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How Silicon Valley can prove it is pro-family

• __loam 1y ago
  When so called luminaries are calling 60 hour work weeks a good baseline, you're not pro-family.
• exolymph 1y ago
  Key quote: > My peers in tech who are reluctant to have children often express fear that it will interrupt the arc of the careers they've worked so hard to build. > That, I think, is the primary tension: not between the family and the state, as Boyle argues, but between individual and collective ambitions. Both the state and the family ask us to make sacrifices for something bigger than ourselves — and this, perhaps, is why they have historically fought each other for mindshare. What tech offers is the opposite: a chance to realize a vision that is entirely one's own. Tech worships individual talent, and it's a unique thrill to live and work among peers who don't shy away from greatness. But it also means that tech has to work harder than other industries to demonstrate that starting a family doesn't require giving up these ambitions. I'm the breadwinner in my family, and my husband is a SAHD. I have a 2yo and I'm 6 months pregnant with our second. Stereotypically, having a kid made me care less about professional ambitions — but I don't care zero. And as the breadwinner, earning money, ideally more money every couple years or so, is a high priority. God, the pressure to keep up. It's hard to balance with being a present mom. I live in the SF Bay Area and being able to attend events and network in person has been a huge boon to my career. Being "in the scene" pays off. I can't really do that anymore, not without losing time with my kid, and I'm just not willing to make the sacrifice. Traveling to conferences, etc., is even more off the table. Don't even talk to me about commuting. But I know these lifestyle changes will have repercussions next time I need to find a job. To secure jobs with the kind of flexibility I require as a mom, I need to be a high performer, an impressive candidate with plenty of connections. Being a mom makes it harder — more expensive, let's say — to be that kind of exceptional worker bee. Oy vey!
  • toomuchtodo 1y ago
    I’m always taken aback when people in power denigrate remote and flexible work, as if it’s lazy or incompatible with an organization succeeding. If you want people to have families and lean into them, they need this work arrangement. Remote and flexible work has been shown to be very beneficial to parents and working mothers specifically. Several other countries protect this as a worker right. There’s over $120B in remote first or highly remote compatible enterprises. But you still have the bros, from Silicon Valley to Jamie Dimon in finance, dragging people back in for the performance art. I hope the right people get into positions of power soon, who understand economic success and worker well-being go hand in hand. It shouldn’t taboo to say “I’m here to do good work, but then I’m going home; my job is not who I am, but merely a means to a reasonable amount of economic and professional success.” We have to enable people do their best work with reasonable accommodations. Mothers are leaving the workforce, erasing pandemic gains - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44894464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44894464 - August 2025
    • bluGill 1y ago
      Remote and flexible are nice, but not what is needed. What is needed is consistency and not too many hours. You have to be expected to not work or party late because you will be with the family. You have to be expected to work the same first shift schedule - that is the kids are in school or in child care when you are working (child care for young kids is expensive enough that one parent staying home until the kids are school aged looks really good, so support for going back to work after that is useful). There needs to be one parent with flexibility, but it doesn't matter which. Just so that when a kid is sick at least one parent able to not go into the office. Most people reading this will have a job that can be done okay from home between cleaning vomit up and so it makes sense for us to get that flexibility. However there are a lot of jobs that must be in person (you can't work an assembly line from home)
      • toomuchtodo 1y ago
        We don’t have to agree on the remote and flexible part, but I agree with reduced hours and am an aggressive advocate of the 4 day week (8x4 @ 100% pay).
• s5300 1y ago
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• moshegramovsky 1y ago
  A culture of greed is never good for children.
• sieabahlpark 1y ago
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• Spooky23 1y ago
  If you choose a life centered around career and ambition, especially in a large corporate or government sector -- you are not pro-family. That's ok. Everyone looks at the happy people around them, and think that they can have it all, but have no idea what actually happens or doesn't. Reality is, you can't woo investors or yak at conferences on 3 continents and be meaningfully fully engaged with your kids. You try your best and make it work. If that family focused lifestyle is what you want, that's fine. But you're unlikely to be a high-flyer in a company that demands blood. End of the day, you need to know youself, and figure out what you actually want and why. Most people keep moving to avoid doing that. Life put me in a place where I lost agency and had to make a choice, and while the circumstances sucked, I made the right choice.
