Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 1001 posts

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

#801

Post by edfletcher_t137 »

loosescrews wrote: post #122
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…

At least in the US, the pandemic has changed everyone's life created stress for everyone. These policies seem to indicate that non-parents don't have an additional burden worth recognizing. It is easy to see it this way too as most of the managers and executives at big tech companies are parents. For young non-parent tech workers, this may be the first time that they have to figure out how to feed themselves during t…

> At least in the US, the pandemic has changed everyone's life created stress for everyone. These policies seem to indicate that non-parents don't have an additional burden worth recognizing.

This is spot on. The article uses multiple quotes from business leaders that, paraphrased, say "everyone has challenges" yet not one mention of any policies to help non-parents who may also be struggling with mental health issues or otherwise.

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

#802

Post by rexpop »

honkycat wrote: post #796

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 childre…

> Most people have children.

I can't find any source for this claim.

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

#803

Post by OakNinja »

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…

In Sweden, preschool/childcare is a part of the school system, with it’s own education plan. My kids have loved going to their respective preschools, and they get to meet other kids and learn new things in a safe environment. Even though I love to hang out with my kids, I would never consider it better for them to stay at home with me. Btw, I have four kids, 2-12 years old, so I’ve seen quite a few preschools now and they have all been amazing.

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

#804

Post by wheels »

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…

While parents care more about outcomes, they may not be making ideal choices to support those outcomes.

When I have my kids full-time, time with them is a balancing act between being actively engaged and trying to enrich their lives and just trying to keep them alive while I knock out other stuff that has to be done. My youngest is still a toddler, and much of his experience of being at home is me chasing him around the apartment taking (almost) everything away from him. He loves going to day care where he's in an environment that's designed around him and where he's allowed to mess with just about anything he wants to. I'm skeptical that I'm worse in that regard than a "median" parent.

In practice, very few stay-at-home parents dedicate all of their children's waking hours to their kids.

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

#805

Post by baddox »

jdm2212 wrote: post #777
baddox wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes it sound like raising children isn't already an extremely strong biological urge and something that tends to provide immense satisfaction to parents. If parents didn't receive special benefits at work to help them raise children, or if all adults were given comparable benefits regardless of whether they have children, I don't think that would shatter the incentive structure and result in having too few hum…

Among most groups in America, the fertility rate is well below replacement -- same ballpark as Japan, IIRC. The only reason our population grows is immigration: immigrants themselves, and they have more kids than native-born Americans. So the biological urge apparently isn't doing the trick.

I’m not convinced that the fertility rate in any one country is particularly troublesome, especially when global population is increasing, that country is populous and wealthy, and that country seems to have little trouble growing its population in ways other than local reproduction. This doesn’t seem a problem at all, assuming we’re not talking about other concerns like maintaining certain demographics in the USA (a concern which I absolutely do not share).

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

#806

Post by will4274 »

jdm2212 wrote: post #274
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…

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…

> today's kids

We have too many of them. It's not polite to say, but ultimately many of the problems faced by the human race (like global warming) are a result of over-population. We don't want the replacement rate to drop too low, because it fucks up cross generational dynamics (e.g. social security), but we really would be better off if we had like 5% less kids over the next 20 years.

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

#807

Post by [deleted] »

rexpop wrote: post #802
honkycat wrote: post #796

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 childre…

> Most people have children. I can't find any source for this claim.

[deleted]

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

#808

Post by destructured »

The various extra entitlements parents get in terms of paid leave, long-term leave with a guaranteed job on the other side, and so on, are a complete joke. I know my opinions won't be popular on this left-wing website, but there won't be any rational reply to what I say.

The fact is that it is a benefit given to a specific group of employees and not others. What are the reasons? Well, there are none. In my country, it is required by law to have these benefits. The rationale they gave was "it is an essential role, we need to increase the birth rate, etc". After decades of this policy, there was no increase in the birth rate. The population had to grow via immigration, not births from residents. As for an "essential role", the people having babies don't think they are doing the world a favour, they are doing it for themselves. That is beside the point though.

The reality is that I had to sit at my desk and watch as every parent in the company took months of paid leave off that I never got, based on a rationale that is proven to be incorrect. They often had more than one baby, so they took these benefits multiple times.

The reality is that it was introduced to buy votes, and now they won't take it away. That is how it is in my country. It makes no sense to give money and time off to my boss, who makes more than me, and not me because I am not in any position to have kids. This is absurd.

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

#809

Post by MaximumYComb »

dheera wrote: post #298
kevstev wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mid 30s childless man I completely agree. We essentially sent people home on a Friday, told them to figure out a work from home situation, and then they were told welp your kids aren't going to school either, and whatever childcare you had lined up has now vanished too- and this is all happening in the course of a few days at most. So now you have kids to worry about all day, home schooling to oversee, focusing…

IMO the real broken part of this system is that people are not getting legally-protected personal time. A big part of the resentment is that a person who chose to have children ends up being able to be excused from work to take care of children, while a person who has no children is not as easily excused to do what they want to do, because it is deemed low priority compared to children. We need to be prioritizing peo…

Do you make it known that employers that you cannot work past 6pm since you need to go read books/hike/whatever? I literally will not accept a job where I can be expected to work nights while I have small children and any employer of mine knows this when hiring me.

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

#810

Post by sellyme »

ironman1478 wrote: post #786
Aunche wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strikes me as extremely selfish, immature and displaying a total lack of empathy Empathy needs to go both ways. Childless employees tend to be younger and less experienced, so they often are paid less than those with kids. If you're a junior who needs to work 80 hour weeks to pick up the slack from seniors with kids, but you're also paid less, it's understandable that you would be angry.

No single employee at a company is productive enough that them leaving literally doubles a person's workload, especially when most people aren't actually productive for an entire day and there is a lot of evidence that 4 day work weeks are just as productive. If this environment did exist, the employee should quit unless they are making A LOT of money.

> the employee should quit

Because the job market is looking so fantastic right now?

Yes, you're describing a hostile workplace, but right now is the worst time in over a decade to be giving up a reliable income.

Post reply on HN