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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost.

So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty.

Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gender.

And these days, youth is not essentially to being a parent (even a natural parent, but parental leave policies usually apply to adoptive parents as well.)

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>>So, OTOH, is a sex discrimination lawsuit, especially when you are blatantly guilty.

Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college. Oh the choices... I think I am taking the lawsuit, especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee.

>>Also, most Western jurisdictions with paid or even unpaid but job-protected parental leave policies apply them without limitation by gender.

Maybe in theory, if you looks at statistics of what actually happens in most European countries you will see that women take much longer leaves and often several months medicals during pregnancy as well. I mean I live in one and my male friends usually take at most several days while women usually take close to a year if you count medical leave during pregnancy. I know exactly one couple who split the leave equally. It worked for them but it's definitely not usually happens.

> Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college.

I don't think you've researched the costs of the kind of lawsuit at issue for your business if you think that it's less than you'd lose by having the employee in the position take a year off on job-protected leave.

Risk = Probability * Consequence

I don't think he (or she!) is saying that the consequence is low, just that the risk of suffering that consequence is low enough to outweigh it.

I'd posit that making public blanket statements about being willing to break the law increases both probability and consequence, and thus expected value.

Which means I don't have high confidence in the risk assessment in the first place, but thankfully it's not my business :)

I am not in US, in my country lawyers don't carry a big stick. In US on the other hand I wouldn't need to be sexist as I don't have to promise parental leaves so that would make things easier. Small businesses don't have to offer that till they are big enough so it makes sense for them.

> In US on the other hand I wouldn't need to be sexist as I don't have to promise parental leaves

The US does, indeed, have mandatory job-protected parental leave. It's much shorter (even in the more generous states) than many European countries and in many cases (i.e., federally, though some states differ) unpaid-only, but it's still a thing.

You are just bullshitting. By your accounting, if your employee quits, or falls ill for a month or two, which would have the same impact as the training period for the maternal leave replacement, your kids would not be able to afford college [1]?

Does your employee Ski? Because ACL tears are damn common, and medical leave for an ACL tear is up to 3 months.

[1] (which if you're really not in the US should be free anyway)

> especially that it will be very hard to prove anything with just one employee.

As long as your real life identity isn't linkable to this comment, that is.

It is linkable but it's an Internet discussion where I am allowed to speak in hypotheticals and being facetious. I've never hired anyone (it's just original founders and occasionall contractors). I don't like being forced to make sexist decisions or eat the risk so it will likely always be contractors for anything critical. We also have more reasonable justice system here. You need actual proof and you won't be hit by a million dollar fine if someone thinks you might have made a sexist decision. Me describing the reasoning which led me to give up looking for new employees in overdramatized fashion doesn't fly as a proof here.

Yeah, lawsuit or my children not being able to afford college

Run your business better. If an employee leaving—something that can already happen at any time due to causes outwith your control—means your children can’t go to college, then your chances of failure are already sky high.

What other laws are you willing to break in order to run your company? Are you fine with tax fraud?

I'm not sure why the above is getting downvoted. It's a perfectly reasonable question given what the parent comment said.

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