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Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

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Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#181
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 12 weeks of unpaid leave is only for companies who employ more than 50 people, too. I expect most Americans work for companies smaller than that (and so don't get the leave) but I haven't checked.

Your expectation is wrong: https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-profes... "Since 2014...34.3 percent worked at small companies." And this is for "small" defined as It's also important to note that it's wrong to say that employees of small businesses "don't get the leave." Many small businesses will ofter leave to their employees without a federal mandate.

Cool, thanks. Surprising!

By "don't get the leave" I meant "aren't guaranteed the leave", of course.

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#182

Title should be fixed to say Sales Engineer.

A sales engineer is a type of engineer (as the term is used in US English; in some countries engineer is a protected term and programmers are rarely eligible for it).

People who drive trains are also a type of engineer. I kind of get where the person you're responding to is coming from. It's not worth calling out when the article is aimed at the general population, which doesn't care about the distinction between a sales engineer and a software engineer. It would just be confusing without an explanation, and that explanation would unnecessarily bloat the story.

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#183
post #180

Please excuse my insensitivity for Paul, but hearing the story I wonder if the baby suffocated in its sleep, e.g. By rolling into a bad position as is not uncommon in young infants. Is it possible to tell the difference? Don't ever intimate such a thing to Paul of course. The only thing worse than losing a child is losing a child to something preventable by the parent.

No. Don’t Hacker News back-to-first-principles this. A child dying is a tragedy, not a chance to second guess it like it’s a website going down.

Your post is ghastly.

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#184

Her maternity leave was cut from 8 to 6 WEEKS I had to do a double take there, I read it as months first time. How can a woman give birth and be back at work in eight weeks? Six weeks seems impossible baby or not, the recovery time for pregnancy and birth can be many months. If I were a woman living in a society like that I think I’d either not have children or not work at all.

I'm in the US and a coworker came to work the next day after giving birth. There is no time allotted for maternity leave and she had already used her vacation time at the beginning of the year before she was pregnant. I was at a charity event with the CEO and he was laughing about it saying."she was born to breed."

Ill be honest. If you didnt stand up and say something(or if you had the money to survive, quit), you're part of the problem.

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#185

We're in an odd state of paralysis as a society. On the one hand, we acknowledge that there are birth rate / population-related issues coming rapidly down the pipeline at us, problems we acknowledge can only be solved by either supporting existing citizens/families in having more children or mass migration. Through exhaustion with unaccountable corruption and reckless, ineffective public spending by all parties on th…

The people of certain states have thought it worthwhile to provide 18+ weeks to mothers and 12 weeks to fathers. The west coast WA/OR/CA and northeast from MA to NJ and DC are a little bit more civilized.

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#187

She got six weeks instead of eight. How dare they. She could've applied for more days based on her psychological state. Also how dare they not pay her commissions earned by her team while she was away. I think the tone is all wrong here. Economically, it makes sense to "discriminate" against pregnant women, so the discussion should be more "Here's why you shouldn't do it" and less "How dare you do it!". Just my $0.02…

> Economically, it makes sense to "discriminate" against pregnant women. I've heard this repeated a lot but I don't get it (I'm an employer). I mean I can't think of many things that would hurt team morale and hiring reputation more than treating a young female employee like shit just because she got pregnant (let alone went through something as horrific as losing a child). What kind of short-sighted psychopath boss…

> What kind of short-sighted psychopath boss would look at this any other way?

Well, she _did_ work in sales...

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#188
post #119
post #8

I had a baby that died. It was an excruciating experience and nobody around us knew what to do or say. From personal experience I can say it should be treated as a grave mental health issue and companies should be forced to provide a great deal of leave to both parents. Whether leave is paid or unpaid, this should be treated in the same way as any disability or health related leave. IMHO it would be cheap for compani…

IMHO it would be cheap for companies to simply buy infant life insurance for all employees Individuals can buy this sort of life insurance for themselves without the help of their employers. Given that it is, as you say, "cheap" there isn't an economic burden either. Why would we want employers intruding into yet another aspect of individual's lives? We're all well aware of the problems that come from having employer…

Who the hell plans for their baby to die? You don't even consider the possibility, too much cognitive dissonance. And after all, how common is it these days? And then when it happens to you, so many other people have a similar story. Turns out it happens all the time, it's just that nobody talks about it.

Also, consider for a moment how you'd feel being given a huge payout for a lost child. The money can't fix anything, but it's kind of nice to have money, and then you start feeling guilty about that, and it's a whole quagmire of badness.

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women everywhere agree with you. Capitalism relies on women to create, raise and see to the education of new consumers and workers with little to no help. They are opting out. People everywhere see that the childless have a higher standard of living than parents. In many places there are more people 65+ than those under 18, and that will soon enough be common in most places. The example cited in the article is just a…

The issue is simply, how do we incentivize people to have more kids? Some countries have figured out...you can use this thing called "government" to create the incentives to solve the problem. Mandatory leave for both new mothers and fathers, massive tax benefits, subsidized childcare, etc. Countries who have done this, while still being market-based economies (capitalist), have been successful in increasing their bi…

Are you sure there are countries that have figured it out? All I have read is that no country has successfully yet incentivized birth rates above 2.1 after dropping below.

Re: Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died

#190
post #48

I think this is a bad way to deal with such people. She needs to make name of the company known, and was the person who made this decision. The internet will do the rest.

Responding to one broken part of American culture with another broken part of American culture...?
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