Slightly unrelated, but it says that Buffer gives 3 months of leave time to parents ANNUALLY. That seems a little bit excessive, and surely gives a little bit of bias against hiring parents for Buffer...
So this may be very unpopular and controversial. I think as great as paid paternity/maternity leaves are for parents, it's a somewhat an indirect penalty against people who don't have children during their tenure. Those people are literally expected to work more hours and days for the same level of pay and responsibility, and if someone has multiple kids during their career it can really add up vs. someone who choose to not have kids.
I don't have an answer for it because I think giving time off to new parents are super important, but in the name of fairness, maybe X months per Y years "paid leave time" should be universally granted to all employees?
Meh. I mostly see it as a regression to the mean. Over the years, Silicon Valley has shown itself as being willing to bend over backwards to the young and childless, sponsoring conference tickets, corporate getaways to tropical islands, happy hours, etc. All of those things are a material benefit to a certain type of person in an earlier stage of life, but are of limited or negative value to a new parent.
It's funny if you think that paid time off for the new parent is "holiday", usually you come back of it way more tired (but you develop lot of new skills)
Think of it as a way to preserve the species.
Or as a deep training session.
And to expand on also hinted growth of skills. Having kids - gives one abundance of opportunity to practice growing others.
Obviously you won't be around your kids all the time, nor be there for them forever. So after initial "micromanagement" phase with babies. With toddlers and older you start switching towards mentoring and coaching.
Which overlaps (not specific things, but concepts) with managers/leaders growing employees.
This may be a controversial or unpopular opinion, but if you are expected to work more because a coworker is unavailable you are bad at managing expectations and controlling your career. When a coworker is suddenly unavailable, you may need to switch priorities but you should never allow a company to tell you to work more to cover for them. Shifting priorites can be an effort or morale drain but these things can happen for a multitude of reasons regardless of coworkers and should be managed the same way regardless. If jane got hit by a bus or joe left the company would your project survive? In any scenario you are expected to pick up the slack, you should be making it very clear the terms necessary for you to continue to be successful and especially clear what isn’t going to get done by changing priorities. This is especially true for things like increased on call rotation. Making it clear that that will effect other things and that your time is not free is crucial for managing expectations.
Well of course I can't know, and I'm also not saying that it DOES, just that it seems like a likely effect.
By the design of how businesses operate in a capitalistic environment (with a profit motive), why wouldn't this cause a bias for companies hiring parents?
Please give me additional time I can take when I want to take it (including for three day weekends) rather than whatever trendy workplace time management is in vogue.
I personally prefer to take month-long vacations than consistently shorter weeks.
Sure, I guess all else being equal I'd rather have an extra 40+ days of PTO. However there is something to be said for shared time off where no one is working. That way you don't have to worry about landmine you're going to step on when you get back. As I get older, 4-day work week is extremely appealing.
Except that’s never going to be the case anyway because customers need to be supported. Unless sort of you can get the whole world on a 4 day work week. And even then that’s only some people.
I’d take even a couple more weeks of vacation over a 4 day work week.
That depends on the business and the role. Where I currently sit, 99% of land mines are internal. On-call is a different thing, but that's no worse on a weekday than a weekend.
Really? My experience with on call is its worse on a weekday since that’s when there’s more traffic generally (at least for the services I’ve supported)
Either of which is fairly common in Europe and no recent trend. 4-5 weeks paid vacation, although not always easy to take in a single block. And many people work 80% independently of company having 4 day week or no.
Well, the site clearly states "All listed jobs are for a maximum of 32 hours per week" so I'm guessing you can spread that in a flexible manner at least for some of these companies.
I’ve been mulling a system that would allow that but also address what I’d consider to be a somewhat unfair benefit we give parents. Of course parents need maternity/paternity time off but this seems to perversely incentivize having kids for no real reason. Another issue on the opposite side is the unfair career progression slowdown women face for taking a maternity leave.
One possible solution is that we expect mandatory 3 month sabbaticals for every employee every two years (which can also be a maternity leave but that’s your choice). This is on top of regular vacations (which probably should be modest if this option exists). We can give the option of breaking it in two but no further. Such sabbaticals would also make everyone think about processes that they do that are not sustainable during such breaks and work properly around it from the beginning. definitely still a hypothesis that I’m continuing to think through, but would love to know where this can go wrong!
