Yeah, but you need to play the odds. If decision A means 5% chance you can't pay for a good college for your kid and decision B means 2% chance of being in that position which one do you choose? If I run 100+ people firm then the cost is small enough that I can eat it for making the world a better and fairer place and I also get benefits of more inclusive work place. If I run a small 2 people business I will weigh every decision in terms of "what is a chance my family well-being being intact if I do that".

But you're making assumptions and predictions based on nothing. If someone leaves, they leave. If they come back, they come back. Male or female. Makes no difference. You can't control it. You can't predict it.

You imagine a level of control that you simply don't have.

Conversely, there is a net benefit to society that simply cannot be ignored. It's life.

The approach blucalm is offering is nearly the definition of sex discrimination. You can’t play the odds when hiring in protected classes, you need to assess the applicants on an individual basis...

> you need to assess the applicants on an individual basis...

Except that he probably cannot (for example) ask the applicant if they are likely to have kids or use the leave policy in the near future. That would be judging them on an individual basis, but in many jurisdictions it's prohibited.

And someone who is planning on jumping ship for another job isn't going to tell you anything either. So what difference does it make?

Yes. You're either sexist, eat the costs or not hire at all. Quite a tough spot for a very small business. I think the laws should align incentives instead of creating situations like that.

You completely ignore the fact that it makes no difference. You seem awfully comfortable with the idea that a man won't screw you over and a woman will by going on a leave. If you want to be irrational, you might as well not even start a business because it could all be destroyed by hurricanes, floods, or fire too.

So you are saying that you have a higher chance that a young woman will carry a baby than having a young man change for a better paying offer?

I'm one of theses young one out of college and I can tell you, based around me, your stats are clearly wrong ;). Most don't care about babies, but they all certainly care about getting more interesting jobs. I'm Canadian too.

>a higher chance that a young woman will carry a baby than having a young man change for a better paying offer? //

Well surely the woman has all the possibilities the man has (eg changing to a better offer), plus they have the possibility of maternity, logically speaking. I'm considering maternity as a separate issue to child-rearing FWIW.

Quantitatively maternity probably dwarfs the male majority issues (for leaving the work force) such as suicide.

>Most don't care about babies, //

The proportion of humans who don't have basic biological urges associated with reproduction is approximately zero. A more telling statistic is probably "Of those born in 1971, 18 per cent were childless in 2016, when they turned 45." [1]. In the same article the average number of children a woman has by her 30th year is 1.0 in the UK.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/24/proportion-women...

If someone leaves I can find a replacement and hope they don't leave. If a women has a baby then I will either need to hire a temp which is more difficult than to hire for full time position or suddenly have 2 positions open (I need to have that when my first employee comes back). For a small few people company having 2 positions open instead of one is often unreasonable cost.

> I will either need to hire a temp which is more difficult than to hire for full time position

We're still talking about programmers, right? Because it is way easier to hire a part-time contract programmer, than it is to hire a full-time programmer. If anything, the best devs are often already freelancing/consulting anyway, and would prefer you hire them this way.

I had to hire a temp for a one year maternity leave replacement. It wasn't particularly difficult and the person I hired didn't want a longer contract and she is great. In fact, I kept her on as-needed contract basis after. She will be helping me smooth other the transition of another employee who just left for a better paying job.

If, in a year, you don't have room to grow your staff by 1, haven't you already failed?

Canada also has paternity leave; and parents can split the leave in any number of different ways as long as it adds up to a year. And yes, men do take advantage of that benefit as well.

A woman will give you five or six months warning before going on mat leave. You'd be lucky to get two weeks out of a young man jumping ship.

He's doing something illegal but I think it's rational. The woman can do everything the man can, but the man won't take paternity in practice.

He can also convince a man wanting to leave with money or opportunities but he can't convince a woman giving birth.

It's kinda super skeevy, but I'm not seeing the inconsistency.

Men switch jobs at higher rates than women do, so it's easy to argue that the OP is taking more risks by hiring exclusively men.

And women at home doing childcare don't become inaccessible the way that men working for a competitor are. They're much more likely to answer if you ask them a question. In my personal experience anyways.

Haha, okay, I’m easy to convince because I really haven’t thought about the problem and I could never see myself needing to reason it out since it’s just illegal and therefore overridden by the objective to ensure my company doesn’t get sued into oblivion.

Surely in this situation you have already decided that the women of childbearing age is the best candidate for the job. You are turning that candidate down and selecting someone you don't like as much. That is a compromise as well. Although to be fair you could have two equally good candidates.