Comment by sinatra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sinatra | Hacker News Reader

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Exactly! It's easy to rush to judgement and say "sue the employer" when you've only heard one side of the story. My wife's friend recently had a baby, and she exploited the situation to the full. She didn't come to work for almost 7 months using various excuses, and she was openly telling her friends at work about how she was exploiting the situation. I don't know how much management knew about it, but they didn't fire her because they were afraid of getting sued. Management isn't always bad by definition!

I am obviously not saying that everyone exploits maternity. I'm just highlighting that there can be another side to the story. Isn't it possible that the management was already considering letting the Director of Engineering (a role that by definition is not going to have a lot of peers) go? What do they do if she's pregnant at the same time? Wait for 6 months just so they don't get sued?

EDIT: Can't respond in a reply, so I am responding here. "Exploiting a situation" doesn't mean utilizing benefits legally given to you. An example of exploiting the situation will be: My employer is required to give me paid sick leave. So, even if I'm not sick, I'll claim that I am and get paid for taking time off. And usually, it's not the employer who gets hurt by something short-term like this. It's my peers who have to pick up the slack.

I would commend your friend's wife for choosing the right priorities. Family is the most important thing in the world. 7 months is a really short time for maternity leave.

How can someone "exploit maternity"? Maternity is not the same thing as being sick. Being sick is a transient personal thing while parenthood is a process that lasts through a lifetime.

People need sleep and eating. People are not machines. The fact that people are not required to work 24 hours a day recognizes this. People also need an occasional time off. This is recognized as well.

Family is a similar natural need, but with different temporal cycles. Any workplace that does not recognize the allowances required for family is not really in it for the long term.

Any coworkers that begrudge a maternity or paternity leave are themselves at fault, not the parent.

> How can someone "exploit maternity"?

When they tell work that they need to stay home due to some "medical complications." while they hang-out with their coworker friends in evenings and show-off that they were exploiting the situation. Yes, people do that.

Family is the right priority. No doubt about that. In that case, such a person should say so to the employers. "I can't come to work for 7 more months because I prefer to take care of my baby. Please make appropriate plans." is very different from "My doctor said I shouldn't come to work for another few weeks. Continue paying me, and don't hire my replacement, because it's just a matter of few weeks." Especially if you then show-off to your coworkers in the evening how you were exploiting the situation. Who picks up that slack when the employer doesn't hire a replacement? Those same coworkers.

> Any coworkers that begrudge a maternity or paternity leave are themselves at fault, not the parent.

Oh come on! Nowhere did I say that her coworkers begrudge just because she took a maternity leave.

How dare someone exploit the benefits that are legally available! Employers can insure against the economic risk of having someone become pregnant. And you know what, just budget for that in your cost of hiring once you are big enough to have a full time payroll and HR person on staff. And start planning to give fathers leave as well.

If you (qua hypothetical business owner) can't cope with the fact that your employees are human being and that human beings have reasonable needs, then what good are you?

What's the latest HN rule? Assume the best intention of the poster? You did the exact opposite!

I was responding to: My wife's friend recently had a baby, and she exploited the situation to the full. [...] And I'm basically saying, why shouldn't she?

Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was clear that the author was referring to the abuse of such benefits, not that she was wrong for using that benefits legitimately.

Just to clarify again, I was talking about exploiting as in "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work." Not "the action of making use of and benefiting from resources." To make the difference clear in my edit, I used the term "utilizing" for the latter.

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