[tptacek]

This is not remotely fair to say. To promise a year of leave for all employees, you have to be able to add headcount to cover the absence. It's not simply a year's cash salary we're talking about; it's a potentially uncapped obligation.

[douche]

Exactly, it raises the question of how often you can take (m|p)aternity leave successively. For a lot of people, if you're guaranteed a year to eighteen months of paid leave every time you get pregnant, and you get to come back to your job at the end of it, then when you get married and want to start a family, you could ghost for four or five years.

I'm not sure that'd be a bad thing, in the grand scheme of things for society - childcare is an unbelievable racket, and we'd probably be better off if parents could actually raise their children instead of having to foist them off on strangers 9-5. But it'd be ruinous for businesses.

[goseeastarwar]

You're accounting for the worst-case scenario, which is fine, but I still don't know why we're behaving like Basecamp can't afford to hire folks to backfill people on leave.