Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#181

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #153

tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife interviewed at Google and was asked how she'd be able to meet the requirements of the job while taking care of young children; the discrimination persists even after pregnancy.

It's amazing to me that a single company can be simultaneously fending off the recently-sealed Damore suit and still be discriminating against women. It's as if it's lip service on both sides, while all actions are just made in the company's interest (rolling over employee's interests whenever they contradict it, discrimination or not).

This predates Damore by several years.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#182

Post by existencebox » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #179

existencebox wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement of "recruit" is exactly the sort of misconstruction I was hoping to avoid. threatofrain got it right. This is a problem we need to address, but the solutions I've seen thus far don't take unfortunate pathologies of human psychology into account, and when we don't do that, we get very surprised at the lack of results down the line. You're more than willing to try to live in a world where you say "Becaus…

I'm not interested.

I can't say anything in response but that I believe you're willfully misreading my posts as to construe me to be fighting against your end.

I'm disappointed that we're not able to engage in better faith.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#183

Post by rubidium » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

sattoshi wrote: post #57

lovich wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to make it mandatory leave. The social pressure is still tilted towards women as care givers and men as providers so more men will end up not using the leave. If it becomes mandatory then it's just a baked in rising to every employee, _and_ will probably do better for society to have both parents get time with their children. I believe some European states solve this by having the state cover ~60% of your…

Thereby encouraging discrimination against people in committed relationships. Perhaps increasing the scope of the worse hire will make discrimination impractical, but it is still going on while it's at roughly 50%. You can somehow make companies unable to discriminate by relationship status, and that would push it into "age bracket" discrimation. I believe the problem is more fundamental and a cultural solution is re…

Not always. At the fortune 200 company I work at, they just introduced paid 8 weeks maternity/ paternity leave that can be taken in any form over the following year. All the engineers think it's great(ok the ones past prime childbirth age are a little jealous) , and a VP (a man) just took a substancial leave after the birth of his kid.

It's all about the culture. Get the culture right and the decrimination goes away.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#184

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #158

existencebox wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something that has always nagged at me in these discussions, and I've always been somewhat afraid to bring it up lest I misconstrue, but I want to try and figure this out. What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that would impact workplace performance? We agree, societally, that we shouldn't discriminate against…

> However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn’t a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook’s stock price is predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to businesses that hire parents), but…

So here's a concrete example of the types of problems existencebox is highlighting:

My sister was laid off from her employer of 8 years 3 months after her first child was born. She was a top performer, and they'd been throwing raises and bonuses at her before she got pregnant. Over the same year or so (there were 3-4 rounds of layoffs), every single pregnant woman or mother with kids under 2 that she knew at the company was also laid off.

I mention this story, and people ask me "Is that even legal?"

And my response is "Of course it's not, but if you've got a 3 month old newborn at home, have just been laid off, and are trying to conserve cash so you don't go bankrupt before getting another job (which, BTW, you will never get if you sue your former employer), are you really going to sue them? Where will you find the money? Where will you find the lawyer? Where will you find the time?"

And then even if you do, they are going to trot out a multimillion-$ defense team who will argue that they laid off 40% of the company, they sold off a business division, the price of oil was down 2/3 from its peak, and all of the layoffs were necessary for the survival of the company. All of which might or might not be true. Look at just a few women's story and it's pretty clear they're breaking the law, but factor in macroeconomic concerns and you can muddy in the waters just enough that they might win.

That's the problem. "It's illegal" does not automatically mean that you can't get away with it. In fact, if you're wealthy and pick the right targets, you can get away with a damn lot of things that are illegal.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#185

Post by DenisM » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #75

tinbad wrote: post #14

Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take seve…

My wife interviewed at Google and was asked how she'd be able to meet the requirements of the job while taking care of young children; the discrimination persists even after pregnancy.

How did they found out? Did they ask?

