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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

#321

Post by souprock »

danans wrote: post #232
souprock wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/averag…

I think "better experiences" should include the value of siblings. There is always somebody to play with. You form a team against bullies. Being able to attend classes together or share dorm rooms is great. Even later in life, there will be family to share life with.

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

#322

Post by [deleted] »

bluecalm wrote: post #312
Spooky23 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they are less likely to go on leave — they work for a guy who doesn’t hire women in non-disposable roles, because his family will starve if a female professional gets pregnant. Presumably the female custodians and admins just get purged.

Small business doesn't have "custodians and admins". It has a few people every one of them absolutely crucial for survival. Have you ever started a company without outside funding? Usually you have some savings, maybe for a few months and a lot of hope. Someone quitting in the middle of that to take care of the child means you won't make it.

[deleted]

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

#323

Post by Symbiote »

bluecalm wrote: post #305
munk-a wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We value individuality foremost and I believe its among the top reasons parental leave is incomprehensible to many people. Uh... that's not valuing the individual (or individuality, the ability to make choices freely for one's self). The lack of paid parental leave adds an outside a government mandated influence to the decision of whether to have children or not. Unless... you're talking about the individual rights…

Parental leave as currently implemented in European countries incentivize having children later in life which is happening resulting in less children overall. There is absolutely no reason employers should be burdened by parental leave. If we as a society decide we want to support parents let's collect enough taxes and have the government pay. If the support is independent of your job status and salary it will remove…

Do you have any source for that?

My parental leave entitlement has been the same since my first job after graduation at 22.

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

#324

Post by 908087 »

thetrb wrote: post #281
charlie0 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here. I heard at my old job that a woman who was having a job orientation got nauseated and was throwing up. She came back stating she was pregnant and due to the law she could not be fired and was entitled to some sort of leave. For HR the position is technically filled, so they aren't able to hire someone else without making exceptions. While I think maternity leave is great, I think there should be some…

Wow, calling a pregnant woman "leech-like" is one of the most misogynistic things I've ever read on HN.

They didn't call her "leech-like", they called her behavior "leech-like".. and it was.

Should pregnant women be exempt from any type of judgement regardless of their behavior?

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

#325

Post by ncallaway »

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

You've just created far more financial risk for your company by doing this.

It's flat out illegal, and if you're caught doing this the punishment will probably bankrupt your company.

Further, it's disgusting and any small business owner that does this deserves to have their business destroyed.

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

#326

Post by 55555 »

sampo wrote: post #135
CydeWeys wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there a limit to the number of kids you can have while still doing this? Because if not, there must be some people out there that have been collecting 100% of salary while going to work a few weeks per year for 5+ years.

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

#327

Post by tathougies »

e12e wrote: post #248
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…

On the other hand, say you and your wife each work for 40 years each. Take 10 years out, and that leaves 70 years. Take one parent out, and that leaves 40 years. You've just earned 30 years of skilled labour by granting parental leave.

Why would we want both of us to work full-time (rather than as a form of passion) if one of us is capable of supporting the family and buying appropriate life insurance? That seems to be working for the wrong reasons.

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

#328

Post by smileysteve »

bluecalm wrote: post #208
dwild wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that you have a higher chance that a young woman will carry a baby than having a young man change for a better paying offer? I'm one of theses young one out of college and I can tell you, based around me, your stats are clearly wrong ;). Most don't care about babies, but they all certainly care about getting more interesting jobs. I'm Canadian too.

If someone leaves I can find a replacement and hope they don't leave. If a women has a baby then I will either need to hire a temp which is more difficult than to hire for full time position or suddenly have 2 positions open (I need to have that when my first employee comes back). For a small few people company having 2 positions open instead of one is often unreasonable cost.

If, in a year, you don't have room to grow your staff by 1, haven't you already failed?

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

#329

Post by wolco »

lhorie wrote: post #244
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 Ignoring the fact that this kind of discrimination is flat out illegal, you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even logically consistent. Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professio…

Why would you avoid hiring her? It takes 9 months to deliver the baby, plenty of notice to find a replacement. If she just quit you have two weeks notice to find someone. In many ways someone going through that situation is most likely to return and stay long term adding additional value.

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

#330

Post by james_s_tayler »

int_19h wrote: post #293
james_s_tayler wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Canada is more collectivist than individualist?

Consider this. Idealized US is "freedom, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." Idealized Canada is "peace, order, and good government." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_governm... ) I'm neither Canadian nor American, but I have been a permanent resident of Canada, and now live in US. The day-to-day differences are relatively minor in comparable geographic regions, but mainstream American and Canad…

OK, I've considered that.

It's not really saying anything to me that would make me think that the people in Canada on average value the collective over the individual in terms of how they personally behave and more importantly how they tell others to behave.

A phrase we often hear a lot is 'It's a free country'. Sometimes we say it as a justification that 'this is my preference / choice and regardless of what you think I do believe I have some justification in making it' and sometimes others use it to come to our defense to tell someone to back off and just let us be. That's individualism.

In contrast I've had thousands of conversations with Japanese people where they use the opposite kind of justification 'because I'm Japanese I must behave this way because this is how Japanese people behave' or someone instructing you to act/not act in a certain way because your behavior is expected to (roughly) line up with cultural norms and there is constant and heavy emphasis on this.

I can appreciate Canadian politics being different to that of the US. Indeed NZ and Australian politics differ both from each other and from that of Canada and the US. But I think we would all sooner blurt out 'it's a free country' than admonish ourselves for not behaving how everyone else behaves. That is to say there are some core philosophies that are held by all of us and then there are a bunch that differ.

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