Why would people suddenly need to take up childcare? Did those employees conflate WFH with skimping on childcare? I know the answer to that.. I had those colleagues. It's a shitty move on their part, their output was definitely less and reflects poorly on people who actually did their hours WFH and outputted more!
> Why would people suddenly need to take up childcare?
...that's what immediately struck me as weird as well about the article. It seems to be presuming that raising young children while simultaneously doing a fulltime WFH job would sort of naturally be a position that an employee would now find themselves in.
Elsewhere in this thread, the question of whether or not that's possible is being hotly debated. But, be that as it may, I would expect that, if this does occur, it would occur by agreement between employer and employee and with some sort of accommodation around lost productivity.
But, maybe, the actual substance of the matter is that Dell allowed its people to WFH and now all of those couples that could previously have only one breadwinner due to having small children are suddenly drawing two fulltime salaries due to combining WFH with parenting responsibilities. If that's actually the case, then I kind of agree that there's a real problem there, but would contend that it's only tangentially related to WFH.
Huge mounds of salt because I'm not a parent - but I have colleagues that do that and it's never bothered me, I suppose I assume it's more a risk of interruption than it is stopping you putting the hours in at all. If someone was a strict '9-5' (or whatever) type and also had child(ren) interrupting or distracting them, then yeah, that's taking the mick a bit. But otherwise, it's not like I don't answer the door or empty the dishwasher or whatever.
Very young children obviously require a great deal of care, but somewhat older children might get dropped off by the school bus at 3 PM and then occupy themselves for a few hours at home with an adult present.
WFH means no commuting. Someone could have childcare arranged for their working hours, but if they're suddenly leaving the house an hour earlier and getting home an hour later, they'll need to make other arrangements.
Childcare is a job, especially with younger kids under, say, 6. The idea that you can execute childcare and your full time job effectively, simultaneously, is just a joke.
The idea that your job should be taking over your life is dangerous.
You work to live not the other way.
Family is more important than a job. So yeah, giving only 20-30% of your life to your job and keeping the rest for your family makes more sense than the other way around.
I basically agree, but that's not what OPs post was about. The fact is you cannot effectively work a full time information job while caring for children. WFH was never supposed to mean "childcare plus do some work when you have time".
Sure you can. There is no point in a child's life that requires undevoted attention 100% of the time.
There is no point in a child's life that requires 100% attention during the day.
Even once they reach preschool/primary they don't.
You are of the opinion that it is more important that an employee be available 100% of the time from 9 to 5, I am of the opinion that it is most important that an employee get their job done.
I would 100% prefer a competent employee where I have to block out some brief segment during the day, than someone less capable where I can schedule a meeting whenever I like from 9 to 5.
I would also 100% prefer an employee I can trust to do their job regardless of supervision than someone who needs hand holding for everything.
Handholding is for interns and new employees learning how to work in industry (vs. academia or opensource).
I expect FTEs to be able to do their job without persistent oversight, and I expect them to do their jobs without persistent oversight.
As a parent and a very crappy multitasker I try to be 100% present into what I am doing: spending time with my kids&family or working. Mixing the two doesn't really work for me and context-switching is also very costly.
Which is completely fair, but it's also wrong to do what folk are doing in this thread and state that that is universal, and that therefore at least one parent must be unemployed (I don't think that is the intent, but it is the outcome of what they are stating is fact: you can't WFH if you have kids, and therefore RTO is the only option, but you can't RTO if you have kids).
as someone mentioned above, in the long run it's impossible to do any intense work with kids under 6 in the house, you end up either neglecting them (probably by giving them an ipad to stare into for hours), or you end up neglecting work by doing activities with the kids.
Above 6-7 yo they are obligated to go to school, unless you homeschool, which is also incompatible with fulltime, good faith employment.
Schools don’t run the entire workday nor the entire work year. Especially if you work at one of those employers that likes their employees to work long hours, with “unlimited” (i.e. zero) vacation days. But that’s a somewhat different social malady.
Just because you are unable to get your job done while having children around doesn't mean that's true of others.
It tells me that your only measure of getting a job done is "are you 'doing your job' from 9 to 5 with no break" rather than "are you getting the work your job requires done". Which is the standard trope of all these "we must be in the office, because without being in the office we lack the emotional maturity and competence to do our job" asshats.
I am done listening to all this "you must be in the office to do a job that has no functional requirement to be in an office" BS from people who are apparently not capable of doing their own jobs without being hand held.
Just because you can't do your own job without being in an office doesn't mean other people can't, so stop projecting your own issues on others and accept that maybe other people have different weakness. I can recognize that "Getting my job done without an office" discipline isn't universal, why are you folk incapable of recognizing that your own weaknesses are not also universal?
> Just because you are unable to get your job done while having children around doesn't mean that's true of others.
No, it really is. There's probably some age threshold where you can say "I don't care what you're doing, don't bother me for the next X hours" (that's not taking care of your child though). Below that threshold... what do you expect to happen when your kid wants to play and has a meltdown next to you?
Some days they demand ~100% of your time and there's no way around it - you would not be able to do your job while trying to look after the kid.
I have to agree with a message you're replying to. It does work for some people, especially if both parents are present/work from home. You actually save 5hrs of commute time and have an hour for lunch. If you split it between two parents in a smart way it's smooth sailing. My wife and I both did it and we both progressed in our jobs at the same time.
