For our first child, for the first 24 hours or so postpartum, my wife and child both needed something checked every couple hours.
Our overnight nurse said something like "I'll be doing your wife's checks at midnight and 2am, and your baby's at 1am and 3am". When I asked if my wife and child could be checked in the same entries, it turned out they could. I was surprised the hospital didn't do it by default that way for less time sensitive checks.
Did you have your child in the US? If so I am curious, do the nurses come and visit your home the next day and a week after? I live in Canada and was very surprised when they came to check on the baby and my wife the next day, looking for jaundice, bleeding, etc. I'm genuinely curious if that is covered by insurance in the US?
I've been in the hospital without insurance. They bill you for gratuitous stuff regardless of whether you have insurance. They don't mention that there will be a bill when they ask if you want your newborn's hearing checked or if you want to try the experimental sap-based wound sealer they happen to have (both things that actually happened). They seem kind and polite. Then they bill you. One doctor looks over another's shoulder for five minutes. They each bill you.
This is in the US, mind you. In fact, both stays were in Nashville, TN, in the early 2000s.
I would guess it depends on the specific circumstance as well as the insurer. With that said, I'm not the GP (but am based in the US), but in our case the hospital arranged for a visiting nurse to do a check in the next day and it was covered by our insurance.
Sorry for missing this, I don't check HN every day!
Both medical systems that we had children with (in SF) do not do in-home followups, at least not for us. We had to go back the day after discharge for both of our children (for bilirubin draws). Would be nice so soon postpartum to have in-home visits.
What they should do is say "These are our parental leave policies" (which will be at least legal minimum) and go from there. (Ideally, these should be reasonable leave time government policies and paid by the government, but let's assume we're not going to fix that soon)
It's then up to the candidate to accept it or not.
It'd be entirely shitty of a company to say "here are our policies" and then reject a candidate who would exercise those policies.
I just switched jobs in San Francisco, and part of my search was parental leave. I did not see any companies in the 6-12 month paid parental leave range.
6-20 weeks is the range I saw. Twitter at 20, Square (and I think Facebook) at 16, Google at 12, and most at 6.
I'm totally onboard with it being government funded instead of employer funded. I think tying it to salary (and what people pay in) makes sense, as many people are less likely to take it if it's significantly under their normal income.
I'm not sure the paid leave and severance is really the primary issue. Sure, money is money, but it's very expensive to find a good employee. When someone goes on leave like that you can't fill the position. Since they can't fill your position your team is stuck having to work extra to pick up the slack, and then if 90% of women don't wind up coming back it's just that much longer before you can find someone decent to fill the position.
90% of moms not coming back is an exaggeration for the bay area.
Part of what we're not talking about here (in this whole thread) is the cost of child care. Child care in SF is over $1700 a month, and hard to find for 3 month olds, which is why a lot of parents quit after leave.
I reckon we'll get a lot more parents staying in the workforce if the government helped more with childcare across all income ranges. Childcare comes at a lower income time of life, often when around when people have recently purchased a home.
We're also likely to have fewer parents drop out of the workforce if they can get their infants to 6+ months with a parent. Childcare is easier to find for 6 month olds than 3 month olds.
I looked it up, the stat is 43% of mothers leave the work force after having a baby. Yeah, 90% is an exaggeration, but 43% is a huge chunk of women. This isn't intended to debate you, just to put a real number on it. The article I got this stat from talks about some of the things you mentioned.
I'm far from an expert so I could be totally wrong but the little bit of literature I've read on outcomes for children suggests a full time stay at home parent provides the best outcomes. That almost certainly doesn't have to be the mom specifically, but if we're going to subsidize behavior, I would prefer to subsidize whatever behavior provides the best outcomes for children. The article below suggests part time work from home opportunities with deadline based projects. That might be a reasonable answer, but again someone with actual expertise on child rearing/psychology should set policy here. The best outcomes might not be [parent] getting back to work in 6 months or even a year.
If 43% of women leave the workforce after having a child, it’s still more likely than not that your employee is coming back. And my guess is that the number of women who plan to come back and then don’t is much smaller than 43%, because - to the surprise of many - women often know what they want in life. (That snark is not aimed at you, btw, just that this thread is full of people second-guessing women.)
I'm glad CA's PFL program exists, and by American standards, it's very good.
But it only pays 60% of income, for 6 weeks, and up to a level under the salary of most in product-engineering-design in tech. Most tech companies true up salary above the PFL levels for those 6 weeks (and potentially pay 100% for more weeks), and in SF, truing up to 100% for those 6 weeks is required for companies above a certain size.
Howdy, author here! When someone is getting ready to come onsite, we give the more detailed information about what the onsite will look like, as this varies team by team. Our iOS and Android interviews both do 90 minutes of pair programming. Roles that we're not hiring many people for typically do not have pair programming interviews.
But our focus in interviews isn't CS textbook experience. It's the types of things you actually need to know to do the job.
Right. As soon as I hear mission statement bullshit from a company, I plot the mental exit strategy. Amazing how those Jedi mind tricks work on the supposedly "best and brightest". I could see it working for a cancer research or fusion energy team, but work focusing clicking on ads or spying on people as a mission is bullshit that you cant polish from my perspective.
It helps that their primary competitors are explicitly about selling ads.
Palantir can at least pretend that your work will be "changing the world" since they do have some government and NGO projects with real impacts. Of course, only a very small select few will work on those projects—not that they mention that in recruiting.
* Making hedge funds richer didn't actually feel like changing the world.
* I never really clicked on the codebase, didn't understand what was going on in the code, and didn't contribute much. (I don't think the code was easy to understand, and my mentor wasn't much help)
* I wasn't interested in making Palantir my full life, and there was a lot of pressure to have work be life. One of the leaders in my group basically said "yeah, I don't spend time with my pre-Palantir friends anymore."
* I also didn't click with my coworkers. I was about 27, and felt like an old guy. There were a bunch of other things socially that didn't work out. Strong culture that I didn't jive with.
* I got the signal that my 9-7 schedule wasn't enough.
The Government group may have been a better fit for me, I'm not sure.
I'm the person whose tweet is at the top of the linked article.
My original curiosity was from that of someone who wants to promote "cooperation, equality and respect" - and, to me, part of doing that is asking for, and being open to, what minor things I might be doing to marginalize others.
So perhaps you're right - in the long run, maybe if organizations promote respect without talking about little things people do wrong, we'll get further on equality. But I do see value in talking about little things that are systemically unequal, and I think we'll get to a better place faster by talking about even the little things.
I think the real issue is that no one (including the author) is obeying the issue #9 "Stereotyping women’s needs". That's what the author is doing, that's what all these guys feeling bad for putting out "microagressions" are doing. Unless you are a women in tech then you can't speak for any women in tech and even if you are, you can only speak for one women in tech, yourself.
Some women might be offended by saying "guys" but some others might feel that it's a term of endearment (as it is probably intended) and they might feel saying "men and women" is silly. But I don't know, because I'm a dude.
What I do know is that every single successful person puts up with crap. That crap is often months of working on a project with a manager you dislike or putting in extra time to get things done when you'd rather be sitting around eating Cheetos. Work is a constant struggle and if you're throwing in the towel on your passion because someone called something sexy, then you clearly weren't meant to work with people, let alone in tech.
Agree with: "Unless you are a women in tech then you can't speak for any women in tech and even if you are, you can only speak for one women in tech, yourself." "What I do know is that every single successful person puts up with crap."
Disagree with implied ideas that: because we can all only speak for ourselves, we shouldn't speak. Because everyone gets crap, we don't need to fight against shit. That guys feeling bad for microaggressions are stereotyping women's needs (?).
