| > I might underestimate the power of the almighty buck here, but I'd take the employer that says "we value work/life balance, when we say 40h/week we mean it literally, we allow remote work, and we have 5 paid weeks off". Almost universally what you see in job ads and recruiter spam is "we offer exciting challenges" and that they've created the most fun place to work ever and if they mention compensation at all they offer "market salary" or "salary commensurate with experience", to the point where all these different messages sound pretty much the same. I get hundreds of messages on linkedin and they all sound like the above with exciting challenges with a market salary, but I don't recall anyone attempting to promise above-market salary or better vacation time, even once. You would think that you could get a competitive advantage by promising tangible benefits as you suggest, but I've never seen it. Some do mention being more flexible with remote work though. > so it's basically a job that requires one parent to stay at home at least part time? Yes, basically. > Or you need a nanny to pick up your kids after school/kindergarten? In the US children are universally bussed to/from school, you don't need to come pick them up yourself. So once they're old enough that they don't need constant supervision they often have a couple hours to themselves at home. > My guess is that you are going to say that normally one parent (and not a random one) just stays home for years after having kids, but that would be a real blow to my view of SF/NYC as progressive... In terms of labor conditions? CA and NY have a handful of better labor protections than the rest of the country, but progressive by your standards? absolutely not. > It seems odd to me that people making a lot of money (which I hope these salaries are considered), wouldn't just invest a huge chunk of it in family/free time, by simply working less hours, e.g. 75% at 75% pay. That would be great. I would totally do that. Remember, people don't get paid by the hour so there's no counterincentive to employers using social pressure to get you to put in as much time as possible. There is no concept of a set number of hours you're supposed to work. > Also I'm surprised of how employers (candidates, rather) aren't pushing the compensation in a more work/life balance friendly direction. Yes. People are not willing to fight for this. > Especially since these were visa applications, a lot of which I assume come from people used to 5w holidays and actual 40h workweeks. The bulk of these these are from Asia or India where the salary differential might be very large. |