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Comment by Cshelton | Hacker News Reader

Before anybody jumps to conclusions about Musk, we need to first know the source is accurate and the email is real, and also we need to know the context of the email.

It could be very well that the employee failed to communicate the fact his wife may go into labor prior to the event, and with no heads up of any kind, he gave the excuse after missing the event. In which case, I completely agree with Musk, if any employee is expecting to be out soon, they need to make it known. And let's face it...you have quite a few months notice on when the baby is due.

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Yes, you have a rough idea when babies are due. My middle child was born 5 weeks early, however. My last was born 3 weeks early. I've had employees send me a note a day after saying 'sorry, baby came early. more later'.

If you have any reaction other than "oh, ok, hope everyone is healthy", you are probably a terrible human being.

Regardless of the actual timing, if you have informed your employer that you are having a baby and it could be anywhere in the time frame, I think that should be accepted. However, if one day you are just gone and then came back and say 'we just had a baby', and that's the first time your employer has heard about it, then yeah, I can see that as a real problem.

In this kind of situation, it is much better to keep people you are obligated to as informed as possible, not keep it a secret. No matter if the baby comes a month early, at least they know you may be out and not wondering why you would miss without any indication you were expecting a child.

Huh, my coworkers who have had pregnant spouses generally gave us a heads-up around week 24... unlikely to be that premature, but it helps everyone plan for that possibility.

Even if you give people at work a heads up at week 24, that's still a lot of weeks left to go in the ideal case. I caused my mother to get an emergency C-section 4 weeks early and it still wreaked havoc with everything - most importantly, my father missed my birth because he had to go pick up my grandmother flying in from halfway across the world, who thought 4 weeks was plenty early.

Besides, this kerfuffle says volumes about how some people would still react to an unexpected emergency. Death or severe illness in the family? Immediate medical emergencies? Taking care of myself and my immediate family comes before any corporate bullshit, personally. I wouldn't have it any other way.

"And let's face it...you have quite a few months notice on when the baby is due."

This simply is not true! You should understand that the "due date" is a distribution in normal childbirth. Even for cesarian sections, which are scheduled, things can go awry.

In fact the second case is precisely what happened to my wife. She still had about 15 days to her scheduled cesarian when she visited the hospital for a routine checkup, during which they found that her blood pressure was too high and presented a mortal danger to the baby. They took her to delivery room immediately. She just had enough time to call me at work, I rushed like a madmen, but due to my long commute I still wan't there when our son was delivered.

And you hadn't given work a heads-up that she was getting close?

Edit: Just pointing out that there is an extremely easy way to notify your work, given the uncertain schedule of all childbirth.

"It could be very well that the employee failed to communicate the fact his wife may go into labor prior to the event, and with no heads up of any kind, he gave the excuse after missing the event."

That's an excellent point that I had not considered. When my wife & I had a due date for both our children, I put everybody at work on notice about my possible lack of availability. That's just how I work. But it's entirely possible that the individual in question either flaked out completely or just spaced out about the logistics of the matter.

There are definitely some puzzle pieces missing from the story.

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