Germany: 14 months paid parental leave (“Elterngeld”), with max of 12 used by one parent, at 2/3 of average net from previous year, capped at 1800 EUR/mo, paid via the employment office. Months can be distributed as desired through first three years of child’s life. Outside of paid parental leave, either or both parents can opt to take unpaid leave, or work 15-30 hours/week (pay prorated, of course) until the kid is 3 - all of this is collectively called “Elternzeit”. My husband used his first Elterngeld month right after our kid was born, and is using his second now as I start back to work. It’s excellent, and everyone deserves this.

“Mutterschutz” is why I was put on paid leave six weeks before the due date, and forbidden to return any less than eight weeks after birth - that’s paid at a rate close to previous net and if there is a cap, it’s higher than my nice (by German, not US tech hub, standards) IT salary. Paid out of federal taxes, administered by employers.

Sounds sensible. Makes sense for the state to essentially insuranize this so small businesses with say 5 people aren't in a pickle.

10 of these 12 months are on statutory parental leave, which is something like 140£ per week. If you have a decent job, it’s almost equivalent to unpaid leave.

Recently companies started offering enhanced parental leave, usually 5-6 months of full pay, but it’s not even close to being the norm.

Ah. Hadn't appreciated that, thanks. I suppose that's still better than nothing though, so the USA's 3-4 full pay ends up more than 2, but another 10 months' pay however meagre with a job to return to seems better to me. I think (again, with no experience) in that situation I'd be optimising for time off rather than money anyway, once required amounts of each are reached I mean.

You can’t compare US benefits to UK benefits. I’m fairly certain Atlassian’s EU offices will have very different parental leave to the US. IIRC, Aus is 6 months

Well I'm comparing to UK (perhaps nee EU?) statutory requirements, of course there's some win-some/lose-some, I just think (even as a right-leaning^ bachelor) that's something worth legislating around.

Especially if you're (I'm not) pro positive-discrimination: the 'time with newborn vs. work/pay/career progression' decision is awful for gender equality, surely? Traditionally it is indeed maternity leave, and if you don't even mandate a good amount of that then the 'better hires' are men (all of us, family size decisions aside), women who won't-have/have-had children, and women who value career more.

(^: I say 'leaning' more because of US/UK political spectrum differences than anything else; feel free to read 'pretty solidly Conservative' in a UK context.)

Why? That grinds my gears. If the company believes in the values and benefits of longer parental leave (and I'm sure they say they do), why not enforce above the minimum in every country they operate in?

The topic however is about the claims of "unlimited". The location becomes less relevant.

3-4 months is a lot for the US. Most states have no legal minimum, at $COMPANY I would get 8 weeks (12 if I moved back to California).

And in california, it's paid, but at 60-70% of wages. And capped at like $1357 a week. Better than nothing, but for most people here, it's not paid at your salary.

Man, the more I learn about the US the more I hate it.

Yeah, that’s fair. Being in the US is amazing if you’re in the “in group”. But if you leave that narrow path for any reason, your quality of life begins to degrade quite quickly.

I never heard of a company giving less than 6 months. My wife works for a very large financial firm and it was 6 months. All startups I worked at were 6 months.

I got 3 months and that’s more than literally everybody I know in real life. Even that was longer than the company gave just a year prior, so long time employees were jealous.

Yes, but how much of that maternal leave is paid for by the company itself? It's easy to be generous when it's someone else's money.

In the US, that is decent. My wife's job (non-tech) offers a month at like 75% pay I believe.

I'm not trying to encourage anybody to quit their jobs for a different local job that I suppose will have better benefits - I'm commenting under the assumption that the discussion's a bit more abstract than that.

Oh, I understand and your point is good. I just wanted to add a little context that the benefits vary wildly when it comes to maternity leave.