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Starting Now At Netflix: Unlimited Maternity and Paternity Leave
vivaoporto writes: Netflix announced Tuesday that, during the first year after their child's birth or adoption, employees will be able to take off however long they feel they need to. They can return on a full- or part-time basis, and even take subsequent time off later in the year if needed. Netflix will "keep paying them normally." Time comments that Netflix's policy "deserves high marks for extending leave to fathers, as well as understanding that the entire first year after childbirth can be challenging for new parents".
Is that a year per kid, or a year total in your career?
If its a year per kid, I'd be tempted to keep having kids. If that catches on, we might wonder if Netflix is encouraging rapid population growth.
I see this can be efficient and useful inside a company with mainly highly-educated workers, with stringent admission standards. But would such a thing work in society in general?
It could. The US trails the rest of the civilized world in maternity/paternity leave policies by a WIDE margin. It works if we insist everyone play by the same rules. There is no competitive advantage to be gained if everyone is allowed to take leave to care for a newborn. It would be harder for small companies to do this but there are ways of working around that too with a little government help. Basically this sort of policy is just a way of showing that you actually care about the well being of your fellow citizens. I can't figure out why so many people in the US think that is somehow a bad thing.
There would be a greater potential for abuse if raising a kid was not so expensive. Also, consider that if you does not show up to work, you are less likely to get a raise, or a promotion.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
Smugness aside, it's a fair point. The Headline is absurd, and the first thing I thought on reading is that would mean you could have a kid and get free wages for the rest of your life, so the headline must be bullshit.
The word "unlimited" has lost all meaning. "Unlimited within X limits" is an oxymoron. "Any amount of leave within the first year" is not. "No further limits within X limits" is also a less misleading way of phrasing things.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
One thing about Netflix though, is that they readily fire low performers.
Something that used to be common place a few years ago, is now the exception more than the norm. Once someone is passed their 3 months, no one fires anybody in engineering anymore, instead attempting to coach people into place, even if they're making absurd salaries. (Giving the 10 bucks an hour clerk a chance, sure. Giving the underperforming 160k/year dude a chance after failing to meet expectations for 6 months...thats silly).
Anyway, since Netflix has a culture if firing those people, anyone who is left is probably worth trying to keep.
That kind of system is extremely prone to abuse. There are subtle (and not so subtle) ways to make sure that folks who are well liked get assignments that have higher chance of success with minimal effort vs folks that are disliked. I've got a friend in sales (not at my company) that deals with this kind of thing all the time. Certain sales team members who are popular with management get highly lucrative sales accounts that are virtually shoe-ins and make their numbers 5 times faster than everyone else. Coincidently, those are the sales team members that the all-male management wants beating their numbers so they win the company sponsered all-included trips to hawaii/carribean/etc which they also attend. I've never competed for a vacation package in my engineering career, but I've certainly seen favoratism regarding job assignments.
I think rather than rewarding people solely based on high performance, it's best to reward people for a bance of performance, work ethic, and risk taking. Any one of those individually isn't enough imho. Some of the greatest successes humanity has seen have come from people who failed over and over again until they got it right.
It's because it's never that simple. First of all, a government mandate that it refuses to pay for is an act of political cowardice.
Yes it really is that simple. And who said anything about a government mandate without funding? There absolutely should be funding to help small businesses out on this and yes this will mean raising taxes.
Other than that, if the government mandates employers pay for such long leaves, it will hugely penalize small companies, and prospective employment of women.
Only if our policies regarding that leave are as stupid as the barbaric policies we have now. Right now if a worker has a child they have the un-enviable choice of keeping their job or spending the appropriate amount of time with their child which is particularly hard during the first year of their life. If everyone (male and female) is guaranteed leave without fear of losing their job then it will not disadvantage any group or company of any size. We raise taxes and help small businesses out with funding employees who take parental leave.
I also suspect that if you actually tried to take that year of paid leave (especially if you're a father), they would suddenly find a way to fire you or cut your pay. Are we really supposed to believe that if some high-paid tech there has three kids in five years that they're going to let him take most of that 5 years off to sit at home and collect his same paycheck? Yeah, I'm sure.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Then I assume that you don't have a problem with unlimited data plans that aren't unlimited?
Unlimited LTE Data (up to 5GB)
Unlimited means *no* limits. Ever.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Don't have kids yet, or too ugly to breed?
Cheap storage VM.
...they'll be paying everyone $70k a year minimum just like Gravity Payments.
Of course, that didn't work out too well
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Infants still require far more attention from parents than toddlers do. Unless you have a unicorn baby, their sleep schedule for the first 3-6 months will be very sporadic which will restrict the parents' sleep. This sleep interruption is the primary difficult aspect of being a new parent. I recently saw a survey which asked what parents missed most about their pre-child life, and obviously it said not to say "sleep" since they didn't want the results to be unanimous.
