Yet again, people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own (e.g., taking care of a sick parent or sibling) are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed. I'm not saying parental leave is bad, but it's entirely eclipsed the other reasons why someone might need to take time off work to help family.
Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.
> people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed.
I don't disagree with your larger point, but this statement is just incorrect as a matter of economics. Your average American child born today is going to contribute a net surplus to the economy over his or her lifetime. There may come a time when robots do all the work, and human labor costs more to raise and sustain than it adds in dollar-denominated output. We are a long way from that (and we may never get there, depending on what happens in the future with AI).
> people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own ... are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed.
This is really a regrettable choice of words. There is no "fault" involved in becoming a parent. The point you are trying to get across could have been communicated so much more convincingly if you had checked your attitude. "This is a great first step, but many of us have responsibilities to other family members, also -- sick or disabled parents or siblings, for instance. It would be terrific to see benefits that support those needs as well."
EDIT: It has been (correctly) pointed out that my translation was lossy; I dropped the fact that no one chooses to have a sick sibling, and thus it might be even worthier of compensation / support than parenthood. That was unintentional, and I regret it. I still think there's a less caustic, more productive way to make that point.
A key point that I was making (and a point which your rewriting of my comment completely erases) is that parenthood can be planned ahead for (or avoided) to a much greater degree than other situations that require family leave.
I could have made some anodyne choice of words that obscures this fact, but I didn't because I wanted to make the point that if we are giving people support for voluntarily taking on extra family burdens, then it's absolutely inexcusable that we don't extend the same support to people who have had similar burdens thrust upon them involuntarily.
Pretty sure part of the point they were conveying was the irritation with society willing to do things for 'think of the children' but not willing to extend those same things to those in basically the same situation but who are not children.
So no, it could not be made by choosing words that would not offend your delicate sensibilities.
When setting parental leave policy at my company, I suggested making it available for any FMLA(1) suitable absence. This seems to be the most fair way to go about it.
(1) FMLA = Family and Medical Leave Act, a US law requiring employers to offer unpaid leave and hold jobs open for employees who have to be out for an extended period for medical reasons or to care for a family member.
> Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.
Well, that's bad! But I'm not sure why the solution should be to discontinue offering parental leave.
I am not saying it will satisfy all your concerns. It is just my experience (having worked in an HR department a while back) that most people are not familiar with what is in there. It doesn't provide mandatory pay, but it does provide a lot of protections other than that. I also find a common reaction to it is to assert that it should do more, but when faced with the question of what to do when people start deliberately gaming it, the objections become a bit more muted. (Yes, in some sense it sucks that there's a condition on how long you've been employed before it kicks in, but it's quite unclear what the alternative is that would work in the real world.)
As a parent and also someone with family members in hospice care, the problem is that the good quality care is prohibitively expensive for many, many people. People don't want to take time off to care for their loved ones just because, but because they can provide much, much better care at a lower cost.
Prohibitive medical and care costs are policy issues, that can be solved by many different methods, not necessarily requiring the same approach as parental leave.
Exactly. Parenting has significant impact on a child's development that cannot be replaced by nannying or daycare. The same can't be said for other types of care.
The difference is that children start dependent on others hand and foot.
Adults have savings, insurance, sick leave, government unemployment benefits, government disability benefits, etc. Or at least they can. There's a lot more grey area on what's necessary.
In general, different sorts of laws cover care of a relative. Besides, it would be the same sort of leave as if your child is sick.
In this case, it is more of a health issue (for women). They just gave birth. To a new human. It hurt, and people die from it. And afterwards, the infant has special needs for a while. This truly isn't the same as taking care of an elderly parent or a sibling.
People with kids are less likely to leave your company. So a company making it financially easier to become more tied down and less likely to leave is just good business sense.
Why would you assume that? In Canada and most of Europe the same system pays for both these types of care. Neither have any real negative affects on companies because:
1. All ee's have the same payroll tax rate, regardless.
2. All companies are subject to the same limitations of the leaves.
Parental care is more popular because it affects more people overall, but compassionate care will likely grow as boomers age.
(I have no idea how this comment struck such a nerve... all it does is point out that compassionate care leaves are also the norm for the first world. It seems some people are really wedded to their ideology, even here.)
The creation of Maine from Massachusetts shows that there is a way to redraw the borders of a state already admitted to the union. It may not be an efficient or repeatable process, but evidently it can happen regardless of how many times you say "states, not provinces!".
Wartime is a long-accepted way of changing what a government has sovereignty over. This is still a bad example to show that US states are mere administrative decisions permitted to exist because the feds feel nice today.
A comment amounting to "that's how capitalism works, so tough shit!" is such a perfect example of the SV empathy vacuum that I almost think it must be satire.
That's not my point at all. My point is that the crosshair is incorrectly aimed: it is not an industry that is failing at this, it is the way our social structure is formed and rewarded that is failing.
Technological progress may be an issue that contributes to this so-called empathy vacuum, but all industries that cause negative externalities (in cyclical or permanent unemployment, or pollution, or wealth disparity, etc) are just as much a problem.