  • Esophagus4 1y ago
    > If that family focused lifestyle is what you want, that's fine. But you're unlikely to be a high-flyer in a company that demands blood. I’m not sure I agree, though it probably depends on what our definitions of a “family focused lifestyle” are. The most high-flying executives you can name from the Valley to the Street… I would bet that most have a family they would describe as being meaningfully engaged with. There’s a certain niche of the Valley that takes pride in being busy to the detriment of everything else in their life, but they don’t represent career success, they represent dysfunction. If you want a family life and a phenomenal career… you’re not playing golf every weekend, nor are you meeting your friends for beers after work at 5:30 on a Friday. You’re spending Saturday mornings with your kids, and you probably have a supportive partner helping around the house (or hired help). So in that sense, you can’t “have it all,” but you can make choices that prioritize both work and family.
    • Spooky23 1y ago
      There’s always a sacrifice. In most cases, that means somebody is usually either not working or working light. I’d agree that workaholics represent dysfunction, but the problem is that they drag down those around them. A key thing is that the place matters. You don’t have to work for a particular company to have a great career. You need to know what you want to be in the place that is right to you.
• adamors 1y ago
  There's no turn, this is just A16Z trying to adopt a more "family values" look for obvious reasons.
  • Analemma_ 1y ago
    The left used to think that Big Tech was their natural friend and ally too. It's funny to see that the blood from that particular knife in the back hasn't even dried yet and the right is already rhapsodizing about how great it is that tech is their ally now. No it's not: you are the current useful idiots, and you too will be thrown under the bus the second you've outlived your value to capital.
    • renewiltord 1y ago
      The funny thing about the highly political is that they're always the ones betrayed. No amount of "Fuck off, techies!" is supposed to have an effect. Puke on a tech bus, protest donations to charity (it's not nearly enough, and you shouldn't have your name on it!), allege racism and this and that. But one "message received" and it's this terrible betrayal. Haha, these people are always being "betrayed" by people who are having their "mask-off moment" who were just "playing them for fools" and they never stop to think it's their behaviour. It's like all those girls who post online that they "hate drama" but for some reason their life is a complete shitshow.
• monknomo 1y ago
  The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save - the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour - your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life - the greater is the store of your estranged being.
  • bluGill 1y ago
    I'm not sure what you are trying to say. However I will state that only religion offers any ability to save for after death - and not all of them do. If you want to save that is good, but get your religion in order (whatever that means - I don't want to open that discussion), then make sure your plan is to spend all the savings somehow. I don't care how you spend it, but enjoy life as best you can. I know some who lived a healthy active life to 104, and some who saved a lot of money for retirement but didn't live that long they were diagnosed with untreatable cancer the same month they retired). Pick your best balance between enjoying now and saving for the future.
    • nehal3m 1y ago
      They're quoting Marx.
    • FollowingTheDao 1y ago
      "the less you are the more you have" is a very spiritual statement by Marx. Our current social focus is to acquire capital, and that is making all of us less. Less compassionate, less available, less human.
• alexdong 1y ago
  It can’t. And it won’t. Yes. There are families on the fringe that tries to make it work. But it’s an exception. Not a norm.
• nehal3m 1y ago
  Silicon Valley is pro-money and nothing else. The don't be evil rhetoric worked well to get a foot in the door but as soon as there was ever any choice between values and cash, greenbacks won. Hell, the entire industry is trying its damnedest to get rid of bodies in favour of chips. That should tell you how many fucks they give about breadwinners.
• bluGill 1y ago
  Things like ping pong tables, free beer - those are bad for family life. They encourage you to stay at the office for more than your 40 hours - of course in many places the idea of a 40 hour week seems like a joke. If you want to encourage family life you need to encourage going home and not thinking about work at all. My company has a branch office near LA. I asked someone there once why they don't move just a few hours north to the Bay - they could easially double their salary. There was no interest in that though - the LA office you arrive to work sometime around 9 or 9:30, take a lunch break, and if you if you are not clearly preparing to leave at 6pm they remind you to turn the lights off when you leave. (that is you are allowed to work later if you want but it is expected that you won't) That is worth far more than the extra money that they could make and so we have a lot of people who have been in that office for 20 years.
  • scotty79 1y ago
    > you need to encourage going home and not thinking about work at all Why would any company encourage that? The only use that business had with people having family was that having family put workers at a disadvantage, pressed them against the wall, forced them to suffer through even more exploitation than they would if they were childless. Make them existentially fear even trying to look for other opportunities. And give them a place to escape the burden of care of their children.
