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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

#591

Post by dcolkitt »

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…

> We already heavily subsidise child-rearing through taxes and other benefits.

The US and most other Western countries run huge budget deficits at essentially zero interest costs. This is only possible because creditors have full faith in the ability of future tax payers to meet debt obligations.

In light of that, I’d say the overall balance is that those with children are massively subsidizing the childless.

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

#592

Post by [deleted] »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #455
rootusrootus wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> the obvious downsides They're not obvious to me... What are the downsides?

[deleted]

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

#593

Post by skizm »

I've gone through maybe 20 of the top comments so far and not one has pointed out that having kids is a choice. All of them are saying "childless workers don't understand parents have it tough!" Yes, they do. That's why they're childless.

As a childless worker, if I volunteer at non-profits with all my free time, can I take 6 months of paid leave occasionally too? Which non-work related hobbies are deemed "worthy" for all this extra paid leave? Is there a list somewhere? Or is "being a parent" the only item on the list?

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

#594

Post by leetcrew »

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?

are they gone? isn't this thread about single facebook employees resenting the special accommodations their employer has granted to parents?

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

#595

Post by wmsiler »

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…

>they chose to have children, and I chose not to

Up until the pandemic, my work schedule had almost never been affected by me being parent in any way. I chose to have kids knowing that my wife and I would be able to continue working without this significantly impacting our jobs (after the first several weeks after they were born, of course), and that has always been true until this. You are acting as though parents fully understood the pandemic would happen and would affect them at the time they decided to become parents.

This argument is like saying that a storm knocked down your neighbor's house, but not yours. So it's unfair that your neighbor get some leniency from work while he tries to repair it while you are expected to keep working. "He chose to build his house on that side of the street, so he has to deal with the consequences."

This isn't about giving extra slack to parents. It's about giving extra slack to people who were hit particularly hard by this situation that they couldn't possibly have seen coming. I was forced to return to the office even though I'd rather be at home. I have a coworker with no kids but who takes care of his mother who is very sick and at high risk for COVID. He gets to keep working from home, which is what I'd like to do. It's never crossed my mind to be annoyed with him for that.

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

#596

Post by pb7 »

rdtwo wrote: post #393
RHSeeger wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The freedom to just sit down and breath. I don't think you really grasp just how much having children robs you of your "self" and your down time. Heck, even the ability to go to the store to shop for food can be seriously impacted by having a child. Having a child doesn't just take away your ability to go out for a drink; it takes away EVERYTHING and replaces it with different things.

He won’t get it until/unless it happens to him. I was the same way once

Childless people don't feel bad for parents for the same reason they don't feel bad for startup founders that work 100 hour weeks. You're putting in the effort for 95% your own benefit (a child that grows up and keeps you company on Christmas in old age, or a big pay day from selling your company), and 5% societal benefit (children growing up and joining the workforce, or a company providing a valuable service and employment). At the end of the day, there will be enough people that pursue these things without any extra incentives so you don't get the pity as well. You can disagree and still see the argument as valid. I certainly won't give a shit if no one pities me for being a parent because the time and effort is mostly for me -- just like it is for everyone else.

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

#597

Post by bsder »

brd529 wrote: post #526
Viliam1234 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, s…

100% this. I do believe that a lot of two-job families would love for one or both parents to go part time. This way one parent doesn't have to 'give up' their career. Some generic advice I give to new grads which I never considered until I had kids was to seriously consider a medical profession because it is well-paying AND has a strong culture of part-time where shift work is the norm. I've seen parents who negotiat…

> Some generic advice I give to new grads which I never considered until I had kids was to seriously consider a medical profession because it is well-paying AND has a strong culture of part-time where shift work is the norm.

I'm going to ask you to clarify this.

In my experience, medical professions are LOUSY for "part time". You are on horribly long shifts. They move around continuously. You have no control over your shifts until you get to a very significant level of seniority.

And, right now, you're on the front lines of a pandemic.

The only advantage to something like nursing (at least it used to be) is that no matter where your spouse is, you will have work.

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

#598

Post by idrios »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #435
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, so…

I think "bored" is a really unfair trivialization when the parent comment's choice of words was closer to "devoid of meaning".

The examples you gave are the day to day things that childfree (& single) people are doing. None of those things involve meeting new people, which is exactly what is causing that emptiness.

Trips, concerts, bars, etc are the kinds of special occasion that motivate the single person to make it through the week. I can continue running, continue having Zoom parties, continue programming for fun (when I'm not mentally burnt out from work), continue watching TV. But there's no discovery or excitement in this routine. It becomes meaningless

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

#599

Post by woah »

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.

Everyone is raised by a parent at some point.

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

#600

Post by leetcrew »

tunesmith wrote: post #495
briandear wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, there is a contingent of people that support the Democratic Party assuming they benefit or, at the very least, have someone else pay for it. As an example, if you took a cross section of supporters, if they had their taxes increase by 100% to support $some_policy, they would be less inclined to support that increase. But if you say “the rich” should pay for XYZ, then support grows substantially. There a…

If your conception of Democrats is that they will only vote for tax increases on people richer than them, then you have a pretty inaccurate conception of Democrats. Yes, Democratic politicians will try to tailor their tax increases to not hit the middle class, but that's because they are trying to attract more voters than just Democrats.

are you sure?

> An individual’s likelihood of being a Democrat decreases with every additional dollar he or she earns. Democrats have a huge advantage (63 percent) with voters earning less than $15,000 per year. This advantage carries forward for individuals earning up to $50,000 per year, and then turns in the Republicans’ favor — with just 36 percent of individuals earning more than $200,000 per year supporting Democrats.

> Interestingly, the median household income in the United States is $49,777 — right near the point where the Democratic advantage disappears and the Republicans take over. [0]

seems like, at least in aggregate, people stop voting blue around the point where taxes/benefits stop being a net positive transfer to their household.

[0] https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demogra...

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