Facebook Inc chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday he is to take two months of paternity leave after his daughter’s birth, a strong statement from one of the busiest and most powerful US executives on the importance of family time.
Silicon Valley technology firms have rushed to extend parental leave allowances and other benefits in an attempt to recruit and retain talent, but many workers do not take advantage for fear of falling behind at work or missing out on promotions.
Facebook allows its US employees to take up to four months of paid maternity or paternity leave, which can be used all at once or throughout the first year of their child’s life.
A study conducted this year by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 21 percent of employers it surveyed offered paid maternity leave and 17 percent provided paid paternity leave.
“This is a very personal decision,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page, along with a picture of a stroller, a yellow baby carrier and his dog, Beast. “Studies show that when working parents take time to be with their newborns, outcomes are better for the children and families.”
Zuckerberg, 31, did not say who would be running the company while he is out. Facebook did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
It is likely that chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who oversees all of Facebook’s advertising, is to assume leadership. Zuckerberg largely oversees products, but would likely rely on chief product officer Chris Cox while he is out.
Zuckerberg’s decision is unusual among high-level tech executives, especially men. Yahoo Inc chief executive officer Marissa Mayer took two weeks off after her first child’s birth in 2012 and when she announced she was pregnant with identical twin girls in September, she said she would be taking limited maternity leave and “working throughout.”
Zuckerberg’s post generated more than 50,000 “likes” in one hour and nearly 3,000 comments.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained