Then afternoon interruptions because they are bored. Lots of crappy reasons, but also because they want me to spend time with them.
Also dealing with my own chronic illness. I was managing to cope/hide before Covid.
Between it all is a sense of guilt of not getting enough done for work and not supporting kids enough.
Other day I got a note under the door asking if I would draw a cat. Man talk about breaking heart.
Between trying to juggle it all, not only feel like I’m letting down my work, but my kids as well. They don’t understand why I can’t spend as much time with them while I’m working, nor is it their fault that I’m so much more tired during the times when I would have spent time with them previously.
You aren’t alone man and we’re all doing the best we can with a really tough situation. Try to be as kind to yourself as possible during all this and don’t be afraid to ask find solutions that ease some of the burden.
Migraines for them have improved greatly since they are away from harsh lighting.
Know your pain. Hang in there. You're doing good work.
Chronic conditions ebb and flow, sometimes I’m a great employee and sometimes I’m horrible. Hell sometimes I can’t even see the computer.
Turns out people/companies get tired of it after awhile. So limiting meetings and working solo when I can on large tricky projects is how I’m rolling.
I can solve stuff most can’t. I just need a lot of time to do it.
So glad I never moved to the West coast when I had the chance. Instead I get to live in a nice spacious house with a half-acre lot, a fenced in yard to enjoy with my kids and dog, and work at a great small-business/startup in ML with great colleagues, excellent work-life balance, and the main company motto being - Don't hire assholes, and don't work for assholes. It's been working fantastic for several years now!
I am a recent empty nester. I don't like it much.
If you want other people to subsidize your productivity and/or income so you can live beyond your means in an area where you can't afford to raise a family, then that's a big ask.
It's better for the planet and better for people to live in urban areas, and the only reason that rural areas are cheaper is that they don't have to deal with the shortage of housing caused by urban zoning restrictions.
We all suffer from long time urban homeowners who won't allow increased density so that they can leach off everyone else's economic productivity. It's time for permissive nationwide by-right zoning standards.
COVID is an exceptional and temporary situation.
Everyone has highs and lows (great successes, terrible personal problems/tragedies/etc...) throughout their careers. The only difference between this circumstance and any other is that it's impacting many people at once.
If, for example, you got COVID and were put on a ventilator for a month, how would you react to finding out that you had lost your job? Would you want to take it on the chin and down-size, or would you be upset that your employer didn't show the basic decency to (at a bare minimum) re-hire you once you were recovered?
Times like this I'm glad I didn't pick the US as a place to live.
You are thinking about this from a single perspective, but it is a massively complicated & interconnected issue.
For one other perspective, consider what would happen is companies didn't do what you call "subsidizing". Effected employees can't then keep their job, they have to take leave or find another job all together. That's bad for the company which loses experienced employees and must now pay to identify, recruit, and train a new person, who doesn't know as much about how things run in that business. That person is going to be much less efficient for 6-months to 1-year before they are completely comfortable. You are then subsidizing them instead.
Or consider a broader economic perspective: Let's imagine companies say they won't subsidize like this and impacted people have to take a 10% pay cut. Over 60% of the workforce in the US is white collar, jobs more likely to be WFH possible. That works out to about 79,000,000 workers. Average salary for White Collar jobs is $60,000. Let's say 1/3 need to work from home for family reasons, and they all take a 10% pay cut. That means the economy loses $158 Billion dollars. That is nearly 1% of our GDP, just in that one move, and it doesn't end there: Those people cut back spending. Areas heavy with such workers, like major cities, SV, etc., suddenly have a huge % of their customer base that has to cut back spending. Businesses like restaurants etc., already hurting, take another hit because 1/3 of 60% of all workers (works out to about 18% of the total workforce) now has to cut back discretionary spending. Even if that accounts for only half their 10% pay cut, that's equivalent to almost a 10% reduction in customer base.
Or consider it from a healthcare standpoint: Putting additional stress on this portion of the workforce will have significantly higher stress if "unsubsidized". That translates to more mental health problems, and expensive health care. Some of these workers may lose their insurance if they drop to part-time work, putting an even high burden on the the healthcare system.
Small things can have massive ripple effects. Saying "It's not fair!" is mostly not a helpful guide to resolving complex issues. Right now solutions are needed to keep society running while we get out of this crisis. Approaching it from a narrow sense of fairness is short sited. It won't be fair to the local shops that lose another chunk of their business. It won't be fair to other workers who have to pickup the slack left by a lost employees. If you're going to bring "fair" into things, you can't cherry pick only the one thing. That is one-dimensional thinking. You need to think multi dimensional. You need to consider second and third order effects.
I think much of my own negative emotion about unequal treatment in many sectors of life, not just child care, stems from this. Almost everyone has special unique difficulties they have to deal with that makes their lives harder. By chance, my set are some that are mostly not recognized by others. It isn't that I want to tell others to grin and bear their problems in life because I don't care. It is instead that grinning and bearing has been the only option for me no matter my struggles that I begin to question why it wouldn't work for others as well.
Is that really true though? In my team parents are still online 40+ hours a week. Definitely if some single person (or parent) is producing double everyone else they should get bonuses or promotion over everyone else.
I think the companies should provide benefits uniformly for all its employees, but the government should provide the extra benefits for adverse situations, such as these for parents.
I think Sweden has a similar model (?), where parents have sick days for their children where the government pays your salary when you take these days off to take care of them. I believe it's called VAB.
Finally, you miss the truth to the matter. If you are getting paid in equity you want the whole boat to float so short term mindsets such as working less for a couple months vs keeping the whole ship floating as a whole is more important. Imagine all the companies with parents just burned out right now - that's the difference.
Just the same, if there is an national pandemic that has upended all traditional childcare options, then maybe give some slack to the parents
Recognizing a distinction someone else is trying to draw with a term isn't splitting hairs.
But in the US we don't pay stay at home mother's for their time either.
These companies should help their employees, I'm saying that there is a much deeper problem in our society in how we handle individuals who are not profitable.
The same can be said about anyone with a hobby though. They are working as much or more. Just not on the same things.
Kids are a choice, first and foremost. And we are, as societies, helping quite a bit with the consequences of those choices, and yes, that's mostly funded by the single people.
We encourage having children by severely lightening the load that comes with having children, but we're not encouraging having children as a life-style choice where you get to cuddle with them and the state takes over any other duties.
Yes, raising children is hard work. No, parents are not doing it for altruistic reasons. Yes, we should support them. No, we shouldn't just push more and more work on non-parents so parents can have an easier time.
Also (unfortunately) people who do not have kids, particularly women, are more likely to progress in their career as they have not taken any career breaks, so I guess that could be seen as an upside, though in my opinion is very unfair.
Overall I think companies should be there to support people when they need it, as a company you should plan your resources so people can take paternal / maternal leave, and also so that the other employees aren't overburdened because of it.
How does it not suck that they are getting the short end of the stick? They are the ones covering and picking up slack for others in this situation so I don't even get your point. You have no idea what the rest of their life is like they may in fact work far harder than any parents do, it's just your assumption they dont?
Also if we're assuming peoples states of mind CONVERSELY clearly it doesn't suck to get bailed out for making a bad decision. For people to have children who lack the time and resources to do so, and in some situations put an unfair onus on people who chose not to or for whatever reason don't have kids.
In America it seems children are also expected to support their parents in retirement, which would mean the employers should be providing more retirement support for childless employees.
It seems nuts that someone working 50%+ less than someone else is going to keep all the same equity, vacation, and salary. Then again it seems nuts that they don't.
All employees who had children or family members to care for before or after COVID get none of the same support. I don't think backpay is coming for those who were forced to take leave or even quit their jobs when they had family they had to care for.
It isn't "unfair" or something, parents with kids of certain ages have a much higher burden right now than most, and our society should support them.
That support won't exist for anything exceptional, and for diseases like autism, alzheimer's or cancer, we've normalized the experience and force individuals to just handle it. It's hard to see how far some companies are willing to go for parents today, when I see how little we do for others.