Megan McArdle and Diane Sawyer talk about the recession and morality.
Take the term "maternity leave" off your resume. "I asked her to explain the reasoning behind
such a discriminatory statement. Admitting to motherhood, she said,
would deter scores of potential employers who might otherwise be
interested. Such a statement implies that your higher priorities rest
with your children and your family life. In turn, your work will
inevitably suffer, paling in comparison to that of your childless
colleagues. It's one of the dark secrets of the HR world. No hiring
manager in corporate America will ever admit to it, but it's true."
David Remnick makes it look easy. (And he grew up in our hometown.)
Detoxing from Twitter and Facebook.
Interesting debate about inter-racial romances between Jill Scott and Ta-Nahisi Coates.
Apt. 11d 
Wow, I’m kind of surprised at my reaction to the link to the maternity leave quote.
I’m very pro mat leave and wouldn’t blink at a gap of a year or two on someone’s resume for that, particularly as Canadian mat leave is one year and – I’m used to it.
But as someone who has hired journalists, I would back away from her interview as well. A choppy work history combined with flexibility being most important to her in an interview would be the kiss of death. For me she would have blown the whole interview at that point – not with the mat leave on her resume.
For one thing, in journalism right now there are so many people out of work it’s easy to find experienced people. I expect journalists to be aware of this and to be focused why I should hire them, not why they need flexibility. (Hypothetically, since we’re. not. hiring. Except interns.)
For another, it is in fact IMO reasonable that someone who doesn’t have that experience would have to put the time in first before getting the flexible work options.
I don’t believe kids and work are always either/or options in LIFE, but on an HOURLY basis they sometimes are. If I am flexible about someone needing to shift hours (I am) or cover sick days (ditto) then I expect in return that they will be giving that time back in some way. It goes both ways.
And if they’ve made the decision to re-enter the workforce at a disadvantage (little experience, spotty history) then yes, I would expect that they start by adhering to my business hours as much as possible to start off with.
My advice to her would be:
1. Get the job offer first and then start talking about flexibility.
2. In an interview, you do have to sound like you want the job.
2. If you feel that putting your time in to prove yourself is such an issue, focus on freelance work and build your clips.
Honestly I really think the US needs better mat leave and all of North America needs better attitudes about true work-life balance and on and off ramps and all that, but that particular post did not to my mind really do the cause a lot of justice. I ended up on the side of the employer.
LikeLike
The Ta-Nahisi Coates response was really good.
I think that some of the uncomfort has to do with visibility, status and statistics. Neither of the two draws any parallel with the white man-asian woman pairing, although that’s very fraught too. And although all of those couples that I know seem happy, well adjusted, and have stories of how they met and started dating that aren’t tales of desperate searches under the thrall of “yellow fever,” there is something in me that’s a little disturbed to find an approximate 80% prevalence of white man-asian woman couples among male academics or international workers that I know. For white women of my acquaintance in the same fields: 20%.
LikeLike
Jenn — I wasn’t sympathetic either. The fact is that people pay you to do the work they need done. Your job as an applicant is to show them how you can do the job. The right complaint is to complain not about how the job won’t fit with all your other outside needs (including the toddler joined at the hip) but to explain how it does.
In desirable fields, you’re hampered by the availability of others who have more flexibility than you (who have infinite availability, or are willing to move across the country). I’m stuck how we can equalize that without taking away rights from the person who is willing to offer more.
In some fields, in addition, there’s work that’s “hazing”, proving ones commitment, not necessarily producing. I think a more effective complaint from those who want workplace is to work hard to identify and remove the parts of work that are about hazing, and not about productivity.
My advise to people in similar situations is that they need to figure out what they have to offer to the work, and then, they need to find a place to sell that offer. If what you have to offer is 10 hours a week, on your own schedule, you’re not going to have many choices — not because employers are evil, but because there aren’t very many jobs that can be done that way.
LikeLike
I think the woman in the maternity leave article needs to lose the attitude:
I speak to him all day long. We have running dialogues about everything from dinosaurs, to music, to sports, to places we’re going and people we’ve seen. I don’t dumb down our conversations. I speak to him as I would to any other adult, and I engage him.
