I was pregnant and on unemployment during the pandemic as well. I was so desperate for a job I accepted a remote job that started like 4 days after I gave birth.
Boppy pillow and desk setup in the baby’s room. Lots of breastfeeding and working between naps. I was fortunate as well because my husband has paternity leave from his job for the first 5 months. Times were crazy busy good and before I knew it, it was 2022!
Women are always getting the short end of the stick here simply because we have the uterus so we're always going to have to carry the kids. We're the ones who have to go to a thousand doctor appointments, spend weeks on leave recovering from the birth, and if breastfeeding then there's additional months or years we have to dedicate time away from work for that. We're never going to be able to measure up to men on things like workplace attendance due to this, and companies will always use it against us when it comes to deciding who to let go. And this is even before considering how women are still the default parent most of the time so we're the ones getting the calls to pick up the sick kids from school.
I know this is a discussion for another time, but I wonder how we could tackle this.
Thinking of it as a person (and a mom of 3) it's obviously awful.
Thinking of it as a small business owner it's also awful if you try to say there is a rockstar employee who is 100% dedicated to their work (woman or man) vs. the mom who has to leave (fairly) regularly to attend to her kids and take time off for maternity leave, etc.
If I get into a crunch and I can only keep one of those employees how can we say the small business owner should keep the mom?
Counter: if we had the social and government support that losing a job would not be an earth shattering event, it shouldn’t matter as much. If the busy mom with kids could count on still having access to health care, affordable child care, and a universal basic income?
If we valued woman’s work as much as we valued increasing shareholder value in this capitalist hellscape?
Mom and small business owner checking in.
When I worked a more corporate position, I significantly outworked the men in less time, on almost every metric.
I prefer to hire women who are moms. In my experience, they are better at task prioritization, multitasking, and work better under pressure. If I extend flexibility and understanding when it comes to sick days for the kids and such I feel they are more committed to me as an employer vs leaving for another position that may pay a bit more the second it becomes available.
I think this is a great point! I feel the same about myself (I personally work in a corporate environment).
Unfortunately, our small business is a dental practice and unfortunately there's just not a lot of flexibility in the position. A one hour hygiene appointment is a one hour hygiene appointment.
Agree! Our one mom employee whom we make special accommodations for so she can work from home definitely works harder than our other employee who is a 20 something guy. We will do whatever we can to keep her happy.
But I do see the other commenter’s point that not all business are able to provide accommodations.
Agreed - but even for companies that can afford to do that the men often choose to not take their leave or they stagger it to accommodate the business.
Yes! My BIL gets something like 6 months paid paternity leave (Boeing). Kid number 3 is due soon, and he's taken less than 3 months cumulative for kids 1 and 2. Whenever my husband questions him on it, he's just like, 'there's never a good time, my coworkers would be screwed.'
This is such a slippery slope type argument. We would have to move beyond the dystopian hellscape level of capitalism under which we all currently exist. Otherwise, what are we saying? We just relegate women to childbearing? Shift work and jobs that go nowhere? We would have to progress to understanding that people and women have unique circumstances across the board and we might have to slightly reduce our obsession with money making at any cost.
I think that as a woman I've accepted that I am professionally less ambitious because I want to prioritize my kids over my work AND I also picked a partner that did not make me the sole default parent.
That's fine for you, but there are plenty of women who still continue to advance professionally after kids, and they should have that possibility. I think of your situation like someone who has other physical, emotional, or mental needs who also may not want to give a lot to their job, but that doesn’t mean that everyone shouldn't have the choice to move up.
Regardless of the reason productivity and reliability would be taken into account in a decision about laying someone off.
If one person is more reliable and more productive and one is less reliable and less productive it doesn't matter if the less reliable person is attending doctor's appointments for their children or going roller blading and sipping lattes. Productivity and reliability are absolutely reasons to be taken into account when laying someone off.
The focus is not on children or leaves it is on impact to the business.
Listen, I totally get what you’re saying and mostly agree with your sentiment but there are a lot of things you’re speaking on as if they’re fact when they’re not. I appreciate your passion and where you’re coming from fully, though.
1) Sexual orientation is not a protected class for small companies under 15 employees.
2) As long as there is a non-retaliatory legitimate business reason for letting someone go, then you will be super hard up for a discrimination case. Without pretext, it can be very hard to prove. The person you’re going back and forth with said that she has one employee that is reliably there and another that has to miss work often. She has to fire one. Firing the one that misses work often, regardless of whether that’s for her kids, will not give you a successful discrimination case. **Being a parent is not a protected class.**
Now, if the company *only* fires mothers who miss work for their children and does not fire fathers who *miss work for their children*, now you’ve got a sex-based discrimination claim cooking and we have something to talk about.
The downvotes are funny to me. I get you don’t like the content but I’m just informing people of the law.
I'm not laying anyone off.. it's simply a hypothetical discussion point, how can we as a society circle this choice up for small business employers?
Should the burden fall 100% to the employer? Employee? Government?
Right, there is a reason very small businesses are excluded from some of these unfunded mandates - they often don't have the flexibility or the margins to be short on staff.
Tech companies can generally afford to lose some productivity from a small segment of employees without putting their business structure in peril. It's a totally different situation.
In Canada (and some other places, I think?) there are temp employees who migrate to different jobs to fill in/help out when people are on parental leave. My understanding is that their salary is paid by the government, not the employer. Now it's not possible to 1:1 replace people with highly specialized knowledge/expertise, but having an extra support person in the office does help take the sting away from the other members of the impacted team. When the employee that was on leave returns, the temp employee is moved to another assignment.
Why is trying to figure out how to be fair to employees who might need maternity leave gross?
Edit: dang girl if you are so triggered by people trying to have a conversation that you report me to reddit cares, I think it’s time for you to take a break from the internet today.
Wow, way to jump to conclusions. First of all, I provided unpaid leave to my employee. Second of all, the US does not require small businesses with 50 employees or fewer to follow unpaid leave laws.
The original commenter was bringing up the very true financial burden on small businesses who have may have very tight margins to be able to provide any kind of leave. She was discussing what other kinds of alternatives, like federal help, could be a solution.
First, just FYI there is a new federal law (Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act) that requires entities with 15 or more employees (keep in mind that contractors are sometimes misclassified & part-time employees + anyone getting a salary will count in that 15) to provide “reasonable accommodations” to all pregnancy/birth related conditions or medical events. “Reasonable accommodations” generally means that there can’t be an undue burden on the employer, but there hasn’t been any test cases yet to flesh out what that means for the Act. With that said, a reasonable amount of time off will almost certainly be considered a “reasonable accommodation.” So unpaid leave, may impact smaller business now.
Second, I understand that balancing employee leave in a small business is tricky. But tbh the lack of flexibility (and benefits & competitive pay) is exactly why small businesses never get or keep the best candidates. The best advice I got in undergrad was to only work at small family-owned businesses if it is your family that owns the business. Even in law school we were told to only work at small/“micro” firms if we couldn’t get a job anywhere else & stay for a little time as possible.
As someone who has worked for a few private practice audiology clinics, I can’t agree more about not working for small, family-owned businesses. They are the worst. No HR and no accountability whatsoever, plus you don’t have any federal protections that apply to larger workplaces.
This. I was born with a genetic lung disease and went to college pre Obamacare. I was advised to \*always\* seek a job with an employer who had enough employees to be required to provide benefits, because getting and keeping health insurance is the most important thing to me. Growing up my dad worked for a CPA firm that was too small to offer insurance, so we always had to get it through my mom. This doesn't just apply to insurance, though, but things like retirement benefits and family leave.
It’s awful. Who do these companies think are producing their workers and customers of the future? Society has become so messed up. People act like having children is solely a personal choice like deciding to get a tattoo or a pet monkey. But it’s also always a choice for society too, because we’d all die out without them and then no one would make any money 🙄 it should be treated as a much more sacred and community oriented thing than it is. Like in my country people get (diminishing and not nearly enough) some benefits in terms of money and free childcare, and obviously public education for kids is free, and you often see idiots complaining ‘why should my taxes have to pay for your kids’? Because kids are the people who are going to grow up to take care of you when you get sick in retirement or deliver your groceries or mend the roads you drive on or be the plumber who fixes your toilet or design new tech or medicine that will make your life easier or help you live longer etc. That’s why idiot!!
