Starting Now At Netflix: Unlimited Maternity and Paternity Leave 418
vivaoporto writes: Netflix announced Tuesday that, during the first year after their child's birth or adoption, employees will be able to take off however long they feel they need to. They can return on a full- or part-time basis, and even take subsequent time off later in the year if needed. Netflix will "keep paying them normally." Time comments that Netflix's policy "deserves high marks for extending leave to fathers, as well as understanding that the entire first year after childbirth can be challenging for new parents".
Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If its a year per kid, I'd be tempted to keep having kids. If that catches on, we might wonder if Netflix is encouraging rapid population growth.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a year per 'event' (so you don't get two years if you have twins, but if you have another kid you can have another year). There's obviously a potential for abuse of the system, given that it takes less than a year to hatch a kid, but the odds of that happening are probably lower than the odds of people abusing the existing unlimited vacation policy, or the likely harm from people abusing the lax expense policy, etc.
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
There would be a greater potential for abuse if raising a kid was not so expensive. Also, consider that if you does not show up to work, you are less likely to get a raise, or a promotion.
Good points. It would not look good on your resume either....
But none of us would be surprised if there was a discrimination suit....
Re: (Score:2)
Why would anyone put "Had a bunch of kids for paid maternity leave" on their resume?
Re: (Score:2)
Why would anyone put "Had a bunch of kids for paid maternity leave" on their resume?
Because it goes great next to "broke my arm for short term disability"?
Re: (Score:3)
What would be negative on your resume? You are still employeed by the company so nothing new would go on there.
Re: (Score:2)
What would be negative on your resume? You are still employeed by the company so nothing new would go on there.
It might be invisible, but if you come back to a different job it might be a bit hard to explain the timelines.
Re: (Score:2)
In what way? again, you are still employed, so that year does not get any special treatment unless you want it to, then the new position would look like a transition into a new position at that time. It would look the same as if you took a different posistion at the company.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"I took a year off to take care of my new kid, then came back to a new position" would be one way to explain it.
And speaking as a hiring manager? Ain't got no problem with that explanation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, depending on the fine print with their policy, you might not come back to the same job.
In Massachusetts (where I have personal experience) the law is that there must be an equivalent job for you to return to, not necessarily your old job. After all, the company doesn't stop needing someone to do the work just because you need to take time off to care for your slobbering bundle of joy. When my wife took her first maternity leave, she did, in fact, return to the same position; after her second maternity leave (with the same company), she was moved horizontally to a job in a different group that, while it had similar responsibilities and identical pay, was far, far less desirable because of her new boss.
Re: (Score:3)
We had 3 kids (no multiples) within 26 months of each other. Trust me, it's not hard to do, even if you're taking measures not to immediately get pregnant again.
Re: (Score:2)
Judging from my experience when my daughter was born, I'll bet you didn't get a whole lot of sleep for three years.
Re: (Score:2)
If its a year per kid, I'd be tempted to keep having kids. If that catches on, we might wonder if Netflix is encouraging rapid population growth.
The factor that allows Netflix (and more recently Microsoft) to offer these kinds of benefits is their constant push to only hire and retain top talent. If Netflix felt their employees were more average, they may fear abuse. But these are employees who have spent their adult life attaining the highest level of achievement and are unlikely to let this slip away. I read one article recently that wondered how many Netflix employees would actually take more than the standard three months off (standard among pro
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not really unlimited if it's limited to a year now is it. Bad title. Commendable policy though, much better than what many places offer.
If it's anything like my brother's company's "Unlimited Vacation Time" policy, it's a scam. He used to have 5 weeks of vacation time every year. He could pretty much always get approved for all that time. Now he has "unlimited" time, with managerial approval. His company did a trial of the policy with a limited number of employees and found that people take 30-40% less vacation time, on average, when they do not have a set amount of time off. The point of the change in policy was to make everyone think they were working for a great company while at the same time giving the employees less time off. Sure there are employees that end up coming out ahead, but most employees feel guilty about asking for time off when they aren't pulling from a fixed pool of leave.
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the point of doing the "unlimited" time off policies.
Sort of the same as "pay what you want" services or products.
Guilt is a powerful emotion.
The company can say they have "unlimited" x and employees feel proud to have "unlimited" x and people who abuse the system will be dealt with... all around win by simple exploitation of guilt...
Re: (Score:3)
This is exactly the point of doing the "unlimited" time off policies.
It's the point of almost ALL "unlimited" business policies of any kind.
Guilt is a powerful emotion.
The company can say they have "unlimited" x and employees feel proud to have "unlimited" x and people who abuse the system will be dealt with... all around win by simple exploitation of guilt...
While guilt may be one factor, I doubt it's the only thing (or even the primary thing) at work here. Guilt explains why someone won't take advantage of an "unlimited" system in this case perhaps, but it doesn't explain why the overall use of vacation time goes DOWN.
