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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

#391

Post by wrkronmiller »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #333
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…

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 job? Would you want to take it on the chin and down-size, or would you be upset that your employer didn't show the basic decency to (at a bare minimum) re-hire you once you were recovered?

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

#392

Post by shiftpgdn »

burlesona wrote: post #55

This feels like more of an effort to create a story than accurate reporting of what life is like inside tech firms right now. 1. Parents lives have been temporarily turned upside down as almost all childcare disappears. Temporary is turning out to be a long time... but still. 2. Most companies are composed of people of all ages and stages of life which means there are lots of parents. Particularly when you consider m…

I know of two parents who have been let go during covid. All of the people on their team who had been let go were parents of young children.

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

#393

Post by rdtwo »

RHSeeger wrote: post #305
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom to go to bars (closed), clubs (closed), trips (not happening), concerts (canceled), conventions (postponed indefinitely), festivals (closed), etc... Most things childfree people get meaning out of are canceled until further notice. You still have your parenthood. What do we get? Extra work for equal pay? Great, that'll make the pandemic suck less.

The freedom to just sit down and breath. I don't think you really grasp just how much having children robs you of your "self" and your down time. Heck, even the ability to go to the store to shop for food can be seriously impacted by having a child. Having a child doesn't just take away your ability to go out for a drink; it takes away EVERYTHING and replaces it with different things.

He won’t get it until/unless it happens to him. I was the same way once

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

#394

Post by grillvogel »

YarickR2 wrote: post #254
CydeWeys wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parents are making sacrifices which benefit society as a whole. 100%. We need people to have kids (and for it to be financially possible to do so) because kids are literally the future generations of human society, and if no one is having kids then we'll see a very rapid collapse. This is, incidentally, why it pisses me off when people complain that their pets don't get the same kind of accommodations that children…

Pets are optional ? I didn't expect myself to hate this statement so much

pets are required? i think most people who have kids agree that once you have kids you care a lot less about your pets than you did before

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

#395

Post by icebraining »

mc32 wrote: post #358
icebraining wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think it's stupid to resent parents; they need the time for the kids, who aren't at fault in any of this. That said, why do you assume we all care about having a future society? Frankly I only care about existing humans. The species is irrelevant to me.

If you don’t care about the future of humanity then why care about progress at all? Why care about any species . Why care about pollution or climate change or anything?

Humanity is likely to decide continue having kids regardless of what I feel about it, and since I care about humans, I feel the obligation to protect those kids and their descendants. And similarly for other species.

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

#396

Post by awinder »

jbay808 wrote: post #318
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…

(Edited to clarify my intended meaning) > I'd happily trade places with one of my childless coworkers right about now. For those childless co-workers that wish they could accept the other end of this deal, this phrase is both common and quite painful to hear. Please consider not using it unless you really mean it, which you don't, as you actually wouldn't give up your kids for anything.

It means if he ran into the Zoltar machine he’d definitely give it a couple of whacks

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

#397

Post by tolbish »

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…

Do you have family or close friends that could look after them for a few days?

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

#398

Post by jknz »

jartelt wrote: post #252
softwaredoug wrote: post #18

It's simply depressing how parent/kid-hostile society has become... I'm not saying we need explosive population growth. But I feel one of the main purposes of society is raising and protecting children. If you're a human-future-optimist, you want some kind of generation that's better than us to continue on.... I'm not saying you NEED to have kids, but I feel it's part of society's collective duty to consider the next…

It is not necessarily just hostility to parents. I see it more as hostility to the HR policies in place at some of the companies. A new parent at facebook gets 4 months leave after the birth and then can take another 10 weeks of family leave. Alternatively, non parent employees at facebook can take 3 days off to cope with stress or else need to take sick days. Otherwise they can take sick days, which probably would b…

> I see it more as hostility to the HR policies in place at some of the companies. A new parent at facebook gets 4 months leave after the birth and then can take another 10 weeks of family leave.

It's not like facebook employees typically have 10 kids. The benefits you mention happen once, twice and rarely three or more times in a lifetime.

This policy also means that younger employees will be able to enjoy the same policy if they become parents in the next 20 years.

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

#399

Post by puszczyk »

ng12 wrote: post #147
mc32 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Parents are making sacrifices which benefit society as a whole. Those children the parents are taking care of now will be the ones who will provide for the one complaining now via taxes as well as services rendered to them. If anything, companies should be providing more childcare so that more women (as well as some men) will have less of a burden balancing career and caregiving. I see these people as being…

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…

I think school and day care are a reasonable assumption. It’s a bit unfair to say — _keep your spouse at home because there maybe once-in-a-lifetime pandemic and the schools will be closed_.

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

#400

Post by Waterluvian »

tolbish wrote: post #397
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…

Do you have family or close friends that could look after them for a few days?

The one year old isn’t ready for overnights for a number of reasons.

I’m not saying we’re in dire straits here. Being a parent is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. But it’s also the hardest job I’ve ever had. And you can’t wake up and decide to take a me day.

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