I’ve been asked required to cover for colleagues on parental leave twice in my career.

🍼 In both cases, the company was a large, blue chip corporation.

🍼 In both cases, the person I was covering for was my boss.

🍼 And in both cases, I had a great relationship with that boss, and was genuinely thrilled for them to be welcoming a baby.

I’m not a child-hating monster. 🤷

But I can definitely throw a temper tantrum. 🤦

👉 Just do the right thing. Quietly.

👉 We all underestimate how deeply our environments can influence our behavior. So choose your environment wisely.

And now — the story behind why this advice matters. 👇

But first…

Turning problems into wine 🍷

“I want to build a marketplace like Airbnb for long term furnished rentals. Can low-code tools handle something that complex?” 

–Miguel, San Diego

They absolutely can — but only if you’re thoughtful about how you build it.

Marketplaces are tricky because of how many moving parts you have: 

If you try to DIY it with the wrong tool, you'll end up duct-taping together 12 different platforms, and it’ll collapse the minute you get real users.

When we build marketplaces at LowCode Agency, we usually go with Bubble.

So yes, you can go full-Airbnb. Just probably not in a weekend.

And I’d be happy to help. I’m always excited to hop on a call and jam out on startup ideas.

-Jesus

Have a tech question? Get an answer from Jesus + get featured in an upcoming issue!

Jesus Vargas is the owner of LowCode Agency, a badass software development agency that builds custom apps twice as fast, and for half the cost, of traditional software developers. Each week, Jesus answers your tech questions. His sponsorship of Drunk Business Advice keeps this content free. 🙏

The first time I covered parental leave, my (male) boss was planning to take about a month off to welcome his second child — which was offered to him fully paid by our employer, Grollo Group. 

His responsibilities were to be split between myself and our finance manager.

I was, frankly, honored to be chosen. At the time, I was only 22, and already the youngest person in our department’s senior management team. There were plenty of older and more experienced folks who could have been tapped to step in.

But they wanted me. 🥰

As we sat down to begin planning for his absence, I learned that I would be receiving extra pay for the extra responsibility I was undertaking. 

Score! 🤑

I hadn’t even thought to ask about pay when they first approached me — I was just excited for the opportunity to sit in the most senior seat.

But I quickly realized that of course they had to pay me for taking on a ton of extra work. They’d be assholes not to.

And I ended up working for every cent of it. During the month I was in charge, I had to deal with:

But in the end, I got some great experience, the business didn’t suffer while my boss got some distraction-free PTO with his family, and I was compensated fairly for the extra work.

This experience left me feeling incredibly valued, and as a result, I was more loyal and committed to my job than ever before. My boss felt the same way.

Everybody won.

The second time I covered parental leave, my boss was a first-time mom, taking full advantage of our company’s generous 3-month maternity allowance.

I was thrilled for her when I found out she was expecting, but I was also a little concerned…

The tech behemoth we worked for (rhymes with PubSnot) wore “culture” like badge of honor. “Culture” was the center of every conversation. One of the founders even published a widely-circulated manifesto on “culture”. 👇

Why am I putting “culture” in air quotes, you ask?

Margaret Thatcher famously said, "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are — you aren't." 

And that’s what was happening here.

But PubSnot was shrieking “LOOK AT OUR CULTURE ISN’T IT AMAZING OMG I LOVE WORKING HERE OMG WE’RE ALL SO LUCKY OMG,” like a cheerleader on meth.

It was a tidal-wave of toxic positivity, conveniently washing over their beach of bullshit.

When news arose about my boss’s upcoming parental leave, I had recently taken on a new role in an adjacent department, and my old boss hadn’t yet found a replacement for my previous role.

I soon learned that they weren’t planning to find a replacement (not something that was in the cards when I agreed to take the new role, but whatever).

So I was… kinda doing both. But I wasn’t doing either of them particularly well, at least by my standards, and the standards our customers had come to expect. 

And I had serious concerns about my reputation suffering as a result.

My boss’s responsibilities were to be split while she was away, and while I didn’t expect it to be nearly as much extra work as the first time I covered for a boss on parental leave — this time it would be for three months.

And I was already attempting to perform two jobs, with a sliver of the resources required to deliver a quality product. 🤦

👉 (Side note — it’s fine to de-prioritize a product, and scale back the team that delivers it, as part of a strategy that gets communicated to customers. But we were delivering pepperoni-less pizza to a house party of meat-lovers, and just hoping they wouldn’t notice. It was bonkers.)

To pull all this off, I was going to need to work my ass off.

So when I found out that PubSnot was not in the practice of providing any compensation to employees who cover for those on parental leave, I truly lost my shit. 😡

I saw red. 

I ruthlessly spat vitriol at my 8.5-month pregnant boss, and her boss, both of whom I truly liked, respected, and enjoyed working with.

I demanded a raise. I threatened to quit. I threw my relationships with these people under the bus, and acted like a total tool.

They went to bat for me (when they probably should have just told me to kick rocks for being such an asshole), but HR declined their attempts to get me fair compensation.

The company’s official position?

“Covering for someone for THREE MONTHS isn’t extra work that you deserve to be paid for — it’s an opportunity to show the company how smart and capable you are.”

What a load of vacuous malarkey.  

But that bold and clarifying statement made me realize why I had so uncharacteristically lost my shit on colleagues who didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of my temper tantrum—

And it wasn’t the “extra work for no extra pay” part of it.

👉 It was the goddamn hypocrisy. 

The company was bragging, “LOOK AT HOW NOBLE AND GENEROUS WE ARE, GIVING THIS NEW MOM THREE MONTHS OF PAID MATERNITY LEAVE!”

But they were stealing from their other employees in order to do it — and gaslighting the f*ck out of us when we questioned it.

It reminded me of how cult leaders exploit the loyalty and generosity of their members to weave a cloak of moral superiority and make themselves rich.

Y’all — my company was using the same playbook as actual cults.

I had to get out of there.

As I think back to how my boss’s parental leave was handled at Grollo Group, I’m even more perplexed by how PubSnot chose to do business.

Grollo Group quietly did the right thing. The simple thing. The easy thing.

And that simple, easy thing helped build a culture of accountability, appreciation, and support. They weren’t a perfect company, but they cared far more about doing good than looking good. And that strategy paid dividends for them.

They were walking the walk.

PubSnot, on the other hand, put 100% of their energy into talking the talk. And that’s one expensive talk. 

I suspect the investments they made in all of their various manipulation “culture” initiatives far outweigh the expense of simply doing the right thing. And I know the ROI isn’t there.

I would point to my own behavior as evidence of this.

👉 At Grollo Group, I basically was a baby — a green 22-year-old with very little experience. But I’m astonished when I recall the maturity and professionalism with which I managed a string of highly sensitive situations. Where the hell did that come from?

👉 At PubSnot, I was an accomplished 36-year-old woman acting like a baby. I whined. I gossiped. I threw temper tantrums. I cringe when I think about it. I was the worst version of myself.

(Hell, it’s still got a little bit of a hold on me. I’m calling the company “PubSnot” for Christ’s sake.)

While I take responsibility for my actions in all of these scenarios, this is such a poignant reminder of how deeply our environments can influence our behavior.

So choose your environment wisely.

And if you’re the one creating the environment, honestly ask yourself:

Are doing good — or just looking good?

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin :-)

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