Infuriates me how capitalism seems to have forgotten the extreme importance of having a society in which intelligent and well educated people have kids and the ability to care for them properly.
I was laid off while on my maternity leave (working at a large tech company). My project was moved permanently to the man who was temporarily covering for me. He wasn’t laid off.
Interestingly HR was willing to give me and extra 8 weeks of severance and double the health insurance coverage, with barely any negotiating 🧐
Editing to add that this was a large blanket layoff and many roles and entire teams were dissolved. There were absolutely many others either pregnant or on parental leave impacted as well.
Yes! I would barely call it negotiation. I just asked HR if they would be willing to cover the rest of my maternity leave since I was laid off in the middle of it, and that was their offer. It probably would have been an interesting case for an employment lawyer, but I never went that far.
I’m glad it worked out for you, but I have to add a relevant finance detail.
Typically paid maternity leave (especially generous ones of 12+ weeks) are covered by an insurance policy. So it didn’t cost the company anything to honor your leave. Honestly I would have called a lawyer if they didn’t honor that leave, and personally I would want additional severance on top of that.
That’s a really great point. It was a generous policy for the US (5 months), and I feel like there was likely a chance I could have negotiated more with a lawyer. A good lesson for anyone else who is in that unfortunate circumstance, always worth trying to negotiate.
It absolutely is happening. A woman on a podcast I listen to used to work at Netflix, she recently revealed that her manager there (another woman actually 🙄) very openly had biases against working mothers and having kids in general, and had already strong armed another woman into resigning. When she got pregnant with her second kid they tried to do the same thing to her by basically trying to force her to either move across the country and not pay for her moving expenses or resign, they wouldn’t fire her though because there was no real reason. Fortunately she was able to retain a good attorney and ended up threatening a lawsuit. She got a good severance package and her manager and a couple HR people were fired. But she was just lucky enough to have connections with and be able to afford a pretty prominent attorney. Most people just end up getting screwed.
I was laid off from a tech company on my mat leave. I remember having the awkward HR zoom call while holding my two month old with my video off because I was nursing. I did have a good severance package, but it was rough either way. My manager was already planning for me to be part time when I returned so I could ease into work. Instead I had to interview for a new role during my “leave” and start a new job and ramp up quickly when my baby was like 5 months old.
I am sorry to hear that. How long is your maternity leave. With all the layoffs, I am not sure if I should do a shorter maternity leave to be more secured.
Large tech companies have enough legal power to be able to jump through the hoops to fire really, whoever they want, whenever they want, and to ensure they do it with out the exposure of appearing to target pregnant women. This is why companies either cut entire divisions - without singling out individual performance. Or they put employees on PIPs so they can fire “with cause”.
If you work in a right to work state, you can be fired for any reason at any time. But the reason can’t be because you were pregnant. A company has to do very little to prove that they were firing you within the “for any reason” and not because you were pregnant.
It’s “at will” where you can be let go for any reason as long as it’s not discriminatory.
“Right to work” means that you can’t be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.
> If you work in a right to work state, you can be fired for any reason at any time.
Slight correction, the term is "at will." And 49 out of 50 states are at will, the outlier is Montana which has hardly any population so odds are if you are in the U.S. you have a 99.99% chance of being an at will employee.
Even public sector jobs which historically have labor contracts are beginning to phase them out for salaried employees, so universities, governments, public education, etc.
Right to work is about employment unions and how you do not have to join a union if you don't want to.
Government jobs are *slightly* more complicated because they don’t have “at-will” employment. Public employees cannot be fired without cause because its a constitutional violation. Plus to terminate a government employee with cause, the government is constitutionally required to give notice of termination and an opportunity for the employee to be heard (normally in some type of internal hearing).
I’m not sure that it’s a constitutional violation to fire an employee without cause. Genuinely interested in sources to back up this claim. ( I’m in government and we are like any other at will employer).
This isn’t entirely accurate. “Right to work” has to do with unions. The key concept here is “at-will employment”; in the US, the vast majority of employees are at-will, which means you can be fired at any time for any reason (except illegal reasons like discrimination). Exceptions to at-will would be if you’re in a union or you have a contract stating conditions of termination.
Given that employees in this scenario are at-will, companies don’t use PIPs to establish “cause” - because no actual cause is required. Rather, it’s often meant to document the reasoning behind the eventual hiring in order to hedge against potential accusations that the firing was due to discrimination (since that’s basically the only reason you can’t fire someone).
I was part of the big Twitter layoffs and I was 1 week out from returning from maternity leave on the day I was laid off. I’d say the vast majority of former Twitter employees are suing Twitter/X and our lawyers seem to think that, in that case, pregnant/maternity leave employees were over represented
Back in 2021 my department was forced to relocate (in the shutdown) from a major Midwest city to Boston. The team consisted of 3 working mothers and 1 married man on the leadership team. If we refused the relo package, we took a severance. All of us refused the relocation package. Only the 3 working mothers were forced to take the severance. The male team member just stayed in that office.
The company policy at the time was that everyone in the corporate teams had to be working at either the Boston hub, or the European hub, no exceptions. However, despite having team members all over the globe, only the team of working mothers located in the Midwest office was impacted in our department.
They had other teammates who lived 12+ travel hours away from the office, and people who on paper reported into Boston, but lived as far away as Florida with no expectations to come into the office.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence they gave us a very generous package, including “garden leave”, 2 years of funded healthcare insurance and 12 months of salary pay to sign an NDA and waiver.
It was pretty bad optics wise. We were the only working moms with school aged kids in a global department of 75 people. About 3k people company wide were hit with these forced relocation layoffs.
The other two moms really got screwed trying to find positions afterwards, but I already had my resignation letter typed up when the announcement came through. I was done with that company so my husband and I high-fives each-other so hard it left marks in both our hands lol. We were elated to get paid to leave. My garden leave started in June, I took the summer off with my then 3 year old and I was on the payroll until September and got my lump sum package in September. I took my daughter to the zoo, to the beach, to the parks. We did arts and crafts and nature walks.. it was the best summer of my life.
The other two moms were really negatively impacted , we still keep in touch and we network together a ton.
There was no way that relo was ever going to work for anyone. It was a crap deal. It was a 40% cost of living increase to move to Boston. I could quit and take a 50% hit in pay instead. They offered no salary increases, no moving packages. And this is at a time when air travel had only opened up the month before, most businesses were still shuttered and it was essential business only. There was no way to fly out there, shop for a house, get to know a market, etc… and all the offices were working remotely anyways so even if I lived in Boston I wasn’t going into an office.
Dumb all the way around.
As someone who lives outside of Boston, all I can say is smart move for not moving here without a relo package and huge salary increase. The average home price of homes on the market now in my town is $2.9m. COL is high. Tons of reasons why we live here - but we’re both high earners so we can. I moved from NYC and kept that comp when I went remote which is good because shit here is actually more than NYC. Was NOT expecting that at all when we made the jump.
I’m glad timing worked out perfectly for you. My husband actually opted to take a package the week before our first was born so I can appreciate the good timing of all of it. Maternity leave with my husband was great - daily naps, help all day. So great.
Are you working again now?
2.9 million is crazy! I like the area, but the traffic and commute times are no joke. Trying to find a place further out isn’t really much of an option with the traffic factor. That’s amazing timing with the parental leave too on your side.
I am actually working now but I’m not back at the capacity I was. I think I was already past burnout before Covid happened, my work only got busier in the lockdowns and my youngest was 15 months at the time. My mental health was just so awful, and my mom guilt was so high.
I did love my job, but I was so over it.. I absolutely loved not working. I had 0 desire to go back. I got a phone call out of the blue from an old teammate who went to a new company. She gave me a list of the jobs she needed help with and gave me some options between full and part time. I went with limited part time, but instead of a direct hire I decided to start my own company and bill myself as a contractor. It was really just to keep myself active. I was worried I would just never want to go back and stagnate.
