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

cnet.com

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

#651

Post by ergocoder »

Waterluvian wrote: post #291

One 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…

But didn't you know about this before making a decision to have kids?

Almost every parent says this.

This is like a person gambling all their money. Then, they complain when they lose the money.

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

#652

Post by gones00n »

wmsiler wrote: post #595
nicbou wrote: post #160

Earlier 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…

>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 f…

There's risk in every major life decision, including having kids.

I hope I'm not coming off as anti-children but while parents couldn't have anticipated the pandemic and its impact, they need to react to the circumstances. If their home situation requires it, then they should switch to part-time or even quit temporarily.

I also agree with giving parents "extra slack", though again there are limits. At this rate the pandemic will remain with us for another year. The onus is probably in company leadership to make the necessary changes and not have colleagues start to resent one another.

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

#653

Post by ergocoder »

ak217 wrote: post #618
nicbou wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not disputing your other points, but: > we already subsidise child-rearing through taxation. Single, childless people are taxed at a higher rate In the US, being married is a tax advantage only if one partner earns much more than the other. Otherwise it's a wash. In the US, the child tax credit is $2K per child per year. In most cases, this does not come close to covering the costs of raising a child. So, no, for mos…

But having child is your choice.

It's so strange to complain that government doesn't cover the cost of your child. You choose to have your child. I'm sure you plan to support your child.

This is like me complaining that government doesn't subsidize my Tesla.

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

#654

Post by solidsnack9000 »

jacquesm wrote: post #162
usrusr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that measure, one could get the absurd idea to expect getting paid time off for that woodworking project. It even has "work" right in the name. Nobody does expect that though. Better arguments should be easy to find.

Woodworking is a hobby. Raising kids is a full time job, no time off, no pay, no changing jobs.

Having kids is not a job.

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

#655

Post by jumelles »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #410
goldenchrome wrote: post #6

I sympathize with the parents but this is just how life goes. If you have kids, you’re going to be more occupied than people without kids since we all have limited time on this Earth. And of course your career will be negatively impacted. There are good things about having kids and bad things. This is one of those potential bad things. If you don’t want to deal with this possibility then simply don’t have kids.

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…

It's very strange that your viewpoint doesn't seem to acknowledge even the concept of abortion. Especially if we're talking about something as awful as rape.

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

#656

Post by jefftk »

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…

> Then is it cool if I skip a few meetings to volunteer to help the homeless?

It depends where you work, but potentially? I work at one of the FAANGs and we can take up to 20hr/y of work hours for volunteering.

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

#657

Post by solidsnack9000 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #18

It's simply depressing how parent/kid-hostile society has become... I'm not saying we need explosive population growth. But I feel one of the main purposes of society is raising and protecting children. If you're a human-future-optimist, you want some kind of generation that's better than us to continue on.... I'm not saying you NEED to have kids, but I feel it's part of society's collective duty to consider the next…

It's just not the right layer -- it is not for corporations to effectively tax all the single employees at ~50% or so in order to subsidize people with kids.

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

#658

Post by jquery »

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…

This is absolutely the right attitude. I’m glad to see it at the top of the HN comments on this article.

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

#659

Post by LudwigNagasena »

nemo44x wrote: post #646
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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’…

It makes no sense to jump from this statement

>Weak life dies out and strong life continues until it too is superseded. Evolution is a thing. Look outside and you see it everywhere.

To this

>life exists to reproduce life

You make a logical leap when you change "we generate new variations of ourselves" to "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.

Exactly. So it is as meaningless and wrong as saying that the point of a falling ball is to hit the floor and bounce or that the point of the sun is to become a red giant. There is no "point", it is just a fact that will happen.

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

#660

Post by Waterluvian »

ergocoder wrote: post #651
Waterluvian wrote: post #291

One 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…

But didn't you know about this before making a decision to have kids? Almost every parent says this. This is like a person gambling all their money. Then, they complain when they lose the money.

I wouldn’t trade this for anything. It’s incredible. It’s also a lot of work.

I would encourage you consider that the truly worthwhile things in life aren’t all easy.

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