Nvidia – significant increases in parental benefits for employees

https://virtuallyvisual.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/nvidia-significant-increases-in-parental-benefits-for-employees/

by bing_dai • 10 years ago

181 155 10 years ago

virtuallyvisual.wordpress.com

Am I reading this correct ? 12 weeks of paid paternity leave. My jaw is still hanging :) (Maternity leave is awesome too but its already more than 22 weeks in the country I live).

johnward2• 10 years ago

I got 6 weeks paternity leave. I wasn't allowed to take it all at once but hey, it's something. We also extend benefits to adopting families like nvidia is doing.

xigency• 10 years ago

Hm, I was lucky to have 2 days. The video game industry is great.

endtime2• 10 years ago

Google has had 12 weeks for a while. I think Facebook is even more (3 or 4 months).

vgt• 10 years ago

12 weeks is 3 months :)

I believe FB is 16 weeks?

gefh• 10 years ago

As a grateful recipient of 12 weeks of parental leave, I hope this is a sign of a wider competitive benefits escalation. It seems likely that increased benefits will be confined to highly in-demand industries though. But who knows, maybe American workers outside of tech will one day get a paid vacation!

semi-extrinsic• 10 years ago

FWIW, this is the government mandated standard paternity leave for everyone in Norway. The mother also has to take the same in maternity leave, and then there's 26 weeks that can be shared between both parents, but in 99% of the cases the mother gets this.

(To be perfectly correct, the parental leave length has been fluctuating between 10, 12 and 14 weeks during the last decade, in what amounts to a major bikeshedding competition by the political parties).

eitally• 10 years ago

I got 3 days from my previous company.

serg_chernata• 10 years ago

Is there something going on right now about parental leave benefits? Just a few stories below this one is a similar piece about Patagonia.

bing_dai• 10 years ago

Hello, I am the person who submitted the link. I got to know the Nvidia story last night because a long-term friend who works there posted it on social media. He is newly wed, so he is understandably very excited about the new policy about paternal leave.

It is indeed an interesting coincidence that there is another story about parental leave at the front page.

achalkley• 10 years ago

I just wanna buy an NVIDIA rig now

devonkim• 10 years ago

Funny, I thought ATI had a pretty large presence in Canada before AMD bought them?

chollida1• 10 years ago

I'm lucky enough to be Canadian and we've had universal parental leave for some time now, though not at full pay. Of my group of 5 close families, all of them ended up taking some form of parental leave. One parent was initially told no by her company before she pointed out that the government enforced this and the company couldn't say no.

Most did things like rent a house somewhere else and stay for 2-3 weeks. All of them still rave bout this as being some of the best times of lives. If you do ever get the chance to do this, I recommend doing it with another couple in the same situation so you have a built in baby sitter so you can go out to diner without having to worry about who is watching your new born.

Just to show the other side, one of my friends sent out this article below to highlight the downside of parental leave. As this becomes more common, I think companies will learn but it can still be a sticky topic.

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-strategy/the-dark-s...

soperj• 10 years ago

Yep, I took 4 months with each of my kids. I got topped up to 80% though by my work. Easily the one of the best choices I've made.

serge2k5• 10 years ago

If you do ever get the chance to do this, I recommend doing it with another couple in the same situation so you have a built in baby sitter so you can go out to diner without having to worry about who is watching your new born.

That actually sounds like a really clever system.

anamoulous3• 10 years ago

I hope to one day have children and experience these things, but this runs counter to the narrative that parents put forward rationalizing why these kinds of benefits should not be afforded to people who choose not to have children. Often I've seen the argument that having and raising children is, itself, a form of work not a vacation or that having children is a form of public good and that's the reason why we can't all just have a standard paid "leave of absence".

silencio2• 10 years ago

That narrative is a bit strange in the US, as the only federal/state mandated leave afforded to new parents (if they even qualify) is one that covers major medical/caretaker leave too.

