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It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

rich_sasha 2y ago
I guess depends how far you are from the office, and how much time you'll end up burning on commutes. Childcare may be a 5 minute walk from home but a 1+hr unreliable commute from the office.
giantg2 2y ago
It depends on the level of needs for the child. There's a certain age range where a child can basically take care of themself for a few hours bur can't be trusted to be home alone (or haven't met the legal age).
- milesskorpen 2y ago
  Yeah, I can understand that.
- ckemere 2y ago
  This is probably between age 6 and 11, so with the average 1.94 children family with ~2 year spacing, there's a need for something like 7 years of after school monitoring...
acheron 2y ago
With a 2 year old, sure. But a lot of my PTO used to be "elementary aged child is sick and has to stay home from school, so I have to stay home too because he can't be home by himself for 9 hours". Now I don't have to take PTO for that. Kids are sick and just stay in bed or on the couch, I check on them every so often. Doesn't interfere with work any more than going to get a coffee.
ryandrake 2y ago
This is a good point. When I started working remotely, I was really clear with my spouse that this doesn't mean that I'm suddenly available to supervise the kid, do work around the house, go pick things up at the store, and so on, just because I was physically at home. I'm still working just as if I was in the office, just without having to drive to a separate building.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Strong boundaries. But the divorce is going to burn a bunch of your work time..
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    It seems like a healthy relationship to me… they communicated and understood each other’s needs.
eesmith 2y ago
I don't see mention of someone working full-time while also doing full-time child care. I see people who have part-time child care who now need full-time, like: > A sales-team member who's a parent said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements and > Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage pickup times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about people signing on later from home to complete their hours. > Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.
SvenL 2y ago
Hanging all day in meetings also feels like not working full time…I have to admit, there are meetings where I sit with my child’s and build legos. Those are the most productive meetings I have…
runako 2y ago
Lots of legit reasons. Some I have seen: - kids do remote school for whatever reason. This works when parent is at home, but not if parent is at the office. - kids are < age when it's okay to leave them at home, but > age when it's okay for them to walk home from school. - Have to be at work at 9, school drop-off starts at 8:35. School is 45 minutes from the office. There are a lot of ways people organize their lives. The cool thing about sales teams is you don't have to micromanage them in the office as they are one of the few teams in the company where results are unambiguous.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  These are all legitimate but I found my self a bit bewildered that the concept of a school bus is absent entirely from the apparent thought process, given I rode the bus for the vast majority of my primary and secondary schooling
  - ars 2y ago
    At least by me you have to be more than 1.5miles from the school to get a bus - that's a half hour walk! Doable certainly, but not fun, especially in the winter - or worse, when it's hot! And teens need to live even farther from their school to qualify for a bus, but teens don't walk any faster than non teens. Most kids don't really want to spend the better part of an hour each way going to/from school.
    - CalRobert 2y ago
      A bike can make 1.5 miles an easy ride (I rode 4 miles to school in HS) but it's really rare to have safe bike routes in most places, sadly.
      - entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Sadly untrue where I grew up. The hills were brutal, walking and taking longer was preferable to not feeling your legs lol
    - 2y ago
rkharsan64 2y ago
There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children. If you as an employer provide a leave of just 15 days for the father (I've seen really big companies do this), and just a few months for the mother, don't be surprised if people lose productivity or just straight up leave when they have children. Most EU countries have great paternal leave policies. Most other countries could learn something from them. Somehow, it has become acceptable to forget raising a family for the sake of working, and it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. Edit with some more thoughts: 95% of all the time you will spend with your parents is gone. [1] If your child is raised by a caretaker, you're losing a huge chunk of all the time you'll get with them. On your deathbed, would you feel proud of having delivered another feature instead of spending a bit more time with your family and children? [1]: https://seeyourfolks.com/ https://seeyourfolks.com/
- unsui 2y ago
  > it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. HN is full of temporarily-embarrassed CEO-wannabes-in-waiting who tend to side with the disruptor, not so much with the disruptees.
- davidashe 2y ago
  “There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children.” Tell me you’ve never been a working parent, without telling me…
  - em-bee 2y ago
    i don't get what you are trying to say here.
jimbob45 2y ago
You're implying that none of them are on part-time daycare because they should easily be able to convert to full-time daycare now. That is false. You cannot simply convert up if the daycare does not have capacity, to say nothing of the associated costs.
creativenolo 2y ago
I couldn’t find any mention of employees doing full-time childcare in the article. But I suspect you don’t really understand the issues. If you need an extra hour childcare because of your commute you are unlikely to find childcare that covers that one hour only and works around you. You most likely need to find afternoon/early evening cover. Good luck. Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Be glad you don’t have to sort out childcare or deal with people thinking you “weren’t really working”.
- jhoechtl 2y ago
  > Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Are you speculating or telling from personal experience? If the first the answer even common sense will give you is no. If the later you contribute to the problem that a vast majority of responsible workers pay the bills for a minority who overstretched the system.
  - creativenolo 2y ago
    Personal experience.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Something like that might include a casual arrangement like a neighbour watching them after school before you get home, a grandparent dropping by, etc.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I’m don’t quite get what you mean. It wouldn’t be that unexpected in a nice friendly community for a neighbor to help out occasionally, but people don’t just work occasionally, right?
    - 2y ago
unethical_ban 2y ago
The job of a worker can often be realistically done in far less than 40 hours a week. If you're salaried, maybe working 9-12 and 2-4:30 is feasible and legal for performance, and 5x/week for 8 hours in the office takes you away from what you were doing in the padding. Secondly, RTO means a lack of flexibility in work hours even if you did 40/week. People who didn't have to commute, who had time to take their kids to school or pick them up, now don't have that pre- and post-work time to help kids.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
plantwallshoe 2y ago
Elementary schools close at 3pm. No longer can you just take a break mid-day to pick them up because you’re stuck at the office until 5. Lots of daycares close by 6pm. Good luck leaving the office, commuting, picking up the kid on time.
camgunz 2y ago
When they're between 1.5-5 you don't really have to watch them all the time, but you can't leave them alone. Depending on your job (fine for my partner when she's being a PM, not fine for me when I'm being an SWE) that can be manageable. And daycare is booooooonkers expensive. I'm sure a lot of people were like "hmm, $3k/mo or constant low-key distraction... how bad can it be"
4star3star 2y ago
Think elementary age children who go to school. Most parents would not want a first grader to have to be home alone for a couple hours. School age kids don't need 100% interaction while at home - they just need to be safe, and their parents need to be available occasionally. I would imagine returning to the office means finding after-school care in many cases.
hexfish 2y ago
Implying you're full time producing value - head in the game - when you're in the office?
raydev 2y ago
> it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time Only if you think it's impossible for people to work while their children are home.

