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Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#191

Post by ddingus »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #95
dionidium wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and moralizing about the smoking and drinking of the lower classes sound reasonable, but they're basically non-starters. You don't stop having basic human desires when you're poor. And as long as people are having sex, some of them are going to have kids.

I'm not "moralizing" about anything. Effective birth control is readily available. I have no interest whatsoever in policing other people's sex lives. I'm just saying that if you work at McDonald's, you probably can't afford to have a child. Yes, there will be accidents, people who fall on hard times, etc., and I actually have no problem with social programs aimed at helping those people out. But that's not what the…

Shouldn't they?

After all, they make a nice profit from those people.

Maybe it's better to value people well enough for them to be people, and part of that is forming a family.

Or, maybe McDees isn't on the hook. Fair enough. Then let's make sure those programs actually work and that people can make use of them without all the angst surrounding the use of said programs.

One or the other. I don't care much. But I do care a great deal about the idea of some people being denied the standing and basic dignity of being ordinary people when they are working and adding value to the society they live in.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#192

Post by ddingus »

hardoncollider wrote: post #118
Turing_Machine wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not "moralizing" about anything. Effective birth control is readily available. I have no interest whatsoever in policing other people's sex lives. I'm just saying that if you work at McDonald's, you probably can't afford to have a child. Yes, there will be accidents, people who fall on hard times, etc., and I actually have no problem with social programs aimed at helping those people out. But that's not what the…

"If a worker today is employed full time for a full 52-week year at a minimum wage job today, she or he is making $15,080. [...] The average age for these [76 million] workers is 36 years old and they have been in the labor force for an average of 17 years. Only 6 percent of the workers who would benefit from this minimum wage increase are teenagers; i.e., 94 percent are adults." 318M people in the US, 188M above the…

You should not have been voted down for this.

How we value people has a very serious impact on our economics. We wonder about tepid demand? This is one cause of that tepid demand. When people are valued low enough for them to require help to exist and do basic things, they really can't participate in the same economy that desires strong growth year over year.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#193

Post by MrGando »

I'm glad to see this.

I can't believe that in the US, paternity/maternity leave is something that is left for 'the market to decide'. I was hoping for Marissa Mayer to lead and set the example for maternity leave... but she took two weeks... I couldn't really believe it, I was pretty disappointed. In my eyes what she did, sent a pretty sad message for women, her employees, and other companies.

I think Mark taking two weeks off, is an example, for everyone. His employees (male, female, etc) and other companies. Hey, maybe even the Government can learn from this.

TD;LR, glad Mark did this. Kudos.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#194

Post by nascentmind »

veidr wrote: post #134
Turing_Machine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably going to get me voted down, but maybe...just maybe ...you shouldn't be having kids if the only job you can get is McDonalds or Yum! Brands (i.e., Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc.). If you choose to have a child when your resources are that limited, your non-paternity leave is going to be among the least of the child's problems.

Ha ha! You probably should have been voted down, but OK, let's take a look at your idea. You are saying 1 out of 4 American workers shouldn't have kids[1]. If everybody followed your advice, a lot of pretty influential people wouldn't have been born: Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Larry Ellison (OK maybe that works in your argument's favor). Jay Z. Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama. I wouldn't be here, either; my dad was a sh…

I have seen that most of kids who have struggled in their childhood because of say low income from their parents or bad family have a kind of a fighting spirit. Most of the people who you see achieve greatness either say in sports or in engineering come from really poor and troubled backgrounds. Now compare that to the upper middle class and the rich whose kids have been given all the resources and you don't see much of them at the top. Even if you see them it would be because their parents would have set up artificial constraints on their resources which they would have to fight to get it.

So finally it all depends on parenting and the values they instil on their kids which require no money. It just needs some thinking and common sense which is available to both the rich and the poor.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#195

Post by lmartel »

smt88 wrote: post #185
incepted wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most large companies in Silicon Valley give men between four and eight weeks of paternity leave, which you can take any time you want (not just right after the baby is born).

