It seems that there is somewhat of an arms race in employee benefits right now. All sorts of companies are competing to offer hybrid weeks, 4 day workweeks, parental leave, extra vacation, full remote, etc. The cynic in me believes this is primarily an attempt to keep employees just happy enough to avoid certain outcomes, but hey, I'm not complaining.
I wonder what the company culture is like. There are many reports from the tech industry of people not taking advantage of paid leave policies because they fear that it would negatively impact their career.
Aside from that, treating parents unequally seems like a questionable choice.
Parents are treated equally. If you give birth you get an additional 6 weeks of medical recovery leave. If two parents (any gender) adopt a child then both receive an equal length baby bonding leave.
I've taken parental leave twice at Google and used the full amount. No ill effects, as far as I can tell. Everyone I work with and my management chain was fully supportive.
I think this is more clear cut than unlimited PTO policies that companies tout (I try and avoid working for companies with unlimited PTO because it often translates to "what your boss determines is appropriate, and if they think it is 2 weeks then you are out of luck").
But yeah, people taking it will depend a lot on company culture. If none of the higher ups take advantage of all the time, then the rank and file will see that as a signal that maybe they shouldn't take all the time.
I don't think this is an accurate comparison. A more apt one would be;
$400k/yr with no social safety net, no national healthcare, and obscene housing costs so you end up in an area with good schools, work like a dog with little actual labor laws etc, no pension etc.
€60k/yr with 1-2 years leave and generous vacation, actual labor laws, good public education, good equitable walkable neighborhoods etc, a pension etc
I exaggerate a bit but the reason people want to earn so much in the U.S is because a large amount of that money goes to building a personal safety net that is guaranteed in most other developed countries.
The average German working class worker probably lives a happier, more fulfilling life than a so called "professional" in the U.S.
I'm so glad I'm living in Germany.
12 months parental leave and three years part-time per child with reduced risk of cancellation and after that the right to do part-time as long as minors are in the household.
And 20 days vacation is the minimum for 5d/weeks (24 days, if working 6d/w) -- a lot offer 29, 30, sometimes more payed days off :-)
So, with 60k€+/a I couldn't care less for a six figure income at Google :-P
Have nice day with your American way of "work-life-balance".
I hate society. So some people get to take 6 months off doing absolutely nothing for the company and still get paid whereas their colleagues are probably getting written up for being 5 mins late back from lunch or taking too many toilet breaks. So fair. Why can't I get paid to work on a personal project for 6 months?
Google used to offer that, paid sabbatical. But people tended to never come back which made it counterproductive as a retention benefit, and it went away.
It's funny how we pretend we want "equal pay for equal work" and compensation to be tied only to merit and productivity, but in practice do the opposite. While the visible salary number might be the same, the benefits structure of contemporary American corporations means that employees with children have a total compensation at a drastically higher hourly wage than their childless peers.
To be perfectly clear before I'm attacked and downvoted- I'm not arguing against society benefiting from people having children or wanting parents to be stable and supported or anything of that nature.
But there is a huge double-standard here about what a job is and how compensation works. Am I being paid for the value I'm creating with my labor or am I receiving an ongoing entitlement for having passed an interview? Why is a VP paid $500,000 for taking care of their child for 6 months but an entry level employee is paid $50,000 for taking care of theirs?
Would it be more fair, inclusive and equitable to allow employees to choose between compensation structures that either paid higher hourly wages without the benefits of paid time off or lower hourly wages with paid leave, such that all employees ultimately received equal pay for the labor they provided?
I can't say what Google's policy is, even after looking.
However, a least in some countries where they pay for parental leave, it's capped.
For example, it appears that in Germany a VP making EUR 500K/year isn't eligible to receive any Elterngeld.
And in Denmark it maxes out at DKK 4,465/week = USD 669/week = ~$35K/year -- both the VP and entry-level employee in your example will get the same benefits.
> But there is a huge double-standard here about what a job is and how compensation works. [...] Why is a VP paid $500,000 for taking care of their child for 6 months but an entry level employee is paid $50,000 for taking care of theirs?
