Mark Zuckerberg Plans 2-Month Paternity Leave From Facebook

November 20, 2015 5:18 PM

"Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said he planned to take two months of paternity leave after his daughter is born this year, amid a debate about work-life balance at technology companies." (NYT)
posted by New Year (81 comments total)

Well, good for him.
posted by town of cats at 5:32 PM on November 20, 2015 [8 favorites]

Facebook has great benefits on paper and it's cool to see the CEO setting the example that it's OK to use them.
In a company that stack-ranks employees in groups every 6 months and then fires the bottom 10% of each group (as is rumored), it can be hard to convince people to actually take the time-off they are entitled to.
posted by w0mbat at 5:32 PM on November 20, 2015 [13 favorites]

Facebook stack-ranks? Wow, I thought they were a smarter place.

Microsoft was poisoned by that garbage. (I can't be the only one to suspect that MS's recent improvements are not unconnected with them finally ditching the stack-ranking as self-destructive.)
posted by anonymisc at 5:37 PM on November 20, 2015 [9 favorites]

Must be nice.
posted by rhizome at 5:42 PM on November 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

Great! The more high profile people (and men) do this, the more normal it becomes!
posted by ChuraChura at 5:44 PM on November 20, 2015 [30 favorites]

Stack ranking always reminds me of that Knights of the Dinner Table strip where one of the player characters is super-smug to find himself in a fight with the worst gladiator in the arena, only to quickly discover that the worst gladiator in the Emperor's Games is still the tenth worst fighter in the world.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:04 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

Tenth best?
posted by jacquilynne at 6:08 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh to be burdened with a baby and also billions of dollars
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:10 PM on November 20, 2015 [34 favorites]

Oh, well isn't he a special little fucking snowflake. Get back to me when the lower caste workers have the same rights.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:12 PM on November 20, 2015 [39 favorites]

Yea, the CEO/majority owner can do whatever he wants. The more interesting question is the stack ranking thing, if that's true. There's not a lot worse about corporate America than paper benefits that no one feels able to use for fear of losing out to their coworkers or outright getting fired.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:15 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, the "Mark Zuckerberg Does A Thing Because He Has Reasons" genre is really wearing thin. There's one of these stories every 5-7 days. He's a billionaire, he's not a representative sample of, well, anything, and holding him out as such is lazy and disingenuous.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:17 PM on November 20, 2015 [19 favorites]

I'm pretty sure this is normal at FB. I've worked at two big tech companies and at both basically 100% of new fathers took paternity leave (usually 12 weeks). At least among the engineers. And I know several Facebookers who have done so.
posted by thefoxgod at 6:19 PM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

uh yeah, and the owner of my employer pops out of the office for days to play golf n' shit. that's capitalism: collecting the fruits of others' labor.
posted by indubitable at 6:19 PM on November 20, 2015 [16 favorites]

The unusual thing here is seeing an exec do it. That's rare to me, regular employees doing so is not.
posted by thefoxgod at 6:21 PM on November 20, 2015 [8 favorites]

Dude just bought a huge spread of land on Kauai, near Princeville and Hanalei. This is an extended vacation, not a victory for workers or balance in the tech industry.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:24 PM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Tenth best?

My useless typing fingers have been consigned to the arena as punishment.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:25 PM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Well, you've got 10 fingers, so you'll be able to make do with the 9 best, I'm sure.
posted by RobotHero at 6:30 PM on November 20, 2015 [18 favorites]

I don't work in tech, but I have never known a man who took more than two weeks paternity leave (if they even took that). And I think this also affects the perception and acceptance of women taking maternity leave. I totally get and agree with all the criticism of Mark Zuckerberg and how CEOs doing something doesn't always extend to us plebs down below, but I think highly visible people doing this kind of thing is a good thing because it helps shape the culture. Especially on the heels of Marissa Mayer announcing she was only going to take two weeks maternity leave after the birth of her twins. If all the people in a position to do so (i.e. who can do so without putting their job at risk) took all of the vacation and leave time allotted to them and made a point of working reasonable hours, it would send a strong message that couldn't be ignored. We are still way too far away from that kind of culture.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:32 PM on November 20, 2015 [41 favorites]

That's one small step for men, one giant leap for menkind.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:34 PM on November 20, 2015 [10 favorites]

Capitalism and stack ranking can suck and it can be a good thing to have a high-profile case of paternity leave.
posted by No-sword at 6:35 PM on November 20, 2015 [29 favorites]

I understand why people focus on parental leave, and I would wholeheartedly support a federal minimum of three months paid leave for both parents, but by volume, parental leave a relatively small component of the larger work-life balance issue. It's great if mom and dad are there for the entirety of baby's first few months, not so great if they're barely there after that because they're expected to work their asses off 50, 60, 70 hours a week.

