Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#361

Post by simion314 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 6:51 AM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #235

woodpanel wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany you'll get up to three years right-of-return. The employer doesn't pay you a dime. First twelve months you get approx. 60% of your current income from the government (BTW the same coverage people get when unemployed). You can expand those twelve months into 24, halving the amount of what you're paid. You can also apply for additional support (e.g. there's a fixed amount per kid you'll get until it reaches…

I like what they do in Switzerland. 3 years is ridiculous for a small business, you often don't know you can survive the next year let alone plan for 3. It's the problem with laws in EU in general though. They are very often made for reality of big businesses hiring hundreds of people. The laws and regulations often make sense there but present a huge obstacle for small players.

If you pay the person well then that person will go back to work for the extra money(though some people are not into making more and more money).

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#362

Post by solatic » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #11

> [heading] How do they manage in Canada? > In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?” Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question. If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but definitely need) and they take a year off, w…

You hire somebody full-time to fill the position. When the employee comes back from parental leave, either move the new employee or the returning employee into a new position.

People ask sometimes why, in capitalism, companies need to grow all the time. Why do company profits have to grow every year? Why can't they just stay at some same, low but healthy level, year after year? Well, this is one of those reasons. When you're constantly growing, then it's not an issue for somebody to come back from parental leave, because there are always new positions opening up. Maybe the person coming back will need to wait an additional week or two for the right position at the company to open up, maybe the person will need some training for a slightly different role. But there will be new spots.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#363

Post by simion314 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #311

lhorie wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman Ignoring the fact that this kind of discrimination is flat out illegal, you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even logically consistent. Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professio…

I think the most blatant scenario involves a code-base where only one engineer knows where the skeletons are buried. Yes it's bad architecture, caused by sustained bad development choices, but it is RAMPANT in our industry. If said engineer gets hit by a bus, or goes on parental leave, the company is fucked. They deserve it, but they are still fucked and they are going to kick and scream whatever excuse they can thin…

The same developer gets tons of recruiting emails, people everywhere telling him to not stay in the same place for more then 2 years, his probably burned out of working with that horrible code base and would be attracted to work at a different place with a new project, with a new framework and language(and restart the cycle).

So if you are in SV and have 1 essential developer then prepare for him to leave he/ she would do it sooner then later.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#364

Post by bluecalm » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:20 AM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #323

bluecalm wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parental leave as currently implemented in European countries incentivize having children later in life which is happening resulting in less children overall. There is absolutely no reason employers should be burdened by parental leave. If we as a society decide we want to support parents let's collect enough taxes and have the government pay. If the support is independent of your job status and salary it will remove…

Do you have any source for that? My parental leave entitlement has been the same since my first job after graduation at 22.

What country? Here it is percentage of your pay (or more precisely it's based on how much social insurance you paid last month and this is based on your current pay). I am under impression it's implemented that way in all of Europe.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#365

Post by sonnyblarney » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #186

randyrand wrote: post #167

My mom had 4 children within 7 years. It's crazy to think someone could be employed somewhere 7 years and only work 3. You'd have to hire 2.3 people to get 1 full-time employee!

> It's crazy to think someone could be employed somewhere 7 years and only work 3. Alternative take: It's humane to think that someone who had four kids wouldn't lose their job because they had four kids.

"It's humane to think that someone who had four kids wouldn't lose their job because they had four kids."

It might be more socially beneficial for someone who's going to have 4 kids in 7 years to simply not work at all, and mind the kids.

It's really hard to come in-and-out of most high performing jobs, and if it's a low performing job, well then it won't cover the cost of day care.

We can try to make things more fair, but we can't have everything we want as individuals or citizens.

Also - here in Quebec they have cheap childcare which I think is an even better idea than long maternity leave. Having kids in Quebec no longer totally 'breaks the bank' and basically the cost of rearing kids is kind of 'spread out' over longer period of time, like a kind of 'kid insurance' - you're probably going to have one, so costs are pooled early on.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#366

Post by pertymcpert » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:23 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #359

pertymcpert wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, those percentages are really close. From your opening sentence it seemed like you were going to say something like 60% and 20%. Seems there's no point at all :)

The numbers have to be fairly close because they're in the same economic system. Furthermore, Sweden's numbers are included in the average as well.

You said you can't just ignore this either, yet there is nothing to glean from your supposed point. The numbers are far too close, and Europe far too diverse to infer anything. It's a waste of the 30 seconds of life of anyone who reads the post.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#367

Post by pertymcpert » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #105

xutopia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. If any company is run in such a way that bus-factor means the company can't thrive with one person gone you're simply doing it wrong.

>>We hire interims or share responsibilities between other members of the team. It happens all the time and we rarely find an issue with this. Sounds nice but in practice it means people who don't have children or have less children do more work. As someone who doesn't want to have children I wouldn't want to work for a place where I am expected to do more work when others get pregnant. There is real cost even if gov…

That's a horrific attitude, you cannot seriously think you have a successful business if this is what it takes to destabilize it. Try harder.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#368

Post by bluecalm » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:35 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #341

bluecalm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty. Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. Oh the choices... I think I am taking the lawsuit, especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee. >>Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gende…

> especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee. As long as your real life identity isn't linkable to this comment, that is.

It is linkable but it's an Internet discussion where I am allowed to speak in hypotheticals and being facetious. I've never hired anyone (it's just original founders and occasionall contractors). I don't like being forced to make sexist decisions or eat the risk so it will likely always be contractors for anything critical. We also have more reasonable justice system here. You need actual proof and you won't be hit by a million dollar fine if someone thinks you might have made a sexist decision. Me describing the reasoning which led me to give up looking for new employees in overdramatized fashion doesn't fly as a proof here.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#369

Post by e12e » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:36 AM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #327

e12e wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, say you and your wife each work for 40 years each. Take 10 years out, and that leaves 70 years. Take one parent out, and that leaves 40 years. You've just earned 30 years of skilled labour by granting parental leave.

Why would we want both of us to work full-time (rather than as a form of passion) if one of us is capable of supporting the family and buying appropriate life insurance? That seems to be working for the wrong reasons.

Assuming the surplus is socialized via taxes, one would want a high degree of work force participation,to pay for schools, health care, infrastructure etc.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves

#370

Post by bluecalm » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 7:41 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #357

int_19h wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you realistically need to scrap so much protection just to accommodate them. And why not do so for them specifically? If you still have protections apply to larger companies, then it becomes a matter of choice for employees to choose small or large. But if you apply to everybody, and it kills small businesses, you're strictly worse off - if you can't land a job at one of those larger places, you're outright unemplo…

I mean you could do it, but then you have some different issues at the margins like the incentive to hire people off the books to not fall into a more regulated category. And also there's a big ethical question here if you create an excemption for small business, because you create a two class workforce where parents in small companies lack what is arguably a very fundamental right. So I guess it is a complicated iss…

Why make employers eat the costs? Just make government pay equal benefits to every mother for x months and don't force employers to keep the position open. This way actually everyone will have the same rights unlike now where how much you get depends on how good a job you managed to land even if you only worked there for a very short time.

There is incentive to re-hire anyway if you have open positions as you get someone already familiar with the work. Forcing employers to do so is a problem for smaller companies having many non-duplicated positions though.