You can't look at a VP's output the way you'd look at a factory worker's.
The VP is being compensated for the work they'll provide over the time spent at the company. They might have no output for 6 months then provide outsized output during the next 2 years (as organizational changes they've made start paying off).
Their compensation is based on this lifetime output. Them taking parental leave in average once every 4 years is taken into account in this formula.
People that never have children are still a minority, so they get lost in this calculation. Yes, they're definitely being "underpaid" in that sense the same way someone leading a healthy lifestyle is "under-benefitting from his tax contributions".
I work for a company that offers 4 months of parental leave and generous PTO, and time-off for people dealing with COVID in their family. I am thankful for that.
I am also acutely aware that I am a small slice of a pretty privileged group (highly paid knowledge workers) and that these benefits are not available to the average American.
I wish this was something that the American government would pay for (instead of spending billions on weaponry and corporate tax giveaways).
We are an incredibly unequal society with little to no safety net for anyone other than the wealthy, and it is a damn shame given how rich we are.
So kudos to Google, and kudos to other companies that are following suit (I think Spotify was the first company to have 6 months of parental leave) but I wish this would become federal policy.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 59.9 ms ] threadI've taken parental leave twice at Google and used the full amount. No ill effects, as far as I can tell. Everyone I work with and my management chain was fully supportive.
Google still has a ways to go.
$400k/yr with no social safety net, no national healthcare, and obscene housing costs so you end up in an area with good schools, work like a dog with little actual labor laws etc, no pension etc.
€60k/yr with 1-2 years leave and generous vacation, actual labor laws, good public education, good equitable walkable neighborhoods etc, a pension etc
I exaggerate a bit but the reason people want to earn so much in the U.S is because a large amount of that money goes to building a personal safety net that is guaranteed in most other developed countries.
The average German working class worker probably lives a happier, more fulfilling life than a so called "professional" in the U.S.
Just save the extra income from the Google job, and you can take years of vacation, not just ten more days.
I speak of what I do and have.
I don't/won't have kids either but it doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me?
But also, what a depressing zero sum world view. Not everyone wants or has kids but we can still be happy about people having some time off if they do
To be perfectly clear before I'm attacked and downvoted- I'm not arguing against society benefiting from people having children or wanting parents to be stable and supported or anything of that nature.
But there is a huge double-standard here about what a job is and how compensation works. Am I being paid for the value I'm creating with my labor or am I receiving an ongoing entitlement for having passed an interview? Why is a VP paid $500,000 for taking care of their child for 6 months but an entry level employee is paid $50,000 for taking care of theirs?
Would it be more fair, inclusive and equitable to allow employees to choose between compensation structures that either paid higher hourly wages without the benefits of paid time off or lower hourly wages with paid leave, such that all employees ultimately received equal pay for the labor they provided?
However, a least in some countries where they pay for parental leave, it's capped.
For example, it appears that in Germany a VP making EUR 500K/year isn't eligible to receive any Elterngeld.
And in Denmark it maxes out at DKK 4,465/week = USD 669/week = ~$35K/year -- both the VP and entry-level employee in your example will get the same benefits.
You can't look at a VP's output the way you'd look at a factory worker's. The VP is being compensated for the work they'll provide over the time spent at the company. They might have no output for 6 months then provide outsized output during the next 2 years (as organizational changes they've made start paying off).
Their compensation is based on this lifetime output. Them taking parental leave in average once every 4 years is taken into account in this formula.
People that never have children are still a minority, so they get lost in this calculation. Yes, they're definitely being "underpaid" in that sense the same way someone leading a healthy lifestyle is "under-benefitting from his tax contributions".
I am also acutely aware that I am a small slice of a pretty privileged group (highly paid knowledge workers) and that these benefits are not available to the average American.
I wish this was something that the American government would pay for (instead of spending billions on weaponry and corporate tax giveaways).
We are an incredibly unequal society with little to no safety net for anyone other than the wealthy, and it is a damn shame given how rich we are.
So kudos to Google, and kudos to other companies that are following suit (I think Spotify was the first company to have 6 months of parental leave) but I wish this would become federal policy.