As a software developer who works in a job where I'm rarely expected to work more than a standard 40-ish hour week, it bums me out that the tech industry has started to normalize this notion that workers owe their employers more than that just because they pay a bit more and provide dry cleaning and a full refrigerator in the office. I get why entry level workers fall for it, but I can't understand why anyone who's got a few years under their belt would work for one of these companies.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:39 PM on November 20, 2015 [19 favorites]

A CEO taking months off for their newborn is a good thing. Lead by example.
posted by zippy at 6:41 PM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'd be on year 15 of paternity leave if I could have gotten away with it.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 6:48 PM on November 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

I do not think it's revolutionary that he's taking the leave, but I do think there's something to be said about him not not taking it, you know? It's not that him taking it will magically make it okay for all men to take it, but if he hadn't taken it it would have reinforced a culture in which nobody can take it.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:55 PM on November 20, 2015 [17 favorites]

Capitalism and stack ranking can suck and it can be a good thing to have a high-profile case of paternity leave.

True, but only if the most rich and powerful people lobby to change the status quo in the US vis-a-vis paid and unpaid maternity and paternity leave. See the foreign comparisons here.

The status quo is awful for American working parents.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:00 PM on November 20, 2015

I don't work in tech, but I have never known a man who took more than two weeks paternity leave (if they even took that).

I took 3 weeks off when our first kid was born. It was great. But I may have enjoyed it too much because our second kid was born late at night and my wife made me go to work the next day.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:05 PM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

Among 38 nations, U.S. is the outlier when it comes to paid parental leave

You know, a Zuckerberg, as a rounding error on his personal bottom line, could fire up a PAC on this.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:07 PM on November 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

I support this as a high profile example of paternity leave. May this influence others to do the same, and to trickle down to all workers. When my twins were born, I was only able to take 2 weeks (non-consecutively) because I'd only been in my job for 5 months. And I had to use up all my vacation and sick leave. When you've got one kid at home and one in the NICU for six weeks, it sure would help everyone to be able to devote that time to your family.
posted by Existential Dread at 7:09 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

I work for a company that could be described as uh, too large to not succeed, and we offer three month paid parental leave, which is used without question. That can be extended unpaid through FMLA. We're not all bad...
posted by Ruki at 7:09 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

I work for a company that could be described as uh, too large to not succeed, and we offer three month paid parental leave, which is used without question. That can be extended unpaid through FMLA. We're not all bad...

I'm not in tech, but from what I've seen, larger companies and agencies tend to have better leave policies and practices than small companies.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:13 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

There was a lot of criticism of Marissa Meyer for not taking her allotted maternity leave which I think was fair. Because the boss sets the tone and the culture. So I think it's good Zuckerberg is doing this for that reason. Ultimately we're all damned if we do, damned if we don't. Whether the boss does or doesn't take parental leave doesn't guarantee its culturally acceptable for anyone else. Which is a sickness in our culture and needs real fixing.
posted by bleep at 7:16 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Facebook grants up to four months of leave for both mothers and fathers. So keep that in mind when considering whether Zuckerberg taking two months of leave sets a good example or not. I think the CEO taking less than the maximum puts a lot of pressure on other employees to do the same.
posted by cruelfood at 7:21 PM on November 20, 2015 [13 favorites]

Difficult pregnancy, day before birth, HR calls me in for some paperwork.

I want a time machine to go back in time to say tell them, "No, fuck you."
And then I will go back farther in time to tell the ancestors of whomever set that policy to fuck themselves.
And I will go further.
I will wave to Dr. Seuss as I pass by the assholes all the way down.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:33 PM on November 20, 2015 [17 favorites]

My organization will give you unpaid maternity/paternity leave but only if you burn through all of your vacation/sick time first. So when you come back, you have zero sick days left until you accrue some more. Somehow you'd think that a hospital system would be a little more caring about families but nope.
posted by octothorpe at 7:58 PM on November 20, 2015 [9 favorites]

I don't work in tech, but I have never known a man who took more than two weeks paternity leave (if they even took that).

