News
broke that Apple and Facebook provide a new benefit to female
employees: they will cover the costs of egg freezing up to $20K.
Bloomberg Businessweek says this is the "great equalizer" to "liberate"
women, but I call BS. It is pretty disturbing to me for several reasons.
We
know that tech is fairly misogynist and gender-unequal, especially in
leadership and technical roles. Despite Sanberg's "Lean In" evangelism,
most FB leaders are male (the major female execs are her, and in the HR
dept). Apple and Google are similar. I don't know if the egg freezing
benefit is the most crucial thing that women in tech (or prospective
women) need now. In this 2011
list,
Apple-FB-Google did not make the top 100 best companies to work for as a
mom, despite offering great mat-leave, health care, and subsidized
onsite day care. Why? Because the stress and workloads are not worth it.
You can set up massage and watering stations at each mile of a Marathon
course, but it's still a painful grueling Marathon.
What
is the egg freezing signaling? A cynic (like me) would conclude that
Apple/FB wants its women to fully focus on work (and work super hard)
during their fertile younger years (~25-35). Just like their concierge
and commute benefits, this is another way that workers don't have to be
bothered by "real life", and can just stay in the work bubble thinking
about company goals and their career growth all the time (you know, the
truly important things in life). They are all about hacking and
disrupting everything, so why can't they disrupt family planning too?
Who says you can't
have it all as a working mom?
But
here's the thing, we know that it's illegal for employers to ask about
or discriminate based on family. When a worker decides to start a
family, often their career trajectory changes permanently, and managers
may subtly or overtly perceive them differently from then on. It's only
natural. So the egg freezing is a form of insurance, if you will. Those
firms hired supposedly child-less younger women. They may be in
relationships, but they will mostly be available for the firm 50-80
hrs/week and ~49 weeks/year. That is what the company expects when it
hires. So the egg benefit prolongs that arrangement, for a measly sum of
$20K (compare that to 1-6 months mat-leave, and all the lost
productivity from childcare responsibilities, illnesses, etc.
thereafter). And later when the egg freezer decides to finally start a
family, the company can marginalize her to a lesser role, eventually
replacing her with a man/new young woman. She's already contributed her
value to the firm, now she can "go to pasture" and be a mom at Yahoo or
Intel.
I could be underestimating Si Valley snobbery, but I
think the # of women who will use this benefit will be small, and the #
of women thawing their eggs later to start a family even smaller.
Biologically, it's more likely they will have kids naturally. But for
those who do choose to freeze and have a family via IVF, it won't be a
cake walk either. Success rates are under 20% per egg. The mom might be 35-45 at that point. The older you get, the harder it
is to deal with the physical strains of motherhood (unless they plan to
nanny everything like Marisa Meyer). And by then they would be
mid-career, with even more responsibilities and stress vs. their 20's.
So is that a better time to start a family? Sure they'll be richer, but
it may also be harder to transition from office rock-star to working
mommy. So is the egg benefit just a scam from Apple and FB, tricking
talented younger women to postpone their family plans to their
detriment? And I don't know if there is data on it, but I wonder if
child outcomes are different when the parents are
older or younger.
Of course teen parents are not preferable either, but I wonder if there
is such a thing as "too old". Kids will still need their parents when
they are 20-30, and it's just harder when they are geriatric by then.
Lastly,
what about the whole cryo-egg/IVF approach? Obviously it is not an
option for most women, and is generally monopolized by wealthier
white/Asian people (which tech is too). Will this further the rich-poor
& racial gaps? Older pregnancies are a larger health risk for both
mother and child. One option is a surrogate mom (pay a younger, poorer
lady to carry your fetus - she's just renting out her excess capacity
like AirBnB, right?). That is such a First World Problem: build vs. buy
right? Outsource the non-value-add stuff, so you can focus on making
money. Never compromise, innovate to have your cake and eat it too.
But it also reeks of exploitation. It's
kind of sick - search for "surrogate mother" and you get a bunch of ads
and sites trying to recruit wombs. Obviously demand > supply,
especially with the rise of the Chinese upper class. And older couples
who want to conceive will often pay any price. Those with medical need
should have access to IVF, but what about those who elected to delay
parenthood for their careers? That is kind of like paying to jump the
line at Disneyland, or for organ donation. Clearly such procedures like
IVF are not equal-opportunity, but the poor have the opposite problem -
they sometime have too many kids because of lack of education and access
to affordable contraception (as we discussed previously during the
Hobby Lobby
ruling).
There
is even "surrogacy tourism" where Western couples lease a Third World
womb (really, are they that cheap that they have to offshore it?). A
case
in Thailand made the headlines because an AUS couple may have
"abandoned" one of their twins after discovering he had Down's (they
left him with the surrogate Thai mom and returned home with the
"desirable" twin). This is just one incident, but you can imagine the
ethical and legal minefield that surrogacy presents.
All
the sci-fi stuff from our childhood like Brave New World and Gattaca
seem to be getting too close for comfort. Those in the "elite" class get
all the privileges and get to lead charmed lives (yes, you can have it
all when you work for Apple/FB!), and the rest of humanity just serves
them, with the narrow/false hope of joining their ranks some day.
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This may also be a symptom of the competitiveness of silicon valley.
What else can you offer once money, food, on site massage, etc is
covered? The incentives are only going to get weirder at this point.
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I agree that there is an "arms race" re: employee benefits to
attract good talent, but remember that Google, Apple, and maybe some
others got
sued
for anti-competitive practices (no engineer poaching collusion to keep
comp in check), but FB was not involved. So I guess several forces are
affecting benefits. Supposedly US raises are being depressed by the
rising costs of health coverage too.
If you took a poll at Apple
on what new/enhanced benefits the workforce really wants, I doubt that
egg freezing would be high on the list. I think it was a pet project by
some HR person to "be innovative" and make some news. I assume the
workforce really wants (1) more pay, (2) more vacation (true vacation,
as in totally unplugged time), (3) more flex time, and (4) more
coaching/training/career dev, not necessarily in that order. But most
employers won't budge on that stuff. Speaking of vacation, some
companies like Netflix offer
unlimited
paid vacation. But as you can imagine, this could have the opposite
effect (workers scared to ask for a lot of time off, and without a
vacation stipend, the firm saves money by not paying out unused
balance).
There are some "nefarious benefits" that
actually benefit the firm more than the worker. Like offering free
dinner - that could encourage workers to stay later (with no OT pay) and
the company gets a little more productivity out of them (even if they
goof off much of that time). It got so bad at
EA
that workers sued to reclaim OT and become hourly workers, so at least
they get comped for their longer hours. So I think the egg freezing is
part of that - it delays family life, which benefits the company
possibly at the expense of the worker.