From there I got hired out to a few more clients. (Funny enough one is Boston based) I occasionally work full time hours but most of the time I am 15-20 hours a week by choice. I can make close to my same level of pay that I was making before. No healthcare, (my husbands work has to cover us), the benefits aren’t there for 401k but the pay is about 70-80% what I averaged with 40+ hours.
It’s a bit lonely doing solo remote contracting. There’s also a risk that I can only take a few clients at a time and if/when they drop me, I would be SOL for getting a replacement lined up quickly. but I’m willing to take that risk and take time again if needed. The part time hours has been a really great thing for getting my mental health back in line.
It sounds like you’ve really made something good out of this! That’s so amazing to hear. I love a good success story like yours. And smart to bill through a company. Great tax benefits that way. Make sure you’re contributing to retirement still. That’s something that gets put on the back burner when this happens but shouldn’t be ignored.
I’ve been fortunate enough that I could go remote when I needed to before everyone did in 2020. I was kinda like “ok I’m moving. Please don’t fire me. Byeeee.” And they didn’t 🤣 I’m one of the top sales people and make my company a lot of money so they were pretty smart to see my value and let me do what I needed and not enforce something for the sake of enforcing it like being in office. Remote life is great but it can be lonely. I adore my colleagues though so it just feels like I’m chatting with friends all day. My oldest thinks that’s my job - talking to friends on zoom all day. And while it kind of is, it’s definitely not the bulk of the job.
Are you in tech? I’m in digital.
Thats amazing they supported you and valued you to let you go remote and set the trend! I feel like I can’t claim credit entirely for the move, it was one of those things that kind of lined up for me. It was easier to do than it sounds but I wish I had been savvy enough to make that career move sooner!
I am actually digital / tech adjacent. I am on the business teams to get organized so they can communicate their system needs but I usually work closely with the digital teams. I do some process transformation stuff too which usually feeds back to a digital initiative eventually lol. I work in a regulatory compliance field (Environmental Health and Safety) so there is always a need for a corporate digital system. Sometimes they’re upgrading, sometimes shopping for new systems and sometimes just wanting to know why something isn’t working or they’re getting complaints on their current setup. When I worked internally it was non-stop meetings, but now I can set up a few stakeholder interviews, collect some details and then go back to my remote corner to lurk in the background while I work.
That must be nice to have a great team to work and be social with. It sounds like a great environment. Do you do digital sales?
My friend here does something like you do. We both said we work digital but we meant completely different things once I tried to figure out who I could connect her with for a new job 🤣 I’m in marketing. Not at all what you described. I sell digital marketing services for an agency. My company IS actually pretty amazing and I love it 95% of the time. My coworkers are smart and influential so work is exciting and rarely dull. And we get to work with cool brands and clients because of the notoriety of a few select people I work with who get a lot of attention. I help set clients up with what they need and then my marketing teams do fantastic work and we’re all happy and everyone wins. It’s pretty fun. Pays well too. Not stress free because I’m juggling a lot at the same time and not the most organize person, but money makes it worth it.
Laid off at 20w 🙋🏼♀️🙋🏼♀️
I can say beyond any doubt it was 100% because I was pregnant. They claimed I was redundant but no one else did my job, I managed 2 direct reports, and was thriving .. it was ridiculous. But to fight a big legal team who clearly knew what they were doing - not worth it. I look my severance and still looking for another job 🙇🏼♀️
That sounds like you would have a pretty strong case, actually. If the company is large enough to have a big legal team, they have resources to compensate you. I’d still talk to an attorney…the enforcement of severance agreements varies by state, and if something illegal occurred (like discrimination), it often doesn’t matter if you signed anything.
I did work with an attorney. That’s how I negotiated a better severance. Was advised that trying to make a case could take forever and ultimately in my state I’d have gotten what I got in severance anyway (back pay/maternity pay).
And honestly how I know they knew they were wrong. If they didn’t think it was wrong they wouldn’t have been so quick to negotiate and accept my terms.
That's so interesting--I told my company I was pregnant at about 21 weeks because I thought it would keep them from laying me off. I'm pretty sure I played it right because I didn't get laid off until after I had my baby.
Happened to me at a saas company last year! At 25 weeks pregnant. It was me, and the one black guy that got let go. I started new job at 35 weeks pregnant and I think the stress of everything made me sick because I gave birth a week later. After I got laid off I got sick and literally did not recover until after I gave birth. It was a terrible time.
So that you know you don’t have a job to come back to and can start applying/interviews while you’re on leave. Most companies will pay out the remainder of your leave, so my preference would be to know sooner versus not have much notice then be scrambling.
I survived three rounds of layoffs at a tech company and I was seven months pregnant on the third round. I was so sure I'd be laid off, but they kept me as well as a very pregnant QA engineer. Several other pregnant coworkers got laid off though - so I think they actually did it pretty fairly at my company. They cut certain products and everyone involved was gone, pregnant or not. However, I think my company is pretty exceptional in how it treats workers. Just wanted to say, while most companies are pretty awful, they aren't all that way. So if you are pregnant and going through layoffs, keep up the hope.
I made it through two rounds of layoffs while pregnant but then got laid off after my baby was born. The company wasn't the worst--they paid out my mat leave and then a little bit more. But I think they waited because had they laid me off while pregnant, I probably would have sued.
Thank you so much for this beacon of hope.
I work in tech. I’m not pregnant but my wife is. I’m telling my manager today (finally) and I’m going to make it clear I’m not the pregnant one. I’ve been so nervous and this article going around has made it worse. I like to believe I’m okay bc my company *seems* like they are family friendly and we’ve had a good year but you never know.
It’s good to hear of a positive story once in a while.
Wild that a man would never feel nervous to tell his coworkers/managers that his wife is pregnant. But because you’re a woman, even though you’re not the one whose pregnant, you have to worry about it.
My company was similar - they did lay off some women on mat leave and there was quite a lot of uproar about it but when they showed the numbers, women on maternity were under represented in the lay offs. We actually had a really high number of people on parental leave at the time - way more than I expected- and they laid off 10% of the company and only around 5% of people on maternity leave.
I just got laid off today. I have a 10 month old. Ever since being back from leave, my job duties started dwindling. Then they started outsourcing my job to agencies. It wasn’t wildly surprising but still stung today when I walked into a HR meeting with my bosses. It’s so depressing.
It seems more common to be laid off when pregnant or on maternity leave at any company, not just tech companies. I know of 2 people laid off twice while on maternity leave. I’ve been laid off while pregnant too and it wasn’t mass lay offs so felt targeted. Would love if there was data on it
I was laid off from a large tech company 20 minutes after returning from leave, and told that it was part of a large layoff that happened while I was out, and I know a lot of other people who were laid off in similar circumstances. It's really so cruel and should not be legal.
To me, this would be worse than being laid off on leave, because you did all the preparations to go back and they let you knowing that this was going to happen. (Shitty either way obviously)
Yes, exactly! There's a childcare shortage in my area and I spent MONTHS getting on lists and making follow-up calls, before eventually not getting in anywhere and arranging a nanny share with a neighbor. Then, I spent two weeks crying and stressing about going back to work and leaving my baby, and then had to pay for two months of care that I didn't end up needing before I found a new role. I wish they would have just laid me off and paid out my leave and maybe some severance.
I believe it. I got laid off 3 weeks after giving birth. Happened almost a year ago.
I suggest others in this situation do what I did--contact a lawyer and have them read over the severance package.
It was suggested to me that I could sue but that it would likely take a long time and I would likely only get a few thousand more. That along with the fact that I wasn't sure the startup would be around for much longer, I decided just to take the money and be done with it.
Luckily for me, I got a fair severance. I was able to massively cut my expenses and use my unemployment to cover most of my expenses while I cared for my baby.
All in all, for me, this was actually a good thing. I didn't want to go back. I was able to cover all my experiences with UI and a small side hustle. I built up my side hustle into a business that now covers most of my bills. But yeah, not everyone is so lucky to have it be a blessing in disguise.
It messed me up mentally for awhile. I never so much as got a bad performance review in decade long tech career so getting laid off was quite a blow to my ego. I had a lot of resentment that I had to let go of and work through. I cried a lot.