Do you have a sense (even anecdata) of how common it is to take advantage of that? Do people feel comfortable taking the full period for leave? I don't know what it would mean if they didn't, though. I think many successful people have trouble believing that their work will be done well in their absence.

Anecdotally, it's unheard-of to not take full advantage of paid family leave at a technology company, whether it's two months or four.

There are issues around vacation, especially "unlimited PTO" as a perk, but no one seems shy about paternity and maternity leave.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#197

Post by Jach »

grandalf wrote: post #162
underwater wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a little over three months off when my first child was born, and am in the process of taking the full four months for my second child. I know a half dozen people who have had children while working at Facebook and all of them have taken all (or almost all) of that time. I never felt pressure not to take leave. The hardest part was convincing myself that things would keep running without me.

wow that makes me want to apply at facebook

Which large tech companies don't have paid paternity leave? It's kind of a common thing... https://www.fatherly.com/50-best-places-to-work-for-new-dads...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#198

Post by melted »

wpietri wrote: post #171
melted wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my advice: don't work for them. You shouldn't tolerate such bullshit no matter how much they pay. This is your _wife and kid_ you're talking about. You will horribly regret prioritizing the unreasonable demands of your employer over their needs. Instead of bitching on HN, get off your ass and find a better employer.

I am astounded by the arrogance of you thinking you know his life and situation better than he himself does. And so well that you feel entitled to lecture him in public.

I am astounded that you're astounded. Seems like common sense advice to me: put your family ahead of everything else. That's what I do, anyway. Once "everything else" starts to interfere, I make sure to change my circumstances to make sure that my family gets the attention it so richly deserves.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#199

Post by bjwbell »

veidr wrote: post #134
Turing_Machine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably going to get me voted down, but maybe...just maybe ...you shouldn't be having kids if the only job you can get is McDonalds or Yum! Brands (i.e., Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc.). If you choose to have a child when your resources are that limited, your non-paternity leave is going to be among the least of the child's problems.

Ha ha! You probably should have been voted down, but OK, let's take a look at your idea. You are saying 1 out of 4 American workers shouldn't have kids[1]. If everybody followed your advice, a lot of pretty influential people wouldn't have been born: Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Larry Ellison (OK maybe that works in your argument's favor). Jay Z. Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama. I wouldn't be here, either; my dad was a sh…

1 out of 4 isn't that extreme, historically ~20% of individuals in Western Europe didn't have children.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#200

Post by veidr »

stickfigure wrote: post #181
zhte415 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent's comment said something explicitly different. There's a very clear line: >>If you want kids, the only reason you shouldn't have them is if you aren't up to the task of raising them -- for whatever reason. As I read it, this submission is about paternity leave and associated Zuckerberg/Facebook, not whether people should have children.

The parent claims that we need the bottom quartile of earners to have children otherwise we would lose out on socially valuable humans (list of examples provided). This is a variation on the argument raised by anti-abortionists that goes along the lines of "how do you know you're not killing the next Mozart?" or "what if your parents aborted you?" It's drek for two reasons: 1) You can't know what the world would like…

You are way out in left field all by yourself.

Nobody else here is talking about what you are talking about. It isn't logically connected to what I said.

I used the familiar names just because they are familiar, not for any reason of those people being more or less valuable to society. (Sorry if my joke about Larry Ellison made it seem otherwise.)

Most of us are familiar enough with those folks' stories that we can surmise that they were happy that their parents didn't follow Turing_Machine's theory, and therefore, that they were born.

We could also presume that for most of them at least, the parents were also likely to be glad they had them, too.

Thus, the two stakeholders referenced in Turing_Machine's post would probably disagree with him in those cases (and, I am trying to imply, countless thousands of other cases).

I certainly did not propose that we should judge whether or not people should breed based on their usefulness to society. That road leads straight to Adolf Hitler.

BOOM! I think we can cite Godwin now and close this branch of the thread.

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