Workplace

Pinterest now offers over six months of parental leave

Pinterest expanded its parental leave policy to a total of 26 weeks.

Father reading to baby

Pinterest announced it will expand its parental leave policy for employees globally.

Photo: Pexels

Pinterest has long been known for having one of the most progressive parental leave policies in the tech industry, but yesterday it pushed its policy even further. The social media company announced it has expanded its policies for parents again.

The news follows a national push for mandatory parental leave in the U.S. In November, the House passed legislation backed by President Biden that includes a proposal for four weeks of paid family and medical leave for all workers in the country.

The biggest change at Pinterest? More time for birthing and non-birthing parents. Pinterest’s update to its policies highlights how Silicon Valley has been leading corporate America in offering generous parental leave.

  • Leave for birthing parents in the U.S. was extended from 16 weeks to a whopping 26 weeks of leave.
  • Leave for adoptive parents is increasing from 16 weeks to 20 weeks. This is in addition to an increase of monetary assistance from $5,000 to $10,000 for adoptive parents.

Pinterest’s goal is to set a global standard for parental leave. Alice Vichaita, head of Global Benefits and Mobility at Pinterest, said the changes came in response to employee feedback.

  • Previously, outside of the U.S., parental leave for employees was 12 weeks, while it was 16 weeks for workers in the States.
  • “We constantly evaluate our benefits to ensure that we continue to do our work to advance a culture where employees feel that they can bring their full selves to work and create a life that they love,” she told Protocol. “Women, as we know, have been especially challenged during this COVID period, and we believe that it's essential that we support them, including through the diversity of paths to parenthood.”
  • “There's a competitive lens to this as well, and we use that as a point of reference. But I think most importantly, we listen to our employees,” she said. Vichaita’s team works with Pinterest employee resource groups to evaluate their thoughts on potential benefits and to ensure decisions resonate with those groups as well.

Supporting parents requires thinking about the full spectrum of outcomes. That includes miscarriages and newborn health emergencies.

  • Employees who experience miscarriage will be allotted four weeks of paid leave. There will be no need for formal documentation to take such leave, said Vichaita. Employees will simply need to communicate confidentially with their manager. There is no tracking required in Pinterest’s internal system as well.
  • Pinterest is not a pioneer in miscarriage leave. Reddit was among the first major tech employers to offer it several years ago, and its benefit period at eight and a half weeks is more generous. But Pinterest deserves credit for adding it.
  • For employees who have a newborn child in the NICU, Pinterest will offer 12 weeks of paid leave.
  • Last, IVF and egg freezing is being made available to all its employees globally.

Benefits like these will require constant evaluation. “We are happy with all the benefits we're able to roll out for next year, but I think five years from now we're going to have to continue to monitor and iterate on these benefits like we do for all of our benefits programs,” said Vichaita.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins