Google's fallibility: Daycare that only an elitist could love (and afford)

Google continues to be at the top of its game, shoving Microsoft and Yahoo! aside in search market share and pushing into new markets, like its innovative slant on collaboration with Google Docs. But in one area Google is proving to be human, all too human:

Daycare.

The New York Times dissects Google's recent problems with its daycare (allegedly jacking up the price to accommodate Sergey Brin's sister-in-law's beliefs on the one true way to do daycare), concluding:

Google may be providing the greatest day care ever, but so what? It doesn't matter how good the day care is if only its wealthiest employees can afford to use it. If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to "scale" day care for everybody no matter what their salaries.

Instead, Google has shown that it thinks about day care the same way every other company does -- as a luxury, not a benefit. Judging by what's transpired, that's what Google is fast becoming: just another company.

Which is not to say that Google is a bad company. My problem with the situation is that Google felt the need to turn daycare into such an elitist experiment in the first place, making it so expensive that it then had to resort to tactics to shed many of its employees from the daycare rolls who wanted the service. (Read the Times' article for the details.)

Along the way, during meetings with concerned parents, Google's Sergey Brin apparently said that "he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of 'Googlers' who felt entitled to perks like 'bottled water and M&Ms'." I bet. But that's precisely the culture Brin has helped to foster at Google, and it is his sister-in-law who turned the daycare system into an entitlement so overwrought that Google was bound to have to cancel it for many of its employees...and then face their ire.

Google hasn't done anything egregiously wrong. It simply built up expectations too high. What will happen when the Oddwallas are replaced by bottled water (generic, not Evian)? When the organics-laden cafeterias give way to preservative-laced cafeterias?

As Google becomes mortal - something that it increasingly appears to be as its stock drifts - it will become more and more like other companies. Is it prepared to suffer this blow to its own self-created myths?

I think it is. But the company will need to start weaning its employees from the entitlement-nipple it has created for them, starting now.

[Mam00th]

The fall of an empire the rise of another. Although I do not particularly like Apple, I have to admit they are gaining strenght.

[Karl-Lessig]

I want to know what Google's doing for the pets, what about the pet care? Is there a Google Doggie Concierge?

[blabtech]

So Google is going a step beyond...

http://blabtech.blogspot.com

[Beenthinking]

As a CEO of start ups, there are two things you worry about, 1. Raising money, 2. Culture. Google is no start up so they don't have to worry about raising money. However Culture is such a hard thing to manage and its so important to the success of the company. Also, you rarely know when you're getting it right, but you always know when you've got it wrong. Google has made a blunder culturally speaking. They've done a great job on so many things that I'm sure they'll figure this one out as well.

[TheStairMaster]

=/ surely there are better ways to spend our time then commenting on the over-priced nature of Google's corporate daycare system. i knew The Times had time to report on stuff like this, but surely we could all do something more beneficial with our time, like take a walk, or go to the pool, or finish our latest jigsaw puzzle we haven't gotten around to finishing.

^^, just messin with you guys. have fun.

[madjack74]

This is yet another ***** in the armor. Google is going the way all big companies go. As the company gets bigger the management, investors, and employees best interests continue to diverge. Management thinks of the employee's as interchangeable parts in some great machine that only they have the brain power to understand. To this end they craft a company that rewards the 2% of people at the top of the organization, whom though their own massive hubris, believe are the only truly valuable resources. Eventually the employee?s figure out that the reward the receive is no longer commensurate with the work they do and they either leave to find greener pastures or take up what I like to call the ?work minimization? strategy. That is to say they start to optimize for doing the least amount of work possible to still receive their pay checks in an attempt to bring their reward more in line with the work they do. This is a very inefficient working dynamic and in the end totally screws over the investors in the company. I sat though half my career at Microsoft watching this dynamic slowly eat away at the once amazingly efficient company until all that is left now is empty lumping hulk waiting for someone to come along and eat its lunch. The only difference I see between Google and Microsoft is how much faster Google seems to be heading down the curve.

[alsingle]

This debate is not about whether or not people should have children or even about Google's misguided corporate culture. I wouldn't go as far as the author to suggest that subsidized or free day care is a "right" of employees, but I think that in the rare instance when a company does decide to offer day care, it ought to be reasonably priced. I think the author's key point is that Google decided to "upgrade" its day care system solely because of a single wealthy employee with close ties to senior management and a desire to artificially manipulate the long waiting list. I doubt that the majority of people who read this article can afford to spend $2300 per month on day care for one child. I have a six figure annual income and I can't afford to spend that much on day care. Does that mean that I don't deserve to have a child because I can't afford to spend that much on day care? No. Maybe the government should start issuing permits to people who can afford their children before they allow them to give birth? Here's a thought, why don't we just limit childbearing to people who have 4-year college degrees and a net worth that is sufficient to afford Google's day care program?