Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19 • Hacker News Board

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

#791

Post by PunchTornado » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

robbiemitchell wrote: post #748

aaomidi wrote: post #152

What I find short sighted about these policies are they don't realize that people without children can also feel stressed and need more time off. e.g. if you're single during this time, you are completely isolated from the world, and your colleagues. This can be extremely difficult mentally and on an individual level can be much harder than just someone with a kid. These policies shouldn't be "oh if you have kids you…

Taking care of a child isn't time off, it's work. And it's not even time away from work because you're still getting pinged on Slack, still expected to review Google docs or leave people blocked, still missing meetings or dialing in (poorly) because they can't be rescheduled, and generally feeling guilty that you can't get enough done. All while trying to handle a baby, or monitor a first grader attending live school…

as a single I'd love to get a kid and take care of it during the pandemic. will feel much less lonely.

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

#792

Post by ornornor » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

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…

> If anything, I'm thankful for all those people with kids who will (a) take care of the continuation of the human race, and more selfishly (b) support our society and economy when I am too old to do so.

This is debatable. I’m of the opinion that there are too many humans on the planet, and that having children is a very resource intensive and polluting choice. I don’t think people who are having children as altruistic heroes but rather the opposite: selfish individuals.

If we take your argument to the absurd about cancer patients, I can say that encouraging coworkers to get children by giving more benefits is akin to give extra benefits to people who drive single occupancy SUVs to work while giving nothing to people who take mass transit, walk or bike.

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

#793

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

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’…

You have taken the rules of a biological system and extrapolated them as a moral framework, placing a value judgement on it.

It is like saying the sky is blue, therefore the point of the sky existing is to be blue, or all physical interactions generate entropy, so the point of the universe is to create entropy.

Yes, life often replicates itself, but that is not why it exists. Any possible reason for existence is a story assigned by a conscious observer. Humans are conscious and decide their own purposes.

Lifeforms can have their own purposes, which may or may not involve reproduction. Yes, those that don't reproduce go extinct, but that doesn't mean their purpose is not fulfilled. There is no objective value in evolutionary fitness or replication.

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

#794

Post by ornornor » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:37 AM UTC

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…

> This argument is like saying that a storm knocked down your neighbor's house, but not yours.

It’s not the same though. Having a so called “act of god” result in property damage is just chance. Having children (in most cases) isn’t chance. It’s a conscious decision.

Even though no one could guess the pandemic would happen, I’d hope people getting children are conscious that they’re getting into a 18–20 years commitment to support them at the expense of their finances and leisure time (to some extent)

I think the smoking analogy applies well, it’s also a choice and not due to chance.

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

#795

Post by zxcvbn4038 » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

This is a real phenomenon. When my son was first born I blew through about five jobs in five years because I had to leave at 4:45pm - 5:15pm to pick him up from daycare or school. Before that I tended to remain in the same position for 5-6 years. Then I got into a position where most of my peers and superiors had kids, "got it" and I've been in that position for close to five years now.

Especially annoying when your peers are coming in drunk or stoned, passed out at their desks half the time, and you are the one getting grief because you have a parent/teacher conference to attend. If my peers wanted to WFH because they were hung over, mo problem. If I needed to WFH because I was feeling ill, no problem. If I needed to WFH to watch my child I would have to do video calls with my boss every two hours to show what I had done. Eventually I wised up and just said I was sick instead of mentioning my son.

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

#796

Post by honkycat » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

Just to get my take out in the open: I do not have kids yet. People are going to have kids and I like kids. Raging against that is like whipping the ocean. Of course we should support families as much as we can as a society, they are our future. ( And maybe we should cut workers some slack across the board...)

However, I feel like people are creating this narrative where society is persecuting them for having children, and they feel judged and persecuted.

Most people have children. Where is this boogeyman coming from? I agree that it is hard to have children in this political and economic climate.

But to assert "People don't get how hard it is to have kids!" BULLSHIT! Most people fucking HAVE kids! And even people who do not have kids understand how hard it is!

This persecution complex natalists have is completely unfounded. Society is VERY positive of having children. Now, support from the government/place of work is another story. But to suggest that society is "hostile" to people with children is absurd.

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

#797

Post by ornornor » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

jb775 wrote: post #765

ramraj07 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This will likely end up happening anyway.

The amount of children we’d need to become next generation workers and support our generation are exponential and cannot be sustained. I suspect that as for the last decade or two, old age benefits will keep shrinking and shrinking anyway because there is no way we can keep having, feeding, and sustaining the exponential numbers required.

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

#798

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#799

Post by semicolonandson » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #360

codemac wrote: post #5

Personally, I struggle with these feelings as well. It seems nuts that someone working 50%+ less than someone else is going to keep all the same equity, vacation, and salary. Then again it seems nuts that they don't. All employees who had children or family members to care for before or after COVID get none of the same support. I don't think backpay is coming for those who were forced to take leave or even quit their…

Don't forget that parents tend to have a higher life expectancy than people without children: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5484032/

This study is for parents born in the 1910s to 1920s. The reasons for being childless then are vastly different to today, so I doubt the results carry.

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

#800

Post by Smaug123 » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

ironman1478 wrote: post #776

ramraj07 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They are not being "rewarded." They need leniency to deal with the raw hand they've been dealt. Its called empathy. Companies are choosing to help their employees out in a rough spot and that's the correct thing to do. My mother was sick a few years ago and I "worked" remotely for 1-2 months to take care of her. The company could have easily said "nah." I am eternally grateful that the company did that and I stayed f…

I think you haven't disagreed? The point of the parent comments in this thread is that "parents are not the only people for whom companies should have empathy", and you've replied "companies are having empathy for parents, which is great".