On day care, Google makes a rare fumble

Search giant has been facing a reality check regarding its subsidized, high-quality child care: make it affordable to all employees or just the wealthiest ones?
(From The New York Times)

The story "On day care, Google makes a rare fumble" published July 5, 2008 at 11:45 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[Anthony, from Rivernet Communi]

Perhaps Google should just close down it's internal day-care and share the cost per child on an outside source. Like cost-sharing, or some cost matching plan. Sadly, Google _is_ just turning into just another company.

[nachurboy]

When you're dealing with a public company, it will ALWAYS be "just another company" because it is beholden to the shareholders now. Unless you own 51%, your wants mean diddly squat.

[WhuzYoDaddy]

A mesage to Google employees:

Welcome to the REAL world.

[azcomicgeek]

Why not just outsource the day-care and ship the kiddies to India.

[rrod182]

Google is a fascist corporation that cares very little for people. Employees are merely variables in an algorithm. I am surprised they don't have an entrance exam or IQ requirement for the kids yet. Certainly only the best and brightest kids "deserve" the best toys and teachers.

[drmultimillionaire]

please don't breed. please.

[solrosenberg]

If ya can't afford to feed 'em, don't breed 'em. Just like many purchased houses they can't afford, it seems many have popped out little ones they can't really afford.

[Xtoo]

As screwed up as this comment is, it is totally true. People just think having a kid is the cutesy thing in the world but many don't think of the real cost of having one. The old say that kids come with their own bread under the arm is obsolete by 100 years. If you can't afford them don't have them.

[RobertFHarwood]

You obviously missed the point of this article.

[mom_of_tor]

Are you kidding? This article didn't mention that any employee was struggling to feed their children. Only that they are outraged at a nearly 75% hike in price over the previous cost - of which as the article also mentioned, the $33k that was already being charged is much higher than any other company provided daycare around. On top of this, you should also know that in general $2750 per month in daycare is outrageous to begin with much less the increased $4750 per month. Google should be ashamed of ripping off their employees this way - especially since this was a major draw for many of them deciding to work for their company.

[rapier1]

Hey Sol, who are you and what planet did you evolve on? I'm just curious because I thought all the troglodytes vanished centuries ago. All issues of evolutionary throwbacks aside, I really don't think most of the google employees can't afford to raise kids - I think its that a lot of them are outraged that google wants $57,000 a year for day care (which is far higher than average day care costs and definitely exceeds my take home) because some woman with a very iffy position at the company decided that this hyper expensive option was the only one they'd offer.

Google, internally, is a very odd company with weird dysfunctionalities that end up excluding all the people that don't want to drink the kool-aid. Its not so bad at the satellite offices but I understand main campus is getting all kinds of Jim Jones.

[tlite722]

we live on the planet that doesn't have day/child care as a right as opposed to a perk or benefit...a benefit that MOST companies don't have might i add so they should thank the company that its even offered. if people don't want to pay $57k a year for it, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE and pay less but don't whine about it and start crying and get a sense of entitlement just because you got it good for the last year or two or five. Google is doing the smart thing. Having it cost the company less and putting the responsibility back on the parent while whittling down the waiting list to those that want to pay for the convenience of not having an extra stop in the morning to drop their kids off at a sub par day care.

Wah.

[rapier1]

Seems to me that if you want an employee to work 10 to 12 hour days as part of their normal schedule you need to provide outsized benefits. And really, affordable quality daycare should be a right available to all people. Its better for the economy, its better for long term crime rates, and its better for future productivity of comming generations. Its idiotic and shortsighted of businesses and governments not to works towards that. The problem is that Google decided to play the elitist hand and gear their offering entirely towards the ipo-millionaires they have working there rather than the the later employees that are helping grow the company.

[Xtoo]

I don't feel sorry for the parents. All parents should look at the real cost of having a kid but many just have them. If your wallet can't provide it don't buy it. As a business owner, I don't feel its a company's responsibility to help you with your kid. If you don't like it go somewhere else. It is your child not ours.

[WhuzYoDaddy]

It's not about "affording" kids. These employees can more than afford them. It's just that they're whining because all of a sudden they're having to explore other alternatives than an employer-subsidized daycare.

Quite frankly, GOOG shareholders should be royally pissed that the company was spending this much money on benefits. Apparently Brin and his lemmings learned nothing from the dot com bust of 2000.

[natis--2008]

And were the individuals that chose to not have kids been given something of equivalent worth when it was a free service?

[pmfjoe]

Wow, I am rather stunned at the cost of their daycare, perhaps here in FL our costs are just that much lower but it would be hard to find a daycare that charges more than 1k a month. Heck even the private schools are only 1-1.5k a month.

[rcrusoe]

"There are many people in this country ... who believe that employer-provided day care, at affordable prices, ought to be like health insurance, a benefit that every company provides as a matter of course."

Salaries, health care, day care, etc. all come out of the same bucket of money. When health care costs go up, the money available for raises, etc. goes down. When employee cost gets too high then something has to go. One only has to look at Detroit to see what happens when that occurs.

