7 ms·

>If you’re gone for 6 months and everything functions just fine, are you really that important? I would spin that arguement against the business rather than ag

>If you’re gone for 6 months and everything functions just fine, are you really that important? I would spin that arguement against the business rather than against people. It's clearly a business-PoV argument. If your business stops functioning after losing a small percentage of employees then it's a poorly planned businesses. It has poor redundancy measures and should fail.

dusted 5y ago
This. I'm on a rather long paternity leave as of now, and I really hope everything runs as if I'd never left when I get back, otherwise, the bus factor is too low.
Aerroon 5y ago
It also means that the normal day to day operation of the business must have a lot of overhead to have that kind of redundancy though. Redundancy is never free.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Redundancy is never free. This. Austria has generous parental leave policies but the effect of that is that as a woman in your late twenties or early thirties, you will have a hard time changing jobs in highly skilled positions as the employer will expect you'll get pregnant soon and will need to find a temporary replacement for you which is impossible as no highly skilled worker wants to be on a fixed short term contract for the same pay, so many employers who can't or don't want to eat the cost of redundancy will prioritize hiring males instead and spread your workload while you're on leave to the remaining workers, causing them to be overworked for that period. That's the hidden cost.
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    Seems like the correct fix is to make sure that men have the exact same rights to parental leave and all the same incentives to take them. If men and women are equally likely to disappear for similar amounts of time, then it becomes a wash. Of course it could then be difficult for men and women of a certain age range to find new employment, but I don't see how you can fix this aspect of things.
    - Aerroon 5y ago
      This is a bit of a problem in Estonia. Estonia has conscription. An employer is not allowed to fire someone that's being conscripted or is doing training for the military after conscription. This means that any business that hires a man that has gone through conscription might have to be able to replace him at extremely short notice (a few days) for the duration of training. I haven't heard of any actual statistics about the problems it causes, but I've heard grumblings from small business owners.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Equal paternity leave is a thing but it doesn't change the fact that women get pregnant and men don't which is why most employers still discriminate against hiring women and why the salary gap is still a thing. Edit: Don't get why I'm downvoted for saying the truth on how many employers think when hiring. Is stating the hard truth bad or something? I don't like it myself but that's how our society works.
      - CogitoCogito 5y ago
        Are men taking the time as much as women? So basically the difference is the 1-2 months (or whatever the average is) women take off before giving birth? Maybe the solution is to add that amount of time to male paternity leave?
        ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        >Maybe the solution is to add that amount of time to male paternity leave? That sounds good, but who will pay for the extra costs of men being out of the workforce longer?
        CogitoCogito 5y ago
        The same people who pay for the current maternity/paternity leave?
        5y ago
  - llampx 5y ago
    Is this really true though? From my experience in the job market in Berlin on both the hiring side and on the other side, it doesn't seem that there's a dearth of women being hired into individual contributor and management positions. Late 20's are women's starting years if they did a Masters or PhD, so we'd see that in the labor force participation numbers if it was true. Maybe in some top echelons / old Boyd clubs these things are discussed, but I was never made to feel like there's a bias towards males. In fact, in tech and product it's more the opposite.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Don't know the Berlin job market but TBH Austria is way more conservative than hip and liberal Berlin as proven by having a conservative party at the helm and the lowest number of women in top management positions in Europe. The corporate world in Austria (excluding young start-ups) pretty much is the embodiment of the "old boys club" meme. Also, Austria has stronger parental leave than Germany AFAIK from my German colleagues working in Austria so that could also explain why employers there are less affected by this.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  But “redundant” doesn’t mean “optional” if the fault-tolerance is actually valuable to the business. Sure, pretty much any company could gut payroll if the sole objective was to minimize costs over the next, say, 12 months. They could further minimize costs by ceasing to back up their data and not putting a fire sprinkler system in their new office building.
- HelloNurse 5y ago
  Normal day to day operation of a business should have enough slack to allow people to spend time on experiments and initiatives, or simply to do a particularly good job, rather than merely struggle with the strictly necessary part of their workload. Abnormal operation in which deadlines can be met by cutting corners and/or everything goes well and/or enough people are overworked appears to be more common. For example, think of the company culture in which multi-month projects can be planned without accounting for vacation time.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Lacking redundancy is also not free, the resulting downtime can happen unexpectedly, for unknown durations. Paying for the redundancy overhead is insurance against single points of failure.

dusted 5y ago

This. I'm on a rather long paternity leave as of now, and I really hope everything runs as if I'd never left when I get back, otherwise, the bus factor is too low.