I am really impatient with this kind of defensive arrogance about certain types of parenting, as if somehow providing enrichment for two-year-olds committed upper middle class manner should make it more respectably like paid work. Like she stayed home in order to do a more lofty and intellectually stimulating job of parenting than daycare could provide, and therefore should be penalized less than those mothers who, what, stayed home to eat bonbons in front of the TV? Or less than someone who took money for caring for small children. Please.
LikeLike
That said, I think the comment about removing maternity leave from the resume is probably off-base. It’s silly to act as if there is one unified employer out there and he hates wimmen stuff. There are probably employers who would think taking maternity leave was perfectly fine and even meritorious, provided everything else looked good.
LikeLike
“That said, I think the comment about removing maternity leave from the resume is probably off-base. It’s silly to act as if there is one unified employer out there and he hates wimmen stuff. There are probably employers who would think taking maternity leave was perfectly fine and even meritorious, provided everything else looked good.”
Yes, or employers who would would wonder if the gap was because of time in rehab, mental illness, or jail because of drunk driving.
LikeLike
I don’t believe kids and work are always either/or options in LIFE, but on an HOURLY basis they sometimes are. If I am flexible about someone needing to shift hours (I am) or cover sick days (ditto) then I expect in return that they will be giving that time back in some way. It goes both ways.
My advise to people in similar situations is that they need to figure out what they have to offer to the work, and then, they need to find a place to sell that offer. If what you have to offer is 10 hours a week, on your own schedule, you’re not going to have many choices — not because employers are evil, but because there aren’t very many jobs that can be done that way.
I was involved in hiring during the tail end of my time in industry, and one thing that struck me was that whenever applicants talked about wanting flexible hours, they way they talked about it revealed that they meant reduced hours.
And my employer was actually very open to all manner of part-time/flex-time arrangements for very qualified folks! But people weren’t pitching that; they wanted the full-time salary with part-time responsibilities.
LikeLike
re: full-time salary w/PT responsibilities. I want that, too. And a pony!
I suppose some work can be done flexibly and others can’t. If you are teaching English Lit, you just can’t suddenly tell your students to show up the next day, because your kid is sick. Other jobs are probably more flexible than people believe. Steve’s boss has said many times that his job could easily be done from home. Steve could, hypothetically, work three days at home and two days at the office. He would still need to work 8-6 M-F, but the location of his work is certainly flexible. But no one would dare implement that plan, because everyone is scared shitless of being fired.
I read a good post over the weekend about unpaid interns. I’ll link to it later today.
Even stay-at-home moms with multiple kids have 10-20 hours per week that they could be working provided they cut out the volunteer work for the schools and communities. Many of those individuals are highly educated and have years of previous experience in demanding careers. I just think that’s a whole lot of social capital that could be invested somewhere in the economy. I suppose it is being invested in the community pro bono, but it could be invested in the paid-work sector. Why aren’t business creating positions that could employ these women? Retail has figured out how to use (or exploit) PT flexible labor , but other professions haven’t.
Marya, I thought that the job seeking woman talked about her parenting, because a)she was understandably proud of her work with the kids and b)she feels that she gained managements skills through parenting. I don’t know. That didn’t bother me at all.
LikeLike
“He would still need to work 8-6 M-F, but the location of his work is certainly flexible.”
See, this is the kind of thing I think people should be pushing for, that the asking for ponies (10 hours a day of rewarding work, with no responsibilities outside of that, paid at what people think their worth), actually impairs the potential for getting flexibility that does not come at significant cost to the employer. Why? because people think, well, if I let them work at home, they’ll stop being available when I need them to come in, ’cause they won’t have child care, or some other scenario where the flexibility will be taken to the point where the it will affect the bottom line.
“Even stay-at-home moms with multiple kids have 10-20 hours per week that they could be working provided they cut out the volunteer work for the schools and communities.”
Any thoughts on how you’d try to convert that into paid labor? I’ve found that the moms who are contributing 10-20 hours to unpaid community labor (including, to a large extent, their kids schools) do so because they believe that it’s providing benefits to their kids (“priceless” benefit that’s difficult to price on the market).
