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

Restarting my career after motherhood

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 273 posts

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#131

Post by jseban »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121
jseban wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh? It has to work out that or the human race dies out. I guess you could have a few couples who have a lot of kids instead, but developed societies are really adverse to that. Obviously the human race somehow made it until we created developed societies. I think you are confusing survival of the human race with survival of our current pension system. Who knows if it's really better or worse to suddenly allow ever…

It’s natural only in the sense of a selection bias: we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t so. Men aren’t the limiting resource here, but if women start having less than 2.1 kids on average, we eventually just disappear. This is just math, not related to economics, morality, or ideology.

> Men aren’t the limiting resource here

Yeah that's the point, so there really is no need for every man to have children, should it be the norm I'm wondering. Can we get rid of this natural selection, and should we? I don't know. Why is it so self-evident that every person should have children? Clearly it's not natural. It's just another artificial "equality" of a social welfare state.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#132

Post by FastEatSlow »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #118
xyzzyz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that policy turned out to be a huge mistake that the Chinese government is now struggling to reverse.

I appreciate having fewer humans to compete against for resources, including carbon emissions.

The process of shrinking to fewer humans is painful however: less people working, more people old and unable to work.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#133

Post by kmonsen »

in_cahoots wrote: post #50
pizza234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you do it right (imho, if you even just try to do it right), it's the biggest accomplishment one can do. Family ambitions and personal ambitions are two separate things (although for some people, typically women, they do match). Personally speaking, I do have parental and professional goals, and I don't think of any of the two as neither superior nor compensating respect to the other. > they spent 5~6 years off…

It doesn’t need to be like this, but that’s what her family chose. One model isn’t superior over the other. It would be great if tech companies supported both family styles, just like they tout their other family-friendly benefits.

Sure they can choose that but it comes with tradeoffs. It seems in hindsight those tradeoffs were a little bit less appealing.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#134

Post by fartcannon »

gumby wrote: post #71

I had a similar issue: I unexpectedly became a single father and ended up just doing that full time for seven years (well I did work for about 15 months in the middle but had to give that up). I understand what she’s talking about. There were many differences for me though. For one I had a rich network (she doesn’t mention this) so when, a couple of years ago, my gf urged me to get a job I ended up with a lot of recr…

As a current full time dad, I get the total opposite feeling. My wife's employer bends over backwards to accommodate her financially and with various options to continue her work how and if she pleases with seemingly no end to their support while I was pushed to return to work at 6 weeks. When I left to become full time (my wife returned to her job with a promotion and raise), it wasn't because I wanted to but because my employer doesn't recognize men as parents. So my career stopped in its tracks. Now, years later, applying for the same job as before, even with my old employer, there's no acknowledgement of my effort, no raises, no promotions, and least of all no compassion for my desire to work part time, remotely for the flexibility I need to handle a kid. Worse, they think I took a 'break'.

I don't know where you're meeting these accommodating people, I just get stared at like I'm doing something wrong when I travel with my child. God forbid I want to use the change table in the woman's washroom because there's none in the men's. I just change my kid on the grass outside, trying to ignore the looks and comments like, "Moms day off?"

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#135

Post by 121789 »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #114
pizza234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you do it right (imho, if you even just try to do it right), it's the biggest accomplishment one can do. Family ambitions and personal ambitions are two separate things (although for some people, typically women, they do match). Personally speaking, I do have parental and professional goals, and I don't think of any of the two as neither superior nor compensating respect to the other. > they spent 5~6 years off…

> Based on the description of the article, the wife and the husband deliberately chose extreme positions - the wife as fully involved stay at home mother, and the father as all-time worker: Maybe you didn't mean it like this... but I find the use of the word "extreme" here in this context somewhat discomforting. Perhaps I'm an old-fashioned 35-year old, but her reasons for wanting to stay home don't come off as extre…

I understood it as both of them taking the far ends of the spectrum of work/parenting balance (one fully parenting, one fully working) rather than a "less extreme" scenario where both take more balanced roles in working/parenting. I didn't see it as an evaluation of the choice in lifestyle.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#136

Post by germinalphrase »

dbcurtis wrote: post #49
a-dub wrote: post #7

some large companies, (i've seen ads from facebook, although i'm sure there are others), have "returnship" programs for people in this exact situation. edit: see https://www.springboard.com/blog/career-advice/amazon-facebo...

Add Zoox to the list of companies with “returnship” programs.

“Hubspot, Intuit, PayPal, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft” are called out in the article.

If anyone is aware of additional companies, mind adding them to the thread?

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#137

Post by jseban »

jjeaff wrote: post #105
spencerchubb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 1 year of compensation for 18+ years of part-time labor, in countries with the most parental leave

Raising kids is full time labor considering that even when you are off, you are on call.

The issue that I'm having with this, is that child care is still relatively unqualified work, so how can it ever be highly compensated?

Parents who are highly educated doctors, pilots etc argue that they should be able to stay at home for 1-2 years with almost full salary, which the tax payers should subsidise, and at the same time they also pay an uneducated 16 year old 10 bucks an hour to babysit when they go to the movies?

And you have 1 educated child care professional easily caring for 10 small children, and making a very modest salary.

It doesn't really add up.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#138

Post by trashface »

sweettea wrote: post #47

I'm proud that my employer has a specific program to help folks who have taken a break in their careers rejoin the workforce. While we are currently mostly only hiring production engineers, the author and others in this situation should check out Meta's return-to-work program: https://www.metacareers.com/facebook-life/return-to-work/

Interesting, I didn't know Meta was doing that, thanks for linking it. I might try that in a few months. I'm not ready to return to work yet - I'm not a parent but out of work for other reasons.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#139

Post by el_jay »

cowpig wrote: post #33
knorker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parenthood is by far the most subsidized personal choice in the universe. Let's not pretend it's not. Some countries give more than a year paid parental leave, in what can only be described as vote purchasing. Parenthood is compensated.

What a strange perspective to take. A "subsidized personal choice," as if there is some higher economic power that we are in service of, and those who decide to dedicate a third of our adult existence to the next generation are making some luxurious lifestyle choice.

I suppose if we followed OP’s logic to its conclusion, we’d find that when it comes to parenthood: you must be this net worthy to ride.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#140

Post by jseban »

gus_massa wrote: post #125
jseban wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Some women like working. In particular, my wife like working and having her personal projects. I like to spends part of my time with my children. So we both work and we both take care of the children. We are lucky to have jobs that allow this.

Sure it's going to work out for some people, but I still think the obvious downside of increased working hours in total is very significant and almost never mentioned. If you raise the working day from 8 to 12 hours, just because you find some guy who likes it, maybe doesn't mean it should be accepted as a perfect idea with no downside.
Post reply on HN