In many (though not all) circumstances, if you offer someone a fixed amount of something, a lot of people will try to "use it all up" to get a good value. If you give them
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Informative)
The other point is that Netflix has a policy of firing people who do normal/acceptable/average work. On public radio this morning [npr.org] I was listening to them speak about the new policy as well as the unlimited vacation time. Here is the relevant quote.
Netflix's theory is that if you want to have incredible employees, you should treat employees like adults. And, you know, they actually put it in terms that is really almost that blunt, and that means giving your employees a lot of freedom, a lot of responsibility. And then if they fail to live up to that trust or if they fail to perform - and not just perform adequately but perform exceptionally - the company says you should get rid of them. So they make a practice of firing people. There's this legendary slide deck that the CEO, Reed Hastings, shared publically about this philosophy. And in one slide, you know, it says, like every company, we try to hire well. Unlike most companies, average performance gets a generous severance package.
So if you take your vacation, you had better be working through it or you will appear to be less exceptional than the other people there and end up without a job. In the end you will take less, or even no vacation because you need to work your ass off to stay employed with them. Not such a nice policy when viewed from that angle. Looks good in the papers though!
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Funny)
I never understood why they give you all of this parental time off during the first year, when the baby spends a lot of time sleeping and is mostly stationary. In parenting terms, that year isn't the hardest one to handle unless the baby is colicky and can't sleep well.
They should REALLY give you the extra time off when the kid is two years old and is trying to break anything that isn't either locked up or three feet off the ground every time you turn your back on them.
Forget Maternity and Paternity Leave... Give me Toddler Leave, dammit!
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Insightful)
Infants still require far more attention from parents than toddlers do. Unless you have a unicorn baby, their sleep schedule for the first 3-6 months will be very sporadic which will restrict the parents' sleep. This sleep interruption is the primary difficult aspect of being a new parent. I recently saw a survey which asked what parents missed most about their pre-child life, and obviously it said not to say "sleep" since they didn't want the results to be unanimous.
Infants also require more attention since they are less able to self soothe and keep themselves entertained. They cannot be unsupervised unless asleep. If a two year old is given the same level of parental attention that an infant requires, the toddler would never break anything. They simply would never be left alone long enough to break anything.
My one year old may be running around now and causing havoc, but she is still far easier to handle now that she can actually play with her toys for 15 minutes in a row without needing me or my wife.
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Insightful)
I also suspect that if you actually tried to take that year of paid leave (especially if you're a father), they would suddenly find a way to fire you or cut your pay. Are we really supposed to believe that if some high-paid tech there has three kids in five years that they're going to let him take most of that 5 years off to sit at home and collect his same paycheck? Yeah, I'm sure.
Legally Required for one year (Score:3)
I also suspect that if you actually tried to take that year of paid leave (especially if you're a father), they would suddenly find a way to fire you or cut your pay.
I doubt it - a year of p/maternity leave is actually a legal requirement in places like Canada. Finding a way to fire someone after returning would get a company into very hot water very quickly. However, depending on your company, you do not get your full salary for the year and it drops after some number of months to the statutory p/maternity leave pay. I took a week off when our kids were born without any issues.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt it - a year of p/maternity leave is actually a legal requirement in places like Canada. Finding a way to fire someone after returning would get a company into very hot water very quickly. However, depending on your company, you do not get your full salary for the year and it drops after some number of months to the statutory p/maternity leave pay. I took a week off when our kids were born without any issues.
This is a different type of workplace than your average office. For women in high powered careers, it can be hard on their career to even take the more standard 3-5 months off. Their projects aren't going to wait for them to get back, and it can be hard to transition back into those projects when someone else has owned them for months. For people who take care of their career, their job isn't just about a paycheck. The most important part of their job is their list of achievements which can get them to the
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Insightful)
Smugness aside, it's a fair point. The Headline is absurd, and the first thing I thought on reading is that would mean you could have a kid and get free wages for the rest of your life, so the headline must be bullshit.
The word "unlimited" has lost all meaning. "Unlimited within X limits" is an oxymoron. "Any amount of leave within the first year" is not. "No further limits within X limits" is also a less misleading way of phrasing things.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unlimited for one year (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I assume that you don't have a problem with unlimited data plans that aren't unlimited?
Unlimited LTE Data (up to 5GB)
Unlimited means *no* limits. Ever.
Re:Just Great...prices to increase now??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Douche,
Anybody working full time (or near full time) should be able to afford to live out of abject poverty without government assistance. What about the $4000+ an hour the CEO of said burger flippery makes? No outrage there, eh? Also, $15 an hour shouldn't be a benefit...more like a 'living wage'.
Re:Just Great...prices to increase now??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Clue #1: a minimum wage job isn't something you should live off of. It is expressly for teenagers and for folks who use it as a stepping stone or fallback until something better comes along.
---Shouldn't be, but is. Reality sucks. We have people in their adult years working fast food. It is a fantasy that only teens should be 'flipping burgers'.
Clue #2: these jobs usually require little-to-no skill, and consequently do not bear the value of $15/hr at current inflation/valuation.
