[ll931110]

The problem is, people without children are told (or required) to pick up the workload left behind when the coworkers having children taking (multiple) weeks off. For once or twice that might be okay, but if became a chronic problem, no wonder they are not happy.

[marbletiles]

Yes, they should be unhappy about that: at their managers. Not at their colleagues attempting to care for children during a pandemic.

I've heard a related thing about US workers resenting colleagues for taking paid time off for similar reasons, and it's just as weird to my European eyes. The difference a decent labour movement (or the legacy of one) can make to industrial relations is stark

[ashtonkem]

Any manager that’s laying out timelines assuming that everyone will work at 100% capacity permanently is being unbelievably naive. People will take vacations, get sick, or need mental breaks. We’re humans, not robots.

If a team can’t handle someone losing velocity due to the challenges of parenting during a once in a century pandemic, then it needs new leadership, period.

[abpavel]

100% pay for 100% work and 16/5 availability. 50% pay for 75% work and 10/3 availability. Are you going to be ok with this on the receiving end?

The second part of comment is asinine trolling. No one is ready for once-in-a-century thing by definition. If once in a century flood leaves the team stranded and water still does not drain away after 6 months it has nothing to do with management. There are no continuity plans for disasters that keep happening for such a long time.

[ashtonkem]

Don’t call me a troll. It’s unhelpful, and turns this from a well meaning discussion into something much more personal and rude. You can disagree without stooping to insults.

Employers should pay for the amount that humans are capable of putting out on average in the long run, which is probably not the same as a neat number like 40hrs a week. Pretending that we can ignore human limits and ask for more is not only a recipe for burnout, but probably not even in the businesses interest due to mistakes and retention concerns.

No, nobody saw a pandemic coming, that wasn’t even my point. My point is that not expecting people to slow down during this is genuinely stupid, and any company (that can work remotely) that can’t handle that change in velocity isn’t well led. It doesn’t take a once in a century pandemic for a team’s availability to change; all it takes is a key developer leaving, someone having a child, or even a car wreck to suddenly pull employees out of the regular rotation. All plans should have error bars on them to compensate for these uncertainties as best as possible; the answer is not to expect the remaining teammates to pick up the slack to avoid missing a deadline that very well might be arbitrary, especially if it’ll cause resentment or burnout among your other employees.

[luckylion]

But they are unhappy about their managers' decision to favor their colleagues.

If you give a tax rebate to anyone who's last name starts with A, are the other people not allowed to be annoyed, given that they have to pay more taxes to make up for the rebate?

"Why can't you just be happy for the A people?" feels weird.

Just pay those not taking time off for the time they would've taken off. It's not a complicated concept, it shows appreciation for them working harder than they'd need to if their colleagues were around.

[evan_]

If there are fewer people working the managers should be scheduling less work.

In your “tax rebate” example you should be upset with whoever decided to issue rebates in that way, not the people who received the rebate.

[luckylion]

> If there are fewer people working the managers should be scheduling less work.

I'll take Things That Will Never Happen for 500, Alex.

> In your “tax rebate” example you should be upset with whoever decided to issue rebates in that way, not the people who received the rebate.

Or you could point out that it's unjust to favor some people in that regard, which everyone would do, and the receivers of the tax break would report feeling a growing resentment over their privileged treatment. Because at the end of the day, the taxes have to be paid. If some are cutting their taxes, others must step up.

I get it, double incomes are great, paying for child care sucks, and reducing hours sucks too (because less income), so if coworkers could just pick up the slack without compensation, that'd be great. But that's essentially just asking the colleagues to finance the chosen lifestyle.

[evan_]

In functional workplaces the management should be capable of tying production to capacity. I’m sorry you can not fathom working in that sort of environment.

I place the blame with the people you have worked for, though, not you.

You could just kill all of the people whose name starts with “A” or whatever but that still won’t get you the tax rebate. The people who made that rule would absolutely love it if you did blame the people who got the rebate though, because they’re the ones who should take the blame and if you ignore their role then they get away with it.

[luckylion]

> You could just kill all of the people whose name starts with “A” or whatever but that still won’t get you the tax rebate. The people who made that rule would absolutely love it if you did blame the people who got the rebate though, because they’re the ones who should take the blame and if you ignore their role then they get away with it.

Favoritism isn't always some kind of hidden "divide and conquer" system. Sometimes it's just favoritism. And nobody wants to kill all the tax-rebate people, they just want the tax rebate reversed (or applied to all tax payers) so everyone pays their fair share.

