I’d like to highlight how difficult it is to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and work while pregnant. My hope is the more aware people are about the difficulties of pregnancy, the more compassion there will be for pregnant women and moms in general.
I’ve come across too many heartless folks who make pregnant women feel uncomfortable at work and make them never want to go back to work after giving birth. Here’s a comment that illustrates my point from the post, Career Advice For Women: Blaze Your Own Path Instead.
My husband is also a “revenue making” startup founder, and I kind of know people hate him because he is a harsh boss, he says things for shock value, but yes he gets things done.
He could’ve said what this guy said (“I hate women”), and he has told me in private that having to deal with his pregnant female employees leaving early or because they are tired, and dealing with maternity leave of his female employees is painful because a startup just does not have that kind of bandwidth. They expect everyone all hands on deck all the time. That’s the reality of it, given the breakneck speed of how things work plus juggling finance, legal, there just isn’t enough bandwidth to run a start up like a large fortune 500 company with HR departments and such.
What I describe above is a different scenario from what you experienced and my husband mentioned this to me in private, but his arguments could be true of any startup.
This type of thinking is endemic among many males and some females. In a highly competitive business environment, I can understand the strains of lost productivity. However, someone has to give birth. Otherwise, nobody would exist. To create more empathy AND minimize lost productivity, let’s address four things everybody should know about pregnancy.
The following is a guest post by Steve, a 40-something year old reader and consulting client who is currently traveling the world with his family after a 20 year career in mass media. So many times we’re just too paralyzed to make a change because we just can’t see a path forward. It’s these stories that keep me so motivated!
Sometimes an experience is so painful it’s helpful to try and forget it ever happened. But something recently transpired that has allowed me to relive my anxiety with all of you. This post is an important reminder about the dangers of written communication.
There’s probably nothing more annoying for an experienced person than to be micromanaged. I’m sure someone who is new to work finds being micromanaged just as annoying, but at least the boss has a good excuse. The novice could really mess things up without proper supervision.
One of the key takeaways from my book, 