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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

#761

Post by anonymoushn »

Cd00d wrote: post #707
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…

Honestly curious, what are these "personal obligations" that are similar to educating and entertaining children during their waking hours in dual-career homes after childcare and in-person school went poof? What I'm seeing overall is a shocking lack of empathy for that situation and seeing home-parenting obligations during a pandemic as not being too dissimilar from taking time to binge Tiger King or take a road trip…

If someone's spouse is having a mental health crisis, dealing with that during work hours is not generally permitted, because a spouse is not a child.

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

#762

Post by epx »

ll931110 wrote: post #12
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…

The problem is, people without children are told (or required) to pick up the workload left behind when the coworkers having children taking (multiple) weeks off. For once or twice that might be okay, but if became a chronic problem, no wonder they are not happy.

Personally I never had this problem, but some friends complain that, in their workplaces, they are automatically supposed to be on-call or available to travel on short notice because they were single/childless.

Every place has its particular culture, I guess.

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

#763

Post by m0zg »

FYI: if you hold these opinions, it would be wise of you to not voice them in public at work. Most of your bosses have kids, and as a parent myself I struggle to think of anything that would cause more resentment on my part than idiotic bullshit like this.

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

#764

Post by asciident »

ngngngng wrote: post #128
tbatchelli wrote: post #57

How much of this issue is related to having a part of the population think that people having children is solely a private question? "You had children, why should I bear your burden!" If none of us had children there would d be no economy to support anyone's life in, let's say, 40 years from now. People making and raising new sane and healthy people should be considered a social and common good, for the sake of all,…

Yep. If you want to see something scary, go browse reddit.com/r/childfree It's an entire community of people that feel like heroes for not having children, and despise the thought of even having to come into contact with a child. It carries a similar religious fervor to veganism but it doesn't actually help anyone or anything.

I'm not advocating for the mindset there, but can't you see a justification of why that might be? I think reasonable people can debate whether or not overpopulation is the main contributor to the environmental disaster upon us that is an existential crises for humans on this planet. Under that perspective, wouldn't those who chose not to have children, while it was an unpopular option, be the heroes?

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

#765

Post by jb775 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #682
wmsiler wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I do not agree with this. Even side hustles have been adversely affected by the pandemic. Quite nearly everything in our lives has been. Parents deserve all the concessions that can be afforded, but people without kids should also be afforded the same. Having children is a personal choice in the end, it's a right, but nothing special in anyway. People should not be penalized for not making that choice, just like they…

In exchange for a strict policy that makes sure employee output is equivalent across the board, would you agree to sign away all future societal benefits paid for by the younger generations? (when you are old) If you aren't willing to do that, aren't you being a hypocrite by saying you'd rather cash in on those kids in the future?

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

#766

Post by adrr »

chii wrote: post #735
tptacek wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not reasonable to compare smokers to parents. Your irritation at smokers is reasonable, but it doesn't translate automatically to other categories of employee.

But the irritation is at the outcome, not at the action. the OP has no irritation regarding the smoker, or the parent. It's at the irritation that certain actions are treated differently to others by the employer and is indirectly costing OP.

I wonder if OP doesn’t believe in paid family leave like maternity or paternity leave. Or is irritated that new moms get to pump multiple times a day which is longer than any smoke break.

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

#767

Post by dannyw »

rauhl wrote: post #747
rhizome wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem with that is two-fold: first, the median childcare worker is less concerned with the child’s long-term success than is the median parent (that’s not a slight against childcare workers!); second, that the presence of state childcare makes it less competitive for parents to spend time taking care of their children themselves rather than to work and earn money, which means more and more folks are likely to u…

Is there any evidence that childcare is detrimental to a kid’s future?

Your argument could easily be used to argue against anything in our service based society. From schooling to dentists.

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

#768

Post by Cd00d »

anonymoushn wrote: post #761
Cd00d wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly curious, what are these "personal obligations" that are similar to educating and entertaining children during their waking hours in dual-career homes after childcare and in-person school went poof? What I'm seeing overall is a shocking lack of empathy for that situation and seeing home-parenting obligations during a pandemic as not being too dissimilar from taking time to binge Tiger King or take a road trip…

If someone's spouse is having a mental health crisis, dealing with that during work hours is not generally permitted, because a spouse is not a child.

I'll admit that I'm not at all familiar with legal obligations to medical conditions for employers.

However, anyone dealing with a "crisis", and also more explicitly a "mental health crisis", should not be punished in their job, esp during everyone-remote-pandemic-time (though overall, but I have had pretty cushy jobs since joining industry).

Maybe you have a specific example where the "adult, not child" thing mattered in a crisis, but that would make me very disappointed with my company, with HR, and compel me to start doing my best to look elsewhere for more empathic colleagues.

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

#769

Post by jen20 »

mattlondon wrote: post #257
falcolas wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extended families have been isolating together since the beginning; Never were families discourages from isolating together. Visiting with friends (groups under 10 people) while following safe interaction guidelines was also not discouraged. EDIT: This is from the point of view of someone in the US; international laws vary as pointed out by replies.

> Never were families discourages from isolating together. False - at least in the UK different households were not permitted to mix. So if grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins/etc lived in a different residence, well that is different households and no mixing was allowed. There goes a huge source of a lot of people's adhoc/emergency childcare options. No mixing of groups of any size was allowed either. There was some r…

There was apparently an exception for mobile optician substitutes, however!

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

#770

Post by anonymoushn »

Cd00d wrote: post #768
anonymoushn wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone's spouse is having a mental health crisis, dealing with that during work hours is not generally permitted, because a spouse is not a child.

I'll admit that I'm not at all familiar with legal obligations to medical conditions for employers. However, anyone dealing with a "crisis", and also more explicitly a "mental health crisis", should not be punished in their job, esp during everyone-remote-pandemic-time (though overall, but I have had pretty cushy jobs since joining industry). Maybe you have a specific example where the "adult, not child" thing matter…

I don't particularly want to post about my employer today.
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