My economics professor taught us that a company exists for only one purpose - to make money for its owners (i.e. stockholders). And if it doesn't make enough they will invest their money elsewhere.

[Xtoo]

These employees will soon ask google to walk their dogs as well. Just suck it up and deal with your child expenses but not at any company's cost whether is google or the family own coffee shop down the street. Ridiculous!!! If you want to have kids make sure you can pay for them on your own. And if you don't like to work 12 hour day, go look for work somewhere else.

[bassboat8]

what a fiasco! Google is stupid in the way they handled the situation from its inception, the employees are a bunch of whiners and both should be spanked.

[Johnr34231]

I tend to agree with bassboat8 in that there is plenty of blame to go around here. Google has obviously not handled the situation well, but for those cut out of day care, welcome to the real world where R.H.I.P. If you don't like it, bust your butt and get promoted so you can join the privileged few.

[tlite722]

and since when is a published employee benefit a first come first serve type of thing. you don't find a waiting list for health coverage or dental. You don't have 401k matching on the first 1,000 employees that sign up. why is this benefit different and why...if i'm one of those on the waiting list...not outraged that i am being denied an offered benefit because i wasn't employee #3 and i have to wait until their kids can stop crapping in their pants for mine to get in? if i were google, i'd scrap the whole thing and give everyone that qualifies a credit for an outside third party daycare and leave it at that. even better is if google (or every employer) would give each employer a bucket of benefits in which they can pick and choose what they want. if the employee wants to blow it on child care then OK. for the childless employee let them get new cars each year with the $30k or whatever that the company blows on child care for each employee now. that is truly fair.

[JImmyDoDing]

Aye Aye Aye can you say Daddy Day Care? /www.an0n.mirrorz.com/

[radjpat]

Rcrusoe... your economics professor is living in fantasyland. Currently corporations exist to make money for the corporate officers... the stockholders are considered an obstacle to be gotten around to plunder the companies assets.

[LibertyVista]

I assume that the New York Times provides stellar childcare subsidies for it's employees, while cutting jobs like crazy, and criticizing Google's policies.

[fokkwp]

It's no secret what happens at Apple or Google or any other hot company. Somehow - and it may be luck or great leadership or whatever (more likely being in the right place at the right time, with some people ready to take advantage of it) - it begins to attract the youngest, brightest talent, who attract more of the same. Once it is going, 90% of the company's luster and success is this self-fulfilling wheel of attraction, not some great new operational philosophy or whatever. When the wheel begins to slow down, loss of momentum leads to more loss of momentum. There's nothing particularly magnanimous about creating great working conditions for the most productive people on the planet - it's just good business. One of the ways Microsoft dealt with its slowdown was to outsource all of the "ordinary" people - front office staff, etc. - and to exclude them from the "great working conditions" so that those conditions could continue to be focussed on the talented few. It seems like a great idea to have your employees eat, breath, do their laundry, raise their kids, even sleep at the company as long as they are the 5% cream of the crop (educated and raised at public expense, of course, and in the few prime years of their lives, ready to work 70 hour weeks, etc.), but as they attract fewer of those and more "ordinary" folks, it's time to cut back to ordinary benefits, and to outsource so that all the non-benefited folks are not really part of the "great company" any more.

[jbssnc]

If they'd force the kids to watch TV commercials 8 hours a day, or click AdWords, they could probably offer childcare for free! And it'd boost their revenues at the same time.

[thesanemarketer]

This article is fascinating in its small insight into the near mythical Google culture. It seems that there are some ****** in the highly polished armor. But it comes down to simple economics. Even if you're a billionaire like the founders, you still must cut costs in the organization. And subsidizing each child $37K is simply insane. If I'm a Google employee without a child, why should I pay for the overhead of giving children the best care on earth? That money could be deployed in another way that benefits me as well.

On-sight day care is a benefit, a luxury, a recruiting tool, a convenience, etc... but it's not a "right." Googlers it seems, and Americans in general, have this outrageous sense of entitlement, and apparently parents of small children particularly so. Google doesn't have to provide the best day care on earth. If you want that for your child, you must pay for it yourself. Not expect your company to do so.

The Sane Marketer, marketingsanity.blogspot.com

[Magamus]

i don't think that they necessarily thought it was a right, but rather the fact that Google at one point did use it as a selling feature. but the major problem here isn't that people think they deserve it, it is that they are being charged private school prices because Google believes that they should offer the equivalent, with no other options. i'm sure that most of them can afford outside day-care, and if they want to take their kids elsewhere now i guess they don't really have a choice. but to have the cost be raised that much at the say of someone who can glibly say "oh i'm going to keep my kids in there" then the people who feel they have a "right" isn't the little people anymore.

so you are right. Google doesn't have to provide the best day-care on the earth. but if they offer it to their employees, they should at least make it comparable to the rest of the world; because really, it's just bad business sense to offer non-affordable day-care (and yes, i consider $57k/year non-affordable, even if i did make 6 figures a year) when their own competitors are now offering what they cannot.