Infants also require more attention since they are less able to self soothe and keep themselves entertained. They cannot be unsupervised unless asleep. If a two year old is given the same level of parental attention that an infant requires, the toddler would never break anything. They simply would never be left alone long enough to break anything.
My one year old may be running around now and causing havoc, but she is still far easier to handle now that she can actually play with her toys for 15 minutes in a row without needing me or my wife.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I'd like to add on to this. The logical conclusion of GP's post is that everyone should retire once they have kids. Or, only incompetent people should breed, so that "good" employees never have to take any time off for children's sake.
Did I enter a Dilbert strip somewhere along the line here, or am I misunderstanding GP's point?
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
This is exactly the point of doing the "unlimited" time off policies.
Sort of the same as "pay what you want" services or products.
Guilt is a powerful emotion.
The company can say they have "unlimited" x and employees feel proud to have "unlimited" x and people who abuse the system will be dealt with... all around win by simple exploitation of guilt...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Dear Douche,
Anybody working full time (or near full time) should be able to afford to live out of abject poverty without government assistance. What about the $4000+ an hour the CEO of said burger flippery makes? No outrage there, eh? Also, $15 an hour shouldn't be a benefit...more like a 'living wage'.
Also, $15 an hour shouldn't be a benefit...more like a 'living wage'.
Clue #1: a minimum wage job isn't something you should live off of. It is expressly for teenagers and for folks who use it as a stepping stone or fallback until something better comes along.
Clue #2: these jobs usually require little-to-no skill, and consequently do not bear the value of $15/hr at current inflation/valuation.
Clue #3: when you price human labor too high, automation becomes more attractive. There are already machines that can effectively replace fast-food cashiers, and are cheaper to operate and maintain than $15/hr people. There are also machines coming online that can operate the back-end of a fast food joint as well, which will also just come under the wire as being cheaper (but would come out ahead by being reliable, on-time, etc.)
Clue #4: sucks to say it, but no one owes you a living -anything, let alone a "living wage" (whatever that means). Safety nets and charity are for those unable to help themselves, and obviously for those among us in temporary desperate situations, but that's it. Meanwhile, if you are able-bodied and not mentally defective, then it is up to you to better yourself by any legal means possible.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My wife and I have decided to not have children at this point. So chuck decides he wants kids and they have one. If I work at Netflix I'm now stuck picking up chucks work load for a year. What if I can't even have kids? What if maybe I have s three year old so I missed out. To me a year is ridiculous and unfair to other workers.
Workers with kids already get to just jump up and leave where I work when they need to. Hey my kids sick. Now I'm picking up their work. Well I'm gonna start saying my cat is sick and leave or I gotta pick my cat up from daycare. Fuck people with kids they always get special treatment for choices they made in their personal life and want to foist it in everyone else
And how does wanting companies to do this kind of compensation for personal choices reconcile with the whole get out of my business vibe these days? .... Seems pretty contradictory to me.
Hey evil corporations I value my privacy don't spy on me or get up in my personal life! Don't hold what I do in my free time against me! If I want to do drugs at home or pose naked on the interwebz or whatever you can't fire me for it! Oh but if I choose to have a kid you better pay me and give me time off for i!t
Everybody screams over population and oh climate change (it's a fraud anyway) yada but everybody wants to subsidize and incentivize child birth. Pay me to have one at my company. Give me tax breaks so its profitable to sit at home and pump out kids. Or now abort it so PP staff can get a Lambo.
Ps your unlimited time off headline is BS wording.
I fully support your eugenics program.
Ummm, what he was talking about isn't eugenics.
I've never seen an expectation of the parents to be financially responsible anywhere as being remotely called eugenics.
That would be more like family focused economic policy. Which sounds like something we'd see on the 700 Club.
He was implying that a person should have enough liquid assets on hand so that they do not need to be paid to take a leave of absence. He's suggesting that this program at Netflix would encourage riffraff to reproduce. He was indicating that those who are independently wealthy are somehow more worthy of passing on their genetic heritage. He wants to criminalize reproduction amongst the poor. That sounds like a eugenics program to me. He took it to a much greater extreme than "Hey you really should try to avoid having more children than you can afford."
I already see a lot of posts that basically say, "Why should I have to pay for someone else's paternity leave?" This is a good move that will definitely be controversial to the young, single techie set. If the demographics are to be believed, Millenials are having even fewer children, much of the reason being that they don't feel stable enough to settle down and, well, procreate. There is also a huge number of younger people who hate even the idea of having children, so you often hear complaints like, "Why don't I get to take a day off when you have to take care of your sick kid?" "Why can't you work 60 hours a week like the rest of the single people?" "Oh great, the procreators are raising prices for everyone."