I do work in tech, and I've seen several men (often senior) take their available three months of paternity leave. I think it's fantastic. I recently got a job offer that included 1 week of paid paternity leave and two weeks of paid maternity leave. I will be mentioning that as a factor in why I'm turning it down.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 8:08 PM on November 20, 2015 [10 favorites]

the guardian recently published a great, well researched piece about paternity leave. it's nuanced.
posted by smoke at 8:11 PM on November 20, 2015

And while the parental leave where I work now is great, my situation was vastly different 14 years ago. I had to quit my job when my daughter was born, because I worked at a place that was too small for FMLA. My husband got two weeks off. One week of his vacation time, one week as a "gift" from his boss.
posted by Ruki at 8:23 PM on November 20, 2015

I manage a couple of teams of engineers, and they all, regardless of gender, take their full 8 weeks of paid paternity leave when their children are born. To a degree, people ask if it screws us over because we have to sometimes cover for multiple folks being on overlapping leaves, but frankly I get a little thrill when someone on my team tells me that they're expecting because it's like "Thank God, I think I can count on you being loyal for at least another 9 months."

I like giving people leave. I like seeing them come back all proud of their wee ones. I also like that having someone going on leave helps us build more resilient teams who can survive a theoretical bus hit, because we can force ourselves to distribute a snowflake's responsibilities to other colleagues under less traumatic circumstances. It's good stuff regardless of gender, and while I will never raise children, I will always advocate for it in my workplace.
posted by bl1nk at 8:28 PM on November 20, 2015 [57 favorites]

A CEO taking months off for their newborn is a good thing. Lead by example.

I think the significant part is that he said something about it, which is an unalloyed good, but let's not kid ourselves that taking this kind of time for a newborn is rare among CEOs at this level. Or, heck, maybe it is rare among these C-levelers, and the message is that he isn't one of those family-ignoring business leaders.
posted by rhizome at 8:37 PM on November 20, 2015

One of the advantages of having year long leaves, as we do in Canada, is that there's no 'how do we get along without this person for a few weeks/months' problem. I mean, obviously not at the Mark Zuckerberg level, but for normal employees, there's no real question of doing without them for a year. You get someone else to actually do their job. Often it's someone on a 1 year contract. Other times, you move a junior employee who shows promise into the position to give them a chance to demonstrate that they can do it. It gives outsiders a foot in the door or insiders a chance to cross-train and move up.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:40 PM on November 20, 2015 [17 favorites]

Is it good for a newborn to be exposed to extended periods of Mark Zuckerberg?
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:56 PM on November 20, 2015 [23 favorites]

When my son was born I had to burn 2 weeks of accrued vacation time in lieu of any kind of paid parental leave.

This economy is fucking awful and broken.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 9:23 PM on November 20, 2015 [7 favorites]

triggerfinger: I wish I could have taken off a year or so when my kids were born, but my workplace only offered a couple weeks paid leave at the time, and we needed the money a lot. It really is terrible we don't give all parents more support in those early years especially. They can be terribly stressful and difficult, and the lack of sleep and general chaos of life with a small infant, especially for a first time parent, can be emotionally and physically brutalizing.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:26 PM on November 20, 2015

This is how I'd imagine Zuckerberg got his leave.

Facebook board member: Hey Mark, could we get your attention for a few minutes on something?
Mark Zuckerberg: You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back home, where my wife and my about-to-be-born-baby are doing things that no one at Facebook, including and especially this board, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing!
posted by FJT at 9:44 PM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Oh, well isn't he a special little fucking snowflake. Get back to me when the lower caste workers have the same rights.

They already do! I mean not just a measly 2 months obviously, but the same idea. Just not in the US.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:11 PM on November 20, 2015

For the record, I am fully in support of not only longer leave for both men and women, but longer paid leave. The system we have right now is straight-up bullshit. When I say I don't know any men who have taken more than two weeks, it's not because I think it's admirable or okay in any way (quite the opposite), it's because I think they often feel like they don't have much of a choice, even if they want to. Because our entire culture still rewards and praises people for working their lives away and never missing a day, even due to illness. That, in my opinion is a culture that is sick and toxic in every way.

