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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

#291

Post by Waterluvian »

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 and housecleaning and other chores.

Grocery shopping was my break today. Home Depot was my treat today.

I’m not on vacation. Please help me keep my marbles. Give me a break.

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

#292

Post by RHSeeger »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #119
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…

With this I think there is a unique take: typically those who feel comfortable having children are better off. Those who are better off get rewarded for having children. So it can be a "rich get richer" problem. If you are currently childless you might end up subsidizing your coworker's choice to have children to your detriment.

And in non-pandemic times, they're subsidizing the continuation of society for the childless, to their own detriment (less free time, less self time, less money, less social life, less sleep; the list goes on and on and on).

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

#293

Post by rblatz »

treis wrote: post #89
rblatz wrote: post #2

A lot of this feels like people looking into their neighbor's bowl to see if they are getting more than them. Love him or hate him Louis C.K. has a great quote here “The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.” Times are tough, don't blame the parents for what they have to do, blame your management if…

>“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.” So then pay me 40% more and tell the parents not to look at my bowl. That's hypothetical because I have a small kid myself. But that quote is sucker talk. Demand that you are compensated for the value you provide because none of these mega corps give a shi…

There is a lot of cognitive dissonance in this post. This whole conversation is about mega corps giving a shit, and accommodating people who are having increased difficulty during COVID. You can't get mad that they are caring, and then in the same breath say they don't care.

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

#294

Post by nickff »

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…

Except that the children disproportionately benefit the parents (unlike jury duty or military service). This is a heads-parents-win, tails-childless-lose scenario.

Your comment would be completely correct if the children ceased all communications and transactions with the parent upon entry into the labor force; but that's not what happens.

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

#295

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

QuercusMax wrote: post #127
treeman79 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have small elementary age kids. It’s rough. 8-10 interruptions the first couple hours of work. Then meltdown over being hungry. Then afternoon interruptions because they are bored. Lots of crappy reasons, but also because they want me to spend time with them. Also dealing with my own chronic illness. I was managing to cope/hide before Covid. Between it all is a sense of guilt of not getting enough done for work and n…

It's not much better with older kids either; I have 3 teens with mental health issues (depression/anxiety/migraines/ADHD) which have gotten worse with 6 months sheltering-in-place.

{{QuercusMax}}

Know your pain. Hang in there. You're doing good work.

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

#296

Post by jonny_eh »

rootusrootus wrote: post #204
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…

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…

And you still have time for HN!

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

#297

Post by CydeWeys »

YarickR2 wrote: post #259
CydeWeys wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit to society as a whole is that human society literally continues to exist. If no one has children then society ceases to exist because there isn't a next generation. It's hard to think of anything that benefits society more than having children to comprise the next generation of society. And you know what's really bad for corporate profitability? Not having any workers in a few decades because conditions w…

What do you think of LGBTQ, then ? Fertility rates among them are near zero.

Can you expand on your question? I'm not really sure what you're asking/implying. Being LGBTQ is not a choice, and no, we shouldn't be forcing anyone to have children. But enough people need to be having children for society to continue, and the reproduction rate for LGBTQ individuals is actually not as close to zero as you seem to think it is. And adopting someone else's children to raise absolutely counts as "doing your parenting duty" as it were, since the raising from 0-18 is still the vast majority of the total work.

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

#298

Post by dheera »

kevstev wrote: post #140
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…

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 peoples' personal time and respecting however they choose to use it. Regardless whether someone chooses to spend their personal time raising kids or raising orphans in an orphanage or rescuing animals or reading books or hiking the wilderness or community service or being social and sleeping and watching movies, all of these things are good for their own mental health, and we need to not discriminate between these choices in giving people their personal time.

It's when people are working till 11pm and someone says "I need to leave at 6 to make food for my kids" that the resentment happens. If everyone got off at 6, there wouldn't be any resentment.

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

#299

Post by seattletech »

QuercusMax wrote: post #127
treeman79 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have small elementary age kids. It’s rough. 8-10 interruptions the first couple hours of work. Then meltdown over being hungry. Then afternoon interruptions because they are bored. Lots of crappy reasons, but also because they want me to spend time with them. Also dealing with my own chronic illness. I was managing to cope/hide before Covid. Between it all is a sense of guilt of not getting enough done for work and n…

It's not much better with older kids either; I have 3 teens with mental health issues (depression/anxiety/migraines/ADHD) which have gotten worse with 6 months sheltering-in-place.

Yeah. Dealing with a teen right now who feels completely isolated. Hanging in there.

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

#300

Post by tus88 »

> When the Boston Consulting Group surveyed 3,055 people across the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy, in March and April, it found more than a third of respondents were worried their performance would be unfairly compared with that of colleagues without family obligations.

Why is it an unfair comparison and not an accurate comparison?

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