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

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341–350 of 412 posts

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

#341

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 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 thes…

>>So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty. Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. Oh the choices... I think I am taking the lawsuit, especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee. >>Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gende…

> especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee.

As long as your real life identity isn't linkable to this comment, that is.

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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An equally effective way to remove that incentive is to break your business in half when you decide to avail yourself of it. It is unfortunate that we have, as a collection of societies, largely forgotten that the fictitious entity that is your company exists at and only at the sufferance of the society that decides it's a good idea to let it exist--and that we-the-society can demand that you play ball with the socie…

I am playing ball. I am working 10-12 hours a day. I don't take any benefits when I am sick. I am paying huge amount in taxes while almost not using very little infrastructure my country provides. It's of great benefit for people of my country to have me doing business here and yet the laws are such that my choices are either to be sexist when hiring, sacrifice my family well-being or not hire at all. I am currently…

Maybe just pack it in if it's not succeeding that you can't accept maternity leave? How long have you been doing this?

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is a difference between saying things like women are worse employees or don't deserve same rights as men and being put in position to choose between being sexist when hiring and putting someone's else children above well-being of your family. I hope you can understand the difference.

Beginning to think your business doesn't deserve to exist.

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

#344

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

#345
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have a friend who runs a restaurant with her husband. It's an _extremely low margins_ business with brutally long hours. She got pregnant and eventually took time off (she went back to China for a few months to get her parents to help with the baby). When she came back a few months later, surprise surprise, the business was still there. Did they have worries? Sure, stress from wait staff turnover, an air c…

Restaurants aren't exactly businesses where people become difficult to replace. Imagine you had a company that was trying to start a video service and the expert on ffmpeg goes on parental leave half way through. Good luck replacing somebody like that if you're not in a tech hotspot.

If someone is literally critical to your business, they need to have equity or some other mechanism to align incentives or you risk unaligned incentives torpedoing your business. This is the case with any business, regardless of parental leave laws.

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

#346
post #173
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not leave -- and note that I'm not opposed to the leave policies -- but I worked at a place that involved travel. The parents always managed to get out of it. I ended up leaving because what would have been a reasonable amount of travel split 4 ways was an unreasonable amount split 1 way (me) with 3 parents who did virtually none of it.

Well your original post made no mention of this. I know plenty of people with kids that have to travel for work. And they make it work. FYI, retaliation over parental leave is a thing too. I have a friend who took 2 months parental leave. When he came back he was put on call for a year straight.

What other post? I think you're talking about someone else.

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

#347

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.

Outside of tech companies, 2 weeks of paid paternal leave is pretty good.

Major law firms generally give 16-18 weeks of maternity and 4 weeks of paternity leave.

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

#348
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, the article title can practically considered clickbait when this is the resultant change in benefits. Neither my wife or I had a need to be home for an entire year with our child. Three months for me would've been perfect, six would've been a vacation, and six months plus $20k to cover my daycare expenses for the year would've been... well, words fail me.

> six would've been a vacation I assume you were at home together with your wife? Or are you calling staying at home alone with a 6 months to 1 year old toddler a vacation?

If it were both my wife and I home with the infant for six months, yes I would call that a vacation. Home alone? Abso-freaking-lutely not a vacation haha.

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

#349

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…

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?

Allow me to offer a different anecdata.

My friend is a lawyer and works for a small, but somewhat successful canadian firm (which I will not name for obvious reasons).

His boss had hired 4 women in a row.

3 of them went on maternity leave within a short amount of time. 2 out of 3 didn't even bother coming back. The other one came back and quit shortly after.

All the files got dumped on my friend and the boss had to hire 3 new lawyers, had them all go through training and learning the logistics of how the office runs (first as a temp, and then once again as full time employees).

So basically a total of 6 staff rotation within a years time.

Needless to say this was a major nightmare.

My friend told me his boss rather let slip that he will think twice before bringing women onboard..

I was obviously shocked to hear these as I myself am strongly against discrimination but I can't help but to at least sympathise with his boss to a certain degree.

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

#350

> [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…

Every company should be "hit by a bus" resilient if it expects to last.
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