I was just this week tallying up my PTO for the year to make sure I take it all and have enough for the holiday season etc, and I was really surprised to find that I had five days I hadn't accounted for. So I actually have ten days of PTO left this year, not five (it's a newish job for me so I'm not used to their PTO tracking system). So I was telling one of my coworkers about it and she said, oh you'll lose some of your PTO days here. I was a little shocked and said, why? She said, oh there's too much to do, you won't get a chance to use it. And I was like, hahaha no. I've always taken my PTO. I will never not be busy. Scheduling time for PTO is like scheduling time for anything else. I can find ways to fit it in. I also get into it regularly with one of my other coworkers who is generally a nice guy, but likes to give people grief in a sorta joking way if they take a day off. Every time he does it, I tell him (once again) STOP DOING THAT. Even if you're only being jokey about it, you're sending a subtle message to everyone who hears you that taking time off isn't okay. And we already have all of society sending that message in a million different ways every day. STOP reinforcing it. And though it's taking some time, I think I may be starting to get through to him. :)

Anyway, this is why I think it's important for powerful people like MZ to take this stance. Because this mindset is just so embedded into everyone. And it's the people at the top that have the most power to bring about change, not the rest of us.
posted by triggerfinger at 10:18 PM on November 20, 2015 [7 favorites]

Spotify announced 6 months parental leave at full pay for all of its employees worldwide yesterday.
posted by meijusa at 11:33 PM on November 20, 2015 [18 favorites]

So, I took a new position recently, and when I got the rundown on my benefits - which, except for PTO and parental leave, I was eligible for on Day 1, I literally cried. Health, HSA (to which my employer will contribute $1500 annually), dental, vision, life, and AD&D for the entire household. Short and long term disability. INSURANCE FOR MY DOGS! (I shit you not.)

On day 91, I will have access to 120 hours of PTO. They will give 2 additional paid days off to volunteer in my community. If I were younger and interested in more children, 8 weeks of paid parental leave. My 401K contributions will be matched 100%. My employer expects PTO to be used, parental leave to be taken, Community Service days to be scheduled. You may not access your work email unless you are on you scheduled shift, and if they catch you yapping in the team chat when you should be away from your desk for a scheduled break or lunch, you will be firmly told to leave your desk and go eat or have a pee.

I have been working since I was 16. I was a SAHM for 11 years because me working would have actually cost us about $400 a month. I'm now 45 years old, and this is the FIRST company I have ever worked for that treats its workforce like actual humans. Why couldn't I have had this 20 years ago, when I was raising the Monsters?? Oh...right...my employer is a shockingly rare animal that actually caters to women with families. Our CEO is a woman who makes damned certain that everyone takes their PTO, because we are of no use to the company if we die from stress. More companies need to behave like this.
posted by MissySedai at 11:35 PM on November 20, 2015 [35 favorites]

I'm now 45 years old, and this is the FIRST company I have ever worked for that treats its workforce like actual humans.

I can't say anything about Bank of America as a customer, but as an Associate, they spoiled the hell out of me with their actually giving-a-shit about 'work-life-balance' and stuff.

PRIOR to that, I worked for a privately-owned insurance brokerage/finance company.... I pretty much "worked-from-home" in 2004 and 2006 when my daughters were born at my convenience for a few months, which was wonderful..
posted by mikelieman at 3:22 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

The unusual thing here is seeing an exec do it.

YouTube's Wojcicki took 3+ months off less than a year after joining the company, and wrote an op-ed for WSJ about how important leave is. I don't think that made it to MeFi, though.
posted by effbot at 3:44 AM on November 21, 2015

I work across the road from Microsoft and Salesforce, and I see the chill area with the free snacks and drinks, and pool tables and consoles through the windows. And everyone in there is single, childless and all that stuff is to engender an atmosphere of 'but why would you ever go home?'
posted by GallonOfAlan at 4:10 AM on November 21, 2015

How can you tell that people on the other side of an office window, hanging out in a work rec area, are all single and childless?
posted by bl1nk at 4:58 AM on November 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

The ultimate fake person award
posted by bukvich at 4:59 AM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm not in tech, but from what I've seen, larger companies and agencies tend to have better leave policies and practices than small companies.

