Cliché Alert!

I really can't believe it's been two years since we started McLemore Luong. I also can't believe I haven't written one of these posts in almost a year – thank you @Carmen for reminding/berating me into doing this. I've toyed around with how to write these articles, looked at different corporate leaders, and decided that the off-the-cuff, first-person perspective is absolutely the right way for me to write these. I just can't bring myself to write a professional blog post when all I do most days is write professional everything else.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll talk about what we have done to make it two years in this startup endeavor. So let's get into it. This week, I’ll talk about one of our most exciting accomplishments:

We Had a Baby!

One of our most meaningful achievements in our first two years is our first opportunity to offer paid family leave. WE HAD A BABY, PEOPLE. That "we" is obviously the royal "We," and of course, "we" as a company had absolutely no part in the planning, execution, or delivery of said baby. But we did have a hand in being a small part of that baby's ability to spend time with BOTH of her parents for her first month of existence. I wrote about this in a previous post when it happened back in April, but I really want to get into it here because it's eye-opening how it worked out.

So, what did it cost us? Nothing. And this isn't to be smug, and it's not to brag exactly, but in the grand scheme of things – as a company of 15 – paying an employee to have one month off costs a negligible amount of money—full stop. Let's call it $6,000 for the purposes of this article. Many factors go into why that's an insignificant sum of money. Still, the bottom line is that for 1/15th of the company to have a baby and for the ability to impart to an employee the commitment and goodwill we have as a firm to place family first, it's just not a burden. We worked out this employee's schedule, planned around it, and kept humming along just fine.

What I take away from all of this is that for all the bitching and moaning (I'm sure that might get edited out by my marketing department, but if it stays in, we [you, the reader, and I] will both be equally surprised) that companies do about how much of a pain this is and how they justify not providing this benefit is beyond me. If we, as a startup, can make this happen, nobody in this industry can justify not doing it. And frankly, I'm looking forward to the end-of-year review of our policy manual to extend that benefit longer moving forward. [Carmen edit: I left the cursing in for maximum effect.]

Our firm has spoken time and time again about how architecture has a people problem. We have always stood on the side of the issue that keeps people, especially women, empowered and supported in the workplace after starting a family.