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Okay, hi everyone! I'll go ahead and get started now.
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It's 2:30, so I'll get started. Hi, my name is Tess Griffin and I am @GriffinTess on Twitter. Yes, all variations of @TessGriffin were already taken, including underscores and multiple underscores, so I just decided to flip it and that would be fine.
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This is a picture of myself and my daughter Ruby. She's 15 months old. You might know her if you're a speaker and you were working in the speakers' lounge today, because she was the baby crying most of the time, specifically when I left the room.
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Yes, her name is Ruby because naming is hard.
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Legend has it that I was six months pregnant when my husband dragged me to Russia with him for a conference he was speaking at. After the conference, he approached me at a party and asked, "Did you really mean to name your daughter Ruby? Are you really going with Ruby? Because that's a little weird." When the creator of the language that I named my daughter after says that, it's a little weird.
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Now, here is my hot take for today's talk: being a mom in tech sucks. I feel bad saying that, but when you're a mom, you have to learn to embrace guilt from all different angles. Right now, I feel guilty that my baby might be crying and we might all hear it because they moved the babysitting to right next door. So if we hear some crying, that will be her. So yes, being blunt today—being a mom in tech does suck.
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The more people know about the issues that moms face, the more we can work towards making it not suck. Diverse teams create better products. The more we empathize with moms, the better chance we have of keeping them around for the long term. You might be asking: why is it so hard here in the US, especially regarding parental leave?
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It won't blow anyone's minds to say that parental leave in the US sucks. Even calling it parental leave is definitely a misnomer. The reality in the US is that it’s maternity leave. A bit of background on me: this is my husband Sean. He's been a developer for a long time.
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I entered the industry about three years ago, and we actually waited to start trying to conceive until after I got my first job. We had Ruby when we lived in Canada. In Canada, parents get a year of paid parental leave that can be split however they want. We decided to both take six months off.
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In contrast, my sister, here in the US, only got 12 weeks—which is three months—of unpaid time off because she had a c-section. If she had given vaginal birth, that would have been only eight weeks. That’s crazy to me. You’d think a two-month-old baby would be put in daycare! We put Ruby in daycare at six months, and even that seemed too soon.
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At daycare, she was actually the smallest baby there because most Canadian mothers take the full year off, and most children don't start daycare until at least fifteen months. It was incredibly hard to leave her at such a young age. I think the culture here in the US is a big problem. As I dug more into this topic, I realized that the company you work for has a much bigger impact on your leave benefits rather than your country.
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For example, in Canada, you do get a year that's paid, but it’s through a program called EI (Employment Insurance), similar to unemployment here in the US. However, EI only covers up to 50k, no matter how high your salary actually is. At the time, both my husband and I worked for Shopify, and they topped up our salary to 85%.
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This was the only way we felt comfortable taking that time off. Sean got five months topped up to 85% of his salary. Overall, it was the company rather than the country that provided us with the most benefits.
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Yes, parental leave in the US does suck, but employers make a much bigger difference. If we had worked for any other company in Canada, we wouldn’t have been able to both take that time off. I probably would have just taken leave, because we couldn’t afford for Sean not to work that long.
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The point is, just because you are a company based in the US, doesn't mean you can't provide parental leave benefits. The culture in the US doesn't value spending time with a young baby and the importance of parents taking that time off. But that doesn't mean your company shouldn't provide these benefits.
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When companies provide these kinds of benefits, they allow parents to actually stay at the company and feel valued. If we want moms to stick around, we want them to feel valued.
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One thing they don’t tell you about having a newborn is they have very sharp fingernails that we call talons. You might think they’re just waving them around, but it’s actually a move that could claw your face off!
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Life after having a baby doesn’t always go according to plan. Before Ruby’s birth, we thought it would be simple. If we felt tired or wanted to go out, we would just call a babysitter, and our lives wouldn’t change that much. That was our thinking at the time.
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One of the biggest things an employer can do for new parents is to offer a flexible schedule. When companies provide a flexible schedule, it allows all the different things that happen when having a kid to be manageable while still having a job and doing it well.
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If you have that flexibility, it helps accommodate the realities of your new life without interrupting your job. Ruby was born six weeks early, and this is her in the NICU. This is my favorite picture because she's wearing little leopard mittens.
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This is Sean and Ruby at the NICU. We never planned for Ruby to be six weeks early or to spend two weeks going back and forth to the hospital multiple times a day for feedings and to learn how to be a parent. As a parent, you adapt to changing schedules, taking kids to the doctor, waking up in the middle of the night.
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In the first six months, you don’t sleep. These are just new realities of parenthood. After having children, things come up constantly, and you have to change your life to fit around their needs.
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The most important thing an employer can do is offer paid sick time off. It’s much better to have sick paid time off rather than a lot of vacation days, especially when you have kids. It’s also vital for a company culture to not penalize parents who have to leave suddenly.
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Having a strict 9 to 5 schedule just doesn’t work when you have a kid, especially if you don't have a partner capable of flexing their schedule. When you’re a mom, you're often the primary caregiver, making it sometimes your responsibility to handle these things.
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For me, one of my biggest worries is not having enough sick days at work. I am the primary caregiver, so my sick days are not just my sick days; they are also my daughter's sick days. If you didn’t know, kids in daycare get sick a lot—they're basically little germ factories.
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A couple of months ago, I took my feverish 103-degree baby to the ER at 2:00 a.m., and we weren't seen until 6:00 a.m. I was literally up all night just to be told to give her Tylenol, which was frustrating. I had to convince myself to take the next day off because I didn't have enough sick time left.
