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

cnet.com

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

#51

Post by kube-system »

pyronik19 wrote: post #9
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…

There is a team of 4 people. 2 have families, 2 don't. The ones that don't picked up the slack for the ones that did. Work quality was equal, but output was greater for the singles. The team has 2 slots for promotion. Do you ignore the fact that the single people put in more work or do you factor it in in the promotion decision?

How do you (legally) differentiate between people who put in less work because of their children and those who put in less work because they underperform?

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

#52

Post by wbronchart »

ll931110 wrote: post #12
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…

The problem is, people without children are told (or required) to pick up the workload left behind when the coworkers having children taking (multiple) weeks off. For once or twice that might be okay, but if became a chronic problem, no wonder they are not happy.

If others have to consistently work overtime to cover for others, wouldn't it make sense to hire more? It's going to take some time for things to get back to normal.

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

#53

Post by bzb5 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #47
ll931110 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, people without children are told (or required) to pick up the workload left behind when the coworkers having children taking (multiple) weeks off. For once or twice that might be okay, but if became a chronic problem, no wonder they are not happy.

I'm perfectly fine with working more than people with children right now, because children are as the saying goes, quite literally our future. I don't have any but seeing how difficult it is for friends right now who do I am perfectly fine with picking up some extra work. I wish we could stop treating this like an individual issue, as we do everything nowadays, which is probably why we're getting so screwed by this v…

> I'm perfectly fine with working more than people with children

That’s cool. Seems like not everybody agrees with you

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

#54

Post by extrawork99 »

I love all the comments saying that people should have empathy for parents.

Being a parent is a choice. It cannot be compared to cancer. How stupid. Unless you think kids are cancer?

The burden of YOUR children should not fall to your coworkers. They are your responsibility, and require YOUR sacrifice.

Sincerely, A father making it work with his partner, and coworker sick of his coworkers making excuses for never getting anything done.

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

#55

Post by burlesona »

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 management tends to be older and more likely to have had kids, it's not too surprising that management in most companies has looked at the outside world and said, "you know, we're all going to just have to do the best we can until this thing is over."

3. Parents naturally feel (1) stressed out and (2) guilty when they are having a hard time maintaining their old workload given the new and vastly different circumstances.

4. Some small minority of tech workers without kids have been unable to empathize with the situation and are publicly complaining about it.

Given that saying mean things online is practically America's past-time, and trying to fan the sparks to see if you can make a flame is how news companies make money... it's not really surprising to see a story like this portraying some kind of "backlash."

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

#56

Post by WD-42 »

This feels like a symptom of a society that has accepted the act of completely outsourcing child-rearing clashing with an event that makes that outsourcing impossible. Being able to work full time while comfortably having other people/institutions raise your child seems like a privilege. Now we are just seeing what happens when that privilege is taken away. I can't help but imagine there are a bunch of parents out there who decided to forgo full time jobs and careers to raise their own children shaking their heads and saying "this is how it is".

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

#57

Post by tbatchelli »

How much of this issue is related to having a part of the population think that people having children is solely a private question? "You had children, why should I bear your burden!"

If none of us had children there would d be no economy to support anyone's life in, let's say, 40 years from now.

People making and raising new sane and healthy people should be considered a social and common good, for the sake of all, and should be protected and encouraged. Maybe not too many children, true, but at least enough to keep some semblance of population balance, no?

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

#59

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #34
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #20

This reminds me of local retirees who are resentful that their taxes are paying for public schools. They seem to have forgotten that someone paid for them to attend school. Regarding parental time off, it's conceivable that their own parents never had that support. Maternal/parental leave is taking decades to roll out - perhaps as long as it took for public schooling to become universally available.

Ignoring the fact the education costs have skyrocketed since they went to school

>education costs have skyrocketed since they went to school

Going back 70 years, you could say that about most large scale services.

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

#60

Post by treyfitty »

Anecdotally, my manager has been a terrible human being after I took paternity leave at the height of Covid in NYC. I 100% sense the resentment. Not only has he been a disgusting person towards me, but my duties have shifted to India and I’m being assigned projects where I have 0 experience in.

I’ve been laid off from my current employer for taking parental leave before. So it’s not surprising that I’m being pushed out again.

FYI: labor laws in my situation are very much stacked against me, as usual.

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