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

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

#341

Post by simonh » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:28 AM UTC

existencebox wrote: post #180

Barrin92 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Actually; that (From the business) is the part I don't agree with. (You're right that the US is comparatively lacking, however) As Rayiner accurately points out, children are clearly necessary from a societal point of view. Thus, it seems "most fair" for the whole society to bear that, and for it to not be unevenly distributed such that it generates perverse incentives for business owners.

Might this unfairly subsidise companies paying higher salaries? So Google and their employees would get more money from the government to support their pregnant employees than Joes Pizza Company? Why?

Companies that pay higher salaries by their choice incur higher payroll costs. That’s just how that works. Trying to engineer the system to even that out somehow is just introducing bureaucracy and costs into the system. The only case I do have concerns about is small employers who by chance might get hit with the costs of a large proportion of their staff taking maternity/paternity leave at the same time. That could be crippling and possibly there should be some special programme to help those companies out.

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

#342

Post by Heya4 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:29 AM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #337

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…

From general interest POV, FB stock price is peanuts compared to problems arising from to many people and overconsumption.

Maybe that's a problem in developing countries, but population increase is very slow in the US. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/us/usa-population-grow...

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

#343

Post by edanm » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:30 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 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.

That's not completely correct when you factor in breastfeeding. Nowadays we do have the ability to overcome this with pumping, but if the parents decide they want to only breastfeed their baby naturally, without a bottle, this pretty much requires the mother to be with the baby for at least a few months.

This is a pretty common choice and situation for various reasons.

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

#344

Post by ggg9990 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:33 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…

> We had twins so she wasn't going back to work anyway

But the company would have still had to keep the position open anyways. Here we see the root causes of pregnancy discrimination.

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

#345

Post by edanm » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:33 AM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #196

rocqua wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an alternative. We could amortize the costs of maternity leave over the entire working population. This way we get the desired outcome (companies have no financial disincentive to hire women) without creating weird forced life-decisions. That is, I'd propose we let some government pay the maternity leave, and finance it from income tax.

>> companies have no financial disincentive to hire women This would still exist in this world. You're still down an employee. So you don't hire women or married men.

Thereby ruling out almost everyone over the age of thirty? Not really practical.

Also, it doesn't actually happen.

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

#346

Post by ggg9990 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:35 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #149

roenxi wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are, obviously, completely correct on the point that you raise. However, I am sold on those sort of laws on the basis that employers are discriminating on irrelevant dimensions, like race and gender. An employee expecting, or indeed planning , to take a X months leave Y months after joining, with X > Y, isn't an irrelevant dimension. Especially if parental leave is paid, but I don't know if that is how the US han…

While we're at it, why shouldn't any prospective employee with a health condition that might require extensive time off be required to disclose that? And, since people aren't often the best judge of their health conditions and the impositions they'll make on future employers, perhaps it'd be better if we all just disclosed our complete medical records along with our job applications.

I have a health condition which causes me to be suddenly absent for a week at a time 1-4 times a year. I absolutely disclose this to any prospective employer because I don’t want them to grumble when it happens.

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

#347

Post by simonh » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #203

giantsloth wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large businesses do not pay their fair share to society and therefore should incur the cost of helping pay for the people that maintain and build their business.

I also agree that larger businesses should shoulder higher burden than smaller ones, but if we make any business pay in a headcount sensitive way, then we are creating disincentives which may be explored in opaque ways. I also think that some industries, such as education, have substantially more women than men and thus will shoulder disproportionate burden. I also think that richer areas will shoulder the burden mor…

I suspect that well meaning attempts to rig the system that way would just backfire. Big companies have the resources, lawyers and incentives to manipulate and exploit regulations like that to their advantage. I think the simplest approach, which is just regulating against discrimination, may not be perfect but trying to come up with a perfect system will just impose so much regulation and costs and exploitable loopholes that it wouldn’t end up any better and could well be both worse and more expensive.

Note I’m not taking a blanket all regulation is bad stance. I support regulation to protect pregnant employees and family life. I am recruiting right now for a contractor to cover for a pregnant employee in my team (in the UK). I just think in general the simplest approach is usually the beast, or anyway the least worst.

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

#348

Post by amriksohata » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

On one side companies want to do more to get women into tech then on the other side they are not supporting them when they need to do what families want, have babies. This is upto the government to protect women against layoffs and redundancies after pregnancy. Especially if that woman has had a reasonable tenure leading upto the pregnancy.

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

#349

Post by s_kilk » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:37 AM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #316

nostrademons wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What I don't get is... forget the "illegal" part, how is that not dumb? 3 months after your first child is born is when you start to accommodate with your new life. They will spend another 6 months-1y trying to find a reasonable replacement, and might very well end up with a poorer employee, and for sure one that needs to ramp up for a few months. By that time, she will likely be fully productive again. What baffles…

> What I don't get is... forget the "illegal" part, how is that not dumb?

It's a kind of bourgeoisie management ideology. The bosses insist that you, your time, and all of your attention belongs to them (we only want 110% players, etc).

When a child enters the picture, they have concrete evidence that the thing they believe is not true, and that's a subconscious threat. They need to either admit that their shitty paper distribution company is not actually the be-all-and-end-all of existence, or just eliminate the threat.

Which is to say that this behavior _is_ dumb, but it does serve a function in preserving the ego of management.

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

#350

Post by ggg9990 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:37 AM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #150

kuriho wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mainly hire people to replace others that quit/retired or to fill a new position created to support a team with a steadily growing workload. New hires are subject to a 3 month probation period during which both parties can end the contract at will. More than 80% of all positions are long term. I would hope that someone looking for a long term employment at a company would be honest and upfront with something lik…

I sure hope you are not involved with hiring at your company because your perspective on this is a great way to get sued into oblivion. It's actually in your best interest as the hiring company to not find out if the person is pregnant or expecting to have a child. Let's say that you decided not to hire someone for a set of reasons unrelated to pregnancy, but along the way you asked the candidate if they were plannin…

People get hit by buses, but would you hire someone who you KNEW was going to get hit by a bus in six weeks?