Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 1001 posts

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#81

Post by extrawork99 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #18

It's simply depressing how parent/kid-hostile society has become... I'm not saying we need explosive population growth. But I feel one of the main purposes of society is raising and protecting children. If you're a human-future-optimist, you want some kind of generation that's better than us to continue on.... I'm not saying you NEED to have kids, but I feel it's part of society's collective duty to consider the next…

It’s depressing how entitled a generation of parents have become. And I say that as a father.

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#82

Post by user5994461 »

pyronik19 wrote: post #9
rblatz wrote: post #2

A lot of this feels like people looking into their neighbor's bowl to see if they are getting more than them. Love him or hate him Louis C.K. has a great quote here “The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.” Times are tough, don't blame the parents for what they have to do, blame your management if…

There is a team of 4 people. 2 have families, 2 don't. The ones that don't picked up the slack for the ones that did. Work quality was equal, but output was greater for the singles. The team has 2 slots for promotion. Do you ignore the fact that the single people put in more work or do you factor it in in the promotion decision?

Assuming all 4 people want a promotion, there are only 2 slots. It doesn't take a genius to understand that there isn't a solution to fit all ;)

The job of the manager is precisely to get them to swallow the pill. Classic excuse "We didn't get enough promotion slots this year, we will get more next year".

More importantly the initial assumption is wrong, not everybody care about promotion. Some employees expect to be promoted or want to climb up the corporate ladders, some don't. If you can figure those with little aspiration and those with long teeth, that's a good way to direct promotions and maintain a team for longer.

Second thing is to figure out who's likely to leave looking for a promotion elsewhere (both willing and capable to get a job at the next level). A promotion with a 5-10% raise is the best way to make them feel valued and forget about looking elsewhere (even though they could get 30-50% by switching companies).

Last but not least, who's strategic for the team and yourself as the manager? Some people may have rare skills hard to replace, some people may have knowledge of the legacy systems and company internals, some people are just dead weight, some are on really important projects that you need done, others are not. Any combination thereof. Estimate whom to keep in priority.

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#83

Post by opportune »

ll931110 wrote: post #12
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

I am a middle-aged adult with no children who's worked at tech firms for the past couple decades. To be honest, the "resentment" of those without children have for "benefits" those with children get strikes me as extremely selfish, immature and displaying a total lack of empathy. This is time off specifically to take care of children, something now that has become exceedingly more difficult in Covid times. What's nex…

The problem is, people without children are told (or required) to pick up the workload left behind when the coworkers having children taking (multiple) weeks off. For once or twice that might be okay, but if became a chronic problem, no wonder they are not happy.

Also, not that I necessarily think this way, but parents are told that working less won’t impact their ratings. And since the distribution of ratings is usually fixed, that effectively means you won’t get rewarded for picking up the slack from others. (Or in the case of Facebook it means everybody got the same rating regardless of how much/well they worked).

Not necessarily due to just the parental policies, but I do believe Covid negatively affected my career progression as someone in my early career. I wouldn’t take my anger out on parents and would instead direct it at my company’s policies (and not just regarding parental leave). But I can see why someone might see others on their immediate team “benefitting” from the pandemic - not that they truly are, but that they are doing less work directly for the company - and take out their frustrations on them

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#84

Post by goldenchrome »

Ductapemaster wrote: post #35
goldenchrome wrote: post #6

I sympathize with the parents but this is just how life goes. If you have kids, you’re going to be more occupied than people without kids since we all have limited time on this Earth. And of course your career will be negatively impacted. There are good things about having kids and bad things. This is one of those potential bad things. If you don’t want to deal with this possibility then simply don’t have kids.

I don’t have kids, but this strikes me as lacking empathy in the current climate. Choosing to have kids or not pre-COVID came with a set of expectations, risks, and choices that were fairly well defined. Parental leave, childcare, proximity to family and friends, school, increased costs, medical treatemtn, etc. Parents could evaluate those based on what their employer offered and the experiences of their peers going…

A pandemic is exactly how life goes. Barely more than one lifetime ago we had the Spanish Flu, WW1, WW2, multiple market crashes, and so on. Global warming is likely to cause more situations like those in the coming years.

Much of this pandemic is overrated. My friends and family aren’t socially distanced. Parks and beaches are actually open. Vacations are very easy and very popular. Social interaction is not a risk for the vast majority of healthy people.

If you’re scared of it, fine. Everyone in my life is not, and life is quite normal.

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#85

Post by edanm »

Shivetya wrote: post #23

Isn't it just bizarre how people can have children and not expect it to disrupt their lives. They are children, they require your engagement, this is part of the deal. Tech companies should offer the same time off to all employees whether they have children or not. Children should not be allowed to be bargaining chip to obtain more from others. Your choice. To be honest having children out weighs any negative impact…

Not many people have children without knowing it will disrupt their lives.

On the other hand, not many people planned on a pandemic that would cause almost the entire support structure for having children to disappear.

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#87

Post by MaximumYComb »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #34
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #20

This reminds me of local retirees who are resentful that their taxes are paying for public schools. They seem to have forgotten that someone paid for them to attend school. Regarding parental time off, it's conceivable that their own parents never had that support. Maternal/parental leave is taking decades to roll out - perhaps as long as it took for public schooling to become universally available.

Ignoring the fact the education costs have skyrocketed since they went to school

So has the cost of caring for old people but they don't complain about that.

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#89

Post by treis »

rblatz wrote: post #2

A lot of this feels like people looking into their neighbor's bowl to see if they are getting more than them. Love him or hate him Louis C.K. has a great quote here “The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.” Times are tough, don't blame the parents for what they have to do, blame your management if…

>“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.”

So then pay me 40% more and tell the parents not to look at my bowl.

That's hypothetical because I have a small kid myself. But that quote is sucker talk. Demand that you are compensated for the value you provide because none of these mega corps give a shit about you. They will fire you the moment that it becomes profitable for them to do so.

Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

#90

Post by [deleted] »

ll931110 wrote: post #12
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

I am a middle-aged adult with no children who's worked at tech firms for the past couple decades. To be honest, the "resentment" of those without children have for "benefits" those with children get strikes me as extremely selfish, immature and displaying a total lack of empathy. This is time off specifically to take care of children, something now that has become exceedingly more difficult in Covid times. What's nex…

The problem is, people without children are told (or required) to pick up the workload left behind when the coworkers having children taking (multiple) weeks off. For once or twice that might be okay, but if became a chronic problem, no wonder they are not happy.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN