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Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

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Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#121

Post by james_s_tayler »

TLC555 wrote: post #66
simonsarris wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like the most obvious dodge. I know plenty of companies, especially small ones, where any person in the company is pretty much the bus factor. When they take vacation the company shuts its doors for a few weeks. This is obviously true for startups and small restaurants, especially ones without gobs of VC funding. Is the solution just to exclude companies that cannot get by without doing this? In other word…

Canada can do it because Canada is not the US. In the US, we have too much emphasis on the individual. In other societies, there is more emphasis on the collective. This opinion may not be entirely accurate, but it's worth stating this basic difference.

Do you think Canada is more collectivist than individualist?

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#122

Post by NikolaNovak »

bluecalm wrote: post #95
unavoidable wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization so that there are enough overlapping responsibilities to account for parental leaves (e.g. good business practice of not making a fragile organization), or you hire a temporary employee explicitly on a 1 year "parental leave" contract. The labour market is quite goo…

It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a leave (the only way it can really work). Maybe the answer to that problem is that really important employees who make a lot of money shouldn't be hired as normal workers but as contractors. Something like: if you get 3x more average salary then you are important but you only…

>>If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost.

Umm, all other moral and ethical considerations aside, this approach fails spectacularly when the young man takes paternity leave instead :-D

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#123

Post by eertami »

bluecalm wrote: post #95
unavoidable wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization so that there are enough overlapping responsibilities to account for parental leaves (e.g. good business practice of not making a fragile organization), or you hire a temporary employee explicitly on a 1 year "parental leave" contract. The labour market is quite goo…

It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a leave (the only way it can really work). Maybe the answer to that problem is that really important employees who make a lot of money shouldn't be hired as normal workers but as contractors. Something like: if you get 3x more average salary then you are important but you only…

>I will not risk hiring a young woman

Not everyone wants or will have children.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#124

Post by endymi0n »

shados wrote: post #37
xutopia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong.

It's not that they can't thrive in a pinch and more "what do you do when it's normal". Let's also remember that the person can have multiple kids in a row. A long time ago I worked at a company where the VP of a department ended up with 3 kids back to back. By the time they came back it was basically a different company and no one remembered them. The company couldn't tell ahead of time if this was going to keep goin…

There‘s this nice saying: „People who want to, find ways. People who don‘t want to, find reasons.

People here in Germany are on parental leave all the time. I was on parental leave two months as CTO. My cofounder was away almost a year as CRO. You just do what’s obvious: share responsibility, temporarily hire people and/or restructure and make it work. Is it annoying? Sure. Would I want it any other way? Hell, no.

I think it makes all the difference if kids are seen as a common investment into the future economy or as a personal luxury.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#125

Post by pjc50 »

lliamander wrote: post #76
simonsarris wrote: post #11

> [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…

There's also something unsettling about "here's how [countries where the native birth rate is pretty much 0 or 1 babies] do parental leave!" feels a bit like... the women already did half the corporation's work for them. There's the rub, can you (at a population level) have a birth rate at or above replacement if both parents are expected to find employment outside of the home? I don't think that's realistic.

Yes, but is a birth rate above replacement a good thing or a bad thing?

If it's determined to be a socially good thing, then society should pay for it, rather than try to badger women out of the workplace to reduce their options and make them parents.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#126

Post by yardie »

simonsarris wrote: post #58
taurath wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a bit of a strong statement, but I understand your leaning. A couple things: * The Employment Insurance office pays for it. Yes, the person is going to be on leave, but you're not sitting there paying their salary. Hire a contractor while they're gone? * If they're irreplaceable, yes you're SOL, but they get to make their own choices just as you did about basing your business's viability on one person that plan…

Thanks. I suppose "use temps/contractors" is probably the answer for most businesses, then, and to me feels like a true answer to the question posed.

If you're fine with using temps/contractors then you are also fine with them not showing up one morning as well. Most temps are looking for full-time employment. And most contractors are after bigger contracts.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#127

Post by WorldMaker »

bluecalm wrote: post #95
unavoidable wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization so that there are enough overlapping responsibilities to account for parental leaves (e.g. good business practice of not making a fragile organization), or you hire a temporary employee explicitly on a 1 year "parental leave" contract. The labour market is quite goo…

It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a leave (the only way it can really work). Maybe the answer to that problem is that really important employees who make a lot of money shouldn't be hired as normal workers but as contractors. Something like: if you get 3x more average salary then you are important but you only…

Do you make the same tough decision and avoid hiring members of the US National Guard, or the Army/Navy/Air Force Reserve, as well, simply because they may be called away for a year or so to serve their country and similarly expect their job to be there when they return?

(This is not a facetious question. I think that these are comparable and at least equably honorable. Parental leave is a form of serving your country by investing in the foundations of the future of your country.)

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#128

Post by Spivak »

prostoalex wrote: post #25
tomp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I'm opposed to free trade and want fair trade instead. Like, it's not wrong for e.g. EU to impose a tax on products/services produced by companies abroad that have much less strict environmental/employment laws.

Get two men in the room and they will come up with three different ideas of what fair is.

Trade among nations with comparable or higher labor and environmental standards is free. No need for a notion of fair.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#129

Post by fzeroracer »

bluecalm wrote: post #105
xutopia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong.

>>We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. Sounds nice but in practice it means people who don't have children or have less children do more work. As someone who doesn't want to have children I wouldn't want to work for a place where I am expected to do more work when others get pregnant. There is real cost even if gov…

Can you actually point out to instances of having to work more in practice due to people taking parental leave?

Other countries tend to have much stronger labor protections so the end result, surprisingly, is often that you're not really doing more work especially if the company is prepared. I just went through an example myself where my relatively small team had a senior developer take parental leave for a few months and the expectation wasn't for us to pick up the slack.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#130

Post by bluecalm »

simion314 wrote: post #111
bluecalm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a leave (the only way it can really work). Maybe the answer to that problem is that really important employees who make a lot of money shouldn't be hired as normal workers but as contractors. Something like: if you get 3x more average salary then you are important but you only…

>If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman Men can get parental leave in European countries, so in this case your strategy is not working.

>>Men can get parental leave in European countries, so in this case your strategy is not working.

Depends on the country. In mine women get much more time and men usually take none or just a few weeks at most. I think that's the case in most countries.

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