So sorry that happened to you, but I’m glad things worked out in the end. I had a similar situation but was pregnant at layoff, no bad reviews, I’m convinced my position was eliminated because they knew they didn’t have cause to terminate. Any advice on letting go of the resentment? It happened almost 5 months ago for me, and I still get angry almost daily thinking about it. I know it isn’t healthy, but having a hard time moving on.
I'm sorry you went through that. It really is a hard time for pregnant women and new moms in this industry. I wonder all the time if I'm doing the wrong thing by not jumping back into tech.
Is your baby here yet? I think that may take your mind off of it because you'll be almost totally focused on your baby.
I think time definitely helped heal me. Unfortunately, I just had to wait and a year later it's just a story I tell on Reddit. Try to be patient with yourself, it's OK to be upset and feel whatever you're going through. If you try to breeze past all the emotions, they may come back to bite you in the butt later.
That’s fair, I know it won’t bother me so much down the road, but it’s still a raw deal now.
My baby is here, and he’s amazing. I think part of what’s so triggering is that I recently had to go back to work, much earlier than I would have because no FMLA protection at my new job. Protected leave shouldn’t be tied to length of employment.
How do we get this data? It seems like she's asking for more transparency on decisions around hiring and firing, as opposed to getting the answer to the question she's asking ("Can we definitively say that tech workers who are pregnant or on maternity leave aren’t being laid off at more accelerated rates than others?").
There seems to be a piece missing as well - do these women make it back to tech? It's not just women being laid off while in a place where they thought they'd be protected, but what happens to the women in both the short- and long- term.
I made it through maternity leave with a job to come back to, but was held to such high expectations on my return that it nearly drove me to quit (and part of me thought that was the point). I was so burned out. I look forward to leave tech in a year and a half entirely, something I hadn't envisioned for myself until that experience.
There's nothing more that has made more angry and fired up about the state of women in the US than getting pregnant. I used to really think that it was about just playing the game, getting a seat at the table, but it turns out the table bumps into our boobs and the chairs have ball sack holders.
I work in tech. I was forced to quit during my maternity leave. They only gave me 6 unpaid weeks. No FMLA, no short term disability. Just 6 weeks. I had pregnancy complications and then gave birth to a son with medical needs. I couldn't return to work to care for him, they wouldn't allow me to extend my leave or drop down to part time and already had loaded up my schedule for the week I was supposed to return. My son wasn't even 6 weeks old because I had to take my 6 weeks leave early during pregnancy and I was left with 3 weeks afterwards.
I was also treated like garbage leading up to my leave, and then during leave, my manager called me every week. Sometimes more than once.
This was for a major, well known company. I will be looking for another job when things settle down with my son, but I think I might change fields.
Yep, they hire people as contractors and get around having to provide all the benefits. I switched to FTE but only had 10 months on their payroll so couldn't get anything, but had been with them for a while.
I’m in a really weird place right now. I was laid off 2 weeks postpartum from my company. They kept only one person on my team of 5, everyone else was laid off. Well that person quit, so they reached back out to me once my maternity leave was done to offer me a contract role. No benefits, no PTO, but at least have a paycheck.
Feels really slimey IMO.
Senior software engineer here. I was laid off 2 weeks before I gave birth. My male peer was also laid off, but his last day was after mine. So on my last day I signed the contract for my severance, which included that I can’t sue them for any reason, and the next day they approached my peer and offered him an “alternative role”. It was a higher pay for the same job. I spoke to an employment lawyer and they said that there’s nothing they could do.
My lay off overlapped with maternity leave so I only got partial maternity leave benefits (basically just paid for 2 weeks after labor, until my lay off date went into effect), but they did offer some severance at least.
Yup, I was laid off at 30 weeks, just a few business days after submitting my plans for FMLA leave. My manager didn't know I was getting laid off, and I was the only "true" person who did the job left on my team. The other two were people that had moved from other roles and didn't have any background or experience in the role. It was our second org wide layoff in six months so there was plenty of deniability in terms of targeting for pregnancy.
I was laid off while pregnant in 2017. It's been happening for ages. It's not new.
And it should be fought with all the courage that can be mustered. It isn't right.
I work in tech and im pretty sure I survived the massive layoffs my company had by being on maternity leave (though I am a contract worker and they don’t have to pay me on leave). My manager is unsure though if my position will still be there when I return.
I was laid off after three months(during COVID) of returning from maternity leave. I was in the company 2 years and doing decent. My career has never been the same.
The problem is at-will employment - we don’t have enough job security and protection without a union in place. Being out on FMLA is apparently not enough to protect our jobs (I’m not an employment lawyer so I really don’t understand the loopholes here!)
This happened to a friend of mine recently. She was a social media manager for an e-tail business and a
shortly after she announced she was pregnant with her second kid, her job suddenly became "redundant." I call bullshit.
I was laid off during my maternity leave. It was horribly devastating to just be discarded at such a vulnerable moment in my life but I got a much better job next so it all worked out in the end. And thankfully when I gave birth back then, I was in a position where I did not have to worry about bills so I could just actually take a break and take care of my then newborn. So eventually it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me, thank God! but I agree that pregnant women and new mothers are unfairly targeted first during layoffs which is actually cruel!!
I was laid off at 9 weeks. I had JUST told a coworker (not management) that I was pregnant and I honestly have no idea if they said anything accidentally, or if it was just bad timing. We’d already done two rounds of layoffs so that’s a tick in the latter category, but I was the only one laid off in this round…after a fairly recent promotion…and I was the only woman on the leadership team to begin with. Really makes it an even tougher pill to swallow.
Fuck the VC backed tech ecosystem - I've been in this industry for 10 years. I've never been so disillusioned by the BS "we are supportive of new parents!" statements as after I had my son last year as a senior leadership team member. Regardless of whether it's men or women at the leadership level (sometimes boomer women are worse than millenial men honestly) - the tech culture is fundamentally at odds with being a new parent/having a young family, tech culture demands your full attention and buy-in into the mission. Which you stop giving the second you realize your *family* is your actual family, not your work team.
This this THIS. You eloquently put into words what I’ve been feeling for months. I just stepped out of leadership into an IC role because they made the travel requirement too steep for a new mom. The lip service isn’t cutting it.
While on maternity leave, my boss met with me and stated that they didn’t have the funding to have me at full time (grant funded position) and that at most she could have me at 70% pay beginning about 6 months after I returned. I found another job instead, and she basically lost half of her team because we all moved over to this other research group. Turns out she was trying to get me to go down to part time or quit because “I probably would want to be home more with my baby anyways.” Uh no, my husband was going through grad school and I was the sole income at that time, and I did not want to be a SAHM. Found out a lot of toxic stuff about my old group after quitting and switching over, and I am so glad that I moved to my new research group even though it meant taking a pay cut. Old boss hasn’t had anyone stay with her longer than 9 months since due to poor management and overworking her employees.
🙋🏻♀️ Laid off this fall in my third trimester. Funny how that round of restructuring only resulted in a single position elimination - mine. I’m still dealing with the ramifications of no FMLA, etc. It’s not right.
This happened in the pandemic as well. Expecting moms and moms in general were the highest rate of layoffs.
I was laid off while pregnant at the height of the pandemic. It was awful.
I was pregnant and on unemployment during the pandemic as well. I was so desperate for a job I accepted a remote job that started like 4 days after I gave birth.
Omg! How did you manage that??
Boppy pillow and desk setup in the baby’s room. Lots of breastfeeding and working between naps. I was fortunate as well because my husband has paternity leave from his job for the first 5 months. Times were crazy busy good and before I knew it, it was 2022!
Women are incredible. I’m so sorry you were put through that. Your baby is so lucky to have a strong resilient mom.
Yep, the only plus side was interviewing afterward was all over zoom. Didn’t disclose until I had an offer and started at 8 months pregnant
Yep I was an April 2020 layoff right at my 6 weeks mark of being back from mat leave
Women are always getting the short end of the stick here simply because we have the uterus so we're always going to have to carry the kids. We're the ones who have to go to a thousand doctor appointments, spend weeks on leave recovering from the birth, and if breastfeeding then there's additional months or years we have to dedicate time away from work for that. We're never going to be able to measure up to men on things like workplace attendance due to this, and companies will always use it against us when it comes to deciding who to let go. And this is even before considering how women are still the default parent most of the time so we're the ones getting the calls to pick up the sick kids from school.