---Neither does working at a factory in many cases, but that seemed to be deemed 'middle class worthy' in the 60s-70s where a single worker could support an entire family. What you're saying is 'you deserve to be destitute, you unskilled scum'.
Clue #3: when you price human labor too high, automation becomes more attractive. There are already machines that can effectively replace fast-food cashiers, and are cheaper to operate and maintain than $15/hr people. There are also machines coming online that can operate the back-end of a fast food joint as well, which will also just come under the wire as being cheaper (but would come out ahead by being reliable, on-time, etc.) /hr would hasten that. All the more reason to support things like a basic income now (perhaps with some civil service requirement), since the mass unemployment problem is only going to get worse.
---Can't argue with that. Automation is coming, regardless of where the minimum wage is. No doubt that raising it to $15
Clue #4: sucks to say it, but no one owes you a living -anything, let alone a "living wage" (whatever that means). Safety nets and charity are for those unable to help themselves, and obviously for those among us in temporary desperate situations, but that's it. Meanwhile, if you are able-bodied and not mentally defective, then it is up to you to better yourself by any legal means possible.
---Ah yes, the 'brutalist' libertarian view. I guess that's where we differ. I'm for treating all people with respect, and providing a safe place to live/eat/prosper. Not 'too bad, so sad, fuck off.' Ideally, regardless of borders, but that's more of a long term thing. You seem to still think that if you're 'able bodied' there is good work available, and you're just lazy if you don't grab it. I'd consider that pretty naive given the population explosion the world has experienced in the past 50 years alone.
Where/how do we pay for all of this idealism? It's pretty obvious that money is essentially made up and totally fiat. It's also pretty obvious that a tiny tiny percentage of people hoard a crazy-huge sum of that money. Arguably, keeping it out of circulation avoids hyperinflation and all that. Considering that over 70% of our economy is consumer-driven, wouldn't giving those consumers more money to...consume with...the economy would benefit immensely? I think such benefits would far outweigh any inflationary risks, but I'm no economist.
The Law States That's The Purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
Clue #1: a minimum wage job isn't something you should live off of. It is expressly for teenagers and for folks who use it as a stepping stone or fallback until something better comes along.
Who says? This is misinformation/propaganda being spread. If you look at the actual bill that instituted the minimum wage in the US (the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938), the law literally says the reasoning for setting the minimum wage is "Congress finds that ... labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standing of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers causes ..." and then goes on to list negative effects of not being paid enough to live. So yes, the law quite literally states that the minimum wage is something you're meant to live off of. (Feel free to read the law yourself on the Dept of Labor website.
This idea of "teenagers can do it" is only a ploy to make people complacent with low wages. Remember a teenager at 17/18 can easily be out living on their own and not have the support of family (for many reasons: family doesn't have ability to help, family has cancer and teenager needs to support them, family is crazy/insane/drug addicts, family is dead, etc.), and so even teenagers should make enough money to support themselves.
Clue #2: these jobs usually require little-to-no skill, and consequently do not bear the value of $15/hr at current inflation/valuation.
When the minimum wage was instituted in 1938, the many US jobs were in agriculture or simple manufacturing. I don't consider those jobs to be "high skill", but that doesn't mean they're not super important (without food, we die -- about as important as you can get! and manufacturing gave us the modern world, despite many of those jobs being just to screw the same bolt on over and over). So for one thing, skill does not equate with importance, and I think important jobs especially should be well paid.
Furthermore, have you seen secretary and human resources job these days? Also requires pretty low skill (mostly just typing and sending emails and filling out forms -- anyone who can read and write can do it, really), but look at how much these people make (in my area, you can get jobs in HR making upwards of $50k with only minimal experience, much above minimum wage). If we were going by your metric, these paper-pusher jobs should be making low pay and important jobs like farmers and restaurants that provide me food should be making more.
All of this is an aside from the real goal of minimum wage, which is that if you do ANY type of work for anyone, you're important to someone and should be able to support yourself doing that work. If you're not needed, why did the company hire you? I'm tired of this idea that companies are entitled to cheap labor; if your company requires effectively slave labor to exist, then how about we state the truth that your company is failing, not doing well, and maybe should go bankrupt due to mismanagement rather than keeping it chugging on the backs of the poor?
Clue #3: when you price human labor too high, automation becomes more attractive. There are already machines that can effectively replace fast-food cashiers, and are cheaper to operate and maintain than $15/hr people. There are also machines coming online that can operate the back-end of a fast food joint as well, which will also just come under the wire as being cheaper (but would come out ahead by being reliable, on-time, etc.)
That is going to happen no matter what because of corporate greed to always maximize profit. Even if we paid people $1/hr, at some point people would need to eat and sleep while a machine could work all night long straight, cranking out more widgets. We can't compete with technology.
What we instead need to do is have real discussion on what the future economy looks like when jobs are phased out by robo
Next Thing You Know... (Score:4, Insightful)
...they'll be paying everyone $70k a year minimum just like Gravity Payments.
