What Marissa Mayer's maternity leave decision means for working parents at Yahoo | Hacker News Reader

What Marissa Mayer's maternity leave decision means for working parents at Yahoo

fastcompany.com

28 pointspmcpinto64 comments

I'm not sure that I agree with this. With the current state of Yahoo Mayer is clearly in a tough position. She can't afford to be absent AT ALL. I suspect employees may recognize that her circumstances are not the same as their own and take the time they need.

I'm inclined to agree with you. If the board is questioning Mayer's leadership, i.e. her boss thinks she is not that great independent of her pregnancy, she's on thin ice. But what do I know -- if I were her, I'd gladly take the $100 million golden parachute and retire at 40.

I don't get it. With or without a golden parachute, she is likely already in the class of people who have enough wealth to never have to work a day in their lives ever again if they don't want to. Her children will probably not ever have to work a day in their lives either. Why choose not to take time with them? They're only babies once.

This is why us normal people aren't hyper successful. We're not psychotic enough.

Do you know there are guys working at Walmart who are forced to miss the birth of their children? I personally know a guy who was in this situation, he was a cashier at Walmart and was forced to miss his child's birth because he was forced to be there on a busy day.

It's not just CEOs and high-paying folks not taking time off for paternity/maternity leave, it's everybody people who work in autoshops, cell phone stores, construction jobs, etc.

The difference, of course, is that the high-paying folks choose to not take time off, whereas your friend was forced to.

That's awful. Didn't know that type of thing still happened.

What kind of Candy coated, sheltered existence do you have?

Missing a childs birth is disappointing, not being able to feed that child is awful... Not being able to get that child medical care is awful, Children working $2 a day to make your $500 pants is awful.....

The reality is that the example is set by senior management. If anyone has any ambition to succeed in a large organization they will do a lot better if they follow the example of their leaders. It is human nature that managers tend to promote those who toe the line, and invariably, this line is not defined in the company handbook, but is a set of unwritten rules and behaviour that is set by the leaders in the organization.

Oh come on. She's CEO of a company that is circling the drain. Of course she won't take 12 weeks maternity leave, that would be completely retarded.

Ask yourself, right now in Yahoo, all things being equal, who will get the promotion, the lady taking a 2 week maternity leave, or the one taking the 12 week maternity leave? I can guarantee you that although in theory it should make no difference, it will in reality.

If I were her boss, as long as things were reasonable under control, and communication channels were relatively open (say a quick weekly catch-up [considering her seniority]) I'd promote the 12 week'er. What people value most is important.

This might be difficult in a tiny company, but this is Yahoo. I don't care if they're in trouble. They have the resources to cope with this like it was child's play.

She isn't bigger than Yahoo. No CEO is.

Is there no leadership team in place at Yahoo? That is part of their role. To cover when one of them is out of action.

Cannot believe the comments I've read here.

In theory it probably should make a difference. The one taking 2 week maternity leave sends a much stronger signal that she cares a lot about her job.

This is absurd. Spending time with one's child instead of one's job is a massive priority for any neurotypical human.

Just because someone cares about something more than their job doesn't mean they don't care about their job or do a damn fine job at it.

Long(er) maternity leave allows women to manage these conflicting priorities in a way that is more workable for parents and doesn't result in a company outright losing valuable employees when they decide to have a kid.

I agree it's a massive priority. That's why shifting back to work early is a strong signal of dedication to work - it suggests work is probably a higher for you than for a "neurotypical human".

Similarly, a person who spends 2 hours/day at the gym to the detriment of other activities is probably more dedicated to fitness than one who doesn't. Is this a remotely controversial claim?

I understand that you don't like the consequences of this, namely rewarding people who are not neurotypical, but that doesn't mean the reasoning is false.

That person who is not neurotypical might be the type of person who works 80 hours a week with the net result of creating more work for everyone else. I've seen plenty of those.

This is the fallacy that hurts men and women. I care a lot about my job. But I care more about my family. Any culture that translate that as a negative (you care less about your job than someone else who is willing to sacrifice family time for the job) is an unhealthy culture, to put it mildly, and one that forgoes long-term thinking for short-term. Employees who are physically and emotionally healthy (which includes your relationships with your family and friends) are more productive and happier. That is the important part.

Actually was does a disservice to everyone is the idea that you need to "care" for job, or that a business is a "family"

A person is paid to do work, if they make a life choice that means they no longer desire to do that work and instead wants to devote their time to other pursuits (like raising children) more power to them. Expecting their co-workers to pick up their slack, expecting their employer to pay for it, and unfairly holding open a job than an unemployed person could fill is simply selfish.

Why do you believe a person who cares more about his job than you do is not "emotionally healthy" and therefore less productive? Is it so wildly implausible that people might have different desires and emotional makeup than you?

