Last year Washington became the fifth state to mandate paid parental leave, and once the law takes effect in 2020, all new parents here will be guaranteed up to 12 weeks off following a birth or adoption.
In the meantime, the local tech industry has taken steps to make the workplace more welcoming for new and potential parents by implementing a range of generous maternity and paternity leave programs.
Here are six of the best paid parental leave policies in the Seattle tech industry — and one non-tech company we simply had to include. You’ll understand when you see it.
Backstory: Niantic builds augmented reality experiences, developing much of its technology in the gaming sphere with an eye to expanding into robotics, adaptive computing and new kinds of entertainment. The company’s origins date back to 2001, when a team of gamers, cartographers, artificial intelligence researchers and computer scientists built a platform to let users zoom into three-dimensional maps of the world. Originally intended as a game, the platform — called Keyhole — was acquired by Google in 2004 and became known as Google Earth. The Keyhole team went on to form Niantic in 2010, as a startup within Google. The company spun out in 2015, and collaborated with the Pokemon Company and Nintendo to release Pokemon Go in 2016.
How much paid maternity leave?: 16 weeks at full pay.
Anything else?: All types of parents can take advantage of Niantic’s 16 weeks of parental leave, including male, female, primary, secondary, adoptive and LGBTQ parents.
Backstory: Zillow was founded in 2006 by current Vice Chairman Lloyd Frink and Seattle startup extraordinaire Rich Barton, and went public in 2011. The company now has offices in 11 cities across the United States and Canada, and is widely credited with inserting a much-needed dose of transparency into the real estate market.
How much paid maternity leave?: 16 weeks at full pay.
Anything else?: Other parents get eight weeks at full pay. Zillow also offers nursing rooms for moms, adoption assistance, resources for caretakers and free breast-milk shipping for traveling employees.
Backstory: Seattle’s third-most famous export after Starbucks and rain-related cliches, Amazon has its fingers in more pies than we can count: e-commerce, cloud computing, groceries, entertainment, gaming, voice applications, and on and on and on. Say what you will about Amazon's colonization of South Lake Union and apparent trajectory toward world domination, but the company’s paid parental leave policy is one of the best in the business.
How much paid maternity leave?: 14 weeks at full pay plus an extra six weeks for employees who have been with the company for over a year — for a total of 20 weeks.
Anything else?: Four weeks of pre-partum leave for birth mothers; six weeks of paternity leave; a program called “Leave Share,” where Amazon will allow employees to share their parental leave with partners whose companies don’t offer paid parental leave; a program called “Ramp Back” where new parents get eight weeks of reduced, flexible work hours.
Backstory: Founded way back in 1982, the San Jose software giant has had a presence in Seattle for years. In 2016 the company announced a partnership with Microsoft to make Azure the preferred cloud platform for Adobe’s marketing, creative and document clouds, and the companies have since deepened that link with integration for e-signatures and PDFs.
How much paid maternity leave?: 16 weeks of paid parental leave for a primary caregiver following a birth, adoption or assumption of custody through foster care.
Anything else?: Non-primary caregivers get up to four weeks of paid leave.
Backstory: Since it was founded in 1975, Microsoft has become a giant in the fields of software, cloud computing, gaming, devices and more. Late last month the company began requiring its contractors — who provide Microsoft with everything from software consultants to janitors — to offer a minimum of 12 weeks of paid parental leave at 66 percent of regular pay, up to $1,000 per week.
How much paid maternity leave?: Birth mothers who work for Microsoft get 20 weeks of paid time off.
Anything else?: All other new parents — including foster placements and adoptions — get 12 weeks.
Backstory: Though they receive far less attention nowadays, Ebay is just as innovative as it was when their name was on everyone’s lips back in the early 2000s. The company has recently debuted augmented reality and artificial intelligence tech as it seeks to differentiate itself from the other e-commerce giant in the room. Their Bellevue office houses scaling services, cloud and data-driven development teams.
How much paid maternity leave?: In 2016, the company upped its paid maternity leave offering to 12 weeks.
Anything else?: The company also offers 12 weeks of family leave.
Backstory: The Gates Foundation is one of Puget Sound’s preeminent nonprofit organizations, working to improve health, economic development and education in disadvantaged areas of the world. We realize they aren’t really a tech company, but we had to mention their paid parental leave policy. Oh, and they are hiring engineers.
How much paid maternity leave?: The Gates Foundation offers up to 52 weeks of paid maternity leave in the first year after birth or adoption.
Surely there can’t be anything else?: So those 52 weeks of paid parental leave? That applies for all parents, not just birth mothers. Yep.
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