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Google's formula to retain women: Longer maternity leave
- eslachance 14y agoI guess this is one reason I'm lucky and happy to be in Canada: There is a total of 52 weeks of shared parental leave, then there's 2 weeks reserved individually for each parent. The parental leave can be split in any way the parents feel necessary. And this isn't anything employers do; this is a governmental program. However, the first 6 months of leave are paid 70% regular salary, the rest is at 50%. I think it's a great program, and I don't know that a lot of women have any issues returning to work after that time.
- jasonlotito 14y agoQuebec, as usually, is a bit different. There is a years worth of maternity (or paternity) leave. There is also 5 weeks given specifically to the other spouse (generally referred to as paternity leave). Anyways, You can take the 5 weeks whenever you want, up to a year from when the child is born. Considering the many massive deficiencies in Quebec, this is one of the brighter spots.
- eslachance 14y agoOh, actually I had the numbers wrong, I'm also in Quebec :)
- PuerkitoBio 14y agoAnd on a related note, in Quebec, public child care centers are 7$ a day. Though it's not all perfect, those programs sparked a mini baby boom and as a result there are not enough places for everybody. But private child care centers are usually around 25$ a day. "Many massive deficiencies" is overly dramatic.
- jasonlotito 14y ago> "Many massive deficiencies" is overly dramatic. No, no it's not. Not in the slightest. I meant exactly that. If anything, it's less antagonistic then I how I usually describe Quebec, it's government and laws, and it's medical community. I usually associate them with child-abusers, and feel justified in doing so. Nor do I feel it's overly dramatic. Simply put, if I knew years ago what I knew now, I would have left Quebec before having children.
- throwaway1979 14y agoSomeone told me that in Canada, clinics often hire dentists as contractors ... this makes it so that you can't get maternity leave benefits, etc. Not sure how pervasive this is across different occupations. Would appreciate hearing experiences. (I'm a Canuck living abroad.)
- rachelbythebay 14y agoHow incredibly simplistic. Of all of the women I know who have left (and there are quite a few), maternity leave never came up as a reason. How about meaningful work, not being evil, and being respected?
- thinkingisfun 14y agoToo radical.
- dominik 14y agoOut of curiosity, what reasons did come up? (And also, is there a possibility that reported reasons are not actual reasons?)
- rachelbythebay 14y agoJust off the top of my head, from what I can remember, these are all different people: "We're having to worry about money. We never had to do that before." (Router wrangler, left in 2008. One of the earlier casualties of the great shrinking.) The whole China thing. (The office there, not the Christmas/Aurora attacks.) The real names thing. (G+) Hostile environment / "My boss was a dick" (This one was in a news story linked from HN not too long ago... and happens to have been said by one of my friends). Bozos, bozos, everywhere. Plus, the new focus on the relentless pursuit of evil, and more. (Me, covered in my writing: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/ ) Tired of being stuck as a go-nowhere sysadmin job with no hope of upward mobility. (Bailed out to go back to school to learn web stuff.) Acqi-non-hired. (They bought a company and then put one of their dev relations people in a one-year fixed term because they didn't like her approach to tech.) Really bad manager. Incompetent, unable to have a meaningful conversation, goes in circles. (Wound up being PIPped. Probably would have quit anyway.) Sorry, I can't come up with any more right now. But that should be a start.
- davidw 14y agoOffhand, those strike me as things that could equally apply to a man leaving. Do women leave Google in disproportionately higher numbers?
- sp332 14y agoWe just had the original posted yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4420056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4420056 and it explains several other steps Google has taken to increase the percentage of women hired and retained. Today.com ignored the rest of the article and made this clickbait to promote some social agenda.
- tocomment 14y agoHow does paternity leave generally work at most companies? My company even has maternity leave for adoptions but they make sure to mention that men aren't eligible! (It seems to me men are just as capable of adoption as women, I'm not sure what would make them less eligible.)
- trhtrsh 14y ago0,2 or sometimes 7-8 weeks. Maternity leave is a combination of medical disability for late pregnancy and post-partum (should be covered by disability insurance) and family leave for a primary caregiver. There is absolutely no reason to enshrine sexism in the policy. Lay out a sex-blind policy, and accept if women tend to exercise it more than men, that's plenty of (acceptable) imbalance.