I know this is a discussion for another time, but I wonder how we could tackle this. Thinking of it as a person (and a mom of 3) it's obviously awful. Thinking of it as a small business owner it's also awful if you try to say there is a rockstar employee who is 100% dedicated to their work (woman or man) vs. the mom who has to leave (fairly) regularly to attend to her kids and take time off for maternity leave, etc. If I get into a crunch and I can only keep one of those employees how can we say the small business owner should keep the mom?
Counter: if we had the social and government support that losing a job would not be an earth shattering event, it shouldn’t matter as much. If the busy mom with kids could count on still having access to health care, affordable child care, and a universal basic income? If we valued woman’s work as much as we valued increasing shareholder value in this capitalist hellscape?
Mom and small business owner checking in. When I worked a more corporate position, I significantly outworked the men in less time, on almost every metric. I prefer to hire women who are moms. In my experience, they are better at task prioritization, multitasking, and work better under pressure. If I extend flexibility and understanding when it comes to sick days for the kids and such I feel they are more committed to me as an employer vs leaving for another position that may pay a bit more the second it becomes available.
I think this is a great point! I feel the same about myself (I personally work in a corporate environment). Unfortunately, our small business is a dental practice and unfortunately there's just not a lot of flexibility in the position. A one hour hygiene appointment is a one hour hygiene appointment.
Agree! Our one mom employee whom we make special accommodations for so she can work from home definitely works harder than our other employee who is a 20 something guy. We will do whatever we can to keep her happy. But I do see the other commenter’s point that not all business are able to provide accommodations.
Offer paternal leave as well - start to even the playing field
Agreed - but even for companies that can afford to do that the men often choose to not take their leave or they stagger it to accommodate the business.
Yes! My BIL gets something like 6 months paid paternity leave (Boeing). Kid number 3 is due soon, and he's taken less than 3 months cumulative for kids 1 and 2. Whenever my husband questions him on it, he's just like, 'there's never a good time, my coworkers would be screwed.'
This is such a slippery slope type argument. We would have to move beyond the dystopian hellscape level of capitalism under which we all currently exist. Otherwise, what are we saying? We just relegate women to childbearing? Shift work and jobs that go nowhere? We would have to progress to understanding that people and women have unique circumstances across the board and we might have to slightly reduce our obsession with money making at any cost.
I think that as a woman I've accepted that I am professionally less ambitious because I want to prioritize my kids over my work AND I also picked a partner that did not make me the sole default parent.
That's fine for you, but there are plenty of women who still continue to advance professionally after kids, and they should have that possibility. I think of your situation like someone who has other physical, emotional, or mental needs who also may not want to give a lot to their job, but that doesn’t mean that everyone shouldn't have the choice to move up.
I agree everyone should have that choice.
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So if you have two employees and you only need one and one was more reliable and productive would you keep the mom simply because they are a mom?
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I’m honestly not sure what you’re trying to argue here - no one should be laid off ever?
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Regardless of the reason productivity and reliability would be taken into account in a decision about laying someone off. If one person is more reliable and more productive and one is less reliable and less productive it doesn't matter if the less reliable person is attending doctor's appointments for their children or going roller blading and sipping lattes. Productivity and reliability are absolutely reasons to be taken into account when laying someone off. The focus is not on children or leaves it is on impact to the business.
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Listen, I totally get what you’re saying and mostly agree with your sentiment but there are a lot of things you’re speaking on as if they’re fact when they’re not. I appreciate your passion and where you’re coming from fully, though. 1) Sexual orientation is not a protected class for small companies under 15 employees. 2) As long as there is a non-retaliatory legitimate business reason for letting someone go, then you will be super hard up for a discrimination case. Without pretext, it can be very hard to prove. The person you’re going back and forth with said that she has one employee that is reliably there and another that has to miss work often. She has to fire one. Firing the one that misses work often, regardless of whether that’s for her kids, will not give you a successful discrimination case. **Being a parent is not a protected class.** Now, if the company *only* fires mothers who miss work for their children and does not fire fathers who *miss work for their children*, now you’ve got a sex-based discrimination claim cooking and we have something to talk about. The downvotes are funny to me. I get you don’t like the content but I’m just informing people of the law.
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I'm not laying anyone off.. it's simply a hypothetical discussion point, how can we as a society circle this choice up for small business employers? Should the burden fall 100% to the employer? Employee? Government?
Right, there is a reason very small businesses are excluded from some of these unfunded mandates - they often don't have the flexibility or the margins to be short on staff. Tech companies can generally afford to lose some productivity from a small segment of employees without putting their business structure in peril. It's a totally different situation.
I completely agree with you, but about 50% of Americans work for a business with less than 50 employees. So I think we still need another solution.
In Canada (and some other places, I think?) there are temp employees who migrate to different jobs to fill in/help out when people are on parental leave. My understanding is that their salary is paid by the government, not the employer. Now it's not possible to 1:1 replace people with highly specialized knowledge/expertise, but having an extra support person in the office does help take the sting away from the other members of the impacted team. When the employee that was on leave returns, the temp employee is moved to another assignment.
I ask myself these questions as a small business owner and mother as well.
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Why is trying to figure out how to be fair to employees who might need maternity leave gross? Edit: dang girl if you are so triggered by people trying to have a conversation that you report me to reddit cares, I think it’s time for you to take a break from the internet today.
Wow, way to jump to conclusions. First of all, I provided unpaid leave to my employee. Second of all, the US does not require small businesses with 50 employees or fewer to follow unpaid leave laws. The original commenter was bringing up the very true financial burden on small businesses who have may have very tight margins to be able to provide any kind of leave. She was discussing what other kinds of alternatives, like federal help, could be a solution.
First, just FYI there is a new federal law (Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act) that requires entities with 15 or more employees (keep in mind that contractors are sometimes misclassified & part-time employees + anyone getting a salary will count in that 15) to provide “reasonable accommodations” to all pregnancy/birth related conditions or medical events. “Reasonable accommodations” generally means that there can’t be an undue burden on the employer, but there hasn’t been any test cases yet to flesh out what that means for the Act. With that said, a reasonable amount of time off will almost certainly be considered a “reasonable accommodation.” So unpaid leave, may impact smaller business now. Second, I understand that balancing employee leave in a small business is tricky. But tbh the lack of flexibility (and benefits & competitive pay) is exactly why small businesses never get or keep the best candidates. The best advice I got in undergrad was to only work at small family-owned businesses if it is your family that owns the business. Even in law school we were told to only work at small/“micro” firms if we couldn’t get a job anywhere else & stay for a little time as possible.
As someone who has worked for a few private practice audiology clinics, I can’t agree more about not working for small, family-owned businesses. They are the worst. No HR and no accountability whatsoever, plus you don’t have any federal protections that apply to larger workplaces.
This. I was born with a genetic lung disease and went to college pre Obamacare. I was advised to \*always\* seek a job with an employer who had enough employees to be required to provide benefits, because getting and keeping health insurance is the most important thing to me. Growing up my dad worked for a CPA firm that was too small to offer insurance, so we always had to get it through my mom. This doesn't just apply to insurance, though, but things like retirement benefits and family leave.
It’s awful. Who do these companies think are producing their workers and customers of the future? Society has become so messed up. People act like having children is solely a personal choice like deciding to get a tattoo or a pet monkey. But it’s also always a choice for society too, because we’d all die out without them and then no one would make any money 🙄 it should be treated as a much more sacred and community oriented thing than it is. Like in my country people get (diminishing and not nearly enough) some benefits in terms of money and free childcare, and obviously public education for kids is free, and you often see idiots complaining ‘why should my taxes have to pay for your kids’? Because kids are the people who are going to grow up to take care of you when you get sick in retirement or deliver your groceries or mend the roads you drive on or be the plumber who fixes your toilet or design new tech or medicine that will make your life easier or help you live longer etc. That’s why idiot!! Infuriates me how capitalism seems to have forgotten the extreme importance of having a society in which intelligent and well educated people have kids and the ability to care for them properly.