[marbletiles]

I don’t think you do get it, no. Staff are not “asking their colleagues to finance their lifestyles”, they are asking their managers to accommodate their needs so they can continue to contribute the best they can to the company. If bosses choose to penalise other staff for that — when they have many other options! - that is on them.

Exactly as how the government would be to blame in the ludicrous tax hypothetical (which falsely compares an accommodation with a benefit).

[vecter]

> > If there are fewer people working the managers should be scheduling less work. > I'll take Things That Will Never Happen for 500, Alex.

That's exactly what I would expect to happen in my company. We do weekly sprint planning, and we assign work to each person based on how many hours they have to work that week, not based on the team's needs in a given timeframe.

[YarickR2]

"Scheduling less work" means less profit for everyone. Should everyone take a pay cut because of child-caring workers ?

[evan_]

The company shouldn’t make promises it can’t keep. If they have to break one promise (keeping salaries the same) to keep another (paid time off) then it’s still the company that is breaking the promise, not other people to whom they have also made promises.

If they have to cut salaries because they spent all the money on magic beans do you get mad at the beans?

[evan_]

also "less work means less profit" is complete bullshit

[rdtwo]

In this example people who’s letter starts with a basically lost a major social safety net but got a small perk instead. It’s like saying sorry you don’t qualify for social security anymore but here is 600$

[luckylion]

When the funding continues, why are they losing anything?

When the company continues to produce the same output, their salaries are the same, they get their equity bonus, and undoubtedly they expect their promotions not to be affected, what are they losing?

[cascom]

I’ve seen this play out with colleagues/listened to the griping - where the resentment comes in (in addition to the items already discussed) some of the self righteousness of the people with kids vs. non-kids “I really can’t be doing this weekly midnight call with Asia...I have kids” as if having kids was akin to solving world hunger and people without kids couldn’t possibly be doing something meaningful with their time

[marbletiles]

"I solve world hunger" is a high bar to set for people to establish boundaries with their employers.

"I can't do this weekly midnight call" should really be enough. That makes things better for everyone: it means the people without kids can also say they won't attend, even if that's because they've got something planned in a bar. Adding in the details of kids is because the labour relationship is already wrong.

Covid has surely shown that when required to companies can suddenly be incredibly flexible in all sorts of ways that were "never happen" before. This "you must work for us at midnight too" is just another example.

(This is all-too-similar to how people sometimes still talk about accessibility requirements. "The self-righteousness of people demanding ramps everywhere! We already added a lift from the back alley basement entrance which usually works, and that hurt profits that month. They knew the building was like this when they took the job")

[dantheman]

And those who can make those calls should be compensated more as they're providing more value.

At the end this comes down to - some people are providing more value and want to be compensated appropriately; or more specifically some people are now providing less value and don't want their compensation to reflect that.

[cascom]

Now you’re suggesting something that will likely not satisfy some sort of “disparate effect” testing

[cascom]

You miss my point the friction is often with colleagues (in addition to manager/employer) as the co-worker who is seeking a reduced workload often acts holier-than-thou with regards to needing someone to work more on their behalf, rather than being contrite...

[marbletiles]

My point is that you shouldn't have to be contrite that you can't meet employer's insane demands. You should be able to reject demands to do midnight calls whether or not it's because you have a kid or because you want to have a social life.

The game is rigged in the favour of the employers here, and it's so cleverly rigged they have employees blaming each other.

The only people taking midnight calls should be those who are willing to, and who are appropriately compensated for it.

[cascom]

The fact is both people signed up for jobs where they are highly compensated but are always “on-call” - now one wants to change that, still be highly compensated, and the other has to pick up the slack...

[aaomidi]

> Yes, they should be unhappy about that: at their managers. Not at their colleagues attempting to care for children during a pandemic.

Why are you assuming it's not that?

[nicbou]

The article has many pretty unambiguous quotes about it

[Barrin92]

I'm perfectly fine with working more than people with children right now, because children are as the saying goes, quite literally our future.

I don't have any but seeing how difficult it is for friends right now who do I am perfectly fine with picking up some extra work.

I wish we could stop treating this like an individual issue, as we do everything nowadays, which is probably why we're getting so screwed by this virus to begin with.

[bzb5]

> I'm perfectly fine with working more than people with children

That’s cool. Seems like not everybody agrees with you

[huanwin]

This is an uncharitable interpretation. Here is GP's statement without the editorializing quotation:

> I'm perfectly fine with working more than people with children right now,...

