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Bad idea to lateral before my leave? My wife is due in October, but am not sure a new firm would be happy about me starting then taking leave a few months later.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:49 am

Bad idea to lateral before my leave? My wife is due in October, but am not sure a new firm would be happy about me starting then taking leave a few months later.

I think some places require you to be there for a certain amount of time before you get to use maternity/paternity leave.

I've heard of a few people taking leave at their current firm, interviewing while on leave, and then giving notice 2 weeks after coming back from leave. Might be a shitty move from a goodwill point, but to each their own.

Is the plan also to take paternity leave right in October? Some (most/all?) firms allow you to take your paternity leave within a certain time period (I know of a few with a 1 year timeline) of birth. So maybe that could be a scenario where you start in say May 2022, have your baby in October, but don’t take leave until June 2023.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 28, 2022 8:48 am

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:49 am

Bad idea to lateral before my leave? My wife is due in October, but am not sure a new firm would be happy about me starting then taking leave a few months later.

I think some places require you to be there for a certain amount of time before you get to use maternity/paternity leave.

I've heard of a few people taking leave at their current firm, interviewing while on leave, and then giving notice 2 weeks after coming back from leave. Might be a shitty move from a goodwill point, but to each their own.

My firm technically requires you to work for a year to be eligible for leave, but they'll waive it for associates. Of course, my firm also hasn't looked too fondly on men married to women who take the "full" parental leave of 6 months instead of 2-4 weeks. If your current firm is cool about parental leave for men, I would stay until after your leave is over unless you really really need to get out. Even if they're not cool, if they get all burned up because you take the full leave, you can just interview at the end of your leave and lateral then. Otherwise, you may be opting into a firm that will say the right things about leave but in reality will give you a lot of push back, but having just lateraled there you'll be a bit stuck and won't have the credibility built up that could smooth things over. It's ridiculous that this how some firms approach things, but it is what it is, and unless you have a friend at the new firm who will honestly tell you what they've seen you won't really have any way of knowing \how the new firm would react (regardless of what HR says).

edit to add: this assumes you're thinking about taking more than 2-4 weeks, if you're only going to be out a short period of time the new firm probably won't care, and I wouldn't hold up on lateralling for that reason. But if you're going to take full leave (4-6 months at most firms), the calculus is different.

I agree with the poster above. Most firms require you to be there for a year before taking leave, but if you just want 4 weeks, most firms will probably give it to you anyway. You may run into problems if you want the 12-18 weeks that many firms are offering these days.