Of course, that didn't work out [nypost.com] too well [cbslocal.com]
Re: (Score:3)
It is still ongoing story and too early for any conclusions.
If you read a more detailed description [nytimes.com], you'll see that it is a mixed bag, with a mix of both good and bad consequences. Also, note that some of the biggest current hardships (legal issues) are totally independent of the $70K wage.
Re: (Score:3)
Clearly those two quitters were not familiar with this parable. [wikipedia.org] If you are getting a fair wage for your work, STFU. Just because somebody working less hard is getting more than a fair wage doesn't give you the right to complain about what you thought was a fair wage beforehand. I don't know why people seem to think it's unfair to get what they agreed to. It's like when my company stopped giving bonuses. A lot of people were angry, even though there was no official bonus policy, and it was never brought up d
Re: (Score:2)
Nerds care about the little details, especially when they make something sound more sensational than it really is.
Great thing, but can this really work? (Score:2)
Re: Great thing, but can this really work? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
... but the people on leave in Canada earn little compared to their normal salaries.
Sure it can work (Score:3, Insightful)
I see this can be efficient and useful inside a company with mainly highly-educated workers, with stringent admission standards. But would such a thing work in society in general?
It could. The US trails the rest of the civilized world in maternity/paternity leave policies by a WIDE margin. It works if we insist everyone play by the same rules. There is no competitive advantage to be gained if everyone is allowed to take leave to care for a newborn. It would be harder for small companies to do this but there are ways of working around that too with a little government help. Basically this sort of policy is just a way of showing that you actually care about the well being of your
Re:Sure it can work (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason many think generous (or even just minimal) maternity/paternity leave is a bad thing is that some folks are solely focused on businesses. The employees working for the businesses are viewed as cogs in the machine whose only purpose is to churn out more profits. Any time off means that the cogs aren't functioning during that time which could mean the overall machine might not churn out quite as much profits. This is, in their view, a bad thing so any time off for the cogs is viewed negatively.
This doesn't just extend to maternity/paternity leave, you see this attitude in companies where taking ANY time off is viewed as bad or where you can take time off but you'd better bring your laptop and phone with you so you can answer e-mails while on vacation. This also gets perverted into the "death march" at some software companies where the cogs... I mean employees are worked 80 hour days to get a product out. The management figures that if the cogs get burnt out from overuse, they can just ditch them and replace them with new ones. They might even be able to replace them for ones that will work for less money and complain less about being overworked.
Keep spinning, cogs. You've got a profit to generate!
Re: (Score:3)
The US has an "attendance culture" in general that starts in elementary school where it's always more important to show up regardless of what condition you are in. This includes you being sick and infectious and a threat to self and others.
We probably have to get rid of that mentality first before the idea of long extended paid leave gain any traction.
Works in Canada (Score:2)
It could.
Actually it does: Canada already has a legal requirement for one year of p/maternity leave which can be shared between parents as wanted. However your salary will drop if you take more than some number of months off depending on your company.
Re:Sure it can work (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like it would be the case, but in this instance there is no evidence to support it. Comapnies that have ehnacted longer term maternity and paternity leave have reported that they have had little to no disruption in the work force. This is probably because it generally isn't a surprise when the baby is born as you generally have at least a couple months notice to train a replacement for the duration of the leave.
Also as the GP pointed out many other civilized countries offer vastly more leave, and it hasn't overly detracted from worker productivity. The average German worker is still light years ahead of the competition in productivity. And this is the country that MANDATES time off before and after childbirth under the Mutterschutzgesetz, Maternity Protection Act of 1968.
Re: (Score:2)
"MANDATES time off before and after childbirth"
Apparently it's 0 weeks before and 8 weeks after. That time is so short that few would want to return to work then, "MANDATE" or not.
52 weeks at full pay is a whole different dynamic.
Re:Sure it can work (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's so hard to do, why are we the only western country that doesn't provide any guaranteed paid maternity/paternity leave AT ALL? There are small companies in Europe, and if it's available for both men AND women then that mitigates the hiring bias you are concerned about. There is already some hiring bias against women based on the possibility that they may become pregnant; I don't think this would make that any worse. Pregnant women are also a protected class for the purposes of hiring/firing decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
NO! You aren't allowed to look at other countries!!
what are you thinking?!
silly man, don't you know that every problem the US has faced it has faced alone and has never been faced, let alone solved, by any place else? ever?
gun violence? healthcare? education? taxes? low and middle class income growth? crime? prisons?
no place has ever solved these things before, and is looking to the us for leadership in how to figure them out!
Re: (Score:2)
We have a much smaller welfare state in general and much lower taxes to go with it.
These measures aren't free. They don't come without tradeoffs.
