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Nicole Javier

Matthew Weinshenker

Work, Family, and Gender

December 5th, 2022

Introduction:

When applying to jobs, what qualities of a job constitute an ideal place to work? Is it the

salary, the benefits, or a combination of the both? Many working families struggle to balance

work and life; hence, finding a job that provides benefits and is very significant when choosing

the right job. Working families need support from employers in order to balance and resolve

these work-life conflicts. As opposed to low-income workers, professional families are capable

of getting jobs that provide many benefits such as flexible scheduling, family leave, child care

assistance. Work-life balance for professional workers decreases burnout and feelings of

overload and increases overall productivity and job satisfaction. Nonetheless, many professional

workers in media platforms often wrestle with feelings of overload, spillover, and a susceptibility

to mass layoffs.

Literature review:

Professional workers find themselves at the top of the income ladder and are depicted to

be the world’s “ideal workers.” Most rewarding jobs are designed for ideal workers that can

work full-time and all year-round. As a result, many professionals suffer pressure to conform to

those societal expectations leading to an inability to balance work and family conflicts. Many

professional jobs may be perceived as desirable, however, it does not imply that work-life

conflicts don’t exist. Employers expect professional workers to be “all in” resulting in erratic

schedules or working longer hours resulting in time-based conflict. In fact, children of

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professional workers are more likely to have two working parents than lower and middle class.

The decline of America’s “silent partner” meant that more women were going into the paid labor

force. As a result, working parents must juggle caregiving and household responsibilities as well

as work. According to “Finding Time,” by Heather Boushey, “..about a fifth of women in the

United States have the right to maternity leave, and the typical mother takes ten weeks off to be

with her newborn child. (Boushey, pg. 164) Hence, it is important for an employer to provide

maternity/paternity leave, paid time off, and paid leave for parents to care for their children.

Professional families can afford to outsource and pay for childcare services; however, they

should also have the time to care for their children. Professional workers are more likely to be

given these forms of flexibility due to recruiting and retention tools for professional workers.

Employers want reliable employees; however, they must be cognizant of the work life

balance that a job must provide. In attempts to be an ideal worker, professional workers often

combat feelings of overload or the feeling of having too much to do in too little time. Luckily,

white collar workers have flexplace benefits or the ability to choose whether to work in the office

or from a remote location like home. In “Overload” by Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen, “With

Star, Ava continues to work for TOMO after the babies arrive, choosing to work at home most

days while using a nanny and later childcare in her neighborhood.” (Kelly and Moen, pg. 224)

Thus, the implementation of STAR helped fight the flexibility stigma and decreased the time-

based and strain-based conflicts for many working parents. Overall, jobs should strive to

implement a STAR model in order to decrease overload and burnout, increase productivity and

job satisfaction, and employee retention. In the article, “Working at Home: Experiences of

Skilled White Collar Workers,” by Samantha K. Ammons, William T. Markham (Ammons and

Markham, pg. 14 “Many said that, freed from the constraints of the office, they had more time
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for friends and family, for golf, exercise, gardening, and cooking, for volunteer work, and for

housework or errands.” Work from home provided employees with the ability to work home and

generally have more time to spend time with friends and family members. Overall, these benefits

would lead to improved sleep, better mood, and the ability to find time to achieve more.

Professional workers are harder to replace in many high-paying companies. However,

this does not insinuate that they can expect job security either and instead anticipate being laid

off at some point in their careers. As a result of the “motherhood penalty” more women are laid

off. According to Gaslighted by Christine L. Williams, The layoffs were also “heavily

skewed towards women having just come back from maternity leave or who had young children”

(William, 169). Many companies provide many benefits like maternity leave and paid time off,

however, caregiving biases and flexibility stigmas still persist as they deviate from being “ideal

workers.” Hence, though professional workers are harder to replace, many companies choose to

conduct layoffs due to downsizing, restructuring, or new management. Overall, these layoffs

may result in decreased productivity, voluntary separations, etc. Employers must offer job

security and assurance for valuable workers in their jobs, especially women who are usually not

perceived to be ideal workers.

Method:

The two employers I will compare are Twitter and Meta otherwise known as Facebook.

