[gyomu]

Yep. I once had the CEO of an early stage, venture backed SF startup I worked for confide to me:

“you know, every time we interview a woman in her late 20s/early 30s, I just have to wonder if she’ll take maternity leave 6 months in to working with us. As a startup we just can’t afford that”.

Of course the public face of the company was all about fighting inequality, supporting diversity, etc.

[gnu8]

I wonder if that CEO was dropped on his head as a child or what else might have been wrong with him to have such a bizarrely spiteful attitude towards humans, and I would have asked him that. People with that type of attitude need to be confronted wherever they are found whenever they express something that fucking stupid. Hopefully he was able to mend his ways.

[jj999]

Being angry about this only hurts your chance of understanding why one will think this way and enact change.

[Gibbon1]

Yeah that's spot on because like nope never have I had a male friend go now that my wife and I have a kid what I need is more money and flexible work hours. So bye. Okay I'm breaking the site guidelines because every man I knew at my age has done that.

[stackedinserter]

But startups really can't afford it, what else can they do?

[callalex]

Civilized governments pay the mother’s current salary for a set period of time. Is a great idea.

[Dalewyn]

The cost isn't just about things money can compensate. A new mother on maternity leave (or father on paternity leave for that matter) is:

* Not undergoing training (if applicable, eg: a new hire).

* Not gaining and maintaining experience and knowledge in the field.

* Not making business connections with others in the industry and elsewhere.

* Not keeping up (in regards to new standards and ways of doing) with her workplace and the industry at large; IT industries especially so.

* Not providing her manpower, which must be compensated by another employee(s) who can't just be fired or transferred away when (or if) she returns.

Basically, the overhead of accomodating and compensating for employees that maek babby is simply unacceptable for many businesses, especially the smaller ones and particularly if the babby is had very early in their employment or career.

You might say this is sexism and discrimination (even though it's not; childbirth is a choice to be made), but this is the cold harsh reality. People who agree to be employed are expected to work, not maek babby.

This is also a reason for falling birthrates: More people just want to live and work without the sacrifices demanded by childbirth and rearing. They know their life or career they have or dream of could end right there if they choose to have children.

[helij]

Harsh reality only if you're making this world to be business first instead of human first.

[vhcr]

Insurance?

[zeroCalories]

You can't insure against losing someone important in the early days of a startup. You lose the context and knowledge invested into the person, and replacing them will take time, which is even more valuable for a startup. Sure, things don't matter at a megacorp that has enough of a buffer to weather these leaves, but I'm sympathetic to startups that don't want to hire women. I don't know what the solution is, but it can't involve maternity leave. Maybe the state should provide free daycare so that the women can get right back to work.

[Dalewyn]

It's not just startups.

Airline companies of all sizes are really hesitant to hire women pilots, because training and certifying pilots is fucking expensive in both money and time. They really do not want to invest in a new pilot only for her (or him, for that matter) to say "Yeah, I'm quitting/taking leave for my new baby." and have to write off their investment that could have gone to another would-be pilot who would fly with them for many decades.

[zeroCalories]

Yes, but that's more of an accounting problem. Airlines will either have to increase ticket prices, or the state could insure them, or maybe non of that matters because there is a critical shortage of pilots right now.

For an early stage startup the potential loss of an important person is incalculable. 3 month delay could put you irrecoverably behind in the market, it could cause you to run out of funding as your efficiency tanks. Treating it statistically the same way you would for airlines does not work for startups that are fundamentally about being an exception to statistics.

[shiroiuma]

There's no shortage of pilots, just like there's never a shortage of any type of employee--companies just don't want to pay enough.

For pilots, airlines refuse to hire people with zero experience and pay for them to go through pilot school: they expect people to pay for all that on their own: get their licenses and enough hours of flying time to be eligible for working for the big airlines. Guess what? That costs a lot of money and not many people want to do it any more. If the airlines really want to hire more pilots, then they need to invest in their training, all the way from zero experience. Of course, they don't want to do that, so they whine and complain.

[burnished]

Is that a real thing or are you just guessing?

I'm trying to imagine an insurance policy that a) protects against financial losses related to losing a pivotal member and b) pays out because they got pregnant, and it sounds insane.