space/etc to also be supported. I work for a great company with top-tier parental leave benefits like these. But if my non-married partner fell back into major depression and required constant suicide watch as they have in the past, while I’m sure my management would be supportive I’m aware of 0 official leave policies that would support me.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

riverdweller 6y ago

Just give the childless employees the same amount of time off on condition that they use that time to go and help out in daycare centers, old people's homes, or institutions for the disabled. They'll be racing to sign up, I'm sure.

gandutraveler 6y ago
Would parents go and help other orphans and volunteer for daycare? Why stop at your own kids ?
- riverdweller 6y ago
  Well, yes, some parents would. Some simply care about people more than others do. It's a continuum. I know individuals who would gladly take the opportunity of an employer paying them their normal professional salary while volunteering in such places. All these people happen to have their own children (this may be a coincidence, as I am old enough for most of my friends to have had kids by now). The point is that there is, I expect, a strong inverse relationship between bitterness expressed by childless employees who don't receive paid time off their day job and the desire to volunteer to help others.

diebeforei485 6y ago

People without children should also get some extra time off. Perhaps not 10 weeks, but say 2-3 weeks.

tqi 6y ago

NYT is really happy for any excuse to stir up controversy. This is not a tech issue, and the gossipy minute by minute framing of this article is completely lacking in substance.