Because larger companies have the money to give employees paid leave. My company couldn't afford to -- but we don't have to, because it is a government program like employment insurance.
posted by jeather at 5:07 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wait, hang on, two months paternity leave is supposed to be good? I literally did not expect that when I saw the link text. Two months seems woefully inadequate to this non-American. How screwed up is your labour market that this seems like something to celebrate?
posted by shelleycat at 5:11 AM on November 21, 2015 [9 favorites]

Two months seems woefully inadequate to this non-American. How screwed up is your labour market that this seems like something to celebrate?
I'm in the Netherlands where we get a few days (2 days paid and then 3 more unpaid I think). That's among the worst in Europe, but in most European countries people do not get two months either.
posted by blub at 5:26 AM on November 21, 2015

In tech, if I took a year's leave off of work, there'd be no telling what I'd be returning to when I came back; the whole site could be dissolved and everyone laid off. At the very least none of the teams would be the same having been re-organized two or three times in the interim and no one would know where to put me. I typically go through three or four managers a year so chances are I'd come back to a boss who had no idea who I was or what I'd been doing before. I'd have to learn all new technologies and spend months catching up with my co-workers since who knows what the new languages and frameworks will be by then.
posted by octothorpe at 5:45 AM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Without ol' Zuck at the helm, though, I bet my FB page is gonna fall apart. And my FB page is more important than his baby.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:46 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

blub, to clarify for the rest of us how NL does it, for women here are the rules. 16 weeks, and they can spread that out over 30 weeks. For men, what you said.
posted by DreamerFi at 6:27 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Can someone provide a link/references or share their experience if they've worked there of Facebook doing stack ranking? I haven't looked very hard but I'm not able to find any evidence of it. My googling only pulls up a blog post that references a 2013 Quora answer describing a system that doesn't especially sound like stack ranking to me. It says Facebook does a performance review where employees are evaluated relative to each to other but mostly to identify top performers and there's nothing there that suggests to me that they fire the bottom 10% or look at those ratings without context.
posted by Percolate at 7:50 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

One of my staff recently became a grandma (for the third time) and as soon as she told me I informed her that if she got the call from her daughter at work she was to just drop everything and run. She originally said she would take one (paid) week off, after hearing about her daughter's long labour, followed by a c-section, I suggested she take the next week off as well when her daughter will be released from hospital and REALLY need her (he daughter works for a separate org and is taking the full year paid parental leave). This is the norm in my family-first org. In return, she is definitely one of the most productive members of staff and her loyalty is unquestionable. I really don't understand how the American system is sustainable.
posted by saucysault at 7:54 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

The plan here is 18 weeks exclusively for the person who gave birth, 5 weeks exclusively for their partner, and 32 weeks that can be shared. (Adoption gives 37 weeks to be shared.)
posted by jeather at 8:34 AM on November 21, 2015

I'm glad he's doing it, but I don't believe in praising jerks when they do the right thing for once, and I don't believe in praising the rich and powerful for doing the right thing because they are rich and powerful and doing the right thing "sets an example." I hold the rich and powerful to higher, not lower standards. If they want praise, donate a billion dollars to the federal government or institute mandatory parental leave or something else substantial. Doing minor* things deserves minor acknowledgement, and that praise should be scaled down according to the wealth and power of the actor, not up.

(* It's minor not because parental leave isn't hugely important, but because the two constraints on parental leave are (a) bad policy, and (b) fear of repercussions from the boss. His action neither changes policy, nor presents an example to those who do have bosses -- or to their bosses -- about how to alleviate those fears. If, say, he changed the policies to give 10K bonuses to any boss who gets a underling to take the full four months, then I'd be full of praise. As it is though, skippy for him.)
posted by chortly at 10:27 AM on November 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'm genuinely curious how hard he actually works on a day-to-day basis. What is he taking two months off from?
posted by gottabefunky at 10:43 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

This culture of not taking off the time allotted to you can exist in really small organizations, too. I work for a very small (6 person) municipal department and after taking a few days off for a bad bout of bronchitis was spoken to severely. It was pointed out to me that our director had only taken one week off after surgery, instead of the 2 she was supposed to take. So now I go to work sick, even though I have the time to take. The boss definitely sets the tone.
posted by Biblio at 10:55 AM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

> In tech, if I took a year's leave off of work, there'd be no telling what I'd be returning to when I came back; the whole site could be dissolved and everyone laid off. At the very least none of the teams would be the same having been re-organized two or three times in the interim and no one would know where to put me. I typically go through three or four managers a year so chances are I'd come back to a boss who had no idea who I was or what I'd been doing before. I'd have to learn all new technologies and spend months catching up with my co-workers since who knows what the new languages and frameworks will be by then.

