Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#21

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:51 PM UTC

ejcx wrote: post #3

That seems great. Is there any protection from abuse? It seems that one could say "See you next year" with this and get a year-long vacation. Is that accurate. Would that actually work? Is there any contract saying you won't take your year off and quit on your last day? OR is this all hinging on you getting a continued workload complete, and not just a year vacation.

In practice it's unlikely to be a problem. Step 1 is that you just avoid hiring people who aren't intrinsically motivated anyway. The rest pretty much takes care of itself.

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#22

Post by Osmium » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:53 PM UTC

caoilte wrote: post #10

Unlimited leave policies encourage employees to self-police and conform to peer pressure. At a place like Netflix I can imagine the result being that people end up taking less than the industry average. A better gimmick would be if Netflix picked one of the Nordics and announced that they were going to adopt all of the social policies provided by that country's government.

> Unlimited leave policies encourage employees to self-police and conform to peer pressure.

I'm sympathetic to your concerns, but this is still a good thing and–importantly–a very good step in the right direction.

Playing devil's advocate a little, but this "peer pressure" idea seems to come with paid vacation too. I think, to an extent, it's peoples own responsibility to resist this peer pressure, rather than the company's. I would always take paid vacation on principle, for example. If you don't want me to take it, don't offer it to me–and if you don't offer it to me, I'll take a job somewhere else, thank you. I'm quite happy for the quality of my work to be judged on its own merits. Which is not to say it's easy to do if you're working at a company with an entrenched culture of abusive expectations. But we only become complicit in it if we give into peer pressure rather than asserting our rights, no?

That said, I say this from the privileged position of living in a country where taking paid vacation is expected, so perhaps it's easy for me to say...

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#23

Post by rquantz » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:54 PM UTC

ejcx wrote: post #3

That seems great. Is there any protection from abuse? It seems that one could say "See you next year" with this and get a year-long vacation. Is that accurate. Would that actually work? Is there any contract saying you won't take your year off and quit on your last day? OR is this all hinging on you getting a continued workload complete, and not just a year vacation.

A year of maternity or paternity leave would be pretty reasonable, I think. Taking the full year would not be abuse, it would be following the letter of the policy.

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#24

Post by rezistik » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:56 PM UTC

ghughes wrote: post #16

I'm highly suspicious of "unlimited" vacation or leave policies because the line between reasonable and not is still there, it's just way less visible and ultimately arbitrary, depending on your management chain and workload. I can't wait for this fad to die. Let's just have generous, well-defined leave policies that don't put the onus on the employee to figure out what is OK and what isn't. "Experience shows people…

I think unlimited with a minimum is really the solution.

Without a minimum people are reluctant to take time off from what I've seen and read.

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#25

Post by Osmium » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:57 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #17

Osmium wrote: post #4

Congratulations Netflix. I'm personally a big believer that equal maternity and paternity leave is crucial for future equality in the workforce, and Netflix have just set a great example to the rest of the industry. And a full year is excellent too. Hopefully other employers will take notice, or even better it becomes a legal requirement. Why it isn't already in some countries[1] continues to mystify–to my mind, a bu…

Saying "the US" is usually not helpful here, since many of these issues are simply not legislated at the national/federal level. Some states do have paid leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_leave_in_the_United_...

It's very encouraging to see some states have it, but an awful lot of that map is blank... I did see a news article recently about the Navy being quite progressive in this regard though (recently tripling its maternity leave time), which is also encouraging.

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#26

Post by rayiner » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:57 PM UTC

ejcx wrote: post #3

That seems great. Is there any protection from abuse? It seems that one could say "See you next year" with this and get a year-long vacation. Is that accurate. Would that actually work? Is there any contract saying you won't take your year off and quit on your last day? OR is this all hinging on you getting a continued workload complete, and not just a year vacation.

> It seems that one could say "See you next year" with this and get a year-long vacation.

LOL. Going to work is a vacation compared to taking care of an infant.

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#27

Post by rosser » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:58 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #17

Osmium wrote: post #4

Congratulations Netflix. I'm personally a big believer that equal maternity and paternity leave is crucial for future equality in the workforce, and Netflix have just set a great example to the rest of the industry. And a full year is excellent too. Hopefully other employers will take notice, or even better it becomes a legal requirement. Why it isn't already in some countries[1] continues to mystify–to my mind, a bu…

Saying "the US" is usually not helpful here, since many of these issues are simply not legislated at the national/federal level. Some states do have paid leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_leave_in_the_United_...

GP is talking about parity between maternity and paternity leave. Citing statistics about the existence (or, as is demonstrably more common, non-existence) of maternity leave is pretty orthogonal to that.

Unless you're claiming that the fact that most states don't offer any paid maternity leave (and almost certainly no paid paternity leave, either) counts as the kind of parity the GP was arguing for, I guess.

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#28

Post by rmordoff » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 10:58 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #19

hughes wrote: post #5

I'm glad to see paternity leave included and given equal weight to maternity. So many employers don't offer this important benefit.

> I'm glad to see paternity leave included and given equal weight to maternity. So many employers don't offer this important benefit. Really? What employer doesn't offer family leave on equal terms? Certainly, this used to be quite common, but every place I've seen for many years has explicitly been equal.

The link references an article about yahoo that states yahoo and google give more time off for maternity leave (the article is from 2013 so it may have changed since then).

"Yahoo will give mothers after the birth of a child from 8 weeks to 16 weeks. Fathers of newborns will get 8 weeks paid leave. Google gives mothers five months off and fathers seven weeks off." http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-doubles-the-len...

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#29

Post by kelukelugames » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 11:00 PM UTC

caoilte wrote: post #10

Unlimited leave policies encourage employees to self-police and conform to peer pressure. At a place like Netflix I can imagine the result being that people end up taking less than the industry average. A better gimmick would be if Netflix picked one of the Nordics and announced that they were going to adopt all of the social policies provided by that country's government.

I agree. This is Netflix we are talking about.

Re: Netflix Announces Its New ‘Unlimited’ Maternity and Paternity Leave Program

#30

Post by mullen » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 11:00 PM UTC

This is dumb. As others have pointed out, all it does is use peer pressure to decide what the "proper amount" of Paternity Leave is. Netflix is probably such a pressure cooker that when people need to and want to take Paternity Leave, they won't take it for fear of upsetting the group and losing their jobs. Managers will abuse it just to keep productivity up.

Want to be a progressive company? Clearly define how long Paternity Leave is, make it generous, tell employees to take it and order managers not to harass employees that do. Don't do nebulous HR policies that just end up confusing people. Make it so that people can take a couple of 2 week vacations a year without worrying about their jobs, that would help too.