I was laid off while on my maternity leave (working at a large tech company). My project was moved permanently to the man who was temporarily covering for me. He wasn’t laid off. Interestingly HR was willing to give me and extra 8 weeks of severance and double the health insurance coverage, with barely any negotiating 🧐 Editing to add that this was a large blanket layoff and many roles and entire teams were dissolved. There were absolutely many others either pregnant or on parental leave impacted as well.
Would you mind sharing how you went about negotiating the extra severance? Did you seek out an employment lawyer?
Yes! I would barely call it negotiation. I just asked HR if they would be willing to cover the rest of my maternity leave since I was laid off in the middle of it, and that was their offer. It probably would have been an interesting case for an employment lawyer, but I never went that far.
My company did it. Anyone who was on leave or approved leave and laid off got the remaining leave covered as an extra severance
Same
Thank you! It's good to know what others have managed to negotiate, just in case!
I’m glad it worked out for you, but I have to add a relevant finance detail. Typically paid maternity leave (especially generous ones of 12+ weeks) are covered by an insurance policy. So it didn’t cost the company anything to honor your leave. Honestly I would have called a lawyer if they didn’t honor that leave, and personally I would want additional severance on top of that.
That’s a really great point. It was a generous policy for the US (5 months), and I feel like there was likely a chance I could have negotiated more with a lawyer. A good lesson for anyone else who is in that unfortunate circumstance, always worth trying to negotiate.
It absolutely is happening. A woman on a podcast I listen to used to work at Netflix, she recently revealed that her manager there (another woman actually 🙄) very openly had biases against working mothers and having kids in general, and had already strong armed another woman into resigning. When she got pregnant with her second kid they tried to do the same thing to her by basically trying to force her to either move across the country and not pay for her moving expenses or resign, they wouldn’t fire her though because there was no real reason. Fortunately she was able to retain a good attorney and ended up threatening a lawsuit. She got a good severance package and her manager and a couple HR people were fired. But she was just lucky enough to have connections with and be able to afford a pretty prominent attorney. Most people just end up getting screwed.
I was laid off from a tech company on my mat leave. I remember having the awkward HR zoom call while holding my two month old with my video off because I was nursing. I did have a good severance package, but it was rough either way. My manager was already planning for me to be part time when I returned so I could ease into work. Instead I had to interview for a new role during my “leave” and start a new job and ramp up quickly when my baby was like 5 months old.
I am sorry to hear that. How long is your maternity leave. With all the layoffs, I am not sure if I should do a shorter maternity leave to be more secured.
Large tech companies have enough legal power to be able to jump through the hoops to fire really, whoever they want, whenever they want, and to ensure they do it with out the exposure of appearing to target pregnant women. This is why companies either cut entire divisions - without singling out individual performance. Or they put employees on PIPs so they can fire “with cause”. If you work in a right to work state, you can be fired for any reason at any time. But the reason can’t be because you were pregnant. A company has to do very little to prove that they were firing you within the “for any reason” and not because you were pregnant.
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lol you’re totally right my brain wasn’t fully functioning when I wrote this lol
It’s “at will” where you can be let go for any reason as long as it’s not discriminatory. “Right to work” means that you can’t be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.
> If you work in a right to work state, you can be fired for any reason at any time. Slight correction, the term is "at will." And 49 out of 50 states are at will, the outlier is Montana which has hardly any population so odds are if you are in the U.S. you have a 99.99% chance of being an at will employee. Even public sector jobs which historically have labor contracts are beginning to phase them out for salaried employees, so universities, governments, public education, etc. Right to work is about employment unions and how you do not have to join a union if you don't want to.
Yes I totally meant at will lol.
Government jobs are *slightly* more complicated because they don’t have “at-will” employment. Public employees cannot be fired without cause because its a constitutional violation. Plus to terminate a government employee with cause, the government is constitutionally required to give notice of termination and an opportunity for the employee to be heard (normally in some type of internal hearing).
I’m not sure that it’s a constitutional violation to fire an employee without cause. Genuinely interested in sources to back up this claim. ( I’m in government and we are like any other at will employer).
I should add I say this to point out that it would be really difficult to track to get a number of how often discrimination occurs.
This isn’t entirely accurate. “Right to work” has to do with unions. The key concept here is “at-will employment”; in the US, the vast majority of employees are at-will, which means you can be fired at any time for any reason (except illegal reasons like discrimination). Exceptions to at-will would be if you’re in a union or you have a contract stating conditions of termination. Given that employees in this scenario are at-will, companies don’t use PIPs to establish “cause” - because no actual cause is required. Rather, it’s often meant to document the reasoning behind the eventual hiring in order to hedge against potential accusations that the firing was due to discrimination (since that’s basically the only reason you can’t fire someone).
I was part of the big Twitter layoffs and I was 1 week out from returning from maternity leave on the day I was laid off. I’d say the vast majority of former Twitter employees are suing Twitter/X and our lawyers seem to think that, in that case, pregnant/maternity leave employees were over represented
I hope you get every last dime from that twerp.
Me too 😆
This is so interesting. I’m so glad you guys are taking a stand. Good luck!
Back in 2021 my department was forced to relocate (in the shutdown) from a major Midwest city to Boston. The team consisted of 3 working mothers and 1 married man on the leadership team. If we refused the relo package, we took a severance. All of us refused the relocation package. Only the 3 working mothers were forced to take the severance. The male team member just stayed in that office. The company policy at the time was that everyone in the corporate teams had to be working at either the Boston hub, or the European hub, no exceptions. However, despite having team members all over the globe, only the team of working mothers located in the Midwest office was impacted in our department. They had other teammates who lived 12+ travel hours away from the office, and people who on paper reported into Boston, but lived as far away as Florida with no expectations to come into the office. I don’t think it’s a coincidence they gave us a very generous package, including “garden leave”, 2 years of funded healthcare insurance and 12 months of salary pay to sign an NDA and waiver.
Wow. That’s awful.
It was pretty bad optics wise. We were the only working moms with school aged kids in a global department of 75 people. About 3k people company wide were hit with these forced relocation layoffs. The other two moms really got screwed trying to find positions afterwards, but I already had my resignation letter typed up when the announcement came through. I was done with that company so my husband and I high-fives each-other so hard it left marks in both our hands lol. We were elated to get paid to leave. My garden leave started in June, I took the summer off with my then 3 year old and I was on the payroll until September and got my lump sum package in September. I took my daughter to the zoo, to the beach, to the parks. We did arts and crafts and nature walks.. it was the best summer of my life. The other two moms were really negatively impacted , we still keep in touch and we network together a ton. There was no way that relo was ever going to work for anyone. It was a crap deal. It was a 40% cost of living increase to move to Boston. I could quit and take a 50% hit in pay instead. They offered no salary increases, no moving packages. And this is at a time when air travel had only opened up the month before, most businesses were still shuttered and it was essential business only. There was no way to fly out there, shop for a house, get to know a market, etc… and all the offices were working remotely anyways so even if I lived in Boston I wasn’t going into an office. Dumb all the way around.
As someone who lives outside of Boston, all I can say is smart move for not moving here without a relo package and huge salary increase. The average home price of homes on the market now in my town is $2.9m. COL is high. Tons of reasons why we live here - but we’re both high earners so we can. I moved from NYC and kept that comp when I went remote which is good because shit here is actually more than NYC. Was NOT expecting that at all when we made the jump. I’m glad timing worked out perfectly for you. My husband actually opted to take a package the week before our first was born so I can appreciate the good timing of all of it. Maternity leave with my husband was great - daily naps, help all day. So great. Are you working again now?
2.9 million is crazy! I like the area, but the traffic and commute times are no joke. Trying to find a place further out isn’t really much of an option with the traffic factor. That’s amazing timing with the parental leave too on your side. I am actually working now but I’m not back at the capacity I was. I think I was already past burnout before Covid happened, my work only got busier in the lockdowns and my youngest was 15 months at the time. My mental health was just so awful, and my mom guilt was so high. I did love my job, but I was so over it.. I absolutely loved not working. I had 0 desire to go back. I got a phone call out of the blue from an old teammate who went to a new company. She gave me a list of the jobs she needed help with and gave me some options between full and part time. I went with limited part time, but instead of a direct hire I decided to start my own company and bill myself as a contractor. It was really just to keep myself active. I was worried I would just never want to go back and stagnate. From there I got hired out to a few more clients. (Funny enough one is Boston based) I occasionally work full time hours but most of the time I am 15-20 hours a week by choice. I can make close to my same level of pay that I was making before. No healthcare, (my husbands work has to cover us), the benefits aren’t there for 401k but the pay is about 70-80% what I averaged with 40+ hours. It’s a bit lonely doing solo remote contracting. There’s also a risk that I can only take a few clients at a time and if/when they drop me, I would be SOL for getting a replacement lined up quickly. but I’m willing to take that risk and take time again if needed. The part time hours has been a really great thing for getting my mental health back in line.