Re:Sure it can work (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet, as someone who moved from Australia (a place with much more generous vacation, parental leave, healthcare etc. benefits) to the US, after you factor in everything (Federal income tax, State income tax, Medicare, Social Security...), my overall tax burden per year on the same income in the two countries is identical almost down to the dollar. But I can tell you I get sweet FA for my tax dollars here, by comparison. I even pay into Social Security which I will likely never qualify to receive (since it requires being a citizen or LPR and to have worked at least a certain number of years in the US).
So I haven't personally experienced "much lower taxes" here in the US. Overall taxes are definitely lower than many European nations, for sure. But not lower than quite a few other OECD nations that still have a bigger welfare state than you guys. My theory is that it comes from the inefficiency of having to administer tax at all these different levels, whereas in Australia the only mandatory deduction from your pay is basically the Federal income tax ... that's it.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's so hard to do, why are we the only western country that doesn't provide any guaranteed paid maternity/paternity leave AT ALL? There are small companies in Europe, and if it's available for both men AND women then that mitigates the hiring bias you are concerned about. There is already some hiring bias against women based on the possibility that they may become pregnant; I don't think this would make that any worse. Pregnant women are also a protected class for the purposes of hiring/firing decisions.
I thought the law requires that companies cannot fire new fathers who take three months off; note that the law does not dictate that any portion of this be paid. My company recently got bought out, and the new company provides two weeks paid leave for birth of a child, adoption, or successfully bringing in a family member from out of country. For my son's birth, I took 1 week of PTO.
Re: (Score:2)
The FMLA does guarantee 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the birth/adoption of a child, or to care for a seriously ill family member (for example, my father was really sick before he got a liver transplant, and my mother was able to take FMLA time for that.)
I was talking about paid leave, but you're correct about the three months.
Re:Sure it can work (Score:5, Informative)
Other than that, if the government mandates employers pay for such long leaves, it will hugely penalize small companies, and prospective employment of women.
Yeah that's why small businesses don't exist in the scandinavias, or canada, or basically everywhere else in the entire fucking world where they have not only universal healthcare of some form but also meaningful parental leave.
Also giving fathers paternity leave equal to a mother's maternity leave, and making sure they take it, is in fact the only way to not affect women's employment any.
Re: (Score:2)
"... and making sure they take it"
Are you sure you want to go down that road?
It is very simple (Score:3, Insightful)
It's because it's never that simple. First of all, a government mandate that it refuses to pay for is an act of political cowardice.
Yes it really is that simple. And who said anything about a government mandate without funding? There absolutely should be funding to help small businesses out on this and yes this will mean raising taxes.
Other than that, if the government mandates employers pay for such long leaves, it will hugely penalize small companies, and prospective employment of women.
Only if our policies regarding that leave are as stupid as the barbaric policies we have now. Right now if a worker has a child they have the un-enviable choice of keeping their job or spending the appropriate amount of time with their child which is particularly hard during the first year of their life
Re:Great thing, but can this really work? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The OP said "this can be efficient and useful inside a company with mainly highly-educated workers..."
Then you reply "In a an homogeneous country with high education as a standard, it is he legal minimum there".
Well, yeah. That still doesn't answer the question. Would it work in a highly diverse society where not 90% of the population is educated northern whites?
Re: (Score:2)
...actually, the "educated northern whites" in America are more likely than not to quit the workforce entirely. They do this because they can. They don't have to have a mere 12 months for their children. They can stay out of work indefinitely.
That's a part of the situation that's missing entirely from this discussion. An American female professional may be out of the workforce for YEARS raising children.
That may in fact be the reason that this works for Netflix. They are working with an entirely different s
Re: (Score:3)
But would such a thing work in society in general?
Why don't you ask all of Europe or every other civilized country in the world?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The US is the only country to have 0 days mandated by law.
Re: (Score:2)
In general? Absolutely not.
Most tech firms are busy out-sourcing or bringing in H1Bs/temporary foreign workers.
Theyr'e trying to get rid of expensive things like employees with benefits, and replace them with scared wage slaves who can be easily replaced if they do something pesky like getting sick.
Corporations want more "at will" employment, not a scenario in which they offer more benefits.
But don't worry, the executives and management are still well looked after.
This is the kind of thing you offer to emp
Netflix does a "Norway" (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Is that subsidised by the government in Norway though? There's a lot of oil money floating around up north.
Re: (Score:2)
Was that a yes or a no, I'm genuinely curious and your link doesn't appear to hold any answers.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, some people might point out that comparing the generous social programs of a country suffused with petrodollars to others would be pointless.
Re: (Score:3)
Their system of government gives them the highest standard of living in the world. All countries collect taxes with the force of law behind them. The difference here is that the oil industry is nationalized and therefore is not in the hands of a handful of old white men who remove all the money from the economy and stash it in the Caymans.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Netflix does a "Norway" (Score:5, Interesting)
What is this bullshit? Why the hell must everybody want kids?
My wife and I want no damned part in raising children. Neither of us have ever wanted children. We don't generally like children.
To borrow your false dilemma, are you a moron or an asshole?
Why the hell does every smug idiot with children think the rest of us give a damn or want one of the little mewling puking brats?