I have 2 kids, 4 and 2, so I'm just climbing out of the early childhood no-sleep, constant work Twilight Zone of fatherhood. One of the reasons I stay with my current employer is flexibility. We don't have an official paternity leave policy, but I do have a boss and several colleagues who've been through this whole thing before. My boss has basically told me he knows I'll have to be out sometimes, and have days I'm not productive and is completely supportive of that because I more than make up for it later on. We're not a Silicon Valley startup managed and staffed by single 20-something males, so I think that accounts for some of the difference. The company I work for has a pretty long average tenure basically because the work we do means we can't just burn through developers and IT people on a revolving door basis. People need to stick around and learn/master the problem domain. The company isn't the most in-tune HR-wise, but line management knows what's needed to keep the ship moving.
I doubt a Scandinavian style parental leave policy will ever fly in Libertarianland, but it would be nice for more employers to do something other than "burn through all your vacation, then back to work" or basically do what mine does -- cutting new dads and moms slack when needed. As long as people don't abuse it, it works. If the economy has shifted to the point where both parents need to work to avoid a looming financial disaster and not be miserable, then this seems like a good compromise. I think a company putting this into official HR policy gives themselves a good recruiting tool.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, (I'm actually a parent), but other than the general societal benefit of paternal/maternal leave, why should parents get it and NON parents not get similar compensation?
Where's the year off of paid leave for someone who wants to see Europe, for example? People CHOOSE to have kids, why should they get paid extra (in the form of paid leave) by companies for it?
In the end, it comes in the form of a net tax benefiting people who have kids, or more kids, on the people have fewer or no kids.
My paternity leave took the form of leave that everyone in my office gets, actually, the only additional protection/benefit I got over non-parents was legal protection from getting fired for using the leave. That seems like much less of an imposition on everyone else than actually being paid.
It seems more rational and fair to me, absent a national goal of having more kids, to just offer everyone "leave" and parents can use theirs for kid-rearing, and other people can go to Europe, or go work another job and double their income.
--PeterM
The simple answer is that having children is a benefit to society. Those children will be the foundation for the future when you are retired - they will be doing the work. Society has decided to reward people who help provide that benefit.
Clue #1: a minimum wage job isn't something you should live off of. It is expressly for teenagers and for folks who use it as a stepping stone or fallback until something better comes along.
Who says? This is misinformation/propaganda being spread. If you look at the actual bill that instituted the minimum wage in the US (the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938), the law literally says the reasoning for setting the minimum wage is "Congress finds that ... labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standing of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers causes ..." and then goes on to list negative effects of not being paid enough to live. So yes, the law quite literally states that the minimum wage is something you're meant to live off of. (Feel free to read the law yourself on the Dept of Labor website.
This idea of "teenagers can do it" is only a ploy to make people complacent with low wages. Remember a teenager at 17/18 can easily be out living on their own and not have the support of family (for many reasons: family doesn't have ability to help, family has cancer and teenager needs to support them, family is crazy/insane/drug addicts, family is dead, etc.), and so even teenagers should make enough money to support themselves.
Clue #2: these jobs usually require little-to-no skill, and consequently do not bear the value of $15/hr at current inflation/valuation.
When the minimum wage was instituted in 1938, the many US jobs were in agriculture or simple manufacturing. I don't consider those jobs to be "high skill", but that doesn't mean they're not super important (without food, we die -- about as important as you can get! and manufacturing gave us the modern world, despite many of those jobs being just to screw the same bolt on over and over). So for one thing, skill does not equate with importance, and I think important jobs especially should be well paid.
Furthermore, have you seen secretary and human resources job these days? Also requires pretty low skill (mostly just typing and sending emails and filling out forms -- anyone who can read and write can do it, really), but look at how much these people make (in my area, you can get jobs in HR making upwards of $50k with only minimal experience, much above minimum wage). If we were going by your metric, these paper-pusher jobs should be making low pay and important jobs like farmers and restaurants that provide me food should be making more.
All of this is an aside from the real goal of minimum wage, which is that if you do ANY type of work for anyone, you're important to someone and should be able to support yourself doing that work. If you're not needed, why did the company hire you? I'm tired of this idea that companies are entitled to cheap labor; if your company requires effectively slave labor to exist, then how about we state the truth that your company is failing, not doing well, and maybe should go bankrupt due to mismanagement rather than keeping it chugging on the backs of the poor?
Clue #3: when you price human labor too high, automation becomes more attractive. There are already machines that can effectively replace fast-food cashiers, and are cheaper to operate and maintain than $15/hr people. There are also machines coming online that can operate the back-end of a fast food joint as well, which will also just come under the wire as being cheaper (but would come out ahead by being reliable, on-time, etc.)
That is going to happen no matter what because of corporate greed to always maximize profit. Even if we paid people $1/hr, at some point people would need to eat and sleep while a machine could work all night long straight, cranking out more widgets. We can't compete with technology.
What we instead need to do is have real discussion on what the future economy looks like when jobs are phased out by robo