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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

#231

Post by mrmuagi »

cheesymuffin wrote: post #206
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like he's the sort of guy that would work the system no matter what - he could be an argument against sick days or flexible hours as well. There will always be people like that, but if the societal good outweighs the few bad apples, I'd argue that's a plus in general.

Yeah, it's really unfortunate when someone cares more about raising well-adjusted kids than the Company.

How is having 0.8 kids/year over 5 years & shirking job responsibilities the spitting image of someone who is raising well-adjusted kids? If the person doesn't care about the company why should the company care about the person -- outside the legal obligations enforced by the government obviously...

Maybe I am too cynical, and having >= 5 kids is the outlier.

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

#232

Post by danans »

souprock wrote: post #215
kzrdude wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

480 days together. Of those, 90 days each are non-transferrable (between the parents).

Wow. I would almost never work. I'm having my 12th kid soon, and my wife doesn't work. At 390 days (roughly 13 months) per kid, I could pretty much just not work. Why don't people do this in Sweden? There are so few kids!

People want to work, and do other things that work avails to them, including provide better experiences and lifestyle for the smaller number of children in their household.

Even in the 1960s in the US, when the working class had much more economic security, and it was easier to financially support children than today, the median number of children per family was still https://www.statista.com/statistics/718084/average-number-of...

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

#233

Post by woodpanel »

rytor718 wrote: post #178
woodpanel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't like the outcome of his thought-process as well but to be fair, it's just logical self-interest which is exactly his #1 job if he's running his own business. The answer to this in my opinion is a job-market with less job-security regulation (so that "getting new workers up to speed" will be the norm not the exception for companies) coupled with a tighter social security net (maternity leave paid for by the gove…

> it's just logical self-interest which is exactly his #1 job if he's running his own business. This is precisely one of the cultural obstacles to correct. Dropping in a 1 year policy without substantial organizational preparation and planning is -- surprise -- doomed to fail. Like every single other aspect of organizational planning. The problem in the US is we simply do not value these kinds of things. We value ind…

> This is precisely one of the cultural obstacles to correct.

I have to disagree: If a cultural obstacle at all, to me it's rather labeling civilizational accomplishments like ownership or property rights as a "cultural obstacle".

> We value individuality foremost and I believe its among the top reasons parental leave is incomprehensible to many people

While I can't speak for the US, in Germany we have a pretty generous m/p/x-aterinty leave system. But still only a few fathers take advantage of it. Certainly it's not because of culture (it's not the 1950s anymore). It might be just the plain truth that it is deeper ingrained in us.

Another big factor is the high increase of bachelor degrees. 40% of our high-school students [1] go to college [2], of which 3 out of 4 finish. By the time they finish they are in their mid-twenties and depending on what they've studied [3] will add another two years for a masters degree. In effect you'll get women who enter the job market 10 years later than their mothers did. So when the biological clock ticks louder they are often faced with a dilemma: Either less kids than originally wished for, or give up your first career years in exchange for fitting as much child-bearing in them as possible.

Again, I don't see how individualism is at the epicenter here. Instead I'd take a good look at lack of intelligent regulation (nudging), medicine and misguided education policy.

[1] & [2] since educational systems are complex to translate, I just went with the most aproximate US counterpart

[3] mostly because the job prospects in a given field are non-existent with 'just' a bachelor's degree

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

#234

Post by danans »

tathougies wrote: post #27

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…

> I am against one-year parental leaves. My wife and I want ten children. That means ten years off work?

You are an outlier in terms of how many children you want. This sort of benefit is intended to help with people who have the median number of children (1.9 in the US today) [1].

The way to deal with outlying cases like yours is to rapidly phase out the benefit as you move far above the median, so you only get the benefit for the first N children.

We already do this today with income-based tax-credit phaseouts for tax mechanisms like the investment and education tax credits.

That's not at all to say that you shouldn't have that many children, but rather that after a certain number of children, it's only in your personal interest to have them, and not in society's.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/718084/average-number-of...

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

#235

Post by bluecalm »

woodpanel wrote: post #204
irrational wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the USA and at my company (albeit a large one) both men and women get 6 months of paternity/maternity leave.

In Germany you'll get up to three years right-of-return. The employer doesn't pay you a dime. First twelve months you get approx. 60% of your current income from the government (BTW the same coverage people get when unemployed). You can expand those twelve months into 24, halving the amount of what you're paid. You can also apply for additional support (e.g. there's a fixed amount per kid you'll get until it reaches…

I like what they do in Switzerland. 3 years is ridiculous for a small business, you often don't know you can survive the next year let alone plan for 3. It's the problem with laws in EU in general though. They are very often made for reality of big businesses hiring hundreds of people. The laws and regulations often make sense there but present a huge obstacle for small players.

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

#236

Post by alexashka »

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 heard of a time when women actually raised their children. It was less than 100 years ago, in every country too.

Now it's 'generous' to get to spend 6 months with your child. Great progress everyone - please hurry back to your open office to check reddit, instagram, facebook, twitter and do that crucial collaborative work open offices encourage.

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

#237

Post by groby_b »

jstanley wrote: post #187
dragonwriter wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. I don't think you've researched the costs of the kind of lawsuit at issue for your business if you think that it's less than you'd lose by having the employee in the position take a year off on job-protected leave.

Risk = Probability * Consequence I don't think he (or she!) is saying that the consequence is low, just that the risk of suffering that consequence is low enough to outweigh it.

I'd posit that making public blanket statements about being willing to break the law increases both probability and consequence, and thus expected value.

Which means I don't have high confidence in the risk assessment in the first place, but thankfully it's not my business :)

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

#238

Post by Barrin92 »

bluecalm wrote: post #203
nasalgoat wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner worked at a 10-person company and took the year off for parental leave. They hired a temp to fill her role, who left when she came back. I work for a 15-person company and we had a developer take a year off. We hired a temp developer who left when the other dev came back. Not sure why this is hard to understand?

It's sometimes doable sure. 10-person company is 5x bigger than mine though so it's way easier there. It's also the case that some areas require specialized knowledge and some don't. If I hire someone even very competent it will a few months till they are productive because we work in a very niche area. If you need someone who programs a CRUD website then yeah, it is easier. Just because something is doable in your 1…

when it comes to a social policy question like parental leave there is no size fits all solution, so we need to ask what we prioritize.

I respect people who want to run very small businesses, but we can't realistically make policy for them if we want to guarantee some basic welfare and labour protection.

Small businesses are often so unprofitable, have so little savings, and are so exposed to risk (as in this pregnancy case), that you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them.

So the answer to the question of how to combine very small business and paternal leave is quite simple, you really can't. It's a policy that favours middle-sized and large businesses who generate more profit, suffer less from a few workers dropping out, and can organise these benefits.

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

#239

Post by p1esk »

woodpanel wrote: post #169
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…

While I can relate to your logic, I wonder: Since men are increasingly considering taking maternity leave as well, wouldn't it be a good alternative to focus on people older than say 40? What would keep you from hiring them?

people older than say 40? What would keep you from hiring them?

They are expensive :)

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

#240

Post by dependsontheq »

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 have a small business (15) and a lot of my employees are young women in Germany, so I think I understand the situation from different perspectives (young father). You just try to work with it, of course the situation for me would be easier in the US, but since all my competitors have the same problem and my customers have the same problem it is not a competitive problem. It is actually a problem for a company in a certain size, so you try to stay out of this size or grow out of it pretty fast. But st the end, it’s a value discussion, my business partner took parental and I’m fine with that , it doesn’t make it easier but it’s definitely better for the kids and I don’t value my personal financial success higher than the chances for these kids.
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