gaius6• 10 years ago

raising children is, itself, a form of work

This would be true if the child were the property of the company paying for its raising ;-)

yomly• 10 years ago

It's a shame we see it this way. Fewer people would resent paying tax which goes towards roads and healthcare even if they never travelled much and were healthy - they appreciate this as a basic right for people (sure, some will even disagree about this) but we now live in times where raising a family is no longer seen as a cause we should happily support as a part of our society.

oflordal• 10 years ago

This is obviously a nice gesture by Nvidia but I always wonder how can it be legal to have different amounts for father/mothers? Are there no laws on discrimination based on sex in the US?

itsdrewmiller• 10 years ago

It's not different for fathers and mothers, it's different for "person giving birth" and everyone else (including adoptive/foster moms).

johnward2• 10 years ago

My wife had to take unpaid FMLA. I got 6 weeks paid. They even noticed she took 3 days too long and made a big deal out of it requiring her to come back exactly then end of the allowed FMLA time. This is still a step in the right direction. Plus giving birth is a little bit more difficult than my job as a dad.

BinaryIdiot2• 10 years ago

Discrimination is a non-issue here. The mother undergoes a medical procedure / event (giving birth). The father does not.

So the one giving birth gets 22 weeks. The father gets 12 weeks. The mother of adoptive kids gets 12 weeks.

I see no issue here. There are differences between the sexes and catering / supporting those differences doesn't automatically mean discrimination.

tostitos1979• 10 years ago

I'm a guy who just had a baby. I'm a pretty hands-on father. However, I have no problem for birth-givers (i.e. biological mom) getting more leave than men. In fact, it is a shame how bad mat leave is in most places. Even in Canada, it isn't full income replacement for a year .. there are a bunch of caveats.

jedberg• 10 years ago

It's a political 3rd rail. There are laws about discrimination based on sex in the US, but you generally get a lot of flack for pointing out the unfairness if it benefits women, which is mostly considered ok since it's making up for the many years that the discrimination went the other way (and I'm actually ok with that).

And to be fair, it's a hell of a lot harder on a birth mother than anyone else. You'll notice adoptive mothers in this policy only get the 12 week benefit too, so this one is already fairer than most.

tobz2• 10 years ago

Your use of "unfairness" sticks out to me, considering you go on to say you're OK with it. Are you actually OK with the disparity or do you think it's unfairness? Can't really be both.

swalsh• 10 years ago

I'd just be happy to get anything. When my wife gave birth I was forced to use my entire vacation time.

athenot• 10 years ago

how can it be legal to have different amounts for father/mothers? Are there no laws on discrimination based on sex in the US?

Well, the law does recognize that the person who just delivered a baby went through a lot harder time than the one who simply contributed the other half of the genetic material 9 months before.

After my wife gave birth, she breastfed every 3 hours (typical for a newborn) so that means very little sleep. Recovery from having pushed another human being through the birth canal (or from having the abdomen cut wide open) is not trivial.

Then there's the baby's bonding, which is primarily with the mom in the first few months.

Paternity leave is a great thing; as a dad I got to support my wife in child with all the household stuff. And there is not replacement for witnessing the first few months of one's child's life. That goes by so fast.

But as a dad, I recognize that the largest burden was born by my wife. Many trivialize the effort women go through but I think they are the unsung heros of humanity.

angry_octet3• 10 years ago

I haven't seen any men breastfeeding lately. Nor do fathers regularly go through post natal depression or suffer the other ailments of pregnancy. I suggest you talk to some mothers (or your own) before making such absurdly informed assertions.

dragonwriter• 10 years ago

Actually, post natal depression also affects men.

pns2• 10 years ago

While some gap in paid maternity vs paternity leave is permissible as women uniquely have to recover from a childbirth (considered short-term disability), courts have found 6-weeks as the typical recovery time and thus the typical allowed difference in maternity/paternity leave duration [1]. Nvidia's clearly understands this issue - adoptive and foster parents parents receive the same leave as paternity (no disability for these groups of course).

How are they've overcoming the legal issues around offering a 10-week difference in maternity/paternity leave?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/business/attitudes-shift-o...

serge2k5• 10 years ago

Why would there be legal issues? Don't they have no obligation to do anything beyond the FMLA?

pns2• 10 years ago

It's a legal issue because courts have previously interpreted large differences (i.e. beyond recovery time) in _paid_ maternity vs paternity leave as a gender discrimination issue. See linked NYT article above

One example from the article: "Just last week, CNN and Turner Broadcasting quietly settled an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge with a former CNN correspondent, Josh Levs, who claimed that the company’s paid parental leave policy discriminated against biological fathers.

At the time Mr. Levs’s daughter was born, in October 2013, CNN offered 10 weeks of paid leave to biological mothers and the same amount to parents of either gender who adopted children or relied on surrogates. By contrast, the company offered two weeks of paid leave to biological fathers."

BinaryIdiot2• 10 years ago

This is really awesome! Good for you nvidia! As a dad it sucks typically getting such low amounts of time off simply because I wasn't the one who gave birth when I want to bond with the baby as well as help my wife with anything I can. The last two times we had a baby they were at companies where I had to take vacation time to cover my time off (I was only able to take a little over a week off the last time).

grondilu6• 10 years ago

I doubt it's related, but today NVIDIA's stock price is down 2.4%. I don't remember it falling down that much in intraday for a while.

I don't know who took this decision to just give away money and free time to employees, and maybe it's good PR after all, but I do hope this is not announcing a trend.

godzillabrennus• 10 years ago

Short term costs mean attracting and retaining top talent longer.

I've found it costs an employer an average of $3000 to hire someone for $8/hour and it costs an average of $26k to hire someone for $80/year. If you can pay someone a few weeks of salary and buy goodwill during a life event like this you keep your company competitive in the competitive tech space.

TL;DR This will probably save them money in recruiter fees.

EliRivers3• 10 years ago

I applaud it very much. When a company has money to give to someone, they can give it to shareholders or employees (or just the bosses who set their own remuneration). It's nice to see it going to employees. It's not just good PR; it's good. I hope it is a trend, and I'm speaking as someone who currently makes more money as a shareholder than from my job.

grondilu6• 10 years ago

Employees are supposed to receive a salary in exchange for their work. The decision on how to distribute profits is, theoretically, made by shareholders. Maybe they decided to give some to employees in order to improve morale or something. If so, that's OK. If somehow the shareholders were left out of this decision, via some authoritative action from the executives or something, it's wrong.

Joky• 10 years ago

Well, it is not really "money given to employees" unconditionally. First it is time-off given, the employee couldn't take only half of the time-off and cash the rest for example. Second it is only subsidizing some employees.

Not saying it is a bad thing, but in the end such decision are likely made to attract talents and/or limit turn-over more than anything else.

gaius6• 10 years ago

Not all employees tho'.

ghughes• 10 years ago

It's good PR because it's the right thing to do. I certainly hope it's a trend. It's fairly well-established that humans make babies and need time off work to properly care for them.

grondilu6• 10 years ago

There are laws written to account for that. This article suggests that NVIDIA went beyond the existing laws. What exactly can justify this?

martin_bech• 10 years ago

"they’ve left their teeny 6 week old baby in nursery to pay the mortgage etc…" As someone living in Denmark, this really blows my mind. In no way should a 6 week old baby be in a nursery. Here the norm would be 6 months to a year before they see any kind of nursery/daycare.

eob• 10 years ago

When my wife and I took a birth class in Boston, the ice breaker was to go around and say who you were and how much time you had off once the baby came (ostensibly so the instructor could tailor her advice).

After a long string of answers like "two weeks.. three weeks.. six weeks.. four weeks", the international parents in the group felt compelled to begin their introductions with an apology for numbers like six months, one year, two years...

I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals (implementation details left as an exercise for technocrats).

overcast• 10 years ago

Because you'd have to advocate paying even more taxes, something Americans just do not want. Universal anything doesn't come out of thin air.

Analemma_• 10 years ago

I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals.

Sheesh, haven't you heard of the slippery slope?? Today it's six months of paternity leave, but from there it's a straight line to Stalinism. /s

dsfyu404ed• 10 years ago

Because a large enough portion of our society finds the technical details very unsavory and the system by which we run our society makes it difficult to do things without an overwhelming consensus (among people who care about the issue).

munificent• 10 years ago

I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals

I'm pretty sure parental leave is not mentioned in the US Constitution nor in the founding documents of most countries.

If we don't have it today, it's not because people advocated against it and removed it, it's because we simply haven't had enough push to advocate for it and add it.

Large countries have a ton of inertia. Diverse, thinly populated countries even more so. When people are far apart, they care much more about local politics and their neighbors than they do centralized government. Making change happen at that scale is very very hard.

People living in European countries enjoy criticizing the US on stuff like this, but they fail to realize how much bigger and more spread out we are than they are. The US is more than twice as large as the entire EU. Our density is less than a third of the EU's.

Another comment here mentions Denmark. If Denmark was a US state, it would be 36th in size, smaller than more than half of all US states. In population, it has fewer than 20 other states. The metropolitan area of the city I live in (Seattle) alone has almost half the population of the entire country of Denmark. LA and surrounding environments contain more than two Denmarks worth of people.

Consider if every US state were to independently enter the EU. In that case, of the top 40 largest members by area, only 9 would still be in Europe.

The US is behind in many ways, but this is not because we are backwater full of regressive idiots. We are a very large country without the density and homogeneity to benefit from good economies of scale. It's a lot easier to reach consensus and move a government forward when you have fewer people and they can more easily relate to each other.

If you are unable to understand why we might not have attained the same healthcare goals as your country, consider that your inability to understand people whose situation is different from yours is the exact psychological problem that slows us down.

jcbeard2• 10 years ago

I never understood why maternity + paternity leave isn't longer. Current corporate policy in America is insane for working parents. Especially when the US DoD gives 12 weeks maternity leave (http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/645958/carter-an...). As a dad who had to take care of his little one for the first 60 days of his life, I can say that paternity leave should be there as well for awhile. I found myself (as a DoD employee) in the precarious situation of working when my son was asleep, and early morning/late at night. Thankfully I was the boss so I could do that (and you know, anybody that worked for me got the same privilege). It's not easy. Moms are in no shape to go back after 1/2/3 weeks, heck not even 1 month. Moms need time to heal + time with the baby. Dads can help out with that process a lot! Unfortunately, most in the US view dads as not really essential to the parenting process. This is reflected in the DoD paternity leave policy which only grants 14 days. I think valuing the fathers input would likely enhance the stability of families (see Nordic countries quest for equal gender rights (https://www.nav.no/en/Home/Benefits+and+services/Relatert+in...). I wonder how Nvidia handles parents who don't fall into the "mother"/"father" categories. That's always a huge hole in some of these plans.

tzs• 10 years ago

How do companies in countries with six months or a year or two year of parental leave handle it?

At most places I've worked, they would not have been able to let my work go undone for six months or a year or more, so would need to find some other way to get the work done. At the large companies, there might be enough redundancy to be able to spread my work among those already working there. At many, though, it seems they would have to hire somebody.

For senior technical positions, especially if the company has proprietary systems or technology that is not publicly documented, it can take quite a while to get someone new up to speed.

wyager6• 10 years ago

I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals

With respect to absurdly long paid parental leave in particular, I would oppose it on the grounds that it's immoral to force people to subsidize other people's children. Having children is a life choice that other people shouldn't be on the hook for.

paulddraper3• 10 years ago

I've never been able to understand how a parent could advocate against European-style healthcare goals

By the same token, I've never understood how parents could advocate against having a one-income family.

