If your company is incapable of structuring things to get done when you set reasonable boundaries about the amount you're going to work, that's its fault, not your coworkers'. If you choose to set those boundaries tightly and your company tries to put more than a fair burden on you, that is not your coworkers' fault. If you choose to do more and your company proves incapable of recognizing you stepping up to the plate in the absence of your parent-coworkers, that's your company's fault, not your coworkers'.
Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
351–360 of 1001 posts
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd happily trade places with one of my childless coworkers right about now. Yes, some things come with downsides. I'm sure a lot of people would also want to trade places with you during the happy times you have with your kids. But you can't usually get the benefits without the downsides.
I think the current situation falls outside the bounds of the regular ups and downs. Most prospective parents were (reasonably) assuming school, childcare, etc would continue to exist.
Exactly, I very much doubt when OP was planning to have children they considered that very well established social norms that make our modern society possible (like traditional schooling and daycare) would not be an option in the future.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#353I 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…
Parents chose to have children with the assumption that childcare, schooling, etc. would exist. Almost no everyday citizen could have predicted that there would be a pandemic that would bring those services down for 1+ years.
Life during COVID is not what parents expected (or reasonably could have expected) when they chose to have children.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I disagree with your last bit. >'Given the extreme change we are going through, the “if you can’t handle it, don’t have kids argument” is just not realistic. A pandemic isn’t “just how life goes”.' Maybe not a pandemic but it shouldn't be any shock that children make things much more complicated. It's, most of the time in the US today, a choice to have a child. The unexpected nature of a pandemic isn't really an excu…
> The unexpected nature of a pandemic isn't really an excuse for me.
Companies, Governments, Healthcare System all failed to prepare for this pandemic but parents are expected to? Should they be considering breast-feeding during a nuclear winter before having children?
What's a sufficient about of global life-altering change before they get the free pass?
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#355A job in big tech is not a job. It's half a job, half a privilege.
Perfectly capable s/w developers fail big tech interviews for the tiniest slip-ups in a day long coding marathon.
Big tech response: "We can afford to lose perfectly capable s/w developers as false positives during interviews, cz the supply for filling up our positions is abundant."
A significant number of capable s/w developers even acknowledge that, and accept it as the nature of the beast.
Big tech can definitely grow some balls and apply the same rules to those who get in and then decide to go on baby vacay sprees.
(Oh, and btw, this also goes by the name of "an effin company doing its effin job!")
Parents can switch to minimum wage jobs with full parental coverage, PTO, what have you.
Don't think minimum wage is high enough to support children? I agree, let's raise the minimum wage. I even support government funded childcare.
If a big tech company decides to run like a baby-producing country club charity, it's only a matter of time before it'll be taken over by an actual big tech company that gives a shit about its business.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income. So you can't have the expectation that one of the parents give up a large chunk of their salary just to have kids. If you do structure society in this way then you get rapidly declining birth rates and very bad long-term population demographic pr…
It’s not just the cost of childcare. Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently give up earning power to raise children. I’ve seen this first hand in my family and it’s really difficult.
>Since divorce became acceptable, it became a huge liability for women to exit the workforce and permanently
You're mixing up cause and effect. A married women trying to resume her career (which also happens for many other reasons in addition to divorce)is going to have the same problems as a women who is trying to resume her career due to a divorce.
Or historical/current practices and attitudes to relationships and child rearing is what created the liability, specifically the societal pressure for women to leave/not pursue a career and thus lose highly valuable work experience relative to men. Divorce just highlights this.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If others have to consistently work overtime to cover for others, wouldn't it make sense to hire more? It's going to take some time for things to get back to normal.
After the pandemic is over, should you then lay someone off when everyone is 100% productive again? Otherwise, you would just be wasting money.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Parents are making sacrifices which benefit society as a whole. 100%. We need people to have kids (and for it to be financially possible to do so) because kids are literally the future generations of human society, and if no one is having kids then we'll see a very rapid collapse. This is, incidentally, why it pisses me off when people complain that their pets don't get the same kind of accommodations that children…
I also think it's stupid to resent parents; they need the time for the kids, who aren't at fault in any of this. That said, why do you assume we all care about having a future society? Frankly I only care about existing humans. The species is irrelevant to me.
If you don’t care about the future of humanity then why care about progress at all? Why care about any species. Why care about pollution or climate change or anything?
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Parents are making sacrifices which benefit society as a whole. Those children the parents are taking care of now will be the ones who will provide for the one complaining now via taxes as well as services rendered to them. If anything, companies should be providing more childcare so that more women (as well as some men) will have less of a burden balancing career and caregiving. I see these people as being…
> Parents are making sacrifices which benefit society as a whole. 100%. We need people to have kids (and for it to be financially possible to do so) because kids are literally the future generations of human society, and if no one is having kids then we'll see a very rapid collapse. This is, incidentally, why it pisses me off when people complain that their pets don't get the same kind of accommodations that children…
I don't understand this sentiment.
Farming is critical for society. However, we don't require everyone to pull on their overalls and work the land.
Security is critical for society. However, we don't expect every person to pick up their machine gun and jump in a trench.
Society is nowhere near a population level that is dangerously low. In fact, we are more concerned with overpopulation and overconsumption.
If you have children, that's great! Congratulations! Enjoy! But it was your choice - not one forced upon you by some dire social need.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#360Personally, I struggle with these feelings as well. It seems nuts that someone working 50%+ less than someone else is going to keep all the same equity, vacation, and salary. Then again it seems nuts that they don't. All employees who had children or family members to care for before or after COVID get none of the same support. I don't think backpay is coming for those who were forced to take leave or even quit their…
Don't forget that parents tend to have a higher life expectancy than people without children: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5484032/