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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

#431

Post by chrisbrandow »

Honestly, when public policy is garbage and everyone has to deal with unreasonable demands, it is quite natural for groups to turn on each other rather than to demand more for everyone.

This entire experience has been difficult for everyone, and everyone is somewhere on a spectrum of minimal disruption to profound stress. I have kids, but it's been "ok" so far. On the other hand I know of a woman who is an attorney representing abused children. Her childcare bailed on her at the last minute. She had to do a zoom trial while her 2 year old began screaming in the background and she had no one to take over her case or her child. She literally broke down in court. There was no obvious "solution" to that situation.

I don't have a conclusion other than it is up to employers and government to provide resources so that we aren't all fighting like animals over the scraps.

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

#432

Post by nicbou »

smeeth wrote: post #361
nicbou wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is made again and again in this thread, and it never got addressed. 1. There are already functional mechanisms for contribution. A single, childless person is already contributing more through their taxes. The government already heavily subsidises child-rearing. 2. Child-rearing is given an arbitrary pass that other equally charitable actions wouldn't get. A single, childless person couldn't let his com…

>The government already heavily subsidises child-rearing. Ah yes, the lofty government subsidy of x > Child-rearing is given an arbitrary pass that other equally charitable actions wouldn't get. Raising a child is spending 20-40 hrs a week for 18 years and a boatload of money to create another person in the workforce who will spend ~40 years generating GDP and paying taxes. Considering GDP per capita in the USA is ~$…

Great answer! I didn't know about The Population Bomb. I was more worried about climate change. As far as I know, the planet can feed a few billion extra people.

> Raising a child is spending 20-40 hrs a week for 18 years [...] to create another person [...] who will spend ~40 years generating GDP and paying taxes

Let's not forget that this person will eventually retire and require increasingly expensive care.

That makes me curious. If the current economy can only function with a growing population, then it takes > 1 person to subsidise your upbringing/retirement. Does that mean that 1 human life costs more than the output of a human's entire life?

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

#434

Post by FpUser »

Letting parents with kids to arrange work schedule however they see fit is the least we can do. I understand there will be some professions/situations where it is not possible but it should be used as a general rule otherwise.

We already have large segments of populace fucked up by the growing inequality and subjecting people to even more is really bad idea I think.

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

#435

Post by wrkronmiller »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #286
Reedx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only after having a kid did I fully realize just how much time and freedom I had.

Freedom to go to bars (closed), clubs (closed), trips (not happening), concerts (canceled), conventions (postponed indefinitely), festivals (closed), etc... Most things childfree people get meaning out of are canceled until further notice. You still have your parenthood. What do we get? Extra work for equal pay? Great, that'll make the pandemic suck less.

> Freedom to go to bars (closed), clubs (closed), trips (not happening), concerts (canceled), conventions (postponed indefinitely), festivals (closed), etc...

I also love all of these things. I'm sorry you're bored.

> Most things childfree people get meaning out of are canceled until further notice.

Not really. Consider the following:

- Athletics: running, hiking, boating, bicycling

- Social Activity: responsible, socially-distant, get-togethers with your best friends

- Engineering: personal electronics projects, programming projects, automotive projects

- Entertainment: read a book, watch a movie, catch up on some TV

edit: To be clear, I think a major problem with this discussion is how it's being framed as a zero-sum game: either parents work more or non-parents work more. I believe smarter companies and better bosses will try to keep pressure off their employees.

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

#436

Post by alisonkisk »

puszczyk wrote: post #399
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 think school and day care are a reasonable assumption. It’s a bit unfair to say — _keep your spouse at home because there maybe once-in-a-lifetime pandemic and the schools will be closed_.

It's more fair to say "save some money for a rainy day" or "you will have to sacrifice some of your quality of life and savings due to the pandemic".

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

#437

Post by DoreenMichele »

goldenchrome wrote: post #420
DoreenMichele wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t want to deal with this possibility then simply don’t have kids. This attitude -- which is pretty common in the US -- never fails to astound me. First, a lot of babies are not planned. Birth control failures happen or young people learn the hard way the facts of life because they fooled around ended up pregnant before they had a good idea of how things worked and some people are essentially brainwashed fr…

My comment was directed at wealthy tech workers who have access to education, contraceptives, and abortions. Of course there are outliers but most of my coworkers carefully planned their pregnancy around their company’s promotion schedules. And I don’t think the human race is anything special and I’m more than happy to let it die off if we decide to stop having kids.

I have six years of college and a Certificate in GIS. I was one of the top students in my graduating high school class and won a National Merit Scholarship.

I also have a 33 year old son who is the result of failed birth control. I chose to not seek an abortion because I was already married to a man with whom I wanted kids, but I had originally intended to have them later.

I will suggest that most of your coworkers discussing their "carefully planned pregnancies" are people willing to talk about their experiences and/or carefully framing their experiences in a socially acceptable manner. Most people who enjoy conventional success are either fortunate to have lives that fit a certain framework relatively easily or they get good at pretending to fit it and covering up or leaving out the things the people around them wouldn't be comfortable hearing.

Basically, your position is one of "Everything needs to go right in your life all the time or a big fat fuck you from me." And that tends to cause the fabric of society to unravel because most people can't manage to force their life to go right every step of the way all the time. If their lives work, it's because they had some kind of safety net when things did go wrong at some point.

If you are rich enough, you can sometimes pretend this is not the case, but the money itself is a kind of safety net, so it's a BS position for wealthy people to take.

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

#438

Post by jdmichal »

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?

For promotion? You promote the person that is filling the higher role.

For bonus? Sure, hand out some extra money to the hard workers.

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

#439

Post by daenz »

ethanwillis wrote: post #273
daenz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Should we be forced to pay taxes?

Exactly, I'm asking if they believe their personal choice to work additional overtime for a specific demographic of people should be compelled by the state via an additional tax.

Do you?

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

#440

Post by andrewprock »

GuB-42 wrote: post #425
CydeWeys wrote: post #213

Earlier 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…

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 produc…

The nature of society was quite different in the 1950s than it is now. For those who were served by the government it was a golden era.

For those who supported the government, it was much more expensive.

For those who were persecuted by the government, it was a living nightmare.

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