The sources I used to find my research are Indeed, Glassdoor, which provides reviews as well as

information about the benefits that employees receive by dividing it into 7 different categories

like culture and values, diversity and inclusion, work-life balance, senior management,

compensation and benefits, and career opportunities. The sources provided insight on

personalized evaluation of employees and their experiences.

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Findings:

Twitter and Meta otherwise known as Facebook are ranked as one of the best companies

to work for. Overall, the two companies reduce burnout, overload, and increase job satisfaction.

Tech companies like Twitter and Meta provide many benefits like paid time off, family leave,

paid vacation, health benefits, work from home, etc. Twitter is a social media networking

company founded in 2006 by Christopher Isaac Stone and has an overall 3.9 out of 5 rating in

which 68% of employees recommend working at Twitter to a friend. For many people when

looking for a job, one of the first things they discern is the salary. In New York City, the average

salary of a Twitter employee ranges from approximately $70, 125 per year for an Administrative

Assistant to $434,367 per year for a Senior Engineer Manager. Professional workers are in the

top 20% of income as opposed to low income and middle class workers that find themselves

stuck and stalled. Twitter employees are provided with more economic opportunities and

financial stability than employees in other industries and sectors. Not to mention, Twitter

employees have access to Family Medical Leave, Dental Benefits, Health Insurance, Disability

Insurance, Life Insurance. Additionally, they have commuter benefits, meals provided, company

outings, 401 K Matching, Generous PTO, and Paid Sick Days and Holidays. On paper, Twitter

sounds like the best place to work and these benefits help address many of the work-life

challenges employees face. In fact, Twitter is rated at a 4.1 for Work-Life balance higher than

Meta. However, things began to shift after Elon Musk became the CEO of Twitter.

Many white collar workers have the ability to work home. Twitter’s flexibility to work

from home was favored by most employees. According to a review on Indeed, “Work life

balance is good depending on the department you are in. If you land a remote position that works

well. Being in the office physically is challenging.” Previously, under CEO Jack Dorsey,
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employees had the option to work from home indefinitely. However, on November 14, 2022,

Elon Musk announced that employees would no longer be permitted to work remotely except

“exceptional” or “ideal workers.” Hence, as a result of a new management, employees no longer

had the same flexibility to work from home and tackle the time-based, strain-based, and

behavior- based conflicts. As depicted in Overload, employees combat work-life conflicts of

work and caregiving responsibilities by having the flexibility to work from home. As a result,

professionals are able to do caregiving and household responsibilities as well as improving

moods, better sleep, reduced overload and burnout.

Additionally, under new management, employees are expected to work longer hours than

before. According to an email written by Elon Musk, “Going forward, to build a breakthrough

Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely

hardcore. This will mean working longer hours at high intensity.” Hence, despite the many

benefits. Twitter employees suffer feelings of overload or the sense that work demands are

unrealistic or having too much to do in too little time. As depicted in Finding Time and

Overload, professional workers are expected to be “all in” and face erratic schedules further

contributing to the work-life conflicts.

On November 4th, 20222, 3,700 or over half of the Twitter workforce were laid off. The

mass layoffs for Twitter employees has created overall decreased job satisfaction, productivity,

and retention. According to a CNN news story, ““My Twitter journey has come to an end, I got

laid off while I’m 6-months pregnant. It has been a pleasure to work with all of you. I’m very

thankful to lead such an amazing [data science] team, it’s been a fun ride.” Hence, a result of the

“motherhood penalty” many women face being laid off from their jobs. The woman plans on

suing Musk as a result of the lay off. Twitter employees who were laid off were devalued and
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many of the workers felt relieved to be laid off because of the changes and unrealistic

expectations that were being implemented. As depicted in “Gaslighted by Christine L. Williams,

though professional workers were harder to replace, they still underwent layoffs, one of the

reasons being new management with women and mothers being the most vulnerable.

Meta is also a social media/technology company founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg

with a 4.1 out of 5 rating, 0.2 away from Twitter. Similar to Twitter, Meta provides unlimited

sick days, tech disbursements, free meals, etc. However, like Twitter, Meta’s benefits come with

many complications. The pros of working at Meta according to employees in New York

“...Amazing benefits and perks great people to work with awesome company culture and work

environment.” Hence, working at Meta optimizes the benefits of professional workers in the

labor force and their ability to As opposed to Twitter, Meta continues to provide work from

home flexibility. I'm on the hybrid model and it's nice having an office to go to for in-person

collaboration while having the flexibility to work from home when I choose to.

