Did Apple and Facebook lay an egg? Or do something great?

[Fragile Bird]

Apple has announced that as of January next year, they will provide a benefit to women already being offered to women at Facebook. The company will pay for women to freeze their eggs and for annual storage fees, up to a total of $20,000. The idea is it will allow women working at the company more flexibility in choosing when to have a family.

From Fortune magazine:

Egg freezing allows women to extend their years of fertility, although the procedure can be pricey. It can cost about $10,000 for every round of harvesting and another $500 or more each year to store the eggs. Both companies will cover costs up to $20,000.

In the often male-dominated world of tech firms, the perk will allow women more flexibility in choosing when they want to build a family, especially as many women devote prime child-bearing years to building their careers. This perk may even help more women stay in tech.

The reaction has ranged from, What a fantastic benefit! to What an arrogant thing to do, why don't they offer one year in maternoty/paternity leave, day-care at the office and work from home options instead.

What do you think about the news?

[Shryke]

It sounds like an extremely expensive solution that only applies to a very thin slice of privileged people, all to fix a rather basic and universal problem with how the workplace functions in our society.

[Altherion]

"Expensive" is a relative term. Apple has around 100K employees and over $100B in total equity. If half of their employees were women (I think it's considerably less than that) and if all of them took advantage of this $20K offer (again, an upper limit), it would only come out to $1B or less than a percent of Apple's cash. Given that the real expense will almost certainly be much less than that, the policy is probably cheaper than the disruption created by employees taking time off and generally being less efficient due to having children.

[Fragile Bird]

That is my cynical take as well, Altherion. I have heard interviews with women who have said they were so not ready to have children at the age of 25 and now at 38 and wanting to start a family, they wished they had some of their 25-year-old's eggs to help them now, but it seems to me this is just s much easier to do than, say, create a more family-friendly workplace.

[Sci-2]

It sounds like an extremely expensive solution that only applies to a very thin slice of privileged people, all to fix a rather basic and universal problem with how the workplace functions in our society.

Yeah, this seems more about the "right" of the corporation to supercede all other concerns in people's lives.

I suspect this tool will be used to judge those who start families earlier, as it will in time extend to wives of employees.

Ah well, I hear work makes you free...

[Inigima]

Yeah, it seems like maybe instead of this we should, you know, not be shitty about how we handle parenthood in employment, like other civilized countries. I also wonder if this means there will be pressure at companies offering this to do it and put off having a family.

[Larry of the Lawn]

So all I have to do to get eggs stored for free is get an iTunes or FB.account? Awesome. I love you, Obamacare.

[Gneisenau]

Is there an assumption (in creating the policy) that, by the time a women decides to use her frozen eggs, she would have moved on to a different company ?

[Fragile Bird]

I don't think so, I think the ideal behind the benefit is to help women with the dilemma many women perceive in the workplace, that if they drop out to have a family they will never be able to get back on the corporate ladder, while worrying if they don't have children when they are young they may not be able to conceive when older.

[Gneisenau]

But how does freezing the eggs solve that problem ? Have a child now, and get shamed in the workplace, or have a child 10 years later and get shamed then ?

[Seli]

It does seem to fixing the problem at the wrong end, and a stunt-solution at that. In stead they ought to make it easier to combine parenthood and a career structurally, for any gender.

[TerraPrime]

It does seem to fixing the problem at the wrong end, and a stunt-solution at that. In stead they ought to make it easier to combine parenthood and a career structurally, for any gender.

Yup.

[zelticgar]

I think it is a noble benefit but it will only apply to a small population. I also suspect that Apple and Facebook probably have a pretty solid maternity AND paternity leave policy that exceeds many employers. FB is probably reasonably flexible about work from home options and flex time. I've heard Apple is more of an "in the office" shop but I know some people that work remote there.

When I saw this come over the news wires my reaction was that this is a good benefit for employees that also allows the company to put on a "best defense is a good offense" move in relation to diversity and inclusion. All the big tech companies are struggling to hire and maintain a diverse employee base and the gender mix is a critical piece of that. If you are having trouble hiring for diversity in the workplace the next best thing you can do is build out programs and benefits that are attractive to a diverse slate of employees and candidates. This way when the numbers are crunched and there are gaps you can at least know that you are putting a best effort approach forward. It also helps blunt the PR issues that come up when discussing D and I.

I do wonder if they anticipated the view some people have taken about this program being an attempt to pressure women into holding off on child birth? I initially looked at it as just a program that would allow more choice.

[TerraPrime]

The raionale of the program, far as I can tell, is to offer female employees an extra tool for planning a balance between family needs and job needs. It is not intended to completely obviate the need for maternity leaves. Rather, it is aimed to (I think) empower female employees to make the choice about when to start a family in ways that they see fit and not in ways that are dictated/pressured by biological concerns.

[Fragile Bird]

Well, when you're 25 and you decide to start a family, you worry that by the time you get back (you might want 2 or 3, after all) you'll never get ahead because by then a whole cadre of bright young things fresh out of university are at the office , and you have family obligations that mean you usually can't stay at work late, or perhaps that limit your travelling, and even if you have good skills you may be passed over.

But if you take time out at 35, when you are already a mid or upper level executive who has proved her worth, you'll be welcomed back to work after the baby.

The corporate world can be very competitive and dog-eat-dog. Dropping out when you're 25 is tough, especially if you also competitive, bright, and eager for corporate challenges.

So far pretty well everyone responding has been male. I'm interested in seeing some comments from the female point of view. :)

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

I imagine freezing eggs is much easier than changing the American corporate culture that worships facetime, busywork and meetings.

[zelticgar]

How does it make that much of a difference though?

I mean, unless people hold off having kids until retirement age (which would be insane), it'll still impact their career to some eventually.

If anything, wouldn't losing senior fortysomething employees to child-rearing be worse for a company than losing them earlier, when they perhaps undertook a less important role?

I think it is the opposite. They would rather the forty somethings wait so they can be qualified to return at senior level roles. There is a significant deficit of senior level female executives in the tech industry. I dont have the motivation to pull numbers but I recall that the gender mix overall for a lot of these big tech companies are reasonably close to the graduation rate gender mix for computer science and engineering schools. The drop off becomes significant when you start looking at the executive levels of tech companies. They need more females period but the most critical deficit is the executives.

[Free Northman Reborn]

This saddens me. Not the fact that Apple and Facebook made this offer. But that there are apparently so many people that would be willing to take it up. Willing to place their ambitions of "making it up the corporate ladder" above having kids at a time when you can still enjoy as much of life as possible with them.

Who the hell cares about the "corporate ladder" when they are on their deathbeds one day? But the kids you spent cherished time with, that sure as hell counts for a lot when the Grim Reaper is about to arrive.

What a world we live in.

EDIT

And since it might not be clear from my above post, I view males that place the "corporate ladder" above their families just as negatively as I do females that do so.

[Fragile Bird]

FRB, the Apple benefit hasn't started yet, and I haven't seen any numbers come out of Facebook as to the popularity of the benefit (though I haven't looked). Have you seen numbers we have not?

[Free Northman Reborn]

FRB, the Apple benefit hasn't started yet, and I haven't seen any numbers come out of Facebook as to the popularity of the benefit (though I haven't looked). Have you seen numbers we have not?

I'm referring to the divided nature of the commentary I've read on this issue on various sites. It seems that opinion is split on whether it is a good or a bad thing.