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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

#601

Post by abpavel »

ashtonkem wrote: post #504
marbletiles wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

100% pay for 100% work and 16/5 availability. 50% pay for 75% work and 10/3 availability. Are you going to be ok with this on the receiving end?

The second part of comment is asinine trolling. No one is ready for once-in-a-century thing by definition. If once in a century flood leaves the team stranded and water still does not drain away after 6 months it has nothing to do with management. There are no continuity plans for disasters that keep happening for such a long time.

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

#602

Post by derwiki »

harshalizee wrote: post #282
wayneftw wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always thought that people should need to get a license to have a baby. You need a license to pull fish out of a river or to plant bamboo in your own yard, but any moron is allowed to make new people. How does that make any sense? With a baby license, hopefully we would actually only make new sane, healthy people - currently that’s not happening because the world is chock full of unhealthy idiots that I don’t wa…

Because it is a violation of very basic Human Rights? Not to mention the can of worms that will open. Who gets to decide who's worthy of procreation? Based on political, social, economic values? This is like codifying systemic discrimination into fundamental human rights.

Not America, but my mother in law had to pass a test in China in the mid/late 80s to have a child.

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

#603

Post by mancerayder »

It's a give and a take, isn't it? For example, I don't have kids, but I know this whole experience is a nightmare for many people with kids. I can hear it in the background in conference calls - and sometimes I can literally see little kids running and jumping up and down.

That's all you need to show me to gain my sympathy, because that's a nightmarish scenario as far as I'm concerned. I don't admire people with kids.

Now, one day I might get sick, or a family member might, or something happens, or I need to take time for some reason. I expect the company to give a little there, too, if I've been there a while.

It's not an exchange, just a humane approach one hopes and expects.

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

#604

Post by notacoward »

The most important point here is that this is about the company's own self interest and the complainers are asking them to act against that. People who are unable to reconcile the demands of parenthood with those of their job will quit. That's bad for the bottom line, the company wants to avoid that, so they make accommodations. The reward - salary, equity, perks - each employee gets was always about supply and demand and cost of replacement, not mushy ideas of deservedness or fairness.

The second point is that these same people were strangely silent when everything about working conditions benefited them. Long working hours and oncall requirements are far more burdensome to those with families than to those without. Ditto performance-review and promotion standards that require consistent delivery on pre-planned items over a long period of time. Easy enough to arrange your life around that when you have no other demands or commitments. I did that myself when I was single. It's a lot harder when an event within the family - even a joyous one such as a long-desired child - can throw your availability and concentration for an unexpected loop. Goodbye, last 11 months of effort. Have to reset now.

After benefiting from years of policies that favor the childless, suddenly strict equality must be the rule? Please. Again, this is about the company acting in its own self interest. Attrition and lack of diversity are bad in the long run. The complainers are simply easier to replace than those they're complaining about. See first paragraph.

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

#605

Post by quadrifoliate »

mrburkins wrote: post #414
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’m curious if people with other legitimate obligations asked and received push back. I’ve seen employers make accommodations for religious, dietary, various family drama (sick parents/partners, death etc), working moms etc - you just have to ask.

The point is that now it's up to the employer to decide what's a work-acceptable thing to ask for; at which point they are kind of affecting your life choices.

At that point, people without kids start thinking “Wait, why is my employer peeking inside my home to decide what I can take time off for? This is a capitalist society, right?”.

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

#606

Post by albertop »

rhizome wrote: post #459
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…

A BIG chunk of all that drama is due to the US social safety net not including childcare. That's the thing disturbing thing about these stories: employees are turned against each other when it's a) the company; and b) your tax dollars, not providing any kind of built-in childcare for society. In France, kids can go to preschool and have pre- and post- school childcare, which has to be paid, but it's only like $500/mo…

We already have government schools that are closed by the edict issued by teachers’ union. How having government childcare would help?

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

#607

Post by ActorNightly »

wonderwonder wrote: post #424
dheera wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being made to work till 11 without any reward is one thing. Having the ability to work till 11 for overtime pay or get ahead is another.

Having a law that mandates that I cannot work when I want to because other people need the time sounds terrible

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

#608

Post by rtlfe »

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…

> strikes me as extremely selfish, immature and displaying a total lack of empathy

We're talking about 22 year olds who have always been told they're smarter than everybody, spend more of their free time with computers than with people, and started making $200k+ immediately after college. Those adjectives correctly describe a large portion of those people.

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

#610

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaybabies wrote: post #453
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'm probably going to get downvoted for being "selfish" but I absolutely do not care about the continuation of the human race and I want as much time off as my coworkers who made the bad life decision choice of making children.

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