Bill and Melinda Gates Generous to a Fault

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is dedicated to bettering the lives of the underprivileged and occasionally assassinating Microsoft upstart competitors. A HR benefit they launched some time back is being recycled back in the news likely with a political purpose — have a kid and go and raise them. We’ll pay you to be a parent. Come back when you’re ready, moms and dads. 

The Foundation lists one year as the term for your return. But upon your return, you are given unlimited time off to tend to your child rearing, at your discretion. 

This will enable parents to participate more fully in their children’s lives, while also allowing them the flexibility and financial certainty to meet the needs of their growing families. Ultimately, our parental leave program is focused on healthier babies, parents who are able to thrive professionally, and strong and resilient families.

A monumental score for a small number of fertile people working for a billionaire’s Foundation. And an arbitrary stunt about as real world as Undercover Boss. There’s no way a legit business can offer this incredibly expensive and operationally disruptive option to their employees. A corporate sugar daddy for the reproducing. A big zero for those who aren’t. Imagine those childless folks are super fine with being cut out. I get two weeks a year, that dad whose wife had a baby gets fifty-two weeks. Hmm. Lawsuit.

Who decided one year is enough time for dad to raise a baby? Freud said age five is when the child psyche is settled. A man with four properly spaced kids could work at your Foundation for twenty years without ever setting foot inside. He’ll accomplish nothing for your mission, but imagine the kids he’ll raise. Internet comments are leaning 99-1 on how this maternity and paternity benefit should be offered by every employer.

If you have money for an over the top benefit, you have money to pay your people better in the first place. Compensate employees for their work, not shit their doing outside of work. Social engineering is not the purview of dudes who made tens of billions moving kludgy software. Leave the crass and politically motivated redistribution of income to the government. Gifts are for children. Fair pay is for grown ups.

On a side note, are you currently hiring and are you allowed to ask me if me and the baby mama put the little bastard up for adoption after my paid year off?

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