Similar to Twitter, a downside in working for Meta is that employees struggle with work

life balance. A former employee stated, “While work life balance is incredibly reasonable and

fair, expect to work after hours on personal work if you want to make sure you do not stagnate as

a “meta employee.” As depicted in Overall by Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen, Randall, a

software developer, “[felt] pressured to be on late-night calls, after putting in a full workday in

the office, because someone-presumably a manager with authority over Randall- has “decreed”

that he and the rest of the team should be on these calls.” Hence, professional workers are

expected to have always-on availability which further adds to the feelings of overload and

creating negative spillover.

Surprisingly, 11,000 Meta employees were laid off in 2022, 13% of the company.
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In comparison, Overload depicted the notion that professional workers are too valuable to be laid

off. However, in mass layoffs. However, in comparison to most employers with high-paying

professionals, twitter and meta employees are susceptible to mass layoffs. Surprisingly, meta

employees are also very susceptible to layoffs. Intrinsically, employees who were laid off will

receive 16 weeks of pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service. Similar to Twitter,

“Of the more than 4,000 layoff survivors we studied, 74% of employees who kept their jobs

during a corporate layoff say their own productivity has declined since the layoff. Hence,

employees neglect to have job security in their jobs and instead, are rather susceptible to layoffs.

Discussion and Conclusion:

No matter how valuable you think you are to a company, you can still be replaced.

Working for these companies provides optimal job satisfaction, high pay, many benefits, work-

life balance, etc. The policies in place provide desirable and sufficient benefits such as paid time

off, paid sick leave, vacation time, health care benefits, etc, however, both of the companies

struggle with employee retention. The benefits that both companies provide are accessible to

most employees and many utilize it. For example, many employees take advantage of remote

flexibility at least 1 day out of the week increasing work-life balance.

Overall, if I were to be a professional worker applying to tech companies, I would

ultimately choose to work in Meta because the new management has been causing overall job

dissatisfaction for Twitter employees. 73% of Meta employees approve of CEO Mark

Zukerberg; whereas, only 35% of Twitter Employees approve of CEO Elon Musk. Management

seems to be a salient role in the decreased job satisfaction for Twitter employees. However, it

seems as though both Twitter and Meta set unrealistic expectations for their employees to

conform to “ideal worker” standards.

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Both companies provide optimal benefits; however, they fail to fully address work-life

balance due management as well as the job security and assurance necessary when choosing a

job. Instead, I would prefer to work somewhere like Google. After conducting research, I learned

that Google is also one of the best technology companies and provides many of the same

benefits that both Twitter and Meta provide. The difference is that Google has avoided these

mass layoffs thus, increasing employee productivity, retention, and overall satisfaction. There are

many factors that constitute what is perceived to be an ideal place to work. So when job-

searching, it’s important to not solely focus on the salary and pay but also focus on the benefits

and contextualize how the job could address the work, family, and life conflicts.
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Works Cited

Anon. n.d. “Meta Employee Benefits.” Meta Careers. Retrieved December 5, 2022
(https://www.metacareers.com/facebook-life/benefits).

Boushey, Heather. 2019. Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.

Kelly, Erin L. and Phyllis Moen. 2021. Overload How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We
Can Do about It. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Kolodny, Lora. 2022. “Elon Musk Demands Twitter Staff Commit to 'Long Hours' or
Leave: Read the Email.” CNBC. Retrieved December 5, 2022
(https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/elon-musk-demands-twitter-staff-commit-to-long-
hours-or-leave.html).

Murphy, Mark. 2022. “Meta and Twitter Layoffs Might Not Generate All of the
Companies' Desired Benefits.” Forbes. Retrieved December 5, 2022
(https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2022/11/09/the-layoffs-at-twitter-and-meta-
might-not-generate-all-of-the-desired-benefits/?sh=38153d631f04).

Williams, Christine L. 2021. Gaslighted: How the Oil and Gas Industry Shortchanges
Women Scientists. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.