Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19 • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by wrkronmiller » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #319

RHSeeger wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in non-pandemic times, they're subsidizing the continuation of society for the childless, to their own detriment (less free time, less self time, less money, less social life, less sleep; the list goes on and on and on).

Except children benefit their parents. Before social security, children were your social security. This mechanism hasn't disappeared. Childless people already pay more taxes that are used to subsidize other peoples' children, but they don't get nearly the benefit from that that parents do.

I strongly suspect that, among wealthy tech workers, children are a net drain when you factor in:

- These workers have enough income to finance their own retirement easily

- The additional real estate to raise children near a tech hub is often prohibitively expensive

- These kids will almost certainly go to college and maybe private school, which adds up _rapidly_

It's important to consider _who_ we are talking about here.

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

#422

Post by rdtwo » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #392

burlesona wrote: post #55

This feels like more of an effort to create a story than accurate reporting of what life is like inside tech firms right now. 1. Parents lives have been temporarily turned upside down as almost all childcare disappears. Temporary is turning out to be a long time... but still. 2. Most companies are composed of people of all ages and stages of life which means there are lots of parents. Particularly when you consider m…

I know of two parents who have been let go during covid. All of the people on their team who had been let go were parents of young children.

Man that’s shitty, unless I guess that’s your thing. A few posters here would love to be in that environment

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

#423

Post by jb775 » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

Not trying to make this political, but I wanted to point out my initial thoughts: It's probably safe to say a good majority of these tech employees skew left, and I'm sure a bulk of these "resenters" were the same people barking on facebook about keeping schools/businesses/daycares/etc closed down. However, the underlying causes of resentment discussed here are the 3rd and 4th order effects of keeping everything closed down. It honestly just sounds like once the "resenters" have skin in the game and are immediately impacted by the policies they're pushing, their reaction is to kick the nearest dad in the balls.

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

#424

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #298

kevstev wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMO the real broken part of this system is that people are not getting legally-protected personal time. A big part of the resentment is that a person who chose to have children ends up being able to be excused from work to take care of children, while a person who has no children is not as easily excused to do what they want to do, because it is deemed low priority compared to children. We need to be prioritizing peo…

I would posit that no one should be working until 11 and everyone should be comfortable saying its 6pm, I'm going home. It's not the parents fault there is resentment its everyone else's for allowing themselves to be abused into working until 11.

We turn on each other when we should really be focused on those making us work the late hours.

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

#425

Post by GuB-42 » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #213

ng12 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've seen is the complaints are largely coming from couples that want to raise kids while both parents work full time jobs. Asking for fewer hours so you can continue that lifestyle is asking your employer and fellow employees to subsidize your second income, not your ability to have and raise children. My coworkers with SAH spouses aren't feeling the burn anywhere near as badly -- it's just an extended summer f…

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…

Ok, it is not the 50s but why could people do it in the 50s and why can't we do it now?

We are hearing "automation will destroy jobs" left and right and for some reason, we can't afford stay at home moms.

The "universal child care" argument makes me feel uncomfortable. It one step short of a dystopia. One where women would surrender their child to a state sponsored center where child care specialists make them productive members of society. Freed from their child rearing duty, "mothers" can continue working efficiently.

Why not just let mothers be mothers? What's the point of progress if we can't even do that. And also turn gender equality the right way, by letting fathers be fathers instead of requiring both parents to work full time.

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

#426

Post by alisonkisk » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

sulam wrote: post #242

ng12 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've seen is the complaints are largely coming from couples that want to raise kids while both parents work full time jobs. Asking for fewer hours so you can continue that lifestyle is asking your employer and fellow employees to subsidize your second income, not your ability to have and raise children. My coworkers with SAH spouses aren't feeling the burn anywhere near as badly -- it's just an extended summer f…

Just keep in mind, those people working two full time jobs might be barely making ends meeting in Silicon Valley. Maybe one is a tech writer earning 5-figures and the other is a nurse with a schedule they don't control and that doesn't give them real benefits (this is all too common). They can't afford to quit and now they have to juggle kids, too. Everything worked fine when the kids were in school and they could pa…

They never seemed to worry about paying for those of us who don't live in year round 70degree weather to be comfortable.

It seems bizarre to say that CA is so expensive due to the poor choices of people who live there, and the solution is for everyone else to pay their exorbitant luxury bills for them.

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

#427

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

dk1138 wrote: post #406

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…

Oh man, this is all so many social issues in a pot that's boiling over. First, as someone with kids, I appreciate everything my company is doing to help me manage workload and parenting. I've been impressed with my company. Not all are the same though. A friend, who is a child-less female who works with two other moms and a mom-to-be is constantly getting saddled with the work that her team members are dumping on her…

>Did I make a mistake having children? What is this shitshow of a world I've brought them into? I'll be honest, we're already a world fraught for resources and maybe we all need to think about the duty to the next generation is to not have kids.

I've also had the same thoughts. I was content not having kids for these reasons, but the spouse wanted to experience being a parent.

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

#428

Post by alisonkisk » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

jtsiskin wrote: post #262

ng12 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've seen is the complaints are largely coming from couples that want to raise kids while both parents work full time jobs. Asking for fewer hours so you can continue that lifestyle is asking your employer and fellow employees to subsidize your second income, not your ability to have and raise children. My coworkers with SAH spouses aren't feeling the burn anywhere near as badly -- it's just an extended summer f…

I’m not sure I buy this argument due to the disruptions of COVID. Pre-COVID, both parents working full time may have made total sense. With daycare, nannies, and/or school it’s perfectly reasonable both parents can have full time jobs. One parent may have even delayed their career during the youngest years and only recently resumed work. The issue now is COVID makes these childcare options impossible, so it isn’t the…

Privatized the gains, socialize the losses?

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

#429

Post by jartelt » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

jknz wrote: post #398

jartelt wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not necessarily just hostility to parents. I see it more as hostility to the HR policies in place at some of the companies. A new parent at facebook gets 4 months leave after the birth and then can take another 10 weeks of family leave. Alternatively, non parent employees at facebook can take 3 days off to cope with stress or else need to take sick days. Otherwise they can take sick days, which probably would b…

> I see it more as hostility to the HR policies in place at some of the companies. A new parent at facebook gets 4 months leave after the birth and then can take another 10 weeks of family leave. It's not like facebook employees typically have 10 kids. The benefits you mention happen once, twice and rarely three or more times in a lifetime. This policy also means that younger employees will be able to enjoy the same…

I don't know whether or not the 10 weeks of family leave will remain after the COVID-19 pandemic slows. Maybe it will, maybe it won't.

The point is that the response to the pandemic was to give stressed parents up to 10 weeks of additional leave and to tell stressed non-parents to use their 3 mental health days (which parents also get). I don't think it's crazy for a stressed non-parent to look at that and feel like the company doesn't think (or doesn't care) that the pandemic affects them at all.

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

#430

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

zarkov99 wrote: post #401

quadrifoliate wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I suspect a fair number of the complai…

I think you are on to something. Many people are happy to be generous with others time and money but less so with their own.

That's not it exactly. It's more about everyone pulling equal weight, not about getting freebies at others' expense. It's also about the correct realization that some problems can only be solved by the actions of society as a whole, that individual choices alone cannot sufficiently solve the problem. E.g. I alone can't solve the problem of catastrophic climate change no matter how green I live in my own life.