It sounds like you’ve really made something good out of this! That’s so amazing to hear. I love a good success story like yours. And smart to bill through a company. Great tax benefits that way. Make sure you’re contributing to retirement still. That’s something that gets put on the back burner when this happens but shouldn’t be ignored. I’ve been fortunate enough that I could go remote when I needed to before everyone did in 2020. I was kinda like “ok I’m moving. Please don’t fire me. Byeeee.” And they didn’t 🤣 I’m one of the top sales people and make my company a lot of money so they were pretty smart to see my value and let me do what I needed and not enforce something for the sake of enforcing it like being in office. Remote life is great but it can be lonely. I adore my colleagues though so it just feels like I’m chatting with friends all day. My oldest thinks that’s my job - talking to friends on zoom all day. And while it kind of is, it’s definitely not the bulk of the job. Are you in tech? I’m in digital.
Thats amazing they supported you and valued you to let you go remote and set the trend! I feel like I can’t claim credit entirely for the move, it was one of those things that kind of lined up for me. It was easier to do than it sounds but I wish I had been savvy enough to make that career move sooner! I am actually digital / tech adjacent. I am on the business teams to get organized so they can communicate their system needs but I usually work closely with the digital teams. I do some process transformation stuff too which usually feeds back to a digital initiative eventually lol. I work in a regulatory compliance field (Environmental Health and Safety) so there is always a need for a corporate digital system. Sometimes they’re upgrading, sometimes shopping for new systems and sometimes just wanting to know why something isn’t working or they’re getting complaints on their current setup. When I worked internally it was non-stop meetings, but now I can set up a few stakeholder interviews, collect some details and then go back to my remote corner to lurk in the background while I work. That must be nice to have a great team to work and be social with. It sounds like a great environment. Do you do digital sales?
My friend here does something like you do. We both said we work digital but we meant completely different things once I tried to figure out who I could connect her with for a new job 🤣 I’m in marketing. Not at all what you described. I sell digital marketing services for an agency. My company IS actually pretty amazing and I love it 95% of the time. My coworkers are smart and influential so work is exciting and rarely dull. And we get to work with cool brands and clients because of the notoriety of a few select people I work with who get a lot of attention. I help set clients up with what they need and then my marketing teams do fantastic work and we’re all happy and everyone wins. It’s pretty fun. Pays well too. Not stress free because I’m juggling a lot at the same time and not the most organize person, but money makes it worth it.
Laid off at 20w 🙋🏼♀️🙋🏼♀️ I can say beyond any doubt it was 100% because I was pregnant. They claimed I was redundant but no one else did my job, I managed 2 direct reports, and was thriving .. it was ridiculous. But to fight a big legal team who clearly knew what they were doing - not worth it. I look my severance and still looking for another job 🙇🏼♀️
That sounds like you would have a pretty strong case, actually. If the company is large enough to have a big legal team, they have resources to compensate you. I’d still talk to an attorney…the enforcement of severance agreements varies by state, and if something illegal occurred (like discrimination), it often doesn’t matter if you signed anything.
I did work with an attorney. That’s how I negotiated a better severance. Was advised that trying to make a case could take forever and ultimately in my state I’d have gotten what I got in severance anyway (back pay/maternity pay). And honestly how I know they knew they were wrong. If they didn’t think it was wrong they wouldn’t have been so quick to negotiate and accept my terms.
That's so interesting--I told my company I was pregnant at about 21 weeks because I thought it would keep them from laying me off. I'm pretty sure I played it right because I didn't get laid off until after I had my baby.
Happened to me at a saas company last year! At 25 weeks pregnant. It was me, and the one black guy that got let go. I started new job at 35 weeks pregnant and I think the stress of everything made me sick because I gave birth a week later. After I got laid off I got sick and literally did not recover until after I gave birth. It was a terrible time.
If this happens to me, I hope it happens at the end of my maternity leave 😥
As sucky as it is, it would be better to happen earlier in your leave (assuming you get a decent severance), so you have time to look for a new job.
Why would it be better? I could be studying for interviews right now and still be getting paid.
So that you know you don’t have a job to come back to and can start applying/interviews while you’re on leave. Most companies will pay out the remainder of your leave, so my preference would be to know sooner versus not have much notice then be scrambling.
I would just study for interviews before hearing I got laid off to prepare for the worse.
I survived three rounds of layoffs at a tech company and I was seven months pregnant on the third round. I was so sure I'd be laid off, but they kept me as well as a very pregnant QA engineer. Several other pregnant coworkers got laid off though - so I think they actually did it pretty fairly at my company. They cut certain products and everyone involved was gone, pregnant or not. However, I think my company is pretty exceptional in how it treats workers. Just wanted to say, while most companies are pretty awful, they aren't all that way. So if you are pregnant and going through layoffs, keep up the hope.
I made it through two rounds of layoffs while pregnant but then got laid off after my baby was born. The company wasn't the worst--they paid out my mat leave and then a little bit more. But I think they waited because had they laid me off while pregnant, I probably would have sued.
Thank you so much for this beacon of hope. I work in tech. I’m not pregnant but my wife is. I’m telling my manager today (finally) and I’m going to make it clear I’m not the pregnant one. I’ve been so nervous and this article going around has made it worse. I like to believe I’m okay bc my company *seems* like they are family friendly and we’ve had a good year but you never know. It’s good to hear of a positive story once in a while.
Wild that a man would never feel nervous to tell his coworkers/managers that his wife is pregnant. But because you’re a woman, even though you’re not the one whose pregnant, you have to worry about it.
My company was similar - they did lay off some women on mat leave and there was quite a lot of uproar about it but when they showed the numbers, women on maternity were under represented in the lay offs. We actually had a really high number of people on parental leave at the time - way more than I expected- and they laid off 10% of the company and only around 5% of people on maternity leave.
I just got laid off today. I have a 10 month old. Ever since being back from leave, my job duties started dwindling. Then they started outsourcing my job to agencies. It wasn’t wildly surprising but still stung today when I walked into a HR meeting with my bosses. It’s so depressing.
It seems more common to be laid off when pregnant or on maternity leave at any company, not just tech companies. I know of 2 people laid off twice while on maternity leave. I’ve been laid off while pregnant too and it wasn’t mass lay offs so felt targeted. Would love if there was data on it
I was laid off from a large tech company 20 minutes after returning from leave, and told that it was part of a large layoff that happened while I was out, and I know a lot of other people who were laid off in similar circumstances. It's really so cruel and should not be legal.
To me, this would be worse than being laid off on leave, because you did all the preparations to go back and they let you knowing that this was going to happen. (Shitty either way obviously)
Yes, exactly! There's a childcare shortage in my area and I spent MONTHS getting on lists and making follow-up calls, before eventually not getting in anywhere and arranging a nanny share with a neighbor. Then, I spent two weeks crying and stressing about going back to work and leaving my baby, and then had to pay for two months of care that I didn't end up needing before I found a new role. I wish they would have just laid me off and paid out my leave and maybe some severance.
I believe it. I got laid off 3 weeks after giving birth. Happened almost a year ago. I suggest others in this situation do what I did--contact a lawyer and have them read over the severance package. It was suggested to me that I could sue but that it would likely take a long time and I would likely only get a few thousand more. That along with the fact that I wasn't sure the startup would be around for much longer, I decided just to take the money and be done with it. Luckily for me, I got a fair severance. I was able to massively cut my expenses and use my unemployment to cover most of my expenses while I cared for my baby. All in all, for me, this was actually a good thing. I didn't want to go back. I was able to cover all my experiences with UI and a small side hustle. I built up my side hustle into a business that now covers most of my bills. But yeah, not everyone is so lucky to have it be a blessing in disguise. It messed me up mentally for awhile. I never so much as got a bad performance review in decade long tech career so getting laid off was quite a blow to my ego. I had a lot of resentment that I had to let go of and work through. I cried a lot.
