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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

#501

Post by tbatchelli »

nicbou wrote: post #235
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,…

As I understand it, we already subsidise child-rearing through taxation. Single, childless people are taxed at a higher rate. This is fine. However, this is happening at a smaller, more arbitrary scale. It's not "I support our future through a legally defined contribution", but "my colleague is working 25% less and still gets paid the same, but I need to take PTO to get a haircut". I think it depends on how you frame…

It is complicated, I agree.

Tax cuts don't really make that much of a difference at the end of the day. Loss of job promotions, inability to take the same financial risks, childcare, education, lack of downtime, etc, all I think have a much bigger impact financially.

But it is also understandable to think that it is unfair to make non-parents pick up the slack for those who are parents. Although as a society we already pick up the slack for those who are unable to work.

Again, it is a question of wether we think there is a social good to have some of us raise children to become, hopefully, taxpaying adults, and if this is a common good, then who and how should bear the burden? Only the parents?

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

#502

Post by pm90 »

subsaharancoder wrote: post #243
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…

> This feels like more of an effort to create a story than accurate reporting of what life is like inside tech firms right now. This is very true. The genesis of the story is that at one of the FAANGs (I work for one of them) someone posted a question that kind of made it sound as "parents vs single employees" issue, the media (the NYTimes got the ball rolling) have jumped on this and are fanning the flames at a time…

How is the media fanning the flames if they’re reporting on something that actually happened?

Perhaps to you it may not be a big deal, but FAANGs are now a crucial part of the lives of Americans and the Public is naturally interested in what goes on in these companies.

To a certain extent, this kind of media attention is an offshoot of the success of the Industry.

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

#503

Post by Kluny »

nicbou wrote: post #312
jdm2212 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone has to provide the goods and services you'll consume when you're old. Those people are today's kids, whose parents are doing you a big favor at considerable expense to themselves. Raising children isn't like smoking, a hobby, a side hustle, or other miscellaneous personal obligations. It's more like military service and jury duty -- an essential service that some people perform to ensure that society as we kn…

Then is it cool if I skip a few meetings to volunteer to help the homeless? We already heavily subsidise child-rearing through taxes and other benefits. As I said elsewhere, there are mechanisms for supporting parents already. If you tried to let any other charitable endeavour take over your work schedule, you wouldn't expect your compensation to remain unaffected. I'm not resentful at parents. It just seems complete…

It sounds like you're being facetious, but plenty of employers will pay for you to do community service. For example, HeroWork is an organization similar to Habitats for Humanity, which does construction work for charities. Trade firms such as electricians and plumbers donate their employees' time (and wholesale accounts, and equipment) to do the work.

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

#504

Post by ashtonkem »

marbletiles wrote: post #65
ll931110 wrote: post #12

Earlier 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.

Yes, they should be unhappy about that: at their managers. Not at their colleagues attempting to care for children during a pandemic. I've heard a related thing about US workers resenting colleagues for taking paid time off for similar reasons, and it's just as weird to my European eyes. The difference a decent labour movement (or the legacy of one) can make to industrial relations is stark

Any manager that’s laying out timelines assuming that everyone will work at 100% capacity permanently is being unbelievably naive. People will take vacations, get sick, or need mental breaks. We’re humans, not robots.

If a team can’t handle someone losing velocity due to the challenges of parenting during a once in a century pandemic, then it needs new leadership, period.

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

#505

Post by ChuckMcM »

icelancer wrote: post #64
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.

>> The team's leadership should have reduced the workload of the team. This isn't always possible, especially given the target businesses that hang out here. This is just evading a tough question.

In my experience it is. One property of a good manager is that they have a good idea of how much their team can produce over unit time. Combined with experience on the teams ability to integrate with other projects at delivery time and repair defects that arise, gives them a good idea how much time something will take to get done, plus or minus a small delta.

Bad managers just say "You bet!" when given an unreasonable timeline (more work than can be done) and then push their workers too hard and blame them when upper management asks why the project is late. It is an all too common management pattern.

When engineers talk about "How hard is management really? You just tell everyone else what to do and yell at them to get it done." they miss that one of the things you do as a manager is tell your boss, "Nope, can't do that without either additional people or additional time." Sometimes it is always time because not all projects can be broken up into parallel efforts. That conversation can be hard unless you've built up the level of trust and understanding with your manager so that they respect your time estimates and requests.

Often times your first few encounters along this line you have to keep "parallel books" where you note what you thought it would take and you look at what it actually took, and what was asked. Bringing that information together in a 1:1 setting can help educate your manager that a) you know what you are doing and b) they should trust your judgement.

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

#506

Post by sdenton4 »

maxerickson wrote: post #478
rayiner wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect a fair number of the complainers are people with Democratic leanings, and I think I can describe their thought process to you. > I think their problem is that a private company is doing this, not the Government. Is that a Democratic take? I think it's a liberaltarian take on it. Here's the conservative libertarian response: raising children is one of the primary functions of society, and social norms that…

What's the conservative libertarian take on what to do when those norms are gone and haven't been replaced?

Probably involves market solutions...

"Sister for sale! One sister for sale! One crying and spying young sister for sale!"

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

#507

Post by ubercore »

johnjj257 wrote: post #376
woah wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not you agree that society should support children, your criticism of the analogy makes no sense.

How so? The typo? Everyone uses the school so everyone should not complain. Everyone is not a parent so the analogy breaks down.

Kids aren't some abstract thing, they are new people that get jobs and work to pay your social security payments and fix your roads and stuff. We need kids because we need people in society. Everyone needs parents around, even if they aren't one themselves.

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

#508

Post by pm90 »

throwaway5792 wrote: post #366
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…

What's the solution? Allow non parents to take 10 weeks off for health issues? What if then a parent has a baby and then has some other health issues. Can they take 20 weeks off? Or would that be unfair because as parents they can take 20 weeks vs 10 for the single person?

Every time a policy suggestion is made there is always that person who will try to find “loopholes”.

If a parent has a baby and then has health issues, yes they should take 20 weeks off. People should be treated as human adults and be trusted with the time they need to take off.

Yes, There will be those who abuse the system. These would be the outliers; even if they get “away”, we should still be generous with these benefits.

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

#509

Post by Viliam1234 »

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…

As a parent, I would love to have an opportunity to work part-time. Suppose I work 3 days a week, and my wife works 2 days a week, we can arrange those days so that each day someone can be with kids. (It might hypothetically even be 3 days + 3 days if one of the jobs would allow Saturdays.) Working 3/5 time for 3/5 salary would feel fair towards my colleagues. (Many of us work on multiple projects at the same time, so from the project perspective, there would be little difference between being 3 days there and 2 days on another project, vs being 3 days there and 2 days off.)

Unfortunately, in most companies this is not an option. Full time (and be happy if this doesn't include overtime) or go away. And I can't afford to go away.

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

#510

Post by [deleted] »

x87678r wrote: post #231
codemac wrote: post #5

Personally, 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…

> 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. Is that really true though? In my team parents are still online 40+ hours a week. Definitely if some single person (or parent) is producing double everyone else they should get bonuses or promotion over everyone else.

[deleted]
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