This is stupid. I've seen 0 signs of this as the FAANG company I work at (my gauge being our internal forum). Absolutely 0 mention of this. No mentions from coworkers, friends, etc.
Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
641–650 of 1001 posts
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#642I 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…
Is the resentment coming from childless people and directed at parents? Or is it coming from parents and directed at childless? Anecdotally I see a lot more of the latter in this thread.
It reminds me of a time when a co-worker complained in a semi-anonymous work channel how it was a problem that some of his other team members worked 9am to 8pm and contributed way more than the other team members. The rationale was that this made other team members feel uncomfortable. This baffled me. If I work 9-5 and someone else puts in 60 hours a week I can empathize with the insecurity of this juxtaposition to a degree, but it seems nonsensical to complain about it.
It's like if you're in a band, and a couple of the team members practice really hard and play way better than the other band members. This behavior is actively helping the group, if some members feel insecure about their relative levels of commitment then their insecurity the the problem - not the dedication of other members.
Things change when you factor in competition for rewards and recognition. Definitely this makes it harder for people with more obligations outside of work to contribute. But I'm not sure if this makes for effective justification to adjust our expected contribution to get the same reward. If someone came up to me and said that they volunteer at a homeless shelter for 30 hours a week and this cuts into how much they can put into work, I'd compliment them on their selflessness but point of that these actions are selfless precisely because these commitments involve sacrificing other opportunities. Choosing to become a parent is analogous.
Not to mention, society already does give parents greater rewards in the form of tax deductions and government services paid for by all taxpayers regardless of whether or not they have children.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#643I 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 47, no children, and have worked in tech most of my adult life. And I have NO resentment towards any parents who ask for, and receive, a certain amount of accommodation to deal with having their children at home during such an unusual time. And I can't even begin to grok the mindset of the people who do harbor that kind of resentment. WTF? Have you people not heard of compassion, understanding, or just basic human dignity? FFS, already.
So somebody else might get a couple of percentage points more on their bonus than you think they "deserve". And if bonuses come from a fixed pool, that means less for you. Well, wwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, cry me a river. There's more to life than fixating on every dollar you could possibly be paid.
And consider what kind of accommodation you might be looking for, asking for, or even expecting, sometime in the future when something extraordinary happens. There are reasons we have all those old cliches about "the shoe being on the other foot" and "the table turning" and so on...
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
We should prioritize people with children. The entire biological point of your life is to reproduce and we should value this. If you can’t reproduce (for a variety of reasons) but you take care of a child then this should be valued just the same. Society should prioritize people with children to raise instead of having a nihilistic philosophy of “ain’t my problem”. The social benefit of well raised children benefits…
[deleted]
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's when people are working till 11pm and someone says "I need to leave at 6 to make food for my kids" that the resentment happens. If everyone got off at 6, there wouldn't be any resentment. What would you propose then? The parents starve their children? What an absurd thing to have resentment over. Do you believe the parents don't feel guilt over having to duck out early while others without children continue to…
Please re-read the full comment. I am not expressing resent, I am explaining why resentment occurs in the masses. > What would you propose then? I proposed a solution, in the very first line of my comment: "legally-protected personal time"
Most people on this site can already work a 40-ish hour week and not get fired. They also probably won’t advance as quickly as someone with equal talent/ability who puts in extra hours when needed.
It would offend many (including me) if the law prohibited people from working as hard/long as they wanted.
If you want legal protection to prevent being you fired specifically because you don’t want to work more than 40 hours a week, I’d 100% support that. If you want legal protection to prevent me from working harder than that, I’m 100% opposed.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#646Earlier quoted context omitted.
We should prioritize people with children. The entire biological point of your life is to reproduce and we should value this. If you can’t reproduce (for a variety of reasons) but you take care of a child then this should be valued just the same. Society should prioritize people with children to raise instead of having a nihilistic philosophy of “ain’t my problem”. The social benefit of well raised children benefits…
> The entire biological point of your life is to reproduce There is no biological point of anyone’s life. This is nonsensical, it is also extremely offensive both to childless by choice and, especially, to infertile people.
I’m not trying to insult anyone but just stating an objective fact - life exists to reproduce life. Weak life dies out and strong life continues until it too is superseded. Evolution is a thing. Look outside and you see it everywhere.
I’m not a biological essentialist but I also won’t deny this simple fact that binds humans to plants - we exist to generate new variations of ourselves.
It doesn’t mean someone who won’t or can’t have children can’t contribute to humanity in a range of ways for their lives are just as worthy. But regardless if you choose to not or can not have children, this biological imperative has not selected you and your DNA will die with you. That’s just a fact.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#647One thing I wish I could make my childless peers grok is that THERE IS NO VACATION when you have young kids. I’m taking this week off and people speak as if I’m on vacation. Please please hear my words literally: my job is my break. Weekends are more physically and intellectually exhausting than weekdays when I get to $&@# off to work for eight hours. My paid time off is a way to give us a fighting chance at laundry…
I secretly miss my long commutes. 90 minutes on a train with no expectations. Good enough internet to surf, not to remote into work or dial into a meeting.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#648Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke? My 12 year old son would be able to cook for himself if it was required. Of course the kitchen would be a total mess. With instructions like the video below everybody can learn how to cook within a few days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw_Ze9zIafM
As someone who loves to cook, I don't fully agree. 60% of cooking is logistics: knowing what to eat, setting time aside for grocery shopping and meal preparation, and keeping food waste to a minimum. In my opinion, this is a lot harder than the actual cooking. If you've never done it before, it's surprisingly hard. Cooking in a well-organised, well-stocked kitchen is very different from starting with an empty pantry,…
I agree with this.
As a person who is single and just moved far away from my parents to work, having to cook at home isn't hard. Acquisition and management of ingredients is hard. Cooking for one is annoying, it's hard to even buy ingredients that won't go bad faster than I can eat them.
Additionally, my whole life was tuned around having food and transportation from work. Given no time to prepare, I now have no car, and I'm unable to carry lots of food back from each trip to the store. Each trip to the store also carries a certain necessary amount of COVID caution.
I'm aware that many of these problems are problems for people with families as well, but I've definitely felt some exacerbation due to living alone, not having a car, and not having anyone else to help me cook or to cook for.
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#649[deleted]
Re: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
One of the many reasons I have had kids is as a service to humanity. It’s definitely fun, but way too many people just cannot be bothered so someone has to. I kind of want our race/country/planet to continue existing even if I can’t.
I'm pretty sure that having kids contributes in the _opposite_ direction to the maintainability of our planet and our species as a whole. Why do you think it's a service to humanity when population growth is a growing problem, continuing to get worse, which exacerbates issues like conflict between groups, resource contention and climate issues.
I want to emphasize that a sustainable average number of children per family is not zero [0] but around 1-1.5 for a sustainable population size in 100 years, according to the linked article. So given that you presumably live in a developed country (well educated, and don't need children for labour), and have a human's normal biological urges to reproduce, it's not immoral to produce children, but it's certainly not morally commendable.
[0] https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/yes-overpopulation-problem/