Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

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.

So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty.

Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gender.

And these days, youth is not essentially to being a parent (even a natural parent, but parental leave policies usually apply to adoptive parents as well.)

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

#132

Post by hello_friendos » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

xutopia wrote: post #14

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…

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.

Yeah, if a company is claiming this is a too large of a hardship to implement all that tells me is that they are running their business poorly.

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

#133

Post by unavoidable » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

james_s_tayler wrote: post #121

TLC555 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Judging by the temperature of sibling HN comments and the degree of Canada-bashing from US-based individuals, it does indeed seem like there is a difference in degree of individualist mindset.

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

#134

Post by bluecalm » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

eertami wrote: post #123

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…

>I will not risk hiring a young woman Not everyone wants or will have children.

I am not allowed to ask though. That's the whole point: extended maternal leaves cause discrimination when hiring women. I would love to be able to hire on merits alone but if I am facing much higher risk of not being able to put my children in a good school when hiring a women then I won't do that. No amount of moral outrage is going to put someone's children above my own. If you want me to not discriminate then please make laws which remove incentives to do so.

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

#135

Post by sampo » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #41

erentz wrote: post #8

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.

Norway gives 14 weeks for the mother, 14 weeks for the father, and then either 49 weeks or 59 weeks to be allocated freely between the parents.

If you choose 49 weeks, all of the leave is at 100% of salary. If you choose 59 weeks, the leave is at 80% of salary.

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

#136

Post by celticninja » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

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…

Your cognitive dissonance must be impressive. You have recently wrote:

>She is openly racist and sexist so good riddance

> I think it's very reasonable to be against Islam because of its stance on gay rights, women rights

And here you are being sexist and ignoring the right of women to not be discriminated against because of their gender.

How do you reconcile these positions inside your own head?

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

#137

Post by nottorp » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

Summary: countries with mandatory parental leave have the parents paid at least partially by those high social security taxes, so it's no problem to hire a replacement.

If the company has to pay the parental leave and the replacement, it's of course more difficult.

Easy enough...

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

#138

Post by otoburb » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

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…

>>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, what do you do? Just go without a CFO/mechanic for the year? Or do you start the hiring search, bring in another person as a temp CFO for a year? What if you can't find a temp, so you hire someone?

Canadian companies will try to hire ahead of the parental leave for 1 year contracts, and stipulate ahead of time that the contract is exactly that - a short-term, time-boxed employment duration. Sometimes there is the option depending on performance and/or business outlooks that the person's contract can be extended or converted to a FTE (assuming they were only hired as a contractor, which may or may not be the case).

>Is the person entitled to their old job back? Do you fire the new person or the old one?

Yes, the person is entitled to their old job back by law.

>What if the person takes parental leave again after 1 month back? Do you accept that you've torpedoed some role? Do you try to slowly phase out this person's job description and offload their work onto their coworkers?

Usually there is a minimum time back, which I thought was 3 months back, but don't have the citation handy. Canadian companies (and I'm sure other non-Canadian companies that operate in countries with similar parental leave durations) will all handle the ripple effects in different ways. Some will offload to others in the team (probably in larger companies?), or simply hire for that role for a 9-12 month contract.

>More succinctly, what if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-day, and does not do work that is interchangeable with other employees?

In this scenario, the company usually has 2-3 months to figure out a contingency plan. There is a disruptive effect, but it's not really any different than managing for the "bus/lottery factor".

>I suspect that firms have learned to deal with it, but by doing things like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles. Is that how they manage? Is that an improvement?

This is a legitimate question. I think this is one of the reasons why the wording is so careful about this being about parental leave, and not just maternal leave. I think this concern and potential bias runs through every company owner's head at some point, but thankfully these laws make it such that it would be discrimination if this point were used in the hiring process and I hope, at some level, acts as a deterrant or diminishes the frequency of this bias in the hiring process.

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

#139

Post by shados » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #124

shados wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I was on parental leave two months as CTO. My cofounder was away almost a year as CRO

2 months is nothing. The later example is abit closer. In some of my examples above, we're talking nearly 3 years. That's a whole different level.

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

#140

Post by simion314 » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #130

simion314 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I mean one of the parents not both, in my case (I am a man in Romania) my wife could not qualify at that time since she was at university/college and I benefited by the parental leave.

The law does not discriminate by the parent gender, so if the man decides to stay at home with the child is fine.