[mynameisvlad]

I mean, that doesn't really change the parent comment's response. It's clear from the article and even the discussion on this thread that not everyone agrees, whether it's permanent or right now.

[huanwin]

You're right, it doesn't. It's the principle I wanted to point out. How can there be meaningful or good-faith discussion if one party's perspective is misrepresented?

[pb7]

Not sure it can be misrepresented when it's right there above the reply to it.

[rdtwo]

It’s cool if they don’t they should just pay more taxes to compensate

[WWLink]

Yeah that's the "they have x, why don't i?" attitude that causes a lot of problems. It should be an "everyone should have x!" attitude instead.

At the end of the day, everyone's human, so there should be a little bit of slack in the staffing - long term - so that when someone's unavailable, nobody is drowning.

[owenmarshall]

> At the end of the day, everyone's human, so there should be a little bit of slack in the staffing - long term - so that when someone's unavailable, nobody is drowning.

I once as a very junior programmer asked a lead why we kept planning 75% of our capacity every month when we were hitting - and exceeding - our deliverables like clockwork.

Then one month we had to do a death march to build features that had some $$$ tied to them. Did I ever learn why a little slack was critical.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

I had a manager who kept saying "don't use fear-based estimates" since he had been picked to right the train. He looked good in front of the directors until he had to deploy the thing that was obviously rushed since "we can't use fear-based estimates". He wasn't able to pat his own back before the alert on the outage went out (all system outage)

[nicbou]

That's the argument I made above. If they get paid 100% of their salary for 80% of the output, so should everyone else. I compared it to smokers taking smoke breaks while non-smokers aren't allowed to take random 5 minute breaks.

[rootusrootus]

The problem is that nobody can even define output accurately. I know people who output more in 25% of the time than some of their peers manage at 100%. But that's not how compensation in this industry is structured, so it is moot.

[nicbou]

Sure, but it's fair to say that if someone has 75% availability and must miss meetings because of external events, their output is affected.

Besides, I am talking about a drop in output for a given employee, so the comparison to other employees is pointless. If my productivity dropped by 25%, I'd hear about it pretty quickly, and I doubt my explanation would matter much in my performance review.

[rdtwo]

Your company must have some good metrics or they are measuring clicks per minute if you think they would notice 25% output growth very quickly. Likely you just wouldn’t get promoted and that might happen to your coworkers in due time

[nicbou]

You are getting hung up on arbitrary numbers in a fictitious example

[rdtwo]

And that comparison breaks down as soon as you go from making widgets to creating nebulous IP. Who can really say if the smoker on non smoker writes better code in their 8 hrs

[sokoloff]

At a place where smokers can take random 5-minute breaks, I can practically guarantee that non-smokers can as well.

[myko]

> At a place where smokers can take random 5-minute breaks, I can practically guarantee that non-smokers can as well.

Never seemed okay for non-smokers to take these breaks in the Army

[nicbou]

Smoke breaks are not really an issue for white collar workers, but I don't think it invalidates the relationship between the two situations.

I don't think this has to be explicitly stated.

[AzN1337c0d3r]

I have a coworker who doesn't smoke but will call it his smoke break and take the 10 minutes and just go for a walk around the building.

[opportune]

Also, not that I necessarily think this way, but parents are told that working less won’t impact their ratings. And since the distribution of ratings is usually fixed, that effectively means you won’t get rewarded for picking up the slack from others. (Or in the case of Facebook it means everybody got the same rating regardless of how much/well they worked).

Not necessarily due to just the parental policies, but I do believe Covid negatively affected my career progression as someone in my early career. I wouldn’t take my anger out on parents and would instead direct it at my company’s policies (and not just regarding parental leave). But I can see why someone might see others on their immediate team “benefitting” from the pandemic - not that they truly are, but that they are doing less work directly for the company - and take out their frustrations on them

[astura]

I would hope that if someone was putting in more than 40 hours regularly they'd be rewarded with overtime pay?

I, personally, wouldn't work overtime regularly without overtime pay. I've worked three software jobs when overtime was needed the overtime was paid. I also don't make SV-level salary though.

[627467]

Would anyone hate to "pickup workload" from anyone else for any other reason? I don't know: maybe colleague goes on PTO, maybe colleague is sick, maybe colleague isn't as experienced on doing something and takes longer, maybe colleague has a disability and not everything is in place to offset the handicap...etc

If the problem is chronic isn't that a stronger indication that you're facing a management problem?

[mlang23]

Bonus points for comparing parenthood with a disability. I am surprised you haven't been ripped into pieces yet.

