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

#351

Post by scarejunba » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #223

bluecalm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but you need to play the odds. If decision A means 5% chance you can't pay for a good college for your kid and decision B means 2% chance of being in that position which one do you choose? If I run 100+ people firm then the cost is small enough that I can eat it for making the world a better and fairer place and I also get benefits of more inclusive work place. If I run a small 2 people business I will weigh ev…

A woman will give you five or six months warning before going on mat leave. You'd be lucky to get two weeks out of a young man jumping ship.

He's doing something illegal but I think it's rational. The woman can do everything the man can, but the man won't take paternity in practice.

He can also convince a man wanting to leave with money or opportunities but he can't convince a woman giving birth.

It's kinda super skeevy, but I'm not seeing the inconsistency.

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

#352

Post by lhorie » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #336

lhorie wrote: 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.

> 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

Typically you get like 3-6 months notice on a parental leave, so you've got plenty of time to find a contractor/consultant, compared to the standard 2 week notice from the much more likely scenario of your expert quitting for greener pastures. If you have such high risk riding on a single employee, you're probably the one to blame: why aren't _you_ (or an equity partner) the expert? Do you not have anything else whatsoever that could be done in the meantime if core development halted/slowed for 6 months? Do you realize an ffmpeg expert can earn twice as much just about anywhere other than your yet-to-be-profitable startup and gets recruiter spam from big tech companies on linkedin every month? Can you even afford benefits and severance for a full time employee in the first place? etc.

Blaming a hypothetical business failure on a parental leave is really just finding a scapegoat for one's inability to take responsibility for their own failings.

Being in a tech hotspot is irrelevant. I've worked remotely for people in Boulder with a coworker living in Vermont. Again, if you want to run a high tech business from rural Wisconsin with no remote workers, that's on you, and has nothing to do with parental leaves.

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

#353

Post by geofft » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:16 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #282

lhorie wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they are much less likely to take this parental leave If you want to talk about likelihoods, consider that in most companies, the chance that an employee of any gender will leave for a random reason is much higher than someone of any gender taking parental leave. Trying to skirt the law to "optimize" for least parental leaves is kinda like sending a memo to your employees telling them to always run red lights a…

But none of the things you mentioned are different between men and women. Parental leave is simply a risk factor on top of what you mentioned. > If your business fails due to a parental leave of all things, let me tell you, you were probably severely delusional about its viability to begin with. Let's take an extreme case: a 1 person business. If I, the business owner, take parental leave then my business is pretty m…

> But none of the things you mentioned are different between men and women.

That's exactly the point: none of the serious risk factors are strongly correlated with gender. (And you're forgetting the argument that young men are slightly more likely to be able to find another competitive job than young women because people like you are more willing to hire them, therefore men are at slightly higher risk of leaving.)

If you want to construct an argument in the service of the conclusion "I don't want to hire young women" you certainly can, but please admit that's what you're doing.

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

#354

Post by Noumenon72 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:17 AM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #325

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 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.

You, who do not have to bear the cost of the policy, should be less harsh with the people who do. For example, we might make a law saying mothers shouldn't leave their children alone at home. Then we could say "You horrible mother, you left your kids alone, you're going to jail". But we are not the ones who have to spend our whole day watching the kids, trapped and exhausted. We should recognize the higher contribution we're asking from the mothers by saying "Unfortunately, for the sake of the children, we have this penalty for having left them alone. We understand that one can be in a rush, so next time we encourage you to team up with other mothers to watch each other's children."

For one thing, the harsh reactions keep the people you're regulating from even being able to let you know how hard it is on them.

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

#355

Post by geofft » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #336

lhorie wrote: 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.

> 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.

I don't know anything about ffmpeg and I am confident I can not only learn it but train someone in it in two months. Bad employers hire people for their current skills, and are caught unprepared when people leave for any reason (including realizing they're a bad employer). Good employers hire people with the expectation of training them and letting them grow into new roles. Bad employers rely on the brains of individuals. Good employers document their processes, enforce knowledge-sharing procedures (code reviews and runbooks and support rotations, in tech), and otherwise proactively mitigate business risk.

