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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

#201

Post by jedberg »

Before the pandemic, this resentment already existed. It's just exacerbated now. There have always been hidden benefits for people with kids. And although those benefits don't nearly make up for the extra responsibilities of having kids, those without kids feel that it's unfair.

For example, someone with kids gets a bigger insurance benefit. Usually managers are pretty forgiving when someone says they need to leave the office at exactly 6pm every day to get to soccer practice, leaving the single people stuck without the same excuse. Oftentimes the single people are asked to do the extra off-hours work "because you have no kids so you don't mind right?"

This is just an extension of that, which is perceived as unfair to the single folks.

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

#202

Post by lrem »

falcolas wrote: post #171
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 "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. Unpopular opinion: We should not be rewarding or elevating people for having unprotected sex without the support network to take care of their children in the event they are unable to attend school. There's a thousand reasons a child might not be ab…

Have it crossed your mind that maybe these people had the time and means to raise the kids, until a global pandemic has broken the plan a, the commercial plan b, the social plan c and the plan d? Because at the time the schools closed, the after school care also closed, people were told to not leave their kids with friends and no matter what never ever let them any near grandparents? Or have you totally missed that part?

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

#203

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

That happens too. People are assholes.

I worked at one place years ago where the union fought management to eliminate center centers of excellence to avoid other cuts that would have amounted to a 0.25% reduction in future retiree benefits.

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

#204

Post by rootusrootus »

kevstev wrote: post #140
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…

Ignoring the obvious downsides for a moment, I'd happily trade places with one of my childless coworkers right about now. This morning I went up and down the stairs at least ten times while trying to get my 7- and 9-year old kids successfully established in their first remote learning session, simultaneously participating in two consecutive Zoom meetings with coworkers, and figuring out how to solve a nagging issue in our application that has stumped the rest of the team. I won't be cut any slack by management, in fact it works out the opposite -- as the team lead, I need to be around all day to answer questions, solve high-level problems, and fit in a bit of architecture work around new projects around the edges. I put in more work time for the office now than I did if you added up all my previous office time, lunch time, and commutes.

I wouldn't give up my kids for anything but I will be so very happy when this pandemic is safely behind us and we can get back to something approximating what we had before.

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

#205

Post by thursday0987 »

wayneftw wrote: post #153
tbatchelli wrote: post #57

How much of this issue is related to having a part of the population think that people having children is solely a private question? "You had children, why should I bear your burden!" If none of us had children there would d be no economy to support anyone's life in, let's say, 40 years from now. People making and raising new sane and healthy people should be considered a social and common good, for the sake of all,…

I’ve always thought that people should need to get a license to have a baby. You need a license to pull fish out of a river or to plant bamboo in your own yard, but any moron is allowed to make new people. How does that make any sense? With a baby license, hopefully we would actually only make new sane, healthy people - currently that’s not happening because the world is chock full of unhealthy idiots that I don’t wa…

> I’ve always thought that people should need to get a license to have a baby.

what a perfect idea! Then Trump could sign an executive order saying "no licenses for black people" and bam - racism is solved forever.

/s (obviously)

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

#206

Post by asciident »

wffurr wrote: post #184
asciident wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so clear to be honest. The global population is growing and leading to environmental disasters, and it's not clear why we need 10 billion people on this planet, rather than a more manageable 100 million.

Parents in tech firms in developed countries are reproducing below the replacement rate already. Regardless, you need a next generation for society to continue to function.

I think it makes more sense to think of the human population globally, rather than on a per-country basis. We have one planet, and environmental problems are not self-contained inside a country's borders.

You're right we need a next generation for society to continue. But right now we're trending in the opposite direction. Just like your first concern about a fast-growing invasive species is whether it becomes extinct if it doesn't reproduce enough.

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

#207

Post by rayiner »

This is a mark of a sick and decaying society. Without everyone having more or less two kids, who is going to pay for social security? (Or work at Amazon, etc., so your 401k isn’t worthless?) And no, immigration isn’t a solution, it’s a cop-out. Us immigrants still have to raise our kids amongst co-workers who are complaining why parents get more slack during Covid. (I mean, I don’t, because my coworkers aren’t psychotic.)

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

#208

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

owenmarshall wrote: post #101
WWLink wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's the "they have x, why don't i?" attitude that causes a lot of problems. It should be an "everyone should have x!" attitude instead. At the end of the day, everyone's human, so there should be a little bit of slack in the staffing - long term - so that when someone's unavailable, nobody is drowning.

> At the end of the day, everyone's human, so there should be a little bit of slack in the staffing - long term - so that when someone's unavailable, nobody is drowning. I once as a very junior programmer asked a lead why we kept planning 75% of our capacity every month when we were hitting - and exceeding - our deliverables like clockwork . Then one month we had to do a death march to build features that had some $$…

I had a manager who kept saying "don't use fear-based estimates" since he had been picked to right the train. He looked good in front of the directors until he had to deploy the thing that was obviously rushed since "we can't use fear-based estimates". He wasn't able to pat his own back before the alert on the outage went out (all system outage)

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

#209

Post by nicbou »

wayneftw wrote: post #153
tbatchelli wrote: post #57

How much of this issue is related to having a part of the population think that people having children is solely a private question? "You had children, why should I bear your burden!" If none of us had children there would d be no economy to support anyone's life in, let's say, 40 years from now. People making and raising new sane and healthy people should be considered a social and common good, for the sake of all,…

I’ve always thought that people should need to get a license to have a baby. You need a license to pull fish out of a river or to plant bamboo in your own yard, but any moron is allowed to make new people. How does that make any sense? With a baby license, hopefully we would actually only make new sane, healthy people - currently that’s not happening because the world is chock full of unhealthy idiots that I don’t wa…

Who hands out the licences?

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

#210

Post by [deleted] »

nicbou wrote: post #160
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 don't fully agree with you. Back when I worked in retail or fast food, smokers could step out for a 5 minute smoke break every once in a while. As a non-smoker, I wasn't allowed to just sit there for 5 minutes. At the end of the day, we got paid the same, but smokers got 30 minutes off, courtesy of the non-smokers who picked up the slack. Likewise, parents are excused from work because they have children. I fully a…

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