[newacct583]

> For once or twice that might be okay, but if became a chronic problem, no wonder they are not happy.

It's a global pandemic, by definition it's not a chronic problem.

I mean, look, we had this problem solved. That's what public education, daycare facilities, child care contractors, grandparents, etc... are for. And this system worked. And it's been disrupted.

That loss is real, but it's not the parents' fault that the pandemic happened either. Why should they be (per your analysis) the ones to bear the costs of the disruption to their particular (and extremely common!) lifestyle?

[wbronchart]

If others have to consistently work overtime to cover for others, wouldn't it make sense to hire more? It's going to take some time for things to get back to normal.

[sokoloff]

That depends on how profitable the company is (many companies are experiencing downturns in revenue right now) and whether that profitability is improved/protected by hiring more people or not.

[Aunche]

After the pandemic is over, should you then lay someone off when everyone is 100% productive again? Otherwise, you would just be wasting money.

[epx]

Personally I never had this problem, but some friends complain that, in their workplaces, they are automatically supposed to be on-call or available to travel on short notice because they were single/childless.

Every place has its particular culture, I guess.

[MaximumYComb]

If the employers offer parental leave after the birth of a child then the managers should factor that in to their work allocations. You cannot blame the employee for using a benefit that's part of their contract.

[celticninja]

That's definitely employer specific. That's has not been the case where I work.

[rdtwo]

They aren’t happy but they have to deal. People with kids got fucked so hard by government mishandling of pandemic that a little bit of extra work for those without kids is minor in comparison. If we had to increase taxes to provide the additional support to even things out then I guarantee you it would be much worse.

[PeterisP]

Well then, direct the anger at those who do the telling or the requiring.

[pojzon]

That not always help but for sure will backfire at you.

Im writing next part as a parent of two.

We have in team people who take multiple days off due to taking care of children, often not even counting it as taking a day off. Management doesnt care and expects people who do not “exploit” their privilages to do work for 2-3-4 people.

Its also not the way to go, but any comment about that is a hard “stop being so selfish”.

What to do in such a situation? Start doing the same to make company bleed money while frozen?

[slg]

Dear boss,

My team is really struggling with the challenges that have come along with this global pandemic. Everyone is doing their best given the situation, but we aren't able to deliver the same level of productivity on a consistent basis. Can we setup a call to discuss adjusting expectations and shifting workloads in order to keep everything running as smoothly as possible?

Sincerely,

pojzon

There is an email template for you.

[YarickR2]

Sure. Just provide us with level of pay cut comfortable to you with respect to your reduced commitment

[slg]

>Well then, direct the anger at those who do the telling or the requiring.

I will remind you that this is what kicked off the conversation. Forcing a pay cut on people who can't reach their normal level of productivity is a perfectly reasonable choice. To do it during a global pandemic if the survival of the business is not on the line is a choice that lacks empathy and compassion, but it is a choice that management can make. At least then it will be clear who is at fault for the decision. Refusing to do anything and letting your employees fight about it amongst themselves due to your own lack of management initiative is a cowardly way to lead.

[VRay]

"Sure thing. I'll take a 0% pay cut, reflective of the market rate for someone with my skills and experience. I'm taking a few weeks of PTO starting today to look for a new job in the meantime in case this isn't tenable. Thanks."

(Then you load up the "Who's Hiring" thread from last week on this site and line up a few juicy offers)

[alchemism]

I’ve never seen it work the other way: “we had to let go of someone so you have to do the work of two people, here take 50% of their salary.”

So why offer such a thing to management?

[RHSeeger]

> Management doesnt care and expects people who do not “exploit” their privilages to do work for 2-3-4 people.

Out of curiosity, why is "just don't" not an option. You do what work you are capable of, maybe push a little harder because we're all pushing a little harder, and that's that. Things don't get done because there's less manpower doing it (people taking time off for kids; people taking time off for sickness; people working less efficiently because they're now working on the kitchen table etc).

Everyone takes a hit because of covid; that includes parents, non-parents, AND companies.

[MaximumYComb]

If a standard work day is 8 hours and management expects you to do the work of 4 people then I'd argue that the company is already bleeding money.

[Apocryphon]

Honestly, this is why labor unions could help even highly-paid occupations such as software engineering. There needs to be something to serve as a counterweight to management, especially during economic downturns when finding a new job is more difficult.

[d3ntb3ev1l]

And this is a fact you have established from what data?

[RandoHolmes]

The same thing happens when a coworker gets sick or goes on vacation.