[achou]

I'm a founder looking for ways to make my next startup family-friendly. I'm a parent of two sons in SF so I know what it's like. A grab bag of ideas so far:

- Allow parents to bring babies to work (0-6mo)

- Locate in suburbs where parents live instead of in the city

- Hire remote employees who work from home

- Establish a culture of taking an office break around 4-5pm then resume at 8pm for a couple hours

- Do social events during the day instead of after hours

- Suspend email delivery certain hours, such as 4-8pm, and on weekends until Sunday afternoon

- Same as above for real-time chat for most employees (some exceptions for things like sales)

- As an exception to above, have on-call schedules planned way in advance

- Flexibility on holidays to help synchronize with school schedules

Other thoughts?

[souprock]

The big win is "suburb", but also consider smaller cities. Suburbs can be OK for city dwellers who have cars, which isn't all of them. The daily commute runs backwards of the norm, so traffic is reduced for them. Smaller cities are really affordable. You can pay people less and they still get bigger houses.

Keeping work tasks at the workplace is important. There is an extra benefit for you: security. The best practice is to store proprietary stuff on a network that isn't connected to the Internet at all. Instead of suspending email delivery, just deliver it exclusively to devices at the office.

Babies at work is important if you hope to keep mothers. Nursing works best when there is no delay. The problem with special rooms for nursing is that they create the expectation that they will be used, but nursing is far easier if people are comfortable nursing wherever they happen to be at the moment.

If you can do flex-time, do it. (depends on nature of business) I'm at a place where some people come in randomly, some come in before the Sun is up, and others come in in the late afternoon. Missing a day entirely isn't a big deal; you just make it up. (we do timecards) I'm sure this helps non-parents too: some people want to take college classes, some people want to go surfing, etc.

Timecards may be helpful. Without them, people may feel pressured to work unreasonable hours.

[laythea]

"bring babies to work" - are you serious? do you have children?

[achou]

Yes, I do have children. I got the idea from this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/opinion/sunday/take-your-...

Bringing babies to work definitely has issues, but also benefits.

[thatwebdude]

0-6 month, as they specified.

That's nice considering daycares have a minimum age requirement before you can start leaving a child to go back to work.

Most of the first few months are spent sleeping.

Perhaps they should have said "remote work while child is 0-6 months".

Honestly, a flexible remote schedule is just something I'd be willing to change jobs for right now. When kids get sick and I have the follow the same vacation/PTO policy as hourly people here; I begin to despise my HR department.

[unfocused]

I like your idea of:

"Establish a culture of taking an office break around 4-5pm then resume at 8pm for a couple hours"

as it is similar to what someone does at my work and it really helps them out.

We have one person that lives far away (45m to 1hr) and she leaves early, around 3:30pm so she can be at home waiting for the kids when the bus drops them off. Then she puts in another hour of work sometime that evening.

[mrfusion]

Sounds great! Except the working after 8pm thing??

[jshaqaw]

Living in the city means no commute which means lots more quality time mornings and evenings

[souprock]

If you mean San Francisco, that isn't really an option with a family. There exist 4-bedroom houses with yards (little tiny yards) in San Francisco, but even the old 1960s ones go for about $1,800,000.

[thatwebdude]

More parents are willing to raise kids in 'burbs than go with city schools.

Most suburban school districts far excel urban ones.