rich_sasha 2y ago

I guess depends how far you are from the office, and how much time you'll end up burning on commutes. Childcare may be a 5 minute walk from home but a 1+hr unreliable commute from the office.

giantg2 2y ago

It depends on the level of needs for the child. There's a certain age range where a child can basically take care of themself for a few hours bur can't be trusted to be home alone (or haven't met the legal age).

milesskorpen 2y ago
Yeah, I can understand that.
ckemere 2y ago
This is probably between age 6 and 11, so with the average 1.94 children family with ~2 year spacing, there's a need for something like 7 years of after school monitoring...

acheron 2y ago

With a 2 year old, sure. But a lot of my PTO used to be "elementary aged child is sick and has to stay home from school, so I have to stay home too because he can't be home by himself for 9 hours". Now I don't have to take PTO for that. Kids are sick and just stay in bed or on the couch, I check on them every so often. Doesn't interfere with work any more than going to get a coffee.

ryandrake 2y ago

This is a good point. When I started working remotely, I was really clear with my spouse that this doesn't mean that I'm suddenly available to supervise the kid, do work around the house, go pick things up at the store, and so on, just because I was physically at home. I'm still working just as if I was in the office, just without having to drive to a separate building.

dboreham 2y ago
Strong boundaries. But the divorce is going to burn a bunch of your work time..
- bee_rider 2y ago
  It seems like a healthy relationship to me… they communicated and understood each other’s needs.

eesmith 2y ago

I don't see mention of someone working full-time while also doing full-time child care. I see people who have part-time child care who now need full-time, like: > A sales-team member who's a parent said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements and > Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage pickup times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about people signing on later from home to complete their hours. > Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.

