Netflix Offering New Parents Up To 1-Year Of Paid Leave For Employees

LOS GATOS (CBS SF) -- New parents working for Netflix will be able to take up to a year off with pay as the company announced their new policy Tuesday.

The employee benefit announced Tuesday on Netflix's blog is generous even by the high standards of Silicon Valley, where free meals and other perquisites supplement lavish salaries in the fiercely competitive battle for computer programmers and other technology workers.

Niti Mendiratta, a mother working in tech, especially loves that dads get equal time off.

Her husband got a measly seven days when she had a child.

"They need to bond with the kid as well."

In that first year, parents can work as much or as little as they'd like and they'd still get a paycheck.

Tristan Seroff works in tech, and even though he wouldn't use a whole year off, he would take advantage of the extra time.

"I would want to take off a couple months - three to six maybe, and then come back in to work part time," Seroff said.

Tim Bajarin, President of Creative Strategies says it's all about competition between tech titans in Silicon Valley

"In order for tech to run, you have to have really good people," Bajarin said. "If Netflix does this, it's going to put pressure on other tech companies who want to keep their engineering staff and people happy."

Google, which consistently ranks among the best places to work, offers 18 weeks of paid maternity leave. Parents can also take up to 12 weeks of paid "baby bonding" time during their child's first year.

Netflix says the baby-leave policy applies to all of the roughly 2,000 people working at its Internet video and DVD-by-mail services.

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