I don't begrudge you having kids, so get over it if some of us choose not to.
But it's not like some of us haven't had to work with someone who is conveniently never available after hours because of their children. So we're supposed to cover all of those times so you can spend time parenting?
Why would we do that again? Because we think you parenting is such an awesome thing?
Hell, no.
Re: (Score:3)
well, if twins are born (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. Its (up to) a year per 'event'.
Netflix already had that policy for holidays (Score:5, Interesting)
Check this presentation about the Netflix Culture (http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664?from=ss_embed).
Basically they want high performers, and if that means you perform high coming to work 20 hrs a week, so be it. It also means if you're pulling 80 hrs a week and are just getting by, that's not enough. You don't get an A+ for "trying hard", you get an A+ for achieving high performance. That's all that matters.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Netflix already had that policy for holidays (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing about Netflix though, is that they readily fire low performers.
Something that used to be common place a few years ago, is now the exception more than the norm. Once someone is passed their 3 months, no one fires anybody in engineering anymore, instead attempting to coach people into place, even if they're making absurd salaries. (Giving the 10 bucks an hour clerk a chance, sure. Giving the underperforming 160k/year dude a chance after failing to meet expectations for 6 months...thats silly).
Anyway, since Netflix has a culture if firing those people, anyone who is left is probably worth trying to keep.
Re:Netflix already had that policy for holidays (Score:5, Insightful)
That kind of system is extremely prone to abuse. There are subtle (and not so subtle) ways to make sure that folks who are well liked get assignments that have higher chance of success with minimal effort vs folks that are disliked. I've got a friend in sales (not at my company) that deals with this kind of thing all the time. Certain sales team members who are popular with management get highly lucrative sales accounts that are virtually shoe-ins and make their numbers 5 times faster than everyone else. Coincidently, those are the sales team members that the all-male management wants beating their numbers so they win the company sponsered all-included trips to hawaii/carribean/etc which they also attend. I've never competed for a vacation package in my engineering career, but I've certainly seen favoratism regarding job assignments.
I think rather than rewarding people solely based on high performance, it's best to reward people for a bance of performance, work ethic, and risk taking. Any one of those individually isn't enough imho. Some of the greatest successes humanity has seen have come from people who failed over and over again until they got it right.
Re: (Score:2)
But high performance is relative to all the other people working. If a significant percentage of the people work 60 hours a week to reach a certain level of performance, then anybody else in the company either has to be extremely talented in a way that would allow them to work 40 hours a week and still produce as much as the other guys, or they have to work 60 hours to keep up with everyone else.
At some level, working more hours just won't yield extra performance, and you will be over tired, such as trying
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Which is better: letting some stranger take care of your child (daycare center) or the mother having a expanded cubicle for the newborn at work? I think the latter is better, except for disturbance to the coworkers when the baby cri
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds grate! (Score:2)
Don't like "unlimited" (Score:3)
To steal a known expression, there's no such thing as a free vacation or maternity/paternity leave. Of all the people who don't get overtime pay, how many of those do you know who spend less than a typical work week at the office? Saying it's unlimited replaces clear and predictable limits with limits imposed by vague and arbitrary social norms and underhanded management pressure to work more. You think you can pull off delivering 100% in 80% of the time? Go ask your boss for an 80% position with the same pay, if he's not willing to do that he's not going let you take a day off every week either.
These are the kind of things that should be set on the macro level as part of your employment relationship. We expect you to work so many hours a week, you get this many weeks of vacation and various other benefits and you get paid this much. Because at the end of the day, you're both going to look at the totality and ask what's my employer/employee really giving me for what I give him. On the micro level there should always be a price to pay, if my employer wants me to work more he should pay more and then it's only natural that if I want to work less I should get paid less.
I have in my contract that I have five weeks vacation, it doesn't mean I have to take all five weeks or that I can't get more time off but that's then a deviation from the norm explicitly written in my contract. If I wanted a sixth week, it's naturally with no pay. If my boss wants me to work another week, that's clearly for extra pay. If either of us aren't happy with the total value the right place to take this is when negotiating salary, not trying to force me to work extra for free or trying to stretch my vacations to compensate.
Guess they haven't been reading the news (Score:3)
Maybe they should look at how things are going at Gravity Payments.
IMHO, this is B.S. Nobody EVER took paternity leave until a few years ago and the world didn't end and kids grew up plenty well-adjusted.
Unlimited paternity leave? (Score:4, Funny)
We've had that for years where I work. Just tell the boss you knocked up his daughter.
So people without or unable to have kids get hosed (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife and I have decided to not have children at this point. So chuck decides he wants kids and they have one. If I work at Netflix I'm now stuck picking up chucks work load for a year. What if I can't even have kids? What if maybe I have s three year old so I missed out. To me a year is ridiculous and unfair to other workers.