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

#356

Post by Noumenon72 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

perfmode wrote: post #109

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…

Your argument is so convoluted that you were probably better off not saying anything at all. It seems like you're starting from a conclusion and providing all of the things that support your conclusion. Instead, consider all the data and see what conclusions are revealed. You haven't conceded a single merit to the counterargument.

This seems like you could copy and paste it in response to just about any comment. His post seems like a relatively straightforward one: "I don't like this policy. Look at all these things this policy does that are dumb." Does your post concede a single merit to the counterargument? Posts aren't required to do that.

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

#357

Post by Barrin92 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #285

Barrin92 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pregnan…

> you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them. And why not do so for them specifically? If you still have protections apply to larger companies, then it becomes a matter of choice for employees to choose small or large. But if you apply to everybody, and it kills small businesses, you're strictly worse off - if you can't land a job at one of those larger places, you're outright unemplo…

I mean you could do it, but then you have some different issues at the margins like the incentive to hire people off the books to not fall into a more regulated category.

And also there's a big ethical question here if you create an excemption for small business, because you create a two class workforce where parents in small companies lack what is arguably a very fundamental right.

So I guess it is a complicated issue, but on the specific matter on paternal leave I would argue that a universal protection at the cost of small business activity is preferable. Every parents should have the same rights when it comes to child care.

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

#358

Post by geofft » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #311

lhorie wrote: post #244

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 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…

I think the most blatant scenario involves a code-base where only one engineer knows where the skeletons are buried. Yes it's bad architecture, caused by sustained bad development choices, but it is RAMPANT in our industry. If said engineer gets hit by a bus, or goes on parental leave, the company is fucked. They deserve it, but they are still fucked and they are going to kick and scream whatever excuse they can thin…

Sure, and it's good for society for those companies to fail.

That's one thing that I think is missing in many argument about business policy. Many times someone says, with this policy passed, my business will be less productive and might even fail. And we're too scared to say out loud that that's a good thing.

Markets works best when there is accurate and open communication of information, and it's generally very difficult to know how a prospective employer really approaches technical debt (or the equivalent for other disciplines) and business risk. I want to work for the company that's willing to confront past mistakes and not drowning in them, and, if possible, the company that made fewer past mistakes in the first place. This company is also more likely to be successful at delivering the very benefits for which society recognizes companies at all (producing goods and services, creating reliable jobs, advancing the state of knowledge, etc.). So, all other things being equal, it's in society's interest for me to find this company accurately, and with a limited labor pool it is almost certainly in society's interest for there to just be one competent company tackling a problem than two companies, one of which is incompetent.

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

#359

Post by Mirioron » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 6:24 AM UTC

pertymcpert wrote: post #340

Mirioron wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the 2018 SBA fact sheet about Sweden by the EU commission [1] Sweden does employ fewer people in small and micro businesses than are employed on average in the entirety of the EU. Small and micro businesses in Sweden employ 46.6% of the workforce, while in EU-28 the percentage is 49.4%. If you add medium businesses to it you get 65.5% for Sweden and 66.4% for EU-28. You can also find some interesting mea…

Wow, those percentages are really close. From your opening sentence it seemed like you were going to say something like 60% and 20%. Seems there's no point at all :)

The numbers have to be fairly close because they're in the same economic system. Furthermore, Sweden's numbers are included in the average as well.

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

#360

Post by tobbebex » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 6:33 AM UTC

Certhas wrote: post #250

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…

Wow. Just wow. So, in many European countries, fathers and mothers have a right to substantial amounts of parental leave. Like a year or more. In all of these places small businesses exist. In Sweden, with very extensive parental leave [1], there is a large number of start ups. So obviously, empirically, you must be missing something. Generally speaking, if your employees care about your business (and getting their j…

Dailyscandinavian seems to have mixed up the numbers a bit.

In Sweden parents get 480 in total together, of which 390 are at 80% (capped at 989 SEK = 138 USD / day), and 90 days are at a minimum level (180 SEK = 25 USD). Out of the 480 days, 90 are reserved to each parent (used to be 60 before 2016) and the non-pregnant parent (usually a father) gets extra 10 days at the birth.