    • nickff 1y ago
      Many companies encourage employees to go home and relax or engage in other rewarding activities; it can be very beneficial for the employer. For one thing, it encourages people to separate their work lives and home lives, which can decrease stress (often encouraging productivity and increasing tenure), as well as encouraging people to treat their office as somewhere to focus on work (to the exclusion of distractions). Additionally, in many fields it can be helpful to get a fresh perspective on your work every day, rather than getting tunnel-vision, which can happen from having your 'head down' all the time.
      • wubrr 1y ago
• LightBug1 1y ago
  By not pretending your work culture and colleagues are "family". This isn't Fast and Furious, ffs
• arrosenberg 1y ago
  The only way Silicon Valley will become pro-family is if they are dragged kicking and screaming by the organized force of their workers. I'm not particularly optimistic.
• VinLucero 1y ago
  If AI enables the personalization of apps for individuals, wouldn’t it also be good at doing so for families? Maybe there is an opportunity to create vibe coded products that fit into the rhythm of a given family. Collective emotion as a construct for a bigger family goal is an interesting optimization problem. Mint for tracking your family’s mental and emotional health.
• elzbardico 1y ago
  Decentralize. The US is a fucking giant place. Why all companies need to be on the same half a dozen places? This makes housing absurdly expensive, commutes become hellish nightmares, school choices few and terrible. All things not conductive to growing families.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • nemomarx 1y ago
    everyone wants access to the largest labour pool possible, to make hiring somewhat cheaper and faster. This means centralization at least among a sector (finance on the East Coast, tech on the West, etc). if you move out to Illinois and other companies move to Kansas or Montana, how will you poach their workers? how will you fire and replace people easily? better to be concentrated for that.
    • bluGill 1y ago
      Also, if you live in a small town how will you meet a girl (or guy - I'm just going with girl to make this easy but adjust to your situation) - there are only a handful and you may not get along with them. Even if you do meet that girl, there are only so many jobs in the small town - if you work for the same company if there is a downturn you may both lose your job at the same time. In a larger city it is more likely you won't work for the same company and thus if one loses a job you can just "tighten your belts" for a few months while looking for a job. The larger city also means more jobs, so if you lose your job and your girl doesn't you have a chance to find a new job without giving up the girl (or forcing her to quit and find a new job)
      • Palomides 1y ago
        I don't usually see anyone argue you should move to the bay area for dating!
        • bluGill 1y ago
• jandom 1y ago
  Remote friendly is a life changer to young parents… and we saw what happened to that fairly quickly
  • angmarsbane 1y ago
    Didn't the COVID lockdowns lead to a small baby boom for first-time parents?
    • kridsdale3 1y ago
      My neighborhood is a positive data point.
• pkdpic 1y ago
  Glad to see this pop-up. For whatever it's worth I was born in the Sunset (SF) and love the city in spite of all it's problems. My parents were forced out when I got a school on Treasure Island for my 1st grade lottery pick. Went back to SF for college, east coast for grad school where I met my wife from Milwaukee. We have a 5 year old now and I would love to move back to SF and raise my son there. But no matter how many different ways I try to analyze it I just can't come close to justifying the move as beneficial for him or for our marriage. I'd have to work a more intense job to make enough to afford even a quarter of the space we have now. And without knowing our lottery pick in advance I'd have to budget in private school for at least twice the price we're paying for our current STEM-focused private option. I don't have any personal aversion to working more to pay for more expensive options but the tradeoff of time keeping my relationship with my kid and my marriage healthy is hard to ignore and seems like a really concrete deal-breaker. We're at the edge of Land Park in Sacramento where my extended family is from. We thought it might be temporary before getting pulled back to the bay for work or schools maybe but the culture here has just been so positive and conducive to family. The public and private schools are excellent with dozens of options, everything is bikable and green, there are literally more museums and restaurants than we can keep up with and the parks / sports options for kids are amazing. And it's swarming with healthy young working / middle class families about half of which are bay area expats. The city obviously has some known issues but I'm continually grateful with the amount of new development going up in every direction and the overall feeling of being a culture / city that supports young cool people having families. Anyway I'm just surprised and disappointed at how hard it is to justify moving to SF right now as a native who loves it there. Even as someone working in tech / AI with a strong desire to go back. If you have a family, it just seems impossible to make SF make sense right now. I could be missing something of course. Curious what other SF or Sac tech parents have to say about all this. So much of this has had to be hypothetical on my end because I know so few parents with young kids in SF...