Oh wait, I know. Because everything has a cost, and everything is a trade-off.

The reason to not have a year-long leave is the same reason not to have a stay-at-home parent: it's expensive.

---

Of course, some people do wind up making that compromise. But Americans don't expect everyone else pay for their decision. Thank God.

snambi• 10 years ago

100% agree. 3-6 weeks just nonsense. even 22 weeks is less than 6 months.

Florin_Andrei• 10 years ago

In no way should a 6 week old baby be in a nursery.

It's the price you must pay for having so much Freedom (TM).

phd5143• 10 years ago

It's the price they pay for taking on a mortgage payment that can't be met on a single income.

linkregister2• 10 years ago

I think that argument makes sense anywhere other than the Bay Area.

CAP theorem for the Bay Area: Commute, Affordable, Protected (from crime). Choose two.

tobz2• 10 years ago

Or the price they pay to take on any housing at all that doesn't put them multiple hours away from their job... :o

esaym• 10 years ago

I was kinda thinking the same thing but kept my mouth shut. My wife stays at home and I mostly work from home. We aren't rich, but are doing alright.

c0nducktr2• 10 years ago

The price the child pays for not being born into a wealthier family, right?

droopyEyelids• 10 years ago

Freedom points are spent on housing, luxuries, and the opportunity costs of being with your children instead of at work.

You're seeing a consequence of not having enough freedom.

dang• 10 years ago

Taking a substantive discussion in a snarky generic direction is exactly the wrong thing to do on HN. Please don't do it again.

Maybe the comment you were replying to hinted at that (if I squint I can read it that way), but if so, the thing to do is gently turn the discussion back in a neutral direction with a substantive reply, or simply not to reply at all.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12306675 and marked it off-topic.

tomjen3• 10 years ago

This fucking over everybody who isn't going to have children, can't have children or are die having children.

learc83• 10 years ago

They can adopt and get the same 12 weeks away from work if they want to.

Viper007Bond• 10 years ago

The American company I work for gives 24 weeks (6 months) of both maternity and paternity paid leave, more if you need it. As a single guy I'm a bit envious, but at least I get a 3 month paid sabbatical every 5 years plus unlimited time off.

I'm surprised more companies don't do this.

atonse2• 10 years ago

What exactly are you envious of? That those 6 months off are akin to a 6 month vacation? It's a full-time job.

The smart business move would be to let people just take the time "off" and come back healthy and rested after a few months. Not sure why businesses don't see this obvious fact.

serge2k5• 10 years ago

That those 6 months off are akin to a 6 month vacation? It's a full-time job.

Except I'm sitting in a little room all day staring at a computer, you're spending all day with your family and seeing your new child walk and talk for the first time.

Gee, I wonder who has a more rewarding time.

wyager6• 10 years ago

How is that relevant? Regardless of how hard parenting is, they decided to bring that responsibility upon themselves, and other employees bear the financial burden.

It's not a "job" in the normal sense because you're not generating profit for anyone, but the company is still paying you. All the people without children perform more labor but get rewarded less (because they get less time off, don't get whatever benefits patenthood may entail, etc.). People without children absolutely get screwed over by such arrangements.

Whether or not this is acceptable depends on your goals and what you consider acceptable incentivization schemes.

gaius6• 10 years ago

And if you don't want kids the consolation prize is lots of unpaid overtime covering for your fellow employees...

lanius• 10 years ago

How much vacation time does Nvidia offer?

farorm• 10 years ago

Well if you like vacation or planning to have a child, you should get a job in Sweden.

https://sweden.se/quickfact/parental-leave/

hatsunearu• 10 years ago

According to NVIDIA's glassdoor, they have a thing where you can ask any time to take time off for any amount of time. It means you have to stress out about negotiation, according to reviews.

This seems to be a stark contrast between the normal policy!

Nvidia – significant increases in parental benefits for employees

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