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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

#671

Post by gones00n »

CydeWeys wrote: post #225
gones00n wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Benefit society as a whole" sounds good in theory but rarely works in practice because people are inherently self-interested. A simple counterargument is that someone's kids may not turn out at all to be productive members of society. Fundamentally corporations are different to the government. So whereas government can tax and progressively tax to soften wealth inequalities, corporations ultimately need to be profit…

The benefit to society as a whole is that human society literally continues to exist. If no one has children then society ceases to exist because there isn't a next generation. It's hard to think of anything that benefits society more than having children to comprise the next generation of society. And you know what's really bad for corporate profitability? Not having any workers in a few decades because conditions w…

I'm not advocating some "Children of Men" fictional dystopia. There will always be kids, maybe just not the white collar tech worker too worried about career progression. For example, outside of my own kids, I'm agnostic on my coworker's kid or some stranger in Africa's.

Overpopulation is also a problem. As long as humans can migrate, I'm not convinced of some lasting labor shortage hypothesis.

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

#672

Post by Waterluvian »

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…

“And here I am using my own lungs like a sucker”

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

#673

Post by Aloha »

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 always volunteered to work more, I travel more than my married peers, I'm willing to give up some holidays and be more flexible, with the caveat that I get whatever time off I need without reservation - its a social contract, and I believe strongly that it takes a village to raise a child.

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

#674

Post by solidsnack9000 »

I am surprised and perhaps impressed by the tremendous number of commenters dropping by to post that children are beneficial, we should all be working together to help parents, the purpose of society is to raise children...while omitting to mention that having children is also incredibly rewarding and represents evolutionary success of the highest order. No one would say, aerospace is beneficial, so we should give all the employees with private planes extra time off to pursue their avocation. Some of those planes are going to participate in search and rescue some day. People would recognize that this is robbing the poor to feed the rich and that is exactly what taking from single people -- overwhelmingly people who are less able, socially or financially, to have children -- represents. The many people who had children while expecting to rely on society for the whole ~20 years of it -- who had not backup plan involving extended family and didn't consider that a problem -- weren't thinking straight and made a mistake. It's amazing that so many people made imprudent choices and imprudency is not something we can ask our coworkers to cover for.

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

#676

Post by gones00n »

m0zg wrote: post #261
gones00n wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Benefit society as a whole" sounds good in theory but rarely works in practice because people are inherently self-interested. A simple counterargument is that someone's kids may not turn out at all to be productive members of society. Fundamentally corporations are different to the government. So whereas government can tax and progressively tax to soften wealth inequalities, corporations ultimately need to be profit…

> "Benefit society as a whole" sounds good in theory but rarely works in practice because people are inherently self-interested This is a very immature POV, IMO. Self interest can, and arguably _should_, be aligned with the benefit to society. That is, in fact, the only way to get _reliable_ benefit to society in the first place. Nobody gets anywhere by trying to piss up a rope. In any situation, you get the behavior…

My original response was to highlight that perhaps we shouldn't be elevating child-raising as a completely altruistic, society-benefiting endeavor. We're talking about a few tech companies, which is not representative of the U.S. (nevermind human civilization).

"Amortized value to society" seems a very one-sided portrayal. Why should I earn less than someone who has kids, when skill/experience/contribution are equal?

Being a parent is a personal choice in today's day and age, especially for highly-paid tech employees. Let's not paint it as some altruistic gift to mankind.

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

#677

Post by solidsnack9000 »

notacoward wrote: post #604

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 deman…

"Long working hours and oncall requirements..." are not benefits and they are only increasing now for childless people, while the parents get multiple weeks of free vacation.

You've engaged in a slight of hand here by describing the demands of a job that are somewhat easier for the childless to meet, and then turning around and treating these demands like they're "...policies that favor the childless...".

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

#678

Post by postalrat »

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’…

So how far do you take this. Is it okay for a father to kill children who aren't to increase the odds his own children succeed?

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

#679

Post by solidsnack9000 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #98

The anti-natalism in tech is just totally unsustainable. What will it become, a race to hire the last remaining infertile young people? Who will provide new humans to replace them - other families that aren't in tech? Parents have a strong influence on the careers of their children - we expect to completely remove that influence, since we will have no parents in tech - and expect their children to discover tech caree…

It's really of no consequence...there are just not that many people who work in tech. If none of them had children, it wouldn't matter.
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