What job would you want, and at what pay, and at what responsibilities, for 10-20 hours a week? And, why should someone want to hire you for that job, instead of someone else, who is willing to be more flexible on behalf of the employer? How would we reorganize different jobs to allow someone to work 10 hours a week, with no required overtime? Let’s pick a job, that we think could be done that way, 4 people dividing up a job that’s currently done by one person and sell it to an employer (as an exercise).
That’s what I’d like to see discussed on a forum on workplace flexibility. I think there is actually some academic work on the subject (IBM did some studies on flextime, other big employers must have as well).
LikeLike
I don’t think it’s a question of paying your dues, exactly. At least in normal (pre-Great Recession) times, there have been lots of opportunities for part-time, off-hours or at-home work by professional women in the law. (Men too, I suppose, though I never knew a man who took that route.) But those jobs are commonly filled by word of mouth and based on personal relationships. The reason is that it requires a high degree of trust to hire someone for a job where she doesn’t work defined hours in the sight of a supervisor.
Therefore, a headhunter, who by nature doesn’t work based on personal relationships and personal recommendations, won’t find you a flex-time, at-home, off-hours type of job. You will have to rely on friends and personal contacts.
LikeLike
Marya, I thought that the job seeking woman talked about her parenting, because a)she was understandably proud of her work with the kids and b)she feels that she gained managements skills through parenting.
Maybe, but parenting is a self-managed occupation with no external review and no measurable product. I bet most of us think we’re pretty decent spouses, too, but no one would ever brag in a job interview about how well they manage expectations and rewards and financial benefits in their marriage, even though that can be at least as tricky.
I suppose some work can be done flexibly and others can’t. If you are teaching English Lit, you just can’t suddenly tell your students to show up the next day, because your kid is sick. Other jobs are probably more flexible than people believe.
Online teaching should be very flexible. And yeah, actual classroom showing up is not very flexible, but otherwise college teaching is only a very small commitment of face time. Most other jobs may be flexible but require a lot of collaboration to get stuff done. The kinds of jobs that can be done mostly offsite would be detachable and less central stuff, for example line editing or number-crunching. If people aren’t in the office to be consulted during core hours, productivity suffers.
LikeLike
“And although all of those couples that I know seem happy, well adjusted, and have stories of how they met and started dating that aren’t tales of desperate searches under the thrall of “yellow fever,” there is something in me that’s a little disturbed to find an approximate 80% prevalence of white man-asian woman couples among male academics or international workers that I know. For white women of my acquaintance in the same fields: 20%.”
Don’t forget the issue of height and how it relates to race. Short women have more romantic options than short men, just as tall men have more than tall women.
LikeLike
Amy, there was a scholarly article in I forget which journal that argued just that. They studied interracial couples in the UK (which doesn’t have much of the fraught racial history of the US, it has a racial history, just not like the US) and they found that the main reason black/white and Asian/white couples sort in the predictable gender ways was – HEIGHT. Black men paired with (shorter) white women; (shorter) white men with (even shorter) Asian women.
Oh, and another study – not connected to race – found that tall men were more likely to marry than short men in all but the tightest (post-war) marriage markets.
It seems that the taboo of a woman earning more is falling by the wayside, but NOT the taboo of the man being shorter (maybe that’s something somewhat biologically ingrained?)
LikeLike
they found that the main reason black/white and Asian/white couples sort in the predictable gender ways was – HEIGHT.
My understanding is that, in the US, black men are, on average, slightly shorter than white men. I don’t know if that’s so in the UK, and it could well be that there’s more variance in height among African-American men (the thing I read, I can’t remember where it is now, didn’t say.)
LikeLike
“My understanding is that, in the US, black men are, on average, slightly shorter than white men.”
As far as I can tell, that’s right. I was looking this up briefly last night (Wikipedia–sorry!) and black and white Americans of both genders are basically the same height, while Mexican-Americans are several inches shorter. I didn’t find an average for Asian Americans, but there is a list of average heights in Asian countries, and they average at least a couple inches shorter than black and white Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
white males age 20-39 5’10.5″
black males age 20-39 5’10”
Mexican-American males age 20-39 5’7″
white females age 20-39 5’4.5″
black females age 20-30 5’4.5″
Mexican-American females age 20-39 5’2.5″
It is a little bit strange that they give an average for Mexican-Americans rather than Hispanics/Latinos.
LikeLike