SvenL 2y ago

Hanging all day in meetings also feels like not working full time…I have to admit, there are meetings where I sit with my child’s and build legos. Those are the most productive meetings I have…

runako 2y ago

Lots of legit reasons. Some I have seen: - kids do remote school for whatever reason. This works when parent is at home, but not if parent is at the office. - kids are < age when it's okay to leave them at home, but > age when it's okay for them to walk home from school. - Have to be at work at 9, school drop-off starts at 8:35. School is 45 minutes from the office. There are a lot of ways people organize their lives. The cool thing about sales teams is you don't have to micromanage them in the office as they are one of the few teams in the company where results are unambiguous.

entropicdrifter 2y ago
These are all legitimate but I found my self a bit bewildered that the concept of a school bus is absent entirely from the apparent thought process, given I rode the bus for the vast majority of my primary and secondary schooling
- ars 2y ago
  At least by me you have to be more than 1.5miles from the school to get a bus - that's a half hour walk! Doable certainly, but not fun, especially in the winter - or worse, when it's hot! And teens need to live even farther from their school to qualify for a bus, but teens don't walk any faster than non teens. Most kids don't really want to spend the better part of an hour each way going to/from school.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    A bike can make 1.5 miles an easy ride (I rode 4 miles to school in HS) but it's really rare to have safe bike routes in most places, sadly.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      Sadly untrue where I grew up. The hills were brutal, walking and taking longer was preferable to not feeling your legs lol
  - 2y ago

rkharsan64 2y ago

There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children. If you as an employer provide a leave of just 15 days for the father (I've seen really big companies do this), and just a few months for the mother, don't be surprised if people lose productivity or just straight up leave when they have children. Most EU countries have great paternal leave policies. Most other countries could learn something from them. Somehow, it has become acceptable to forget raising a family for the sake of working, and it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. Edit with some more thoughts: 95% of all the time you will spend with your parents is gone. [1] If your child is raised by a caretaker, you're losing a huge chunk of all the time you'll get with them. On your deathbed, would you feel proud of having delivered another feature instead of spending a bit more time with your family and children? [1]: https://seeyourfolks.com/ https://seeyourfolks.com/

unsui 2y ago
> it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies. HN is full of temporarily-embarrassed CEO-wannabes-in-waiting who tend to side with the disruptor, not so much with the disruptees.
davidashe 2y ago
“There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children.” Tell me you’ve never been a working parent, without telling me…
- em-bee 2y ago
  i don't get what you are trying to say here.

jimbob45 2y ago

You're implying that none of them are on part-time daycare because they should easily be able to convert to full-time daycare now. That is false. You cannot simply convert up if the daycare does not have capacity, to say nothing of the associated costs.

creativenolo 2y ago

I couldn’t find any mention of employees doing full-time childcare in the article. But I suspect you don’t really understand the issues. If you need an extra hour childcare because of your commute you are unlikely to find childcare that covers that one hour only and works around you. You most likely need to find afternoon/early evening cover. Good luck. Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Be glad you don’t have to sort out childcare or deal with people thinking you “weren’t really working”.

jhoechtl 2y ago
> Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect. Are you speculating or telling from personal experience? If the first the answer even common sense will give you is no. If the later you contribute to the problem that a vast majority of responsible workers pay the bills for a minority who overstretched the system.
- creativenolo 2y ago
  Personal experience.
CalRobert 2y ago
Something like that might include a casual arrangement like a neighbour watching them after school before you get home, a grandparent dropping by, etc.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I’m don’t quite get what you mean. It wouldn’t be that unexpected in a nice friendly community for a neighbor to help out occasionally, but people don’t just work occasionally, right?
  - 2y ago

unethical_ban 2y ago

The job of a worker can often be realistically done in far less than 40 hours a week. If you're salaried, maybe working 9-12 and 2-4:30 is feasible and legal for performance, and 5x/week for 8 hours in the office takes you away from what you were doing in the padding. Secondly, RTO means a lack of flexibility in work hours even if you did 40/week. People who didn't have to commute, who had time to take their kids to school or pick them up, now don't have that pre- and post-work time to help kids.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

plantwallshoe 2y ago

Elementary schools close at 3pm. No longer can you just take a break mid-day to pick them up because you’re stuck at the office until 5. Lots of daycares close by 6pm. Good luck leaving the office, commuting, picking up the kid on time.

camgunz 2y ago

When they're between 1.5-5 you don't really have to watch them all the time, but you can't leave them alone. Depending on your job (fine for my partner when she's being a PM, not fine for me when I'm being an SWE) that can be manageable. And daycare is booooooonkers expensive. I'm sure a lot of people were like "hmm, $3k/mo or constant low-key distraction... how bad can it be"

4star3star 2y ago

Think elementary age children who go to school. Most parents would not want a first grader to have to be home alone for a couple hours. School age kids don't need 100% interaction while at home - they just need to be safe, and their parents need to be available occasionally. I would imagine returning to the office means finding after-school care in many cases.

hexfish 2y ago

Implying you're full time producing value - head in the game - when you're in the office?

raydev 2y ago

> it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time Only if you think it's impossible for people to work while their children are home.