If we assume a generous leave policy for both? The one rushing back after 2 weeks either has a screw loose or is so bad at their job that they can't take their hand off the wheel for 5 minutes. I wouldn't necessarily consider them better at the job even if I were a sociopath who didn't care about families.

In that case not taking it is completely retarded. These are moments that no amount of money will ever be able to buy her back and the company is already done so why should she bother?

>These are moments that no amount of money will ever be able to buy her back

Sounds like life to me.

You'd think someone who is set for life financially may be able to have time to reflect a little on this aspect of life and act accordingly.

> She can't afford to be absent AT ALL.

Why? It isn't like anything she has done in the past couple of years have been game changing.

I know you are trying to be funny, but exactly, she's basically on "probation".

Actually I wasn't being funny (or at least trying to be)!

I mean honestly what has she done other than let Yahoo! carry on as business has been for a while? (stagnant). She did some publicity stunts like buying that 17-year olds summery app and that is about it.

Not saying anyone else would have done a better job, I think most of us could predict the future of Yahoo! no matter who was at the helm.

What she is doing sends a message not to take all your leave. It also shows she is a poor manager. No manager, even CEO, should be so irreplaceable that she cannot step away from the job for several weeks, especially when the leave is anticipated. The leave should be viewed as a valuable opportunity to ensure that successors are being groomed and are ready to step in.

She might think this "unique time in Yahoo's transformation" talk shows that she is pitching in to help, but all it says to me is that she either thinks she is more important than she is or that due to poor management she really is that important. Fail either way.

I disagree 100%...

The board did not hire "other managers" they hired her, for the expressed purpose of turning Yahoo Around, and splitting out the Ablibaba Stock, now they have reverse that and will split out Yahoo Core but the fact remains when a Major restructuring like that is going on your damn right the CEO, the one hired by the board, should be at the helm, not the "other managers"

Ultimately people need to stop looking to other people as "examples" and determine for themselves what they need to do for their family. If Yahoo Provides X leave, and a person chooses to only take Y, that is their choice, that does not mean other employees can not take all of it.

Society seems to be developing a massive co-dependency problem and loosing individualism.

"...what they need to do for their family."

Exactly.

Which may or may not include taking time off.

What you view is as a "need" may not be what someone else views as a need and people should not feel they must take 3 months off, or even 3 days if they do not desire to do so.

"It also shows she is a poor manager. No manager, even CEO, should be so irreplaceable that she cannot step away from the job for several weeks"

There is no evidence that she "cannot" step away. She just chose not to do so this time. Yes, a company should be able to function well in the absence of its CEO, but it should do even better when she is around.

Agree. Certainly she has the right to choose, but this sends a bad message to all employees.

Typical. Zuck takes half his parental leave, yet Facebook employees say "Four months and very little pressure to come back to work. I've personally never seen anyone not take the full amount when they had a child."

When Mayer doesn't take her full leave, she is setting a bad example and pressuring her employees.

What is the difference, here? Oh wait, I see it now...

I did not notice Zuckerberg delivering the baby.

The difference is two months vs. two weeks (assuming Mayer's "limited time" will be the same as with her previous child, which is the best guess with nothing else reported). Two months is still reasonably generous by American standards, two weeks is not.

Two weeks after giving birth to twins is ridiculously short.

The four months is for the whole year. Many people take some time off initially and then the rest over the course of the year. So, its premature to judge that Zuck is taking "half his parental leave".

(disclaimer: FB employee, views are personal)

Not too many people have more than one kid a year, though :)

Mayer will have two.

Well, what if she took 6 months off? Would there be another kind of criticizing, given Y!'s status?

Tough be a woman in sv.

I'd applaud it. There's nothing I hate more than seeing people putting in extra hours at work instead of spending that time with their kids - especially when they're young. At nearly every job I've had I worked less hours than co-workers with a spouse and kids and I'm 25, single, with no kids. It's sad.

yeah but what does "limited time away" mean?

The whole article would be a waste if that really meant a couple weeks short of what mothers take on average.

edit: okay, it says she took 2 weeks leave for her first child. That's short. A key point is "does she have a small army of maids at home?" because she can afford that when an average worker can't.

Actually, she built and staffed a nursery at her office, which is certainly a luxury not available to the average worker. Her statement on the matter doesn't acknowledge the fact that she has resources that are unique to her, which I find somewhat disingenuous.

Her CEO stint will get an textbook example and taught in university/business schools.

Can you elaborate?

Her career (stints at Google and Yahoo) as described on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer ) and mentioned several times in Eric Schmidt's book "How Google Works".

She's a woman.

It's hard to untangle the sexist ranting from the actual critique.

Submitted article is saying that she should have taken more maternity leave in order to make it culturally acceptable within Yahoo for other parents to take that leave. (That's a good point, and is probably true.)

But if she had taken more leave we'd have had a bunch of articles saying why she's terrible for taking that much leave.