Having two parents at home during that time is massively different though. "unable to get your job done while having children around" did not imply anyone else around. I agree with you that's much easier, but if that's what the original comment meant, they ignored a significant assumption.
> I mean… Do you always make so many random assumptions about the thoughts and lives of people you don’t know and know absolutely nothing about?
I'm not sure why you're accusing me of this, when I was replying to the person saying that if you're a single parent your only option is unemployment
> Let’s play this game.. Maybe your job is just not very demanding and you get paid for doing basically nothing all day?
Feel free to, maybe it is, I don't think so, but that's kind of moot as I don't have kids. What I do know is that I have plenty of coworkers who are parents who seem able to do their job while their kids are around, and my experience working with them was very periodically rescheduling meetings rather, and not once them being incapable of doing their job.
Let's try this again: I am not saying that looking after kids is easy. I am not saying that looking after kids takes time.
What I am saying is very simple: people who have kids, of any age, are able to do their jobs. Requiring them to return to office means immediately and instantaneously that at least one must quit. Not because they're not doing their job, but rather because their employer has required that they be in the office from 9 to 5, they're now (let's be optimistic) away from home from 8 to 6. At that point the message is extremely clear: if you have children you cannot work here. An absurd hypothetical of children need only one minute of you being there during the day means you can no longer be in the office, and therefore are no longer permitted to work for your employer. Again not because you're not doing your job, but because you're not in the office.
It's also super fun that childcare penalization disproportionately impacts women. In the US at least, you only get 12 weeks of guaranteed maternity leave, but it's generally recommended that you breastfeed for 6 months. So the mandatory RTO policies say "are you a new mother? time to stop being employed in tech because mothers don't belong here".
I just checked, and it turns out that babies and toddlers don't stay awake an in need of attention for 100% of every hour. They are also not awake for 100% of 9-5 work hours. This is not rocket science.
Here's the thing: if you're a decent human being and someone is in a meeting and their kid wakes up unexpectedly you can reschedule the meeting or delay it a couple of minutes. If someone is not in a meeting then who gives a damn if they spend an hour or two in the middle of the day playing with their kid?
It's super easy.
Any business has a choice. You can reward working exactly a 9 to 5, or you can reward getting the work done and doing incredible work.
You are making it absolutely crystal clear that you would rather a person who is doing a 9 to 5 and not remotely interested in doing anything else is more valuable than any amount of skill or work that isn't 100% available for BS meetings from 9-5.
It's also not lost on me that these policies universally favor people who don't have children, or who are not expected to look after children. While the deployment of child rearing would ideally be a 50/50 split, it is still split such that women are expected to do that, so a policy that says "you can have a job or you can have kids" is inherently biased against women.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Anyone who claims being a parent is "super easy" is immediately outing themselves as either someone who has never done it or someone who is really bad at it.
It is incredibly hard to deal with kids while working — for either the kind of job where you have to sit and mindlessly make widgets for 8 hours a day or the kind where you need to think and focus. Kids are not awake 100% of the time but a) when they are they demand up to and often 100% of your time, b) you don't get to decide when they are awake. As for your idea of "oh just reschedule the meeting or delay it": sure, once or twice that's fine, but if you had kids you'd know that this happens _all the time_ and feeling like a total flake who can't concentrate sucks for the parent and the employer.
(Yes, they can find a new job blah blah. I'm more concerned with your lack of empathy though.)
It seems like the only thing you're interested in is insisting that your work arrangement is the best and every other one is wrong, even when you aren't doing them or don't understand their challenges.
I don't believe you've spent extended time taking care of kids through whole days on your own while trying to get work done. It's not super easy, if it's possible at all. Seriously, either you've been in an exceptionally good situation (but the kids were a bit ignored) and you're just not aware of what those days look like for most people, or you're making things up and trolling actual parents.
I just checked, and it turns out that babies and toddlers don't stay awake an in need of attention for 100% of every hour. They are also not awake for 100% of 9-5 work hours. This is not rocket science.
Nope, just for the majority of that time. You might be able to squeeze in a couple of hours of work, but not anything remotely close to what you could do in a full work day.
Here's the thing: if you're a decent human being and someone is in a meeting and their kid wakes up unexpectedly you can reschedule the meeting or delay it a couple of minutes. If someone is not in a meeting then who gives a damn if they spend an hour or two in the middle of the day playing with their kid?
It's not an hour or two.
It's also not lost on me that these policies universally favor people who don't have children, or who are not expected to look after children. While the deployment of child rearing would ideally be a 50/50 split, it is still split such that women are expected to do that, so a policy that says "you can have a job or you can have kids" is inherently biased against women.
Whether or not you have kids is your choice, and it's on you to make the required arrangements for childcare. It's not on the employer - some of them are struggling as much as you are - to deal with your choices. In most developed countries, maternity leave (and paternity leave for those who have it) is paid for by taxes via social security, not the employer.
Sorry but this is just not true. You have to train your baby/toddler to sleep during the day as well. If two parents are both home and working from home it works pretty well. You save 5 hours of commute time and 2 hours for lunch. That's plenty of time to organise your day.
Before Covid, if someone was constantly being interrupted in meetings because of child care responsibilities when they were allowed to work from home, it was seen as a bad thing. WFH did not mean you didn’t pay for childcare.
