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

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

#131

Post by save_ferris »

itsoktocry wrote: post #77
save_ferris wrote: post #10

This is one of the biggest reasons I’ve chosen to forego parenthood. I can’t imagine trying to carve out a solid career in tech while being a parent. I’m sure there are so many here on HN that will say it’s not so hard, but employer expectations have historically been incredibly high at companies I’ve worked for, to the point that sacrificing one’s personal life is pretty much expected (although never explicitly stat…

> employer expectations have historically been incredibly high at companies I’ve worked for, to the point that sacrificing one’s personal life is pretty much expected (although never explicitly stated). This sounds horrible. Honest question: why do you want to carve out a solid career in an industry that you can see works this way?

Because it's likely my best shot at financial independence. There's no other line of work I can pursue without taking on tens of thousands in student debt and starting over career-wise.

I've worked in several industries in my life, and it's not like tech is unique this way. In a lot of ways, finance is much, much worse. It would be great to have enough money to pursue whatever goal or passion I wanted, but that's not my reality.

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

#132

Post by daenz »

dtx1 wrote: post #43

I'd be happy to do some overtime to help people with children in my company. Even as a childless single, I chose a family friendly company because it aligns with my personal values.

That's very noble, but do you believe that your choice should be forced onto others?

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

#133

Post by dec0dedab0de »

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…

I'm a parent and a cancer patient. I have no problem if someone complains about the time off I take. Though I don't think anyone would complain. I keep it to a minimum, and I make up for it when I can.

Some people are going to sacrifice their personal life, and their health for their careers. I decided a long time ago that I was not going to do that. I accept that others may climb the corporate ladder faster than me, and I agree that they should.

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

#134

Post by jacquesm »

codemac wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are working as much or more. Just not on the same things. It's not as if being a parent somehow translates into more free time, in fact it translates into substantially less free time if any at all.

Completely agreed. But in the US we don't pay stay at home mother's for their time either. These companies should help their employees, I'm saying that there is a much deeper problem in our society in how we handle individuals who are not profitable.

Fair enough, but that's a problem that could be solved by adopting those 'socialist' measures that are normal in other first world countries. The individual parents are not in a position to make any changes there and their lives are as expensive - and probably more so - as the lives of singles. Resentment is a ridiculous response to a societal problem.

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

#135

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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…

Societies that don't care about the future in the form of children won't have a future.

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

#136

Post by ericmay »

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?

This is a pretty easy question to answer. You focus on the things that you'd get promoted for with that specific company (output maybe, leadership skills, etc.).

Even single people have to do with issues or projects or you name it outside of work. A workplace should only evaluate on the job performance. If it doesn't, then you can't do any actual fair evaluations. Maybe you spend too much time with your kids, maybe the single person spends too much time getting ready to ski in the Olympics or is tired all the time from being out late and partying?

If you take this to it's somewhat logical conclusion, you could have have 10 kids and say you don't have time to do a lot of work and then get a paycheck.

This seems pretty straightforward to me.

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

#137

Post by gones00n »

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…

I wonder why tech companies aren't allowing the option to change from full-time (100%) to part-time (60%), while retaining all the benefits especially healthcare in the U.S.

This can help ensure that everyone is being measured fairly - for example parents can opt to change to 60% and their role/responsibilities will be adjusted accordingly. Management will be able to hire to fill the gaps. Conversely if you're a parent that opts not to change to part-time and fails to deliver per the full-time expectations, then you get a "NI" rating or PIP.

Seems like this might normalize the compensation/recognition dimension at the heart of this debate. For parents that feel they can't stomach the pay cut from the switch, then there's no option but to work nights/weekends.

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

#138

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

bzb5 wrote: post #69
strictnein wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither. The failure is with the team's manager. The team's leadership should have reduced the workload of the team. It starts at the top. I work at a (non-tech) Fortune 50 and the message from the CEO on down has been the same: take vacation, take care of your family, some priorities/projects for this year will not be met and that is fine.

This reminds me of mandatory leave for male parents after childbirth. Women will stop producing because of childbirth, so let’s screw everybody over

>This reminds me of mandatory leave for male parents after childbirth.

A pretty dang important thing. For my 5 sons, I did the vast bulk of changing diapers, feeding, cleaning & the rest of it.

>Women will stop producing because of childbirth, so let’s screw everybody over

Women don't stop producing. Day to day, they're more likely to out-produce the men in their lives. Anyone who's in their shadow and somehow feeling screwed-over is in deep need of a perspective adjustment.

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

#139

Post by luckylion »

user5994461 wrote: post #82
pyronik19 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

That's the point: which two are promoted? The ones that did more work or the ones that did less work?

> More importantly the initial assumption is wrong, not everybody care about promotion.

"Let me take your hypothetical situation and inject a bunch of fantasy to solve it". That's basically "I just cast a magic spell at the trolley so I don't need to decide. Check Mate

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

#140

Post by kevstev »

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…

As a mid 30s childless man I completely agree. We essentially sent people home on a Friday, told them to figure out a work from home situation, and then they were told welp your kids aren't going to school either, and whatever childcare you had lined up has now vanished too- and this is all happening in the course of a few days at most. So now you have kids to worry about all day, home schooling to oversee, focusing on your actual job, and then on top of that oh yeah there is still a mildly terrifying pandemic going on with an uncertain outcome. I work in the NYC area, and everyone is tight on space here as it is. I barely held it together during all this, how parents did with young children is beyond me.

Maybe I am making assumptions here on the general political leanings of those here, but if you are talking about supporting anything like Medicare for all, UBI, BLM, PPP or even just support the Democratic party in general, pulling a little extra weight for those in a time of need is IMHO a relatively small ask that you as an individual can implement compared to those agendas.

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