I haven't been a parent so I can't be positive, but I doubt time off for maternity or paternity acts as a "positive" incentive for having children, meaning people who didn't want children before would now want them. That time off is filled pretty well caring for the baby, which is extremely tiring and time-consuming; it doesn't really function as a break. I also don't know how many people would trade a several month absence from work for the at least 18-year (more like lifetime, really) commitment of raising a child; they have children for other reasons.
That said, I could see how having maternity/paternity leave would help people who want to put in the effort of raising children, but cannot/do not want to quit their job or keep working with a baby for the most demanding first few months. There is likely negative pressure on having children from not being able to take paid leave from work, and in aggregate people would probably have more children as a result if they do get paid leave.
Although this is an entirely different topic, such a policy seems like a good idea to combat the lack of births many developed countries are facing, which in the long term will cause an asymmetric demography. This could be a big problem, as countries with births under replacement and little net inward migration need to support an aging population with fewer active workers (see e.g. Japan). I imagine some would argue that we should move toward smaller and more sustainable societies in order to preserve the planet's resources and reduce our total consumption, in which case they would advocate for alternate solutions to deal with societal aging.
I don’t think anyone is incentivized to have a kid because they get a few weeks or months off. The only incentive i see is the opposite; if there is no parental leave, they may decide not to have children they were otherwise considering.
And the few weeks/months after a child is born can be much harder work than your day job in many aspects. So it would be unfair to parents, especially mothers, who tend to spend more time on child care, to force them to use their sabbatical/vacation time as parental leave. You’d effectively be controlling people’s reproductive timelines with this sabbatical schedule.
In terms of women being disadvantaged, I agree. But I think the answer is to make sure it’s illegal to discriminate based on current or future parental obligations and enforce that strongly, and to strongly incentivize both mothers and fathers to take their full allocated leave, and make it the same length for both parents.
The disadvantage due to pregnancy leave is tricky stuff - even with best intentions. (Actually same for any other longer term leave).
Especially if in the X months you are away, someone needs to step in as temp replacement because you're the only person of that role in your team/unit.
Basically - where does that replacement come from? And where does replacement go afterwards?
It's slightly less problematic if you're 1 of say 3 or more people in the same role in the team/unit.
Though even when it works out (say if not temp backfill then you have another place/team/unit to join once you're back, or you weren't only person of that role).
Various changes/pivots likely lead to you coming back to something completely different from what you left, if it's even determined what exactly will you work on once you come back.
I do not, but I might. The point is that at we all (at least the ones who plan it) subtly factor how supportive our work environments are for having a child, and in that way the leave policies would definitely change the equation at least for some if not all parents. Further, while it might not change someone’s mind if they weren’t gonna have a child, at the least it will make them decide if they want to do it _today_ instead of a few years later.
I’m also not against such leaves; while I’m not able to articulate it correctly, I feel there’s definitely something “not fair” about the system. A coworker who took a paternity leave did not necessarily have fun but they arguably ended up with something far more valuable in their life (a child), so as painful as the Time you spend in those days might be you get actual happiness from it. Again, good for you! No ill-will at all!
I just wanted to propose a system that might just be better. Whether you want to have kids or not you get that much time off every two years. Have a kid, great. Don’t have a kid, also great.
Sure, I understand the unfairness aspect, but I think there’s a limit to how fair we can actually make things for different individuals in different situations. We do make structural accommodations for people with disabilities and other disadvantages that can seem unfair to those with the privilege of not dealing with that situation.
I’m not against your sabbatical proposal per se but keep in mind it’s going to cost the company at least 20-30 times what parental leave does.
As a parent (and former single person), the idea that society is tilted unfairly against single people really does not resonate. At a macro level, with birth rates declining the way they are, we should probably be doing even more to ease the lives of parents.
>> this seems to perversely incentivize having kids for no real reason
In Canada mat/pat leave is unemployment insurance, which you pay for on every pay cheque. Even if it was "free money" nobody is having kids to get a few months off work.
Whatever the exact form, I wish sabbaticals in industry were more common—probably at longer intervals than job-hopping folks would find interesting though.
We tried that with a law firm I worked at. 10 hour days, 4 days a week. There is always the fifth day where someone needs you to be at work for something. When Non-IT employees learn that IT gets 4 day work weeks, they want it as well.
