[DavidHm]

If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them.

If you own in part the business, then imho you take as much or little parental leave as you want/can afford.

[simonsarris]

The reason I used CFO and specialist mechanic is that often companies are utterly reliant not on a single person, but a single person's work or expertise. It may be no problem at all to hire a replacement expert, just like it is easy to hire a new accountant if your accountant dies from a heart attack.

But you still hire a new accountant, and in this case, with parental leave, hiring someone to do the leaver's job leads to problems because unlike the dead accountant, they come back! This is the issue, that normally you fulfill a specialist role with another hire.

[throwawayjava]

> not on a single person, but a single person's work or expertise

But this is true for literally everyone in the company, including the owner. It's a rare business that couldn't change ownership and still thrive under the right circumstances. In fact, there's a whole day of the week that has a nickname because people do this so often ("M&A Monday")

Your "someone with equivalent skills" condition is equivalent to the "under the right circumstances" condition.

So, I'm not sure I see how this is a response to:

> If the company is utterly reliant on a single person, that person is either an equity owner, or should be, and the owner is taking advantage of them.

[walshemj]

you know there is an entire industry of recruitment agencies that specialise in interim directors?