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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

#911

Post by renewiltord »

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…

Man you people are sooo dramatic. Everyone deals with stuff, dude. It's just what you do.

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

#912

Post by notacoward »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #677
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...".

How is a demand that is easier for the childless to meet, even if only slightly, not a policy that favors the childless? That's not sleight of hand. It's just English.

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

#913

Post by astura »

CydeWeys wrote: post #213
ng12 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've seen is the complaints are largely coming from couples that want to raise kids while both parents work full time jobs. Asking for fewer hours so you can continue that lifestyle is asking your employer and fellow employees to subsidize your second income, not your ability to have and raise children. My coworkers with SAH spouses aren't feeling the burn anywhere near as badly -- it's just an extended summer f…

In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income. So you can't have the expectation that one of the parents give up a large chunk of their salary just to have kids. If you do structure society in this way then you get rapidly declining birth rates and very bad long-term population demographic pr…

>In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income.

What an absurd claim, only 21.1% of (Americans) two parent households with children under six have both parents working full time.

https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/indicators-child-family-and-comm...

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

#914

Post by mikece »

rhizome wrote: post #459
rootusrootus wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the obvious downsides for a moment, I'd happily trade places with one of my childless coworkers right about now. This morning I went up and down the stairs at least ten times while trying to get my 7- and 9-year old kids successfully established in their first remote learning session, simultaneously participating in two consecutive Zoom meetings with coworkers, and figuring out how to solve a nagging issue i…

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…

Why should it be someone else's responsibility to care for your child during working hours? I have nine children, my wife both stays home with them AND home-schools them (COVID didn't affect our schooling situation), and I'm able to work from home without it being an issue to affect productivity. This is possible because I didn't start having children until I was married and I married someone not only based on shared beliefs but that we both wanted a large family who would be educated at home.

It's not magic, luck, or privilege: it's called planning ahead.

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

#915

Post by nicbou »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #862
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…

While I think your argument is specious at best, your point is salient. I‘m a parent and have several co workers who do not have children, and I push them —- have to push them —- to take time off. I think there’s a lot going on here: * parents need more time to care for their kids * parents feel guilty for the time off they’re taking * non parent workers might feel some resentment, but probably not overtly * non pare…

I wrote the parent comment to flesh out my own thoughts. As I wrote it, I kept wanting to write what you put in the last paragraph.

In reality, none of us work 8 hours a day, and if someone slacks off, we'll push the deadline and go home.

In real reality, I'm self-employed and none of this matters. I just found that it was something interesting to discuss.

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

#916

Post by avh02 »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #391
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move to an area where you can afford a house on one income or two half incomes and stop working so much. If you want to raise a family, raise one. That's your choice. If you want other people to subsidize your productivity and/or income so you can live beyond your means in an area where you can't afford to raise a family, then that's a big ask.

This is a bad take. COVID is an exceptional and temporary situation. Everyone has highs and lows (great successes, terrible personal problems/tragedies/etc...) throughout their careers. The only difference between this circumstance and any other is that it's impacting many people at once. If, for example, you got COVID and were put on a ventilator for a month, how would you react to finding out that you had lost your…

I'm just sad you think there's decency in being rehired in a situation like that, you shouldn't even be fired to start with!

Times like this I'm glad I didn't pick the US as a place to live.

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

#917

Post by zo1 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #408
ShroudedNight wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While giving every employee personal time may well be the right answer, I also believe that we should acknowledge that, at least up until recently, there was an on-going social contract that society had that provided parents with additional time as an on-going investment into the health of our social fabric, and that, in a sense, we have already benefited (at least in aggregate) from the dividend payed by the previou…

I think most societies around the world didn't and don't provide parents with any additional time. It just so happened the that most people had children and elders/women could raise them while the men kept working. Not to say that women didn't work, but whatever they did allowed them to keep an eye on kids, or relatives/neighbors did. Also, increasing the population is one of the most damaging things to the environme…

> "Also, increasing the population is one of the most damaging things to the environment, so there's an argument that not having kids is paying it forward to future generations also. "

No, that's paying it forward for the children of those that choose not to think as conscientiously as yourself on the matter of taking care of the environment. That's not the world I want to live in.

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

#918

Post by zo1 »

dheera wrote: post #491
wonderwonder wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would posit that no one should be working until 11 and everyone should be comfortable saying its 6pm, I'm going home. It's not the parents fault there is resentment its everyone else's for allowing themselves to be abused into working until 11. We turn on each other when we should really be focused on those making us work the late hours.

Yep, this is exactly what I proposed in the first line of my comment :-/ Yet HN people are downvoting me to oblivion, yet again, for proposing a reasonable solution: "legally-protected personal time". I guess they all enjoy working till 11pm.

Sounds like you're saying that people need to use their "personal time" in order to have and care for their children? I know you want to generalize and just give everyone personal time, but the net effect is that it would appear selfish as those that stand to benefit the most from such a restructuring would be the childless. It's not the equitable/fair middle-ground that you're proposing it to be in this case at all, hence why you're being downvoted.

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

#919

Post by woadwarrior01 »

This reminds me of an episode from my own life. After I'd left FB, I interviewed at a smaller SV social media company for a remote SWE role. The technical interviews were easy enough, during the final interview with the director of the department, he asked me point blank: "Do you have any children?". I found that question to be very jarring because my spouse was 2 months pregnant with our first child at the time. After pausing to weigh my options a bit, I replied with a curt "no". The first thought that came across my mind was, how was even legal to ask questions like that at a job interview? But then I remembered that he was sitting in California and I was in Ireland. In all likelihood there aren't any international laws preventing it.

To conclude the story, I got an offer that I accepted. Told the director during our first 1:1 that I was expecting a child. At both subsequent interaction I had with that person started with an anti-natalist rant about how children slow down one's career. I left the company in 3 months. The anti-natalism was one of the many reasons to do so.

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

#920

Post by cascom »

marbletiles wrote: post #65
ll931110 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, they should be unhappy about that: at their managers. Not at their colleagues attempting to care for children during a pandemic. I've heard a related thing about US workers resenting colleagues for taking paid time off for similar reasons, and it's just as weird to my European eyes. The difference a decent labour movement (or the legacy of one) can make to industrial relations is stark

I’ve seen this play out with colleagues/listened to the griping - where the resentment comes in (in addition to the items already discussed) some of the self righteousness of the people with kids vs. non-kids “I really can’t be doing this weekly midnight call with Asia...I have kids” as if having kids was akin to solving world hunger and people without kids couldn’t possibly be doing something meaningful with their time
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