I had to quote this entire thing because there's no single part to point to and say "this is fucked". The entire thing is fucked.
posted by cardioid at 11:37 AM on November 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is slightly off topic but where we work one can take time to take care of a child and chalk it up to sick time. I encourage (implore/insist) that Mr. Llama take this time rather than say he's 'working at home'.

Visibility of men taking time to take care of children is incredibly important. We work at the same place--we can't have it that he's 'working at home' and I'm 'taking care of a child' when she gets sick. We take turns, which is fine, but it has to be under the same framework, not one where our kid gets a cold and I'm down and out and our kid gets a cold yet he shows up on four conference calls that day.

It's really, really important that men be loud and visible when they take time off to take care of a kid. I can't tell you how much it helps for men to do this. Reschedule a meeting because you've got a sick kid. Answer All and say you'll get back to them Thursday, because you've got a sick kid.

Dads, if you're wondering what you can do for your female colleagues and women partners: be public about being parents, be stupidly loud about it, unnecessarily so. Handling having a family needs to be normalized, not some secret bullshit thing the mom does hoping it won't impact her future promotions.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:40 AM on November 21, 2015 [13 favorites]

Can someone provide a link/references or share their experience if they've worked there of Facebook doing stack ranking?

Yeah, I can't find anything about it aside from that 2013 splooge of articles. Maybe diving into Glassdoor could provide some illumination, but...meh. From what I read and gather, Google is stacky and Facebook is more like Apple where they just "encourage" you to find a place to work best suited to you when you are floundering.
posted by rhizome at 11:52 AM on November 21, 2015

> In tech, if I took a year's leave off of work, there'd be no telling what I'd be returning to when I came back; the whole site could be dissolved and everyone laid off. At the very least none of the teams would be the same having been re-organized two or three times in the interim and no one would know where to put me. I typically go through three or four managers a year so chances are I'd come back to a boss who had no idea who I was or what I'd been doing before. I'd have to learn all new technologies and spend months catching up with my co-workers since who knows what the new languages and frameworks will be by then.

I had to quote this entire thing because there's no single part to point to and say "this is fucked". The entire thing is fucked.

My experience in tech hasn't been as chaotic as octothorpe's, but in thinking of past colleagues who've taken their leave, if they'd taken a year off, I can totally imagine them coming back to a company or a job that was materially different from what they had left. Acquisitions occur. Leaders leave or rotate. People get promoted (and promotion opportunities that occur are missed out). Teams change. Projects live and die and live again. That sort of dynamism is both a feature and a bug of the industry; and it's certainly more prevalent in smaller, younger companies that are still finding their niche in the industry.

And one can certainly talk about accommodations, about making sure that an employee can come back to -a- job and a certain title or compensation level; but you can't make guarantees that, say, their level of seniority vis-a-vis their colleagues won't change, or that the way they do their work won't change, or that the company won't be acquired while they're on leave. And if you do, then you're essentially arguing to put your company into stasis, because for a given size of company, if you do provide 12 month or 18 month parental leave, you're pretty much guaranteeing that an employee is -always- going to be on parental leave.

This isn't to criticize the idea of taking 12-18 month leave. If a new parent wants it, and if I worked for a company that offers it, I'd be happy to support them, but they should understand the tradeoffs between being present for your company and being present for your family. Up to a certain point (maybe 2? 3 months leave?) in tech, it's impossible to take time away from your company without missing out on something that could've been great for your career. but it's a choice between that or being present for your kids, and I'd never begrudge someone who chooses their kids over their career. It's just that everyone's got their own balance point.
posted by bl1nk at 12:37 PM on November 21, 2015

I'm genuinely curious how hard he actually works on a day-to-day basis. What is he taking two months off from?

Exactly. This asshole could take 200 months off and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.