We're all jerks sometimes, and often we don't even know it. When we realize we did something that made someone else feel bad, it's natural to feel defensive and at the same time sorry. It's not stereotyping to listen honestly to someone's viewpoint and consider it. And not having time to eat Cheetos is not what women are facing, it's weird stuff like the boss never inviting them to beer or getting sexually explicit trolling. You've read the news; you know what's in the harassment lawsuits: retaliation for sexual relationships had or not had, promotions denied because of "fit", networking events that were male-only, and all the guys in the company going along. If a guy had practice saying, "Hey, let's not call that app sexy and then ask if grandma can use it," he might actually have the practice and the courage to stand up to some of this serious stuff.
To your point, everything you mention about things in the news are significant issues. However, they are not small slips by good natured men. Those are bad people actively discriminating against people they deem unworthy.
That being said, I didn't say we shouldn't speak. I said we shouldn't speak for others. This article wasn't written as "here's how I feel when this happens" it was "here's how women feel when you do this". Generalizing in this way is just as sexist as any of the issues she brings up, if not more so, but because she wraps her sexism in good intentions we ignore it.
It's hard to qualify disliking certain adjectives as worse "shit" then anything else you have to go through as a professional. We're specifically talking about microagressions here, not firing someone for not sleeping with you, not excluding women from events, etc. These are not major issues, they are small things that make some people uncomfortable.
I understand it can suck when a company's culture doesn't fit, I deal with a fair share of bad culture fit as I consultant for many companies. I'm a 20yo male bisexual who doesn't drink or smoke. I just spent time with a company where the entire staff went to the bar and I wasn't just invited, but pressured to go and I felt very outside when I had to repeatedly refuse. I had a different client make unwarranted comments about us cuddling and he brought up multiple times who would be the big spoon (I'm unsure if he knew my orientation, I suspect he did). I later had a very negative falling out with him, was it because I ignored his advances? Who knows. My point is that we're all different and you're extremely unlikely to mesh perfectly with every member of a group, but being successful often means putting aside these things and doing business regardless. It sucks, but it's an issue that will always exist and isn't exclusive to women. It's not called work because it's super fun, it's called work because you put up with crap and all these "microaggressions" are on the level of all this other crap.
To your final disagreement about me saying that men feeling bad are stereotyping women's needs/issues, imagine you take what I've just told you about me and imagine we're hanging out one night and we're quite close, so you want to share some story about your sexual exploits from the night before. You start to tell your story but then think "well, he's bisexual, I probably shouldn't tell him this story because he's confused about his sexuality and trying to figure himself out". That's you stereotyping, obviously. It's no different than saying "she's a women, I shouldn't call this software sexy". If you knew me personally and I had said "don't talk about sex around me" then you would have grounds to think that. Similarly if I'm working with a women and she says "hey don't call me a guy" then I say okay and I don't do that anymore. But by assuming she'd be offended, I'm stereotyping.
The goal of communication isn't to make everyone feel great all the time, you shouldn't err on the side of inclusion, you should err on the side of openness, so if you say something that makes someone feel bad or out of place, they can say "hey bud, pls don't". By shuttering communication and wildly speculating about what all people of any group dislike or are offended by, you're belittling their individuality and overall moving communication in the wrong direction.
Your final paragraph is interesting, given the author's point here:
> Finally, this list is written for those who, like me, try to err on the side of being maximally-inclusive. Many of these things are common in our culture, and while I try to model good behavior, I don’t correct others’ usage unless they ask. I consider this an application of the robustness principle.
The author addressed the issue from the point of view of "Someone asked what things might marginalize, but not obviously so to the majority in the field", but many people have viewed the post as a line that others shouldn't cross. That's decidedly not the tone put forward.
For our first child, for the first 24 hours or so postpartum, my wife and child both needed something checked every couple hours.
Our overnight nurse said something like "I'll be doing your wife's checks at midnight and 2am, and your baby's at 1am and 3am". When I asked if my wife and child could be checked in the same entries, it turned out they could. I was surprised the hospital didn't do it by default that way for less time sensitive checks.