The future people will want to know why her PR is so terrible; and will be able to see a bit more clearly whether what she did was useful or not.

I'm not sure it's a sexist ranting though. Zuckerberg just faced a similar criticism (about the precedent he is setting by only taking half the allotted time). I suspect that most CEOs would face criticisms if they were about to spin-off the primary business and become a holding company for international stocks (very few people would have defined that as a success before Meyer stepped in).

Maternity leave is not about her, it is about the children.

Tangent: I think that paid paternity/maternity leave is prejudicial against those who have chosen not to have kids. I get the sleepless nights in the first few months, and wouldn't want to deny parents time to bond with their newborns.

But looking at it objectively, why should a company offer benefits associated _only_ with parenting? It benefits society (not individual companies) to encourage breeding, and therefore parental incentives should, if they exist at all, come from the state rather than private enterprise.

At the company level, flexible personal paid leave for employees who have earned it might be a fairer arrangement.

Parental leave is available to everyone. It's not prejudicial just because you choose not to take advantage of it, just like it's not prejudicial to offer gym memberships to people who choose not to work out.

Besides that, parent leave is better seen as an accommodation (like bathrooms or wheelchair ramps), not a benefit. It's a human function necessary to society--until the robots take over anyway. Because it's uniquely tied up with work schedules, it's reasonable for society to force employers to make the accommodation. It's entirely reasonable for private enterprise to sometimes be forced to foot the bill for activities that benefit society rather than the business itself.

> Parental leave is available to everyone.

That's a parent-centric view. Some of us a really not wired to have offspring. Obviously the magnitude of the situation is different, but your statement is along the lines of saying that "marriage benefits are available to everybody" prior to gay marriage being legalized.

> It's not prejudicial just because you choose not to take advantage of it, just like it's not prejudicial to offer gym memberships to people who choose not to work out.

That's a question of magnitude also. Parental leave for software engineers is easily a $10-20k benefit. Gym membership is a $100/mo benefit.

> Some of us a really not wired to have offspring.

Some of us are really not wired to go to the gym!

> Parental leave for software engineers is easily a $10-20k benefit. Gym membership is a $100/mo benefit.

But people use the gym benefit throughout their working life, while they will use the parental leave benefit typically just twice (on average). Averaged over a 30-year career, the net cost of the two benefits is about the same.

Even if not everybody takes advantages of those benefits, you can safely bet that a fairly large percentage of employees past a certain age are going to. If you want to hire senior people with solid experience, they're likely to be of an age where they're planning on having kids, and, given a company that offers no paternity/maternity benefits and one that does, they're pretty damn likely to choose the company that does offer such benefits -- both for the benefits themselves, and for the message that goes with them, that it is OK/expected that you'll have kids (and the less extravagant availability that goes with that).

I am from Brazil, and I think one of the few things we actually do properly, is that here the law follows exactly what you just said (paternity and maternity leave aren't touched by the company at all, the state foots the entire bill)

Still not enough sometimes (I know a person that worked at 3M, and refused to have kids, fearing the temporary replacement if she ever got pregnant and went on leave might become permant and displace her... after she got fired, near her 40s, and tried to have a kid and failed, she went to the doctor, that informed here that she missed the boat, she was fertile some years before, but now wasn't fertile anymore...)

It seems like the new reality is that most of us are going to be working through our 40s, 50s, and 60s, at the least. If there was some way that we could reconfigure the world so that it was possible for people to work on starting their families in their 20s, when they are the most fertile and the risk of birth defects and difficult pregnancies are lower, that seems to me like a better way for the world to work. The way the math works out, if you had children in your early 20s, by the time they were grown, and you were freed up to really devote yourself to a career, you'd still have 25 or 30 productive years to make something happen.

I have no idea how we would get there, though. The current system leaves young people buried in a deep hole, with very limited resources - huge student loan debts, nonexistent savings, precarious, transient work and living conditions. You've got to work like a dog for a decade to achieve some level of stability. On the other end, ageism leaves people that hit 40 at a disadvantage, just when they are reaching the point that they become experienced enough to really be useful.

Bumping you back up because I don't think you're trying to be inflammatory...

You're asking why the American government doesn't implement more progressive/liberal labour laws and/or 'entitlements'?

The massive wall of reasons why American (I assume you're talking about American) labour benefits/protections are relatively minimal is a pretty good reason for why companies are "forced" to do paid mat/pat leave to compete.

Yeah, obviously it's a touchy subject.

And I understand the reality too; adding social benefits at the federal level would be a tough political fight that few of our politicians seem particularly keen or suited to take on.

But looking at it objectively, why should a company offer benefits associated _only_ with parenting?

Because companies are cheap and want to keep paid leave to a bare minimum. But parenting is important so its harder for them to take a firm stance against time-off policies ion that specific situation.

Are you American? I totally agree with you but that's just not how we do things over here.

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