If we want to have this debate, that's great. It needs to happen, especially as our economy ends up with an increasing human labor supply as it's automated away or sent to places where labor is cheaper. The track we are on now will likely end up with massive Gini coefficients worldwide, a ruling class and a noted underclass based upon who was able to achieve capital accumulation while their labor was still worth something.
The problem I have here is that the New Yorker isn't even going for this debate in this article. They are complaining about something and pointing a finger at but a sliver of an issue that they are also a part of.
No, you can't just take a statement and call it a "law", even in a facetious sense.
Murphy's law, Betteridge's law, or other facetious laws are at least roughly formulated as "if X, then Y" (or sometimes "Y happens"), which mimics the structure of actual scientific laws. Stallman's statement is formulated as "if X, then maybe Y" (or "Y could happen").
"If corporations dominate society and write the laws, then each advance or change in technology is an opening for them to further restrict or mistreat its users."
Also, you definitely can, tongue-in-cheek, call a general statement a "law." It's not meant to be taken in a literal sense; it's meant for humorous or broadly pragmatic effect.
That's not a "maybe" any more by now. Corporation are meant to maximise profits, at the expense of everything else, except braking the law —and even that is debatable. Some jurisdictions even have laws to enforce that mindset.
As soon as profit maximization is at odds with the user's interests (that's pretty much all the time), the corporation will naturally act against the user's interests.
From this, I'm pretty sure "law" is a relatively accurate descriptor.
> Spencer advocates for a white homeland for a "dispossessed white race" and calls for "peaceful ethnic cleansing" to halt the "deconstruction" of European culture.[16][22][23]
Think we can all agree that the people you are describing are trash. My point is that they are a fortunately very small non-statistically significant group and their beliefs do not represent the beliefs of most Americans (yes, including Trump voters.)
The post you replied to was talking about white supremacists, with no mention of Trump voters.
You are the one who brought up Trump voters at the first mention of alt-right white nationalists, which is ironic since you insist that the former has nothing to do with the latter.
Is there a better descriptor for what Eich was put through? I'd like to hear it.
Brendan Eich contributed to the Prop 8[1] traditional marriage campaign that the California electorate voted on. It was a constitutional amendment and it passed which, in 2008, was simply stunning.
In any case, Eich was shamed retroactively for his contribution. The hate and vitriol I read directed at the man at the time was incredible. If I were him, I would have been more in fear for my life and my family's, much less holding on to my CEO position. I don't know Brendan except hearing heard him speak a bit on youtube on technical topics, maybe he's a braver soul than I am IRL.
In any case, "the use of violence or threats of violence in order to coerce, especially for political purposes" is the #1 definition of 'terrorism', which describes what happened with Eich pretty well. Fear is as powerful a weapon of terrorists as bullets or jet planes or pressure cookers are. Is this definition of terrorism and its implications well understood by you, and are you simply resistant to empathizing with someone with different politics than yours? That's all well and good until it's your ox that gets gored.
Eich wasn't fired, at least not publicly. He stepped down because the cowards/traitors on the board let him dangle with no support.
What's to understand? Gaur fantasizes about victimhood (mine, and presumably his or others; see links below) and makes up facts.
On the facts, Mozilla and I both say I resigned, and Mozilla's board members said at the time that they wanted me to stay.
But in fantasizing that I was fired, gaur's moralistic and judgmental language exhibits the usual signs that Jonathan Haidt has detailed in "The Righteous Mind": a casting out of the other as beyond redemption and justly punished, without the ability to model said other or address their point of view.
(Also without ever adverting to the bad "purging" precedent he's endorsing, which global Trumpism can and will exploit by reversing his right-makes-might-makes-right circular argument. The shoe may soon be on the other foot even here in the USA, at least in large regions; it definitely never left the first foot in places like Saudi Arabia.)
Dishonesty and self-pity are not worth hearing or studying -- we have enough of them already.
Gaur expresses or implies falsehoods about California law, but I've addressed those elsewhere on HN and won't repeat here. Links:
Hi Brendan, just in case it wasn't clear to people who pity gaur, I upvoted to keep his messages alive so everyone could see how effortlessly the crybully drifts into tyranny.
Of course, you're right on, and that level of injustice he lusts for invites a cruel backlash. Your ominous parenthetical sidebar is not lost on me, and we may be heading to ugly places under Trump.
I am glad to hear you speak well of the Mozilla board. I know you all were put in an awful bind, and you did the most honorable thing you could.
Quick reply to say I cited what the board said, not to praise them (I have no comment on the board then or now) but because they independently stated that I resigned, _contra_ gaur who wrote that I was fired. Facts matter.
Facts do matter, and I will always be grumpy at your board for not more strenuously arguing in favor of you and against your detractors.
I hope you took good notes during those times and write your memoirs someday. What was it like to become a public figure after having such an impact on our industry? And then, I'm convinced you were just at the wrong place career-wise at the wrong time, what was it like to be a public figure caught up in a media firestorm? That's a story I'd like to read someday.
Also, what are you going to do next, if you're in a sharing mood?
Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.