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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

The stand-out detail is 6 months unpaid leave. Sounds like a pretty reasonable idea; if an employer can't cope with that they probably have a resiliency issue with their staffing numbers anyway. The upside of a lucky startup is clearly much greater than the potential drain on the economy, and the incentives don't seem unsound.

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> if an employer can't cope with that they probably have a resiliency issue with their staffing numbers anyway

That statement seems highly dependent on the size of the employer.

Parental leave is already very generous in Scandinavia, so companies already have to deal with employees disappearing for several months.

This just plays into the hands of big businesses at the expense of small ones. What if the company is 25 people and 6 decide to take the leave at the same time? No way they could handle that.

I would say this is fairly uncommon and unlikely to hit any given business. But sure, it puts some strain on businesses. It also seems to work fine. We have companies of many different sizes. I haven't heard a lot of complains about it.

Parental leave is paid. If they can't survive 6 months unpaid leave from a worker, then they got a problem. The system with paid leave works fine in all of Scandinavia so how could unpaid leave not.

Paid by the employer or by the government?

In Canada I get leave but I get paid by the Employment Insurance program (tax). Interestingly it caps off meaning lower income people might get 100% of their salary while I'd get like 30%.

It takes ~9-1/2 months to have a baby; that's a huge planning and coordination window.

What would that minimum window look like to my hypothetical employer if I decided on a whim to start a business tomorrow?

We only need to tell the employer 3 months before the planned parental leave though.

You don't need to tell your employer that you need parental leave on the date of conception.

similarly, you can't just take this business leave by saying "I'm not coming in next week!". The notice period is actually longer than for parental leave.

In Sweden, you need to tell the employer about the plans to take time off for starting a company 3 months before.

That's on par with parental leave, where it's not uncommon to tell the employer 3 months before the delivery.

I don't expect a 25 person company is paying well enough that 20% of their workforce would take 6 months off unpaid all at once. In the unlikely event that it does happen, use their salary to hire short-term replacements.

That's an absurd assertion. Small companies don't pay well? Two of my friends fit this. One works for a land surveyor, the other an engineering consultancy. Both paid very very well. Both about a dozen people company.

Except no one wants to have short term temporary job.

Also it’s not just the percentage of employees on leave, but also about their position.

What if this happens in a startup of 10 people (where they have 2-3 developers) and the person taking the leave is a developer?

Company loses 33-50% of its R&D capacity for the next 6 months. That can have catastrophic effect on a startup.

> Except no one wants to have short term temporary job.

Sure they do; that's what contractors often are. I've spent eight months working in Belgium plus three in Luxembourg. It's a great option if you're from a EU country with lower salaries and don't want to permanently migrate, but want to build some savings (plus local employers seem have some fetish for people who worked abroad).

Many jobs are hard enough to hire qualified people for key alone for 6 month temp contract.

Small business owner here. If your a significant share of your employees decides to take six months of unpaid leave all at the same time just because it's legal, you have bigger problems than legislation.

If anything this helps employees leave shitty companies without the full risk of just quitting entirely. You know how capitalism is about a marketplace of rational actors? Actors will be a lot more rational if they know they can still have a job to fall back on if things don't work out.

How would the 31-person company handle a bunch of their employees coming back to re-fill positions that had already been filled by someone else?

I'm indifferent to the policy, but one possible way would be conditional employment linked to the return of a sabbatical employee being replaced, or perhaps a fixed probationary period allowing for release without cause.

Read the article:

>Anyone who's been in full-time employment for at least six months is entitled to apply for the unpaid sabbatical, or tjänstledighet, as it's called in Sweden. Employers can only turn the request down if the employee is vital to the business's operations. Also, your new idea can't compete with your existing employer, nor cause them any significant inconvenience.

I agree to an extent, but it's important to realise such rules aren't "free."

There's a cost to holding someone's seat. Employers whole heartedly replace them, because they're entitled to come back. So, they need a small 6 month replacement that may or may not become a permanent need.

For most jobs at large companies, I totally agree. They should be able to handle it. But, marginal cases will still exist. Niche roles, senior employees or smaller companies. Image a 200 person startup where a team lead or similar takes her 6 months. The team is now in limbo.

I like the idea, just saying it comes with downsides too.

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