  • arjie 1y ago
    We've got a 5 month old here in San Francisco, and will attempt child #2 some time in the next year. The lottery system doesn't bother me as much about school as the fact that it seems to lack academic rigour. As for the prices, it's obvious that the relentless work of SF natives has had its effect: few can live here but the wealthy. They have been very good at achieving this effect, and the population is now at a median age higher than 40. In time, those arriving here from elsewhere will remedy it, but the war SF natives wage on families will take a lot of work for the rest of us to fight.
• realityfactchex 1y ago
  Conspicuously absent from TFA is the #1 thing they could do, which would be to stop requiring vaccines for school or workplace. Possibly, Silicon Valley (and the larger California) has had more exodus of (and lack of inbound) families for this reason than most others IMHO. Obviously, there are other factors too, and this is highly controversial (not to mention counter to the politically-correct/institutionally-endorsed position). But to not mention this issue seems to miss something major. Or do we not talk about that?
  • exolymph 1y ago
    While anti-vax people / families obviously exist, are there really that many? Any substantiating data? (I am genuinely curious, though skeptical.)
    • nunez 1y ago
      SO SO SO MANY in the South Like, SO FUCKING MANY
  • mtswish 1y ago
    You think one of the biggest issues for being pro-family is that Silicon Valley requires people to be vaccinated? You don't think it's a cost of living problem, but rather a policy disagreement?
• lenerdenator 1y ago
  Money spent on an employee to allow them to better raise a family is money not spent on a shareholder return that allows a retiree to swing on and off the course at a golf-centered retirement village in Florida. Until you get a diversification in who holds most corporate shares (they're usually held by retirement and pension funds) you're going to see more of the same.
  • dcow 1y ago
    I can’t see a way around it without more government incentive to combat the drift of gerontocratic capitalism. Children aren’t valuable anymore in the access to cheap labor sense because our economy has scaled beyond the phase where that’s a competitive x factor. Whether we created organically, or capitalism lead us into, a worldview where both parents are better off as good reliable corporate wage slaves, we’re at the point where dual incomes are expected which puts a lot of strain on any family wanting to actually raise their kids, which not too long ago was the default expectation. I am sure diversification of assets will help, but I don’t see 40 yr old “we’re over populating the earth” and “parents don’t know what they’re doing they aren’t suited to raising children” types having much shareholder empathy for an economy that takes a haircut to support 30 hour work weeks and 6 month paid parental leave. The feasibility of having children has to be supported by society and systems that work against it have to be kept in check.
• bluebirdhh123 1y ago
  > My peers in tech who are reluctant to have children often express fear that it will interrupt the arc of the careers they've worked so hard to build. I mean...When you spend your entire life up to that point focused on personal development and skillsets (all that studying, exams, interviews!), it feels like a "downgrade", or at least a significant pivot, when you become a parent. And most tech workers grew up in an academic-focused environment with few opportunities to learn parenting skills. There were no lessons growing up about basics of childcare or household management! It's not surprising to be reluctant.
• grafmax 1y ago
  I think family is a worthwhile value, and I like remote work, but I become skeptical with this politicization around family. Often it’s a code word for Christian, hetero, cisgender, divesting women of economic power, and/or censorship. None of these should be forced on people, but often is, under the aegis of family. I trust it even less coming from these people. Boyle presents family is essentially anti-authoritarian, and praises Marc Andreesson’s supposed opposition to authoritarianism, despite Andreeson’s well-documented support for oligarchy. What we’re actually seeing here from Boyle is more likely increased convergence between the tech oligarchs and the Christian Right.
• 8f2ab37a-ed6c 1y ago
  If you look at the hot up-and-coming companies in the AI rush era you'll notice that the median age is pretty low, and the working hours are nuts, borderline deathmarch-like. Everybody's trying to stay in the race, and for many it's worth it. How many jobs will give their staff a $1.5M bonus on a whim? There's no way any of these people can sanely start and maintain a family without a spouse at home full time. Which maybe you can afford on those salaries, maybe. Being on single income in the Bay with kids can get tricky.
  • kridsdale3 1y ago
    I bailed out of my OpenAI loop for this reason. I collected enough signal that it would not be a place I could succeed while prioritizing my one-year-old.
• lbrito 1y ago
  Next up: Tech bros are actually traditional family men. Here's why 10 reasons why RTO mandates are pro-family
• renewiltord 1y ago
  This is an interesting person to write this. Nadia Asparouhova is Delian A's wife. He runs Varda Space Industries and is a partner at Founder's Fund. FF content is generally charts and vibes kind of stuff. It'll be interesting to see how Varda changes to enable this, and how FF advises their portfolio to act.