Workers with kids already get to just jump up and leave where I work when they need to. Hey my kids sick. Now I'm picking up their work. Well I'm gonna start saying my cat is sick and leave or I gotta pick my cat up from daycare. Fuck people with kids they always get special treatment for choices they made in their personal life and want to foist it in everyone else
And how does wanting companies to do this kind of compensation for personal choices reconcile with the whole get out of my business vibe these days? .... Seems pretty contradictory to me.
Hey evil corporations I value my privacy don't spy on me or get up in my personal life! Don't hold what I do in my free time against me! If I want to do drugs at home or pose naked on the interwebz or whatever you can't fire me for it! Oh but if I choose to have a kid you better pay me and give me time off for i!t
Everybody screams over population and oh climate change (it's a fraud anyway) yada but everybody wants to subsidize and incentivize child birth. Pay me to have one at my company. Give me tax breaks so its profitable to sit at home and pump out kids. Or now abort it so PP staff can get a Lambo.
Ps your unlimited time off headline is BS wording.
Re: (Score:3)
"My wife and I don't exercise at the office gym, but Chuck does. If I work at $company I'm now stuck picking up Chuck's work load while he exercises."
"My wife and I bike to work, but Chuck drives. If I work at $company I'm now stuck paying for a parking lot for Chuck, via decreased salary because they had to budget for it."
Sheesh.
I'm sure this will be controversial (Score:4, Insightful)
I already see a lot of posts that basically say, "Why should I have to pay for someone else's paternity leave?" This is a good move that will definitely be controversial to the young, single techie set. If the demographics are to be believed, Millenials are having even fewer children, much of the reason being that they don't feel stable enough to settle down and, well, procreate. There is also a huge number of younger people who hate even the idea of having children, so you often hear complaints like, "Why don't I get to take a day off when you have to take care of your sick kid?" "Why can't you work 60 hours a week like the rest of the single people?" "Oh great, the procreators are raising prices for everyone."
I have 2 kids, 4 and 2, so I'm just climbing out of the early childhood no-sleep, constant work Twilight Zone of fatherhood. One of the reasons I stay with my current employer is flexibility. We don't have an official paternity leave policy, but I do have a boss and several colleagues who've been through this whole thing before. My boss has basically told me he knows I'll have to be out sometimes, and have days I'm not productive and is completely supportive of that because I more than make up for it later on. We're not a Silicon Valley startup managed and staffed by single 20-something males, so I think that accounts for some of the difference. The company I work for has a pretty long average tenure basically because the work we do means we can't just burn through developers and IT people on a revolving door basis. People need to stick around and learn/master the problem domain. The company isn't the most in-tune HR-wise, but line management knows what's needed to keep the ship moving.
I doubt a Scandinavian style parental leave policy will ever fly in Libertarianland, but it would be nice for more employers to do something other than "burn through all your vacation, then back to work" or basically do what mine does -- cutting new dads and moms slack when needed. As long as people don't abuse it, it works. If the economy has shifted to the point where both parents need to work to avoid a looming financial disaster and not be miserable, then this seems like a good compromise. I think a company putting this into official HR policy gives themselves a good recruiting tool.
If your boss was just as understanding for (Score:3)
People without kids...if I worked there and said "Boss, I can't come to work today because I've got to take my turtle to the vet." or "Sorry I'm not productive today, I spent all night playing WoW and din't get any sleep."
Those excuses aren't materially different than "Got to take Susie to the pediatrician." or "Susie was crying all night so we didn't get any sleep." except for the whole kid thing.
Being out-of-the-office is being out-of-the-office, and being unproductive is being unproductive.
Does everyone
Is it really fair? How about "just wanna leave"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, (I'm actually a parent), but other than the general societal benefit of paternal/maternal leave, why should parents get it and NON parents not get similar compensation?
Where's the year off of paid leave for someone who wants to see Europe, for example? People CHOOSE to have kids, why should they get paid extra (in the form of paid leave) by companies for it?
In the end, it comes in the form of a net tax benefiting people who have kids, or more kids, on the people have fewer or no kids.
My paternity leave took the form of leave that everyone in my office gets, actually, the only additional protection/benefit I got over non-parents was legal protection from getting fired for using the leave. That seems like much less of an imposition on everyone else than actually being paid.
It seems more rational and fair to me, absent a national goal of having more kids, to just offer everyone "leave" and parents can use theirs for kid-rearing, and other people can go to Europe, or go work another job and double their income.
--PeterM
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The simple answer is that having children is a benefit to society. Those children will be the foundation for the future when you are retired - they will be doing the work. Society has decided to reward people who help provide that benefit.
How terrible that they treat their employees well (Score:2)
I'll remember this next time they raise prices. Dicks.
Yeah, they're real "dicks" for actually giving a shit about their employees. You would prefer they work in some third world sweatshop I presume so you can get discount? How nice of you.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as he gets his cheap jar of pickles [fastcompany.com], he doesn't care. There is more to value than how much something costs.
