201–210 of 229 posts
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It is reasonable, but reasonable employers for the most part don't exist. That's why we have laws establishing a minimum wage, nondiscrimination, paying out PTO in California, and the FMLA act which gives us parental leave in the first place.
This sounds like you're suggesting no one had good wages, paid time off, etc... before these laws. Is that the case?
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.
The United States is infamous among world nations for lack of mandatory paid maternity leave. Even the unpaid leave is incredibly short: Only 12 weeks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_leave_in_the_United_... This, while the total _paid_ leave available to mothers among OECD nations is ~54 weeks, including 18 weeks average paid maternity leave plus another long period of paid parental leave following it: http:…
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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 anythi…
The emotional complexities of "receiving a huge payout for the lost child" make me even more sure that employers shouldn't be getting involved in this. It's a deeply personal decision that people can have wildly differing views on. The last thing we want is businesses making these sorts of decisions for their employees. Businesses aren't your parents. They shouldn't be involved in stuff this personal.
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.
Thanks for the insensitivity though ;-)
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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.
I disagree. If you don't get to the root cause, no matter how uncomfortable, then you don't learn what you can from the tragedy and that just compounds the loss. Not that I really expect to get to the bottom here, but I can't suppress that curiosity even perhaps when it's warranted.
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While I would love if the world could work like this, the reason HR and their arcane rules exist in the first place...is because people tend to take advantage of things. And you might think, hey but 99% of people are decent and would not take advantage of the company. That's probably true! But there's always the 1% that ruins it for everybody else (just like the outlier sociopath HR person in this article). If you sa…
So let's say the company is 100,000 people, and 1% of births are still births, and 1% of employees will take the piss. And let's say 5% of employees have a baby in any given year (is this realistic? I honestly don't know, it seems high). Then on average you'll have one employee every two years take advantage of the situation (keeping in mind, the person "taking advantage" has also endured the death of a baby). I thin…
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I disagree. If you don't get to the root cause, no matter how uncomfortable, then you don't learn what you can from the tragedy and that just compounds the loss. Not that I really expect to get to the bottom here, but I can't suppress that curiosity even perhaps when it's warranted.
You’re not doing root cause analysis on infant mortality. You’re guessing at a baby’s death in the comment section on the internet. Just stop.
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I had a coworker who went through this. My bosses were very gracious. She was on leave for some time, purely for mental health reasons. And I’m sure returning to work with her job intact was a major comfort. Our direct boss at the time would meet with her for lunch occasionally until she felt well enough to come back. I’m willing to bet it was the best way it could have gone for her in light of what she experienced.…
I am happy to hear that she is beaming. But, from personal experience, I would not assume that she is anything like "over" losing the other child.
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I had a coworker who went through this. My bosses were very gracious. She was on leave for some time, purely for mental health reasons. And I’m sure returning to work with her job intact was a major comfort. Our direct boss at the time would meet with her for lunch occasionally until she felt well enough to come back. I’m willing to bet it was the best way it could have gone for her in light of what she experienced.…
The boss in this story should be used as an example for others to learn from. What a great person.