Silicon Valley: Perks for Some Workers, Struggles for Parents - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The American workplace has always prized people who prioritize work over family, and European countries have long had more generous policies for working parents. But in the last two decades, that gap has widened significantly. Other developed countries have expanded benefits like paid parental leave and child care, while the United States has not.
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for workers — most of whom have children, aging parents or both, and many of whom are single parents — the downsides can be enormous, whether they work in high finance or hourly labor. Many workers today — blue-collar and white-collar alike — believe they must choose between career and family.
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The share of women in their 30s and 40s who work, which was once higher in the United States than in Canada, Australia, Japan and much of Europe, has fallen behind. The widening gap in policies is a major reason for the change,
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More broadly, some economists say, the lack of family-focused policies reflects the power imbalance between companies and workers in the American economy today. The share of economic output flowing to corporate profits has surged, while employee compensation has stagnated.
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The technology industry is a striking example because it attracts some of the country’s smartest people, many of whom have far more bargaining power than most workers. Silicon Valley also has outsize cultural significance, as the face of American ingenuity and a magnet for global talent.
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But it is also a place that often expects total commitment to work. That grows from the notion that in tech, unlike in other industries, companies become overnight successes, and believe their work is changing the world.
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“People who give you millions of dollars for nothing but an idea at the very least expect your complete commitment to that idea,”
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Start-ups are unlikely to have parental policies because they are more focused on growing as quickly as possible.
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Though it’s off limits for interviewers to ask candidates whether they have children, tech companies use euphemisms to indicate that parents or older employees are not welcome, said a tech executive who would speak only anonymously. They say people are not a good “culture fit” and cannot “align on priorities” or make it in a “rapidly moving company.” The translation, he said: “People who are not exactly like us.”
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“When people have kids, they have other priorities — and start-ups can be pretty brutal about not having other priorities,”
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“Young people just have simpler lives,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, said in a talk to would-be entrepreneurs in 2007, when he was 23. “We may not own a car. We may not have family. Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what’s important.”
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In some ways, an aging Silicon Valley is beginning to look more like the rest of corporate America, where most workers have families. The challenge is retaining the youthful optimism that they can do the impossible — while also showing their employees that working and having families is realistic.