Parental leave is just a salve on a brutal culture that makes it mandatory for all parents to work outside the home in order for families to survive.

Some rich guy took some time off, BFD. we shouldn't have to live in a world where moms and dads have to work their fingers to the bone so some stranger can watch their kids all day. And this doesn't help that.
posted by mrbigmuscles at 12:37 PM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

This asshole could take 200 months off and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.

Parental leave is just a salve on a brutal culture that makes it mandatory for all parents to work outside the home in order for families to survive.

Some rich guy took some time off, BFD. we shouldn't have to live in a world where moms and dads work their fingers to the bone so some stranger can watch their kids all day. And this doesn't help that.

Nothing you're saying here is incorrect, we really shouldn't live in that world, but it's the world we're in, and 'this asshole' is a highly public person. Saying he thinks it is important to be with his kid for a couple of months when she's born (she.) says a lot and those messages are culturally meaningful. It matters. It really, really, matters, in the real world, that a male CEO says 'I'm not going to work for a couple of months, everybody. I have diapers I gotta change.'

The overall criticism of what we've arrived at for modern economics is spot on but it doesn't matter for those of us who have to live with this day to day--it's not changing tomorrow or next month, but the perception of whether or not dad should be expected to take care of a sick kid or stay at home with a newborn...that's a thing that can change, short term and it is a non-trivial thing.

And, unrelated to your comment but re. Marissa Meyer. I am a mom. I have stayed at home with an infant. It fucking sucks and I blew at it. In retrospect, I wish I had the nerve to tell everyone two weeks after having a baby that I was going to work.

It didn't hurt anything that little llama was in my care, but I fully believe it also wouldn't have hurt little llama if she were with grandma or in day care. Kid is grand, physically and mentally.

For what it's worth, I think I'm going to be the one mom in a thousand that can handle puberty and adolescent parenting. That, I think I'll be especially good at.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 12:59 PM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I had to quote this entire thing because there's no single part to point to and say "this is fucked". The entire thing is fucked.

It's always fun when you get to your year end review and your current manager has no idea what you did because you had four other managers over the year and three of them have left the company. The first year I worked at my current job I changed managers six times.
posted by octothorpe at 1:00 PM on November 21, 2015

I work across the road from Microsoft and Salesforce, ....And everyone in there is single, childless

That's super funny, my story about guys taking three months parental leave was at Microsoft! Haha, it's so weird how people's random stupid projections and stereotypes are so wrong that they shouldn't bother sharing them, haha, right?
posted by the agents of KAOS at 1:32 PM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

That's super funny

MeFi threads about tech companies are often pretty funny :-)

without missing out on something that could've been great for your career

FoMO. That's not really a strength. Also, most career opportunities appear outside the office you're in right now.
posted by effbot at 3:27 PM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Falling birth rates across the EU might have something to do with parental leave policies, rather than just sentiment. Same for companies in the US that want to retain employees.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:25 AM on November 22, 2015

It really, really, matters, in the real world, that a male CEO says 'I'm not going to work for a couple of months, everybody. I have diapers I gotta change.

No, it really, really doesn't. It's just a privilege of having your name on the door. It doesn't mean anything for ordinary working people.
posted by mrbigmuscles at 10:16 AM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's trickle-down logic. It's a good thing to take the time off, and it's good to tell people it's a good idea for everybody to take the time off, but his words don't have any innate power or effect beyond that. Something tells me Donald Trump didn't blanch upon hearing about this and tell his assistants, "Mark Zuckerberg is making us look bad!"
posted by rhizome at 12:19 PM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

But these firms are competing for employees, and one of the ways they compete is with benefits packages, which include parental leave. The more common paternity leave becomes, the more employees are going to expect it, and so the more firms will offer it.
posted by jaguar at 12:59 PM on November 26, 2015

Right, that's the trickle-down logic, which never trickles all that much.
posted by rhizome at 1:27 PM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Exactly, he's the guy who sets the policy!

If the king takes a day off, that doesn't mean he's going to give the peasants a day off...
posted by mrbigmuscles at 1:44 PM on November 26, 2015

Right, but people in this thread have talked about how their boss *not* taking allowed time was used against them when they wanted to take it. I'll grant you that it doesn't mean the peons are getting that time, but it's not meaningless because it's one less weapon that can be used against them.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:56 PM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]