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This is all a bunch of weird handwringing... >Child care is a competitive business that can almost always be provided better and cheaper elsewhere. So it's muc

This is all a bunch of weird handwringing... >Child care is a competitive business that can almost always be provided better and cheaper elsewhere. So it's much better to use stipends to subsidize employee child care. Child care facilities aim for profit like any other business, and a corporate add-on doesn't need to seek profitability (and even if they did, assuming it's on-site the operational overhead is ultimately lower). So how exactly would outside facilities compete with that? >Having child care is also an expensive distraction and liability for management Having children is an expensive distraction whether or not your company is involved. If something happens at a remote daycare, your employee will leave the building to manage that. If there's a child-care gap that doesn't align with work schedules, your employee will take time off to deal with that. >What happens when an employee accuses a child-care worker of hurting their child? What happens when an employee accuses another employee of hurting them? >or do you want to spend your time thinking about how to better sell product and keep employee's employed I want to spend my time making a good product and making my employees lives easier so they can do their best work.

valuearb 9y ago
Making something non-profit doesn't make it efficient. If your business is child-care, it's your job to know the cheapest/best way to comply with regs, build child-care locations to meet market demands, hire child-care staff, enforce appropriate rules and procedures, etc, etc, etc. Running a software company doesn't give you any of those skills. Someone specializing in the business of child-care should be able to wipe the floor with anything your software company puts up in it's spare time. Children are a distraction, I know. But having the management of the company involved in making decisions about how your kids are being cared for is a distraction from their core duties. By definition they are going to be slightly worse at sales, marketing, development, etc because they have to spend time on childcare. Having childcare only benefits a few employees for a few years of their lives. There is nothing wrong with having company childcare, I'm playing the devils advocate a bit here, but there is also nothing wrong with saying the outside world will be better at serving this need and just offering a stipend to help parents with the cost.
accountyaccount 9y ago
>Making something non-profit doesn't make it efficient. If your business is child-care, it's your job to know the cheapest/best way to comply with regs, build child-care locations to meet market demands, hire child-care staff, enforce appropriate rules and procedures, etc, etc, etc. You hire someone for this >Running a software company doesn't give you any of those skills. Someone specializing in the business of child-care should be able to wipe the floor with anything your software company puts up in it's spare time. Same hire as above >Children are a distraction, I know. But having the management of the company involved in making decisions about how your kids are being cared for is a distraction from their core duties. By definition they are going to be slightly worse at sales, marketing, development, etc because they have to spend time on childcare. Seriously, hire like one person. >Having childcare only benefits a few employees for a few years of their lives. There is nothing wrong with having company childcare, I'm playing the devils advocate a bit here, but there is also nothing wrong with saying the outside world will be better at serving this need and just offering a stipend to help parents with the cost. I'm talking about companies with hundreds of employees in the same building... like Apple, who has built a massively enormous HQ without childcare. An issue that likely impacts dozens, if not hundreds, of their employees at this location.
- valuearb 9y ago
  I think you greatly over-estimate the ease of hiring someone to run child-care for your company. Are they skilled at it? You don't know, their resume looked good to you, but your expertise is elsewhere. Are their policies correct? Again, you don't know. Are your liabilities reasonably covered? Who knows? And you still have to manage that person on a day to day basis. You have to be able to fire them if they screw up, you have to know whats going on in their department. You can educate yourself, but again you won't become an expert and that's time you could spend building your business. Even for Apple, and Tim Cook, it's easier to rely on the competitive market to provide child-care. The best of all worlds would be to rent space to a child-care provider, and bid out the service to get the best child-care possible. There are still issues, such as you don't want the low bidder, and you have to do research to pick the best bidder. But at least you aren't running it day to day.

valuearb 9y ago

Making something non-profit doesn't make it efficient. If your business is child-care, it's your job to know the cheapest/best way to comply with regs, build child-care locations to meet market demands, hire child-care staff, enforce appropriate rules and procedures, etc, etc, etc. Running a software company doesn't give you any of those skills. Someone specializing in the business of child-care should be able to wipe the floor with anything your software company puts up in it's spare time. Children are a distraction, I know. But having the management of the company involved in making decisions about how your kids are being cared for is a distraction from their core duties. By definition they are going to be slightly worse at sales, marketing, development, etc because they have to spend time on childcare. Having childcare only benefits a few employees for a few years of their lives. There is nothing wrong with having company childcare, I'm playing the devils advocate a bit here, but there is also nothing wrong with saying the outside world will be better at serving this need and just offering a stipend to help parents with the cost.

accountyaccount 9y ago

>Making something non-profit doesn't make it efficient. If your business is child-care, it's your job to know the cheapest/best way to comply with regs, build child-care locations to meet market demands, hire child-care staff, enforce appropriate rules and procedures, etc, etc, etc. You hire someone for this >Running a software company doesn't give you any of those skills. Someone specializing in the business of child-care should be able to wipe the floor with anything your software company puts up in it's spare time. Same hire as above >Children are a distraction, I know. But having the management of the company involved in making decisions about how your kids are being cared for is a distraction from their core duties. By definition they are going to be slightly worse at sales, marketing, development, etc because they have to spend time on childcare. Seriously, hire like one person. >Having childcare only benefits a few employees for a few years of their lives. There is nothing wrong with having company childcare, I'm playing the devils advocate a bit here, but there is also nothing wrong with saying the outside world will be better at serving this need and just offering a stipend to help parents with the cost. I'm talking about companies with hundreds of employees in the same building... like Apple, who has built a massively enormous HQ without childcare. An issue that likely impacts dozens, if not hundreds, of their employees at this location.

valuearb 9y ago
I think you greatly over-estimate the ease of hiring someone to run child-care for your company. Are they skilled at it? You don't know, their resume looked good to you, but your expertise is elsewhere. Are their policies correct? Again, you don't know. Are your liabilities reasonably covered? Who knows? And you still have to manage that person on a day to day basis. You have to be able to fire them if they screw up, you have to know whats going on in their department. You can educate yourself, but again you won't become an expert and that's time you could spend building your business. Even for Apple, and Tim Cook, it's easier to rely on the competitive market to provide child-care. The best of all worlds would be to rent space to a child-care provider, and bid out the service to get the best child-care possible. There are still issues, such as you don't want the low bidder, and you have to do research to pick the best bidder. But at least you aren't running it day to day.