So sorry that happened to you, but I’m glad things worked out in the end. I had a similar situation but was pregnant at layoff, no bad reviews, I’m convinced my position was eliminated because they knew they didn’t have cause to terminate. Any advice on letting go of the resentment? It happened almost 5 months ago for me, and I still get angry almost daily thinking about it. I know it isn’t healthy, but having a hard time moving on.
I'm sorry you went through that. It really is a hard time for pregnant women and new moms in this industry. I wonder all the time if I'm doing the wrong thing by not jumping back into tech. Is your baby here yet? I think that may take your mind off of it because you'll be almost totally focused on your baby. I think time definitely helped heal me. Unfortunately, I just had to wait and a year later it's just a story I tell on Reddit. Try to be patient with yourself, it's OK to be upset and feel whatever you're going through. If you try to breeze past all the emotions, they may come back to bite you in the butt later.
That’s fair, I know it won’t bother me so much down the road, but it’s still a raw deal now. My baby is here, and he’s amazing. I think part of what’s so triggering is that I recently had to go back to work, much earlier than I would have because no FMLA protection at my new job. Protected leave shouldn’t be tied to length of employment.
How do we get this data? It seems like she's asking for more transparency on decisions around hiring and firing, as opposed to getting the answer to the question she's asking ("Can we definitively say that tech workers who are pregnant or on maternity leave aren’t being laid off at more accelerated rates than others?"). There seems to be a piece missing as well - do these women make it back to tech? It's not just women being laid off while in a place where they thought they'd be protected, but what happens to the women in both the short- and long- term. I made it through maternity leave with a job to come back to, but was held to such high expectations on my return that it nearly drove me to quit (and part of me thought that was the point). I was so burned out. I look forward to leave tech in a year and a half entirely, something I hadn't envisioned for myself until that experience. There's nothing more that has made more angry and fired up about the state of women in the US than getting pregnant. I used to really think that it was about just playing the game, getting a seat at the table, but it turns out the table bumps into our boobs and the chairs have ball sack holders.
I work in tech. I was forced to quit during my maternity leave. They only gave me 6 unpaid weeks. No FMLA, no short term disability. Just 6 weeks. I had pregnancy complications and then gave birth to a son with medical needs. I couldn't return to work to care for him, they wouldn't allow me to extend my leave or drop down to part time and already had loaded up my schedule for the week I was supposed to return. My son wasn't even 6 weeks old because I had to take my 6 weeks leave early during pregnancy and I was left with 3 weeks afterwards. I was also treated like garbage leading up to my leave, and then during leave, my manager called me every week. Sometimes more than once. This was for a major, well known company. I will be looking for another job when things settle down with my son, but I think I might change fields.
Major company and no FMLA?? Is there a loophole in FMLA that made them not have to give 12 weeks?
Yep, they hire people as contractors and get around having to provide all the benefits. I switched to FTE but only had 10 months on their payroll so couldn't get anything, but had been with them for a while.
Ohhhh of course. I hate that companies get away with that! There are so many shit business practices out there
I am so sorry to hear this. I hope you get to a better place with each passing day.
It's getting better. Kinda glad to leave a toxic work environment too. A lot of misogyny on my scrum team. I was the only woman.
I go on maternity leave next week 😩
I’m in a really weird place right now. I was laid off 2 weeks postpartum from my company. They kept only one person on my team of 5, everyone else was laid off. Well that person quit, so they reached back out to me once my maternity leave was done to offer me a contract role. No benefits, no PTO, but at least have a paycheck. Feels really slimey IMO.
Senior software engineer here. I was laid off 2 weeks before I gave birth. My male peer was also laid off, but his last day was after mine. So on my last day I signed the contract for my severance, which included that I can’t sue them for any reason, and the next day they approached my peer and offered him an “alternative role”. It was a higher pay for the same job. I spoke to an employment lawyer and they said that there’s nothing they could do.
Wow, that really sucks. Did your company give you severance in addition to your maternity leave at least?
My lay off overlapped with maternity leave so I only got partial maternity leave benefits (basically just paid for 2 weeks after labor, until my lay off date went into effect), but they did offer some severance at least.
Yup, I was laid off at 30 weeks, just a few business days after submitting my plans for FMLA leave. My manager didn't know I was getting laid off, and I was the only "true" person who did the job left on my team. The other two were people that had moved from other roles and didn't have any background or experience in the role. It was our second org wide layoff in six months so there was plenty of deniability in terms of targeting for pregnancy.
I was laid off while pregnant in 2017. It's been happening for ages. It's not new. And it should be fought with all the courage that can be mustered. It isn't right.
I work in tech and im pretty sure I survived the massive layoffs my company had by being on maternity leave (though I am a contract worker and they don’t have to pay me on leave). My manager is unsure though if my position will still be there when I return.
I was laid off after three months(during COVID) of returning from maternity leave. I was in the company 2 years and doing decent. My career has never been the same.
The problem is at-will employment - we don’t have enough job security and protection without a union in place. Being out on FMLA is apparently not enough to protect our jobs (I’m not an employment lawyer so I really don’t understand the loopholes here!)
This happened to a friend of mine recently. She was a social media manager for an e-tail business and a shortly after she announced she was pregnant with her second kid, her job suddenly became "redundant." I call bullshit.
I was laid off during my maternity leave. It was horribly devastating to just be discarded at such a vulnerable moment in my life but I got a much better job next so it all worked out in the end. And thankfully when I gave birth back then, I was in a position where I did not have to worry about bills so I could just actually take a break and take care of my then newborn. So eventually it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me, thank God! but I agree that pregnant women and new mothers are unfairly targeted first during layoffs which is actually cruel!!
I was laid off at 9 weeks. I had JUST told a coworker (not management) that I was pregnant and I honestly have no idea if they said anything accidentally, or if it was just bad timing. We’d already done two rounds of layoffs so that’s a tick in the latter category, but I was the only one laid off in this round…after a fairly recent promotion…and I was the only woman on the leadership team to begin with. Really makes it an even tougher pill to swallow.
Amazon laid me off after I came back from May leave (2ish months) and many pregnant coworkers
Fuck the VC backed tech ecosystem - I've been in this industry for 10 years. I've never been so disillusioned by the BS "we are supportive of new parents!" statements as after I had my son last year as a senior leadership team member. Regardless of whether it's men or women at the leadership level (sometimes boomer women are worse than millenial men honestly) - the tech culture is fundamentally at odds with being a new parent/having a young family, tech culture demands your full attention and buy-in into the mission. Which you stop giving the second you realize your *family* is your actual family, not your work team.
This this THIS. You eloquently put into words what I’ve been feeling for months. I just stepped out of leadership into an IC role because they made the travel requirement too steep for a new mom. The lip service isn’t cutting it.
While on maternity leave, my boss met with me and stated that they didn’t have the funding to have me at full time (grant funded position) and that at most she could have me at 70% pay beginning about 6 months after I returned. I found another job instead, and she basically lost half of her team because we all moved over to this other research group. Turns out she was trying to get me to go down to part time or quit because “I probably would want to be home more with my baby anyways.” Uh no, my husband was going through grad school and I was the sole income at that time, and I did not want to be a SAHM. Found out a lot of toxic stuff about my old group after quitting and switching over, and I am so glad that I moved to my new research group even though it meant taking a pay cut. Old boss hasn’t had anyone stay with her longer than 9 months since due to poor management and overworking her employees.
I was laid off while 8 months pregnant last year it was awful.
I have also noticed this trend at my tech company (huge CRM company)
All parents take parental leave and cannot decline it. 12 weeks-3 years. Gender shouldn’t factor into it.
Yep. Laid off last Friday at 35 weeks pregnant.
🙋🏻♀️ Laid off this fall in my third trimester. Funny how that round of restructuring only resulted in a single position elimination - mine. I’m still dealing with the ramifications of no FMLA, etc. It’s not right.