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#186

Post by Consultant32452 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:15 AM UTC

tinbad wrote: post #14

Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take seve…

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand you were totally in the right and should have sued if they persisted. At the same time I have a hard time being emotionally upset at a company/manager behaving rationally. The fact that your wife didn't go back to work will subconsciously reinforce the idea to not hire birthing age women. This is also a huge problem in the UK if anecdotes from my friends are any indication, women of birthing age have a very hard time finding work because employers don't want to be saddled with paying massive leave and then severance.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#187

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:16 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #176

threatofrain wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interpretation of existencebox is that he has already assumed the moral position that shielding pregnancies is wholesome for society, but he's asking the policy question of where the money should come from, or if government should get involved in evening out the burden. On a tangential matter, I think many people would agree that society should consider financial help for children in poverty. But who should pay?…

>but he's asking the policy question of where the money should come from, or if government should get involved in evening out the burden. From the businesses. Paid paternal leave is already a legal mandate in just about every country. The US is very lacking in this regard.

[deleted]

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#188

Post by golemiprague » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #88

habosa wrote: post #55

This area is really tough. I feel terrible for women who experience this bias, but the solution is not nearly as obvious as with race/gender/age/religious/etc discrimination. In those cases the answer is: stop being biased. Let's say you're a small company and you can really only afford to have Even if they both plan to have 2 kids in the next 4 years, it's a biological reality that it will take the woman away from w…

It actually isn't a biological reality that the woman is away from work for longer. What's actually happening is that the man isn't expected to be away as long as the woman, so he doesn't take as much leave. It's a form of discrimination to make it the woman's problem because she's the one laid up in the hospital. Just because women are bearing the physical burden of the pregnancy, it doesn't mean it's solely their b…

It is a biological reality and always has been, trying to get women not to raise their kids is just causing problems to everyone in the family. It is time to admit that this experience has failed miserably and instead of putting the kids on ritalin and moms on prozak we should bring back the natural way that always worked, women raising their young children, preferably while they are still young and healthy. All we have to do is change the time line of women careers, instead of making it similiar to men it should start later after the kids are already in school, much more simple than the all the gymnastics we try to do now to get women to become corporate minions at age 22 and bring kids at age 32 rather than the opposite.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#189

Post by existencebox » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #184

rayiner wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn’t a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook’s stock price is predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to businesses that hire parents), but…

So here's a concrete example of the types of problems existencebox is highlighting: My sister was laid off from her employer of 8 years 3 months after her first child was born. She was a top performer, and they'd been throwing raises and bonuses at her before she got pregnant. Over the same year or so (there were 3-4 rounds of layoffs), every single pregnant woman or mother with kids under 2 that she knew at the comp…

Thanks for chiming in, as is my way after diving into a "touchy" subject I'm honestly half regretting this thread given the negative reception, and from your greying I see you received the same; but what is HN for if we don't discuss important things. :) It's ironic since your situation is _exactly_ what I worry about, both my wife and I have some phenomenal stories of the side-channels that can be used to ensure "lack of performance" during or prior to a maternity leave.

Hell, it even bridges genders, I've seen male friends on extended sick leave got the shaft via PiPs, where the time-correlation was uncanny to say the least, and the cost to pursue it seemed disadvantageous to them at the time.

My suspicion is that there's a perception that because we don't back the "Laws Laws Laws" aspect of it 100%, some people read us as "opposed", when in reality I'm arguing that _laws are not sufficient_ to achieve positive outcomes. Unfortunately, many people are... very opposed to engaging in this discussion, so the best I can do is guess.

EDIT: (And, lest I spam the thread more, thanks@meti for mentioning EEOC, I honestly didn't know that existed prior, and I'll be sending it to one friend right now)

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#190

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #185

tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife interviewed at Google and was asked how she'd be able to meet the requirements of the job while taking care of young children; the discrimination persists even after pregnancy.

How did they found out? Did they ask?

They asked about the resume gap from when she had our kids.