- icarus127 14y agoAs some people have pointed out this is a bit of a simplistic analysis, but I find it encouraging that Google is doing this. The state of Maternity leave in the U.S. is frankly appalling. My wife (a nurse) is currently pregnant and her Maternity 'leave' is 8 weeks. She is _required_ to burn all but one week of her vacation time as well as all her sick leave. After that it's unpaid and if she were to stay on her employer's insurance we would have to pay for it out of pocket for the remaining duration of the leave. Fortunately I have good insurance but this seems incredibly bizarre to me. Nurse's are already overworked. Long story short, when I see a high profile company treating pregnant mothers better it only makes me happy.
- colmvp 14y agoI actually like the way the U.S. does it. Citizens and companies shouldn't have to have their dollars used to pay other people to have and raise children.
- nileshtrivedi 14y agoThat's somewhat naive in my opinion. Reducing maternity leave would lead to women leaving work rather than not having babies. So citizens and companies lose ultimately.
- colmvp 14y agoI prefer the approach of saving money to account for one parent being able to take extended time off from work/leaving their job for a period of time. Myself, I've saved money and could work from home. As for my own mom, even though I live in a country where she could take a long maternity leave, she opted to go back to work after a very short time.
- lukeschlather 14y agoThe thing is, you're viewing this from a moral rather than a business perspective. From a moral perspective, sure, people should plan ahead and not have children until they have the requisite resources with sustainable income. From a business perspective, six months paid leave is worth it if you can avoid hiring and training a new employee.
- Spooky23 14y agoI don't have any insight into Google, but is is a smart thing to do. My wife and I recently had our first child, who thankfully has no serious health issues and is a great sleeper. My wife's employer provides 3 months leave at half pay, but only after she uses her PTO accruals. So that left us in a position where we would have to find quality, expensive infant care, while simultaneously dealing with taking FMLA time without pay for baby doctor's appointments or when daycare sends the child home due to illness or other issues. (My job unfortunately requires travel, so much of that burden falls on my wife.) End result is that we ran the numbers and talked about what we really wanted, and it made sense for my wife to stop working.
- skrebbel 14y agoJust a somewhat offtopic request: on an international site like this one, would you please be so kind to translate non-international terms such as "PTO" and "FMLA" to something more general? I really want to understand your comment, but I have a hard time at it.
- trhtrsh 14y agoPaid Time Off Family Medical Leave Act -- https://www.google.com/ https://www.google.com/
- ch 14y agoAnd just to expand on that a bit further. The FMLA allows you to take up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for health reasons, and protects you from being terminated by your employer during that time. My wife and I had to face similar decisions when our first son was born. I really applaud Google for doing this. I certainly understand that employers walk a thin line on giving benefits without employees simply taking advantage of the company. But a good maternity/paternity leave program really helps build loyalty to a company.
- Spooky23 14y agoSure, I didn't think of that! PTO is your vacation/sick accruals. In most US companies, having a baby means that a mother will use all of her accrued sick and vacation time for maternity leave. The problem with that is that you come back to work with no time... But you need to take days or afternoons off to care for your infant. (pediatrician visits, kid is sick from daycare, etc) FMLA is a federal law that requires most employers to allow you to take time off to deal with medical problems that you or your immediate family have. If you use all of the time, it is almost certainly unpaid.
- xradionut 14y agoIt's not only that maternity leave policies in the US suck in the majority of companies, it's that fact that quality child care is so expensive, that many mothers find it cheaper to stay at home or work part-time, especially those with more than one small child. Add in the fact that many companies are understaffed to cut expenses, that there can be resentment from coworkers when a mother goes maternity leave. You might get some blowback from the non-parents and singles in the office when you expect them to cover for you with no incentives, not even a thank you. Try working in a office with deadlines and critical projects when 40% of staff are expecting...
- PeterisP 14y agoWell, in countries with larger maternity (and other) leaves and functioning overtime legislation, it's obvious even to dumb,lazy and miserly managers that (a) you need to plan for workers becoming unavailable, and (b) you need to hire extra staff for absences, as it's cheaper than paying lots of overtime. Only in USA they can get by without caring about this. Handling long absences is an everyday task just if you handle vacations properly - a month paid vacation means that of an unit of 12 employees at any time at least one is off, so every company has worked out how to handle replacements and task switching properly (i.e., delegate tasks to someone who has time) - and if you handle a month off, then you can handle 6 or 12 months off.
- PeterisP 14y agoEvery civilized country has it better than USA in this regard. Every. single. one. In many of them, the minimum mandatory maternity/paternity support that every sweatshop must (and does) provide is better than what google is offering now.
- mediascreen 14y agoJust for comparison: Sweden has got 18 months per child at 82% salary, where none of the parents can use more than 16 months.
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- debacle 14y agoWhat about paternity leave?