Re: (Score:3)
These parental leave policies make employees happy. Happier employees = more productive employees. More productive employees = lower expenses. Lower expenses = higher profits at a given level of revenue. Therefore there is no reason to increase the price to the consumer (unless you're relentlessly greedy like so many companies).
There is a world beyond the end of your nose, you should check it out.
Re:Another punch in the face (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to add on to this. The logical conclusion of GP's post is that everyone should retire once they have kids. Or, only incompetent people should breed, so that "good" employees never have to take any time off for children's sake.
Did I enter a Dilbert strip somewhere along the line here, or am I misunderstanding GP's point?
Re: (Score:2)
How about we create rules that foster responsible procreation? If someone wants kids they should have the means (money, time) that is required to take care of them before getting pregnant. Netflix did something helpful for new parents, sure, (and people working at netflix are probably people we'd rather be having more kids than Joe Bob and his sister/wife Fanny Mae) but there are people out there who take their "right" to have kids and stomp on my "right" to not pay a dime for their terrible decisions. We shouldn't be incentivizing having more kids in any settings, we should de-incentivize having kids when you can't afford it (ie. jail time).
I fully support your eugenics program. We should only let the purest of race, the smartest, most noble people reproduce. Everyone else should go to jail for even thinking about reproduction. While they're incarcerated, they can work for my corporation's prison work program. It helps provide inmates with real world job skills while giving them the opportunity to work at $0.80 an hour.
Re: (Score:2)
We should only let the purest of race, the smartest, most noble people reproduce.
No, no, no, it's not like that at all. Obviously the GP meant that only the richest people should be allowed to reproduce.
Re: (Score:2)
I fully support your eugenics program.
Ummm, what he was talking about isn't eugenics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There are a lot of things that are eugenics even now. Just allowing birth control is eugenics, and even financial incentives to have children is a form of eugenics - ie "baby bonus", or I expand the dependent tax write off as one of those things. But eugenics is broadly, improvement of humans by control of reproduction. If stupid fucktards could afford children under his proposal, they could have children.
I've never seen
Re:Responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
I fully support your eugenics program.
Ummm, what he was talking about isn't eugenics.
I've never seen an expectation of the parents to be financially responsible anywhere as being remotely called eugenics.
That would be more like family focused economic policy. Which sounds like something we'd see on the 700 Club.
He was implying that a person should have enough liquid assets on hand so that they do not need to be paid to take a leave of absence. He's suggesting that this program at Netflix would encourage riffraff to reproduce. He was indicating that those who are independently wealthy are somehow more worthy of passing on their genetic heritage. He wants to criminalize reproduction amongst the poor. That sounds like a eugenics program to me. He took it to a much greater extreme than "Hey you really should try to avoid having more children than you can afford."
Re: (Score:3)
I fully support your eugenics program.
Ummm, what he was talking about isn't eugenics.
I've never seen an expectation of the parents to be financially responsible anywhere as being remotely called eugenics.
That would be more like family focused economic policy. Which sounds like something we'd see on the 700 Club.
He was implying that a person should have enough liquid assets on hand so that they do not need to be paid to take a leave of absence.
He said no such thing anywhere. Show me where he said that. I read it that people should have children when they can support them. Is that a bad thing?
He's suggesting that this program at Netflix would encourage riffraff to reproduce.
He said no such thing. In fact, he wrote:
"Netflix did something helpful for new parents, sure, (and people working at netflix are probably people we'd rather be having more kids than Joe Bob and his sister/wife Fanny Mae) "
If you doubt the veracity of what I wrote, it's just a few posts up.
He was indicating that those who are independently wealthy are somehow more worthy of passing on their genetic heritage.
He said no such thing. Show me the part where he said people have to b
Re: (Score:3)
I fully support your eugenics program.
Which twisted sort of racism is in your head, that you think the expectation that people be prepared to finance and rear their own offspring should somehow be different depending on skin pigment? As usual, the people who recoil and spit venom at the mere mention of personal accountability ... turn out, under the hood, to be the real racists.
Eugenics isn't strictly limited to race. In fact, most proponents of Eugenics want to prevent the poor, handicapped, homosexual, intellectually average, and other "deviants" (regardless of skin color) from reproducing. The OP wants to imprison people for having children that they cannot afford. His definition of being unable to afford children include Netflix employees that have to take a leave of absence to care for their children. Do you consider that to be reasonable? Does it sound like the OP reall
Re: (Score:3)
but there are people out there who take their "right" to have kids and stomp on my "right" to not pay a dime for their terrible decisions. We shouldn't be incentivizing having more kids in any settings, we should de-incentivize having kids when you can't afford it (ie. jail time).
I've often thought that the days of getting tax breaks for people who turn the vagina into a clown car, like the ex-reality stars Duggar family, should go away. I'll even be generous - you get 3 deductions for children, and after 4, you start losing deductions.
And speaking of America's favorite over-reproducers, I'm trying to imagine what would happen if both the father and mother had started at Netflix when they first were married, then took the allowed year off for each child.
Looks like they might be