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If I had unlimited sick time, I wouldn't have to worry about that. If you’re wondering what day one looks like when bringing home your baby, I think this picture perfectly encapsulates that moment. It screams, "Oh God, what have I done?"
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Now, work and children add complexity to everything you do, especially when there’s a look like the one Sean just gave me, which totally rocked my world.
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One thing that employers often don’t consider is organizing after-hours events. Many companies have happy hours at 4 or 5 p.m. after work as a way for team bonding. But for us parents who need to pick up our kids at 6 p.m. and commute half an hour each way, attending those events just isn’t feasible.
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Daycare often charges by the minute for late pickups, so I simply wouldn’t have time to attend those work events. If you want to include parents and avoid making them feel excluded, the most impactful thing you can do is arrange for childcare or at least ask the parents if they need childcare.
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One of the worst things is just being overlooked in these situations. Back in February, my company organized its first company retreat. For those of us who were remote, it was the first chance to get together for some team bonding. The reality is that having kids complicates travel significantly. I'm the primary caregiver, so I couldn't make it to the retreat.
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Traveling with children is very complicated. I took this picture yesterday on the plane, which perfectly captures what traveling is like with children. This was her at the end of a three-hour flight, falling asleep as we were landing.
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I felt left out from the retreat because I was the only one unable to attend, and that really sucked. Ultimately, there was no malice in deciding to have the retreat in a cabin in the woods, but travel logistics were much more complicated.
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If you’re organizing these kinds of events, the best thing you can do is consider the needs of parents. I had a productive conversation with my lead afterwards about improving future arrangements.
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If you have employees with kids, especially remote ones, just ask them if they need childcare. Researching childcare options in advance is also a significant help because even if you don’t use them, knowing what options are available in your area is beneficial.
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When I was interviewing for a job last year, they asked if I could attend quarterly meetups. I questioned whether they had childcare options available, but they couldn't answer that. I figured they would have this figured out, given several moms I knew worked there.
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If you're interviewing somebody for a role, be prepared to answer if you have childcare options available. After I raised this question, someone wondered why I felt comfortable asking about childcare.
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Legally, an employer cannot discriminate against you for being a parent, but in reality, they can hold scrutiny based on the fact that you have children. The reality is discrimination against parents is common, and it is practically impossible to prove afterwards.
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I felt comfortable asking about childcare because I knew some mothers working there loved the company. But this is a valid question. The sad fact is that I probably shouldn't have felt comfortable asking that question because it opens the door to discrimination.
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At one startup I know, they asked if a candidate was married, made plans to start a family, or if they wanted kids in the future. Luckily, my friend didn’t take that job, demonstrating the blatant discrimination that exists for parents.
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If you're researching potential employers, look for signs that they value parents—for instance, whether they offer childcare stipends or partner with local daycare providers. Shopify has a partnership with a local childcare company that saves spots specifically for Shopify employees, and we valued that as an indicator of their support for parents.
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Other signs to look for are flexible schedules and unlimited PTO. Specifically in tech, there's a culture of learning and developing side projects outside regular hours.
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While it's great to have that time for learning, the expectation that this is the only way to advance your career is problematic. Employers need to build these learning opportunities during company time.
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Many parents, like me, simply won’t have time for learning during nights and weekends. My time should be dedicated to spending with my daughter and family or managing our household.
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Some companies prominently preach work-life balance as a selling point for future employees, yet for this to be realistic, it must be embedded in the company culture. Regular things like lunch and learns or 80% regular hours and 20% dedicated to learning can greatly benefit employee growth.
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If you want to see your mom employees grow and stick around, prioritize learning during work hours. I’ve seen some positive changes recently.
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One of my friends was breastfeeding and traveling. TSA made it challenging, particularly with breast milk. However, the company she worked for covered the cost of overnight shipping her breast milk to her destination, which was a fantastic benefit.
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This is Ruby last year at RailsConf; she was the youngest attendee! A shout-out to Abby and the conference organizers for even printing her own badge. One great aspect of Ruby central conferences is that they have on-site childcare.
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This is critical to allow parents, like Sean and me, to attend these conferences. Sean has looked into conferences that didn’t offer childcare, and it’s disappointing that only about 8% of them do.
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I also heard about a different conference called "That Conference" in Wisconsin, which is family-friendly, offering activities for all family members, not just childcare!
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Some practical ways for employers to help include flexible hours, sick paid time off, or unlimited PTO. One of the simplest things a company can do is change the language in maternity leave benefits to parental leave benefits.
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Allowing fathers to take that time off would make moms feel more comfortable doing the same. The more parents can share and take this time, the more equal the arrangement will be.
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Other things employers can implement include dedicated pumping rooms for breastfeeding moms. Too often, mothers have to pump in bathrooms, which is unhygienic and unacceptable.
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One way everyone can help is simply by listening to the stories of mothers. One of the best supports for a mom is simply listening to her story and empathizing with her.
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The more we share these types of stories, the less it will suck. If you’re at a company event and don't have kids, ask about childcare options. Even if you're not a parent, it will be a huge surprise to your parent friends if they find out there is childcare available.
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So why should you care? Diverse companies develop better products. Diverse teams think of solutions to problems that non-diverse teams simply don’t consider.
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If you want to help moms become senior developers, leads, and eventually CTOs while encouraging them not to leave the industry, just make them feel included and considered. That encouragement allows them to stick around.
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Lastly, shout out to my company Headway. We’re a consultancy based out of De Pere, Wisconsin, specializing in Rails and React Native apps. They allowed me to be here today and speak to all of you; thank you!