Aerroon 5y ago

It also means that the normal day to day operation of the business must have a lot of overhead to have that kind of redundancy though. Redundancy is never free.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>Redundancy is never free. This. Austria has generous parental leave policies but the effect of that is that as a woman in your late twenties or early thirties, you will have a hard time changing jobs in highly skilled positions as the employer will expect you'll get pregnant soon and will need to find a temporary replacement for you which is impossible as no highly skilled worker wants to be on a fixed short term contract for the same pay, so many employers who can't or don't want to eat the cost of redundancy will prioritize hiring males instead and spread your workload while you're on leave to the remaining workers, causing them to be overworked for that period. That's the hidden cost.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  Seems like the correct fix is to make sure that men have the exact same rights to parental leave and all the same incentives to take them. If men and women are equally likely to disappear for similar amounts of time, then it becomes a wash. Of course it could then be difficult for men and women of a certain age range to find new employment, but I don't see how you can fix this aspect of things.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    This is a bit of a problem in Estonia. Estonia has conscription. An employer is not allowed to fire someone that's being conscripted or is doing training for the military after conscription. This means that any business that hires a man that has gone through conscription might have to be able to replace him at extremely short notice (a few days) for the duration of training. I haven't heard of any actual statistics about the problems it causes, but I've heard grumblings from small business owners.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Equal paternity leave is a thing but it doesn't change the fact that women get pregnant and men don't which is why most employers still discriminate against hiring women and why the salary gap is still a thing. Edit: Don't get why I'm downvoted for saying the truth on how many employers think when hiring. Is stating the hard truth bad or something? I don't like it myself but that's how our society works.
    - CogitoCogito 5y ago
      Are men taking the time as much as women? So basically the difference is the 1-2 months (or whatever the average is) women take off before giving birth? Maybe the solution is to add that amount of time to male paternity leave?
      - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        >Maybe the solution is to add that amount of time to male paternity leave? That sounds good, but who will pay for the extra costs of men being out of the workforce longer?
        CogitoCogito 5y ago
        The same people who pay for the current maternity/paternity leave?
        5y ago
- llampx 5y ago
  Is this really true though? From my experience in the job market in Berlin on both the hiring side and on the other side, it doesn't seem that there's a dearth of women being hired into individual contributor and management positions. Late 20's are women's starting years if they did a Masters or PhD, so we'd see that in the labor force participation numbers if it was true. Maybe in some top echelons / old Boyd clubs these things are discussed, but I was never made to feel like there's a bias towards males. In fact, in tech and product it's more the opposite.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Don't know the Berlin job market but TBH Austria is way more conservative than hip and liberal Berlin as proven by having a conservative party at the helm and the lowest number of women in top management positions in Europe. The corporate world in Austria (excluding young start-ups) pretty much is the embodiment of the "old boys club" meme. Also, Austria has stronger parental leave than Germany AFAIK from my German colleagues working in Austria so that could also explain why employers there are less affected by this.
tshaddox 5y ago
But “redundant” doesn’t mean “optional” if the fault-tolerance is actually valuable to the business. Sure, pretty much any company could gut payroll if the sole objective was to minimize costs over the next, say, 12 months. They could further minimize costs by ceasing to back up their data and not putting a fire sprinkler system in their new office building.
HelloNurse 5y ago
Normal day to day operation of a business should have enough slack to allow people to spend time on experiments and initiatives, or simply to do a particularly good job, rather than merely struggle with the strictly necessary part of their workload. Abnormal operation in which deadlines can be met by cutting corners and/or everything goes well and/or enough people are overworked appears to be more common. For example, think of the company culture in which multi-month projects can be planned without accounting for vacation time.
sangnoir 5y ago
Lacking redundancy is also not free, the resulting downtime can happen unexpectedly, for unknown durations. Paying for the redundancy overhead is insurance against single points of failure.