Things like ping pong tables, free beer - those are bad for family life. They encourage you to stay at the office for more than your 40 hours - of course in many places the idea of a 40 hour week seems like a joke. If you want to encourage family life you need to encourage going home and not thinking about work at all.
My company has a branch office near LA. I asked someone there once why they don't move just a few hours north to the Bay - they could easially double their salary. There was no interest in that though - the LA office you arrive to work sometime around 9 or 9:30, take a lunch break, and if you if you are not clearly preparing to leave at 6pm they remind you to turn the lights off when you leave. (that is you are allowed to work later if you want but it is expected that you won't) That is worth far more than the extra money that they could make and so we have a lot of people who have been in that office for 20 years.
scotty79 · 9m ago
> you need to encourage going home and not thinking about work at all
Why would any company encourage that? The only use that business had with people having family was that having family put workers at a disadvantage, pressed them against the wall, forced them to suffer through even more exploitation than they would if they were childless. Make them existentially fear even trying to look for other opportunities. And give them a place to escape the burden of care of their children.
nickff · 3m ago
Many companies encourage employees to go home and relax or engage in other rewarding activities; it can be very beneficial for the employer. For one thing, it encourages people to separate their work lives and home lives, which can decrease stress (often encouraging productivity and tenure), as well as encouraging people to treat their office as somewhere to focus on work (to the exclusion of distractions). Additionally, in many fields it can be helpful to get a fresh perspective on your work every day, rather than getting tunnel-vision, which can happen from having your 'head down' all the time.
exolymph · 32m ago
Key quote:
> My peers in tech who are reluctant to have children often express fear that it will interrupt the arc of the careers they've worked so hard to build.
> That, I think, is the primary tension: not between the family and the state, as Boyle argues, but between individual and collective ambitions. Both the state and the family ask us to make sacrifices for something bigger than ourselves — and this, perhaps, is why they have historically fought each other for mindshare. What tech offers is the opposite: a chance to realize a vision that is entirely one's own. Tech worships individual talent, and it's a unique thrill to live and work among peers who don't shy away from greatness. But it also means that tech has to work harder than other industries to demonstrate that starting a family doesn't require giving up these ambitions.
I'm the breadwinner in my family, and my husband is a SAHD. I have a 2yo and I'm 6 months pregnant with our second. Stereotypically, having a kid made me care less about professional ambitions — but I don't care zero. And as the breadwinner, earning money, ideally more money every couple years or so, is a high priority. God, the pressure to keep up. It's hard to balance with being a present mom.
I live in the SF Bay Area and being able to attend events and network in person has been a huge boon to my career. Being "in the scene" pays off. I can't really do that anymore, not without losing time with my kid, and I'm just not willing to make the sacrifice. Traveling to conferences, etc., is even more off the table. Don't even talk to me about commuting. But I know these lifestyle changes will have repercussions next time I need to find a job.
To secure jobs with the kind of flexibility I require as a mom, I need to be a high performer, an impressive candidate with plenty of connections. Being a mom makes it harder — more expensive, let's say — to be that kind of exceptional worker bee. Oy vey!
toomuchtodo · 17m ago
I’m always taken aback when people in power denigrate remote and flexible work, as if it’s lazy or incompatible with an organization succeeding. If you want people to have families and lean into them, they need this work arrangement. Remote and flexible work has been shown to be very beneficial to parents and working mothers specifically. Several other countries protect this as a worker right. There’s over $120B in remote first or highly remote compatible enterprises. But you still have the bros, from Silicon Valley to Jamie Dimon in finance, dragging people back in for the performance art. I hope the right people get into positions of power soon, who understand economic success and worker well-being go hand in hand.
It shouldn’t taboo to say “I’m here to do good work, but then I’m going home; my job is not who I am, but merely a means to a reasonable amount of economic and professional success.” We have to enable people do their best work with reasonable accommodations.
My company has a branch office near LA. I asked someone there once why they don't move just a few hours north to the Bay - they could easially double their salary. There was no interest in that though - the LA office you arrive to work sometime around 9 or 9:30, take a lunch break, and if you if you are not clearly preparing to leave at 6pm they remind you to turn the lights off when you leave. (that is you are allowed to work later if you want but it is expected that you won't) That is worth far more than the extra money that they could make and so we have a lot of people who have been in that office for 20 years.
Why would any company encourage that? The only use that business had with people having family was that having family put workers at a disadvantage, pressed them against the wall, forced them to suffer through even more exploitation than they would if they were childless. Make them existentially fear even trying to look for other opportunities. And give them a place to escape the burden of care of their children.
> My peers in tech who are reluctant to have children often express fear that it will interrupt the arc of the careers they've worked so hard to build.
> That, I think, is the primary tension: not between the family and the state, as Boyle argues, but between individual and collective ambitions. Both the state and the family ask us to make sacrifices for something bigger than ourselves — and this, perhaps, is why they have historically fought each other for mindshare. What tech offers is the opposite: a chance to realize a vision that is entirely one's own. Tech worships individual talent, and it's a unique thrill to live and work among peers who don't shy away from greatness. But it also means that tech has to work harder than other industries to demonstrate that starting a family doesn't require giving up these ambitions.
I'm the breadwinner in my family, and my husband is a SAHD. I have a 2yo and I'm 6 months pregnant with our second. Stereotypically, having a kid made me care less about professional ambitions — but I don't care zero. And as the breadwinner, earning money, ideally more money every couple years or so, is a high priority. God, the pressure to keep up. It's hard to balance with being a present mom.
I live in the SF Bay Area and being able to attend events and network in person has been a huge boon to my career. Being "in the scene" pays off. I can't really do that anymore, not without losing time with my kid, and I'm just not willing to make the sacrifice. Traveling to conferences, etc., is even more off the table. Don't even talk to me about commuting. But I know these lifestyle changes will have repercussions next time I need to find a job.
To secure jobs with the kind of flexibility I require as a mom, I need to be a high performer, an impressive candidate with plenty of connections. Being a mom makes it harder — more expensive, let's say — to be that kind of exceptional worker bee. Oy vey!
It shouldn’t taboo to say “I’m here to do good work, but then I’m going home; my job is not who I am, but merely a means to a reasonable amount of economic and professional success.” We have to enable people do their best work with reasonable accommodations.