81–90 of 412 posts
I once worked with a guy who had 4 children in 5 years. He took a lot of parental leave, sick days and often slacked off early. As soon as the last baby was stable he quit for a new job. Companies and teams that are too generous get shafted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you absolutely need one for the business to function you need more than one person knowing how to do the job. Maybe not as good as the first guy but beeing so dependant on one person can put a company out of business. I thought that was basic knowledge espcially in tech.
In tech, you do not commonly hire people in pairs. If you need a DBA you hire one. If he quits or dies you hire another one. If he leaves for a year, what do you do?
And in the weeks/months until you found one ?
It's not like babies appear over night, you have months to prepare.
I am against one-year parental leaves. My wife and I want ten children. That means ten years off work? How can a company manage? What if I were a less moral man and got two women pregnant a year? I mean, it's not that difficult. Even for faithful men, we plan on trying again (last baby born in December) in a few months. Is it really fair to ask my company to pay for my sex life? More worryingly, what kind of incentiv…
and no one has any incentives to make things better for working parents. the only incentives are to make things better for top talent. it just so happens that more experienced people tend to be that top talent. and more experienced people are older, and older people tend to have more kids. the company should try to make things better for top talent and if that is being more flexible on schedules, or vacation, then they should do it (and most companies do both of these)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them. If you own in part the business, then imho you take as much or little parental leave as you want/can afford.
The reason I used CFO and specialist mechanic is that often companies are utterly reliant not on a single person, but a single person's work or expertise. It may be no problem at all to hire a replacement expert , just like it is easy to hire a new accountant if your accountant dies from a heart attack. But you still hire a new accountant, and in this case, with parental leave, hiring someone to do the leaver's job l…
But this is true for literally everyone in the company, including the owner. It's a rare business that couldn't change ownership and still thrive under the right circumstances. In fact, there's a whole day of the week that has a nickname because people do this so often ("M&A Monday")
Your "someone with equivalent skills" condition is equivalent to the "under the right circumstances" condition.
So, I'm not sure I see how this is a response to:
> If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them.
To be somewhat fair this is still an amazing benefit: “It’s now capping parental leaves at six months and giving parents a taxable $20,000 stipend to defray the costs of childcare.” In the context that they are doing this while few other American organizations do it, and not that many other countries do something this generous.
I've literally never heard of anyone offering better. My company offers 12 weeks parental leave plus 2 (I think?) weeks medical leave for birth mothers, and that's waaaay better than average.
Didn't know they had such an extremely generous benefit. 52 weeks of paid time off is a huge benefit. I think people here are underestimating how huge that is - it is far better than any country . I don't see any countries that offer 100% PTO for parental leave. Most cap it at $XXX/week or some percentage like 50-66% that is a far cry from 100%. (Which I assume still has a true upper limit but isn't well documented i…
I’m not surprised. This is so different to how workplaces are usually run in the US that organizations, or society even, has no institutional memory on how to deal with it. In Sweden, where 400+ days of parental leave has been mandatory for years organization have adapted and learned patterns and ways to deal with people dissappearing for around a year. It’s a shame the Gates Foundation didn’t research this better be…
Yeah, but in Sweden, it's not a huge deal if the person that makes the Ikea meatballs takes a year off
Wonder why a burger so different that the person making it cannot be on parental leave for a year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you absolutely need one for the business to function you need more than one person knowing how to do the job. Maybe not as good as the first guy but beeing so dependant on one person can put a company out of business. I thought that was basic knowledge espcially in tech.
This is simply not a norm in American business. Most companies have numerous team members that have no redundancy or fail-over. For instance: a mid-sized startup hires its first GC --- it is certainly not a norm for that company to hire two lawyers in case one needs to take leave, and also not the case that the rest of the team can simply pick up the slack.
As in my other response, you have months to prepare a solution.
The fact that after they backed off of the leave they are giving out a 20K bonus for child care is amazing in and of itself. I'm surprised that's not emphasized more. They probably also have very flexible work environment for parents so that when daycare's are closed and other issues crop up the parents can get back in there. I'm a dad of 2, 2 years and 5 year. I don't know if I'd want a year off to stay home with th…
I have to say, the first day at work after 9 months of parental leave is... sublime. To be able to go to the bathroom and close the door is a pleasure you don’t know until you have to go without. As an aside, what happens to children in the US between 1 month until they start kindergarten (and at what age)?
That said the cost of this care is astronomical. We've seen places that are 20K per child and others that are 10K per child. The range can be even larger within the same town, not just metro area.
That cost is in part because a teacher can only watch 4 kids from ages 3(mo) - 18 mo, 6 kids from 18 mo-3 year, and 8 from 3-5. Or something like that (state dependent) Costs also go down as the kids get older. Presumably because it's an hourly rate per child being watched and as you can take on more kids you can charge more per teacher.
https://www.daycare.com/california/state51.html
I feel tremendously for any single parent who has to send their children to preschool. Some places do have free daycare, I think Washington DC is on that list from 2-5 which is awesome.
> [heading] How do they manage in Canada? > In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?” Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question. If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, w…
What do you want out of life is a great question, I prefer the more social view of the world Canada has, even if I am paid less than in the individualist culture of US.