6 ms·

Relatively few people were able to take advantage of the on-site daycare because of long waitlists and exorbitantly high prices (sometimes as much as $4-5K/mont

Relatively few people were able to take advantage of the on-site daycare because of long waitlists and exorbitantly high prices (sometimes as much as $4-5K/month). I remember when I first joined in 2009 there was a bunch of friction because new arrivals - those who had joined post-IPO and whose stock was then underwater - could not afford it, and so it was felt like it was a perk that went exclusively to pre-IPO Googlers. Sometime in the early 2010s, it also ceased to actually be on-site. I lived near the Bernardo/El Camino neighborhood in the late 2010s and the daycare on the corner there is actually one of the Google daycares shuttered in the recent announcement. It's more like 3 miles from campus. Most of the folks I know who actually optimize for commute time have their kids at private daycares in the Middlefield area.

swozey 3y ago
You had to pay.. 4-5k/mo for daycare, at work? I don't know if they ever built it because I left prior but Rackspace was going/did add a daycare at their hq (castle) and as far as I know it would be/was free.. At least there was never any mention of cost before I left. Big difference in number of employees but also massive difference in quarterly profits. A lot of the younger child-free people were angry about it and wanted a bar or something added for them. I've never worked anywhere with a daycare except a Golds Gym in high school so I'm not familiar with how they usually go.
- swexbe 3y ago
  That’s crazy. Couldn’t you basically hire a day-time nanny for that price?
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Going rate for a nanny is about $25/hour or about $4000-5000/month in the Bay Area, so yes, it was roughly the same price. I know many, many Googler families with daytime nannies, night nannies, multiple nannies, etc. The two main things you got with the in-house daycare was a.) consistency and b.) convenience. I have a teammate whose kid went through the Google daycare; she said that at the time (over a decade ago now), it really was quite high quality, and because the caretakers were in-house employees of Google, they had passed the same high bar as the rest of Google employees. (I've also heard that this - like many other things about Google - has gone downhill in recent years, and that people whose kids went through post-COVID dealt with high staff turnover and inadequate care.) Meanwhile, almost everybody I know who uses nannies for full-time care has had horror stories about finding a reliable nanny. Some are flakes who don't show up to work; some seem to have perpetual car trouble; some are neglectful; some always have their boyfriend come over and spend more time with him than the kids; some get fired for putting the kids in danger. Nannies are not licensed, unlike daycares. It's very much parent-beware, and a lot of people don't have time to search for a good nanny, hire them, and monitor them to make sure their kids will be safe. There's also just a convenience benefit from having your kid on-site. You can share commutes; you can use the carpool lane; your schedules are identical; you can pick up your kid in a blink if they get sick; you know they're always close; you don't need to coordinate logistics with a nanny; your time schedules will overlay; and so on.
    - matsemann 3y ago
      > and because the caretakers were in-house employees of Google, they had passed the same high bar as the rest of Google employees I wonder what the equivalent "why are manhole covers round" and "reverse this linked list" questions are for a caretaker.
      - archagon 3y ago
        If anything, Google should ask prospective engineers how they would corral a room full of boisterous toddlers.
        hansvm 3y ago
        Oh, they already do that. IIRC, the phrasing was "how do you deal with multi-team dependencies and OKR conflicts?"
ziddoap 3y ago
>Relatively few people were able to take advantage of the on-site daycare because of long waitlists I might be parsing this incorrectly, but isn't this sentence saying "too many people used the daycare (long waitlist), so not many people could use it"?
- medler 3y ago
  But the people on the waitlist are not using the daycare. I don’t know the numbers in this case but you could imagine a daycare with 10 slots and 1000 people on the waitlist.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  "Nobody Goes There Anymore. It’s Too Crowded" - Yogi Berra The point isn't about popularity (or not) of the daycare. The point is that on-site daycare isn't a competitive advantage for Google, because it is understood that the perk is rarely available.
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    >The point is that on-site daycare isn't a competitive advantage for Google, because it is understood that the perk is rarely available/convenient. Except for the people who filled up all of the slots of the daycare, right? Surely it was seen as an advantage to those people, it was available, and it was convenient. Which I think was the point of the original poster. Implying that dry cleaning and daycare have the same level of importance is just kind of silly. However, nostrademons worded it in a way (on another comment here) that my smooth brain was able to parse better, and makes sense/resolves the contradiction I was pointing out.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- nostrademons 3y ago
  A better model is "The daycare was supply-constrained and never expanded at the same rate as Google's employee base, so it ended up having little influence on the overall population." That resolves the contradiction while still being an accurate representation of reality. It's the same phenomena as the housing market or California's population today. Both are super expensive and not growing. The reason they are super expensive is that they are not growing, while the pool of potential buyers is.
euroderf 3y ago
> (sometimes as much as $4-5K/month) That's not a service, that's a profit center !

swozey 3y ago

You had to pay.. 4-5k/mo for daycare, at work? I don't know if they ever built it because I left prior but Rackspace was going/did add a daycare at their hq (castle) and as far as I know it would be/was free.. At least there was never any mention of cost before I left. Big difference in number of employees but also massive difference in quarterly profits. A lot of the younger child-free people were angry about it and wanted a bar or something added for them. I've never worked anywhere with a daycare except a Golds Gym in high school so I'm not familiar with how they usually go.

swexbe 3y ago
That’s crazy. Couldn’t you basically hire a day-time nanny for that price?
- nostrademons 3y ago
  Going rate for a nanny is about $25/hour or about $4000-5000/month in the Bay Area, so yes, it was roughly the same price. I know many, many Googler families with daytime nannies, night nannies, multiple nannies, etc. The two main things you got with the in-house daycare was a.) consistency and b.) convenience. I have a teammate whose kid went through the Google daycare; she said that at the time (over a decade ago now), it really was quite high quality, and because the caretakers were in-house employees of Google, they had passed the same high bar as the rest of Google employees. (I've also heard that this - like many other things about Google - has gone downhill in recent years, and that people whose kids went through post-COVID dealt with high staff turnover and inadequate care.) Meanwhile, almost everybody I know who uses nannies for full-time care has had horror stories about finding a reliable nanny. Some are flakes who don't show up to work; some seem to have perpetual car trouble; some are neglectful; some always have their boyfriend come over and spend more time with him than the kids; some get fired for putting the kids in danger. Nannies are not licensed, unlike daycares. It's very much parent-beware, and a lot of people don't have time to search for a good nanny, hire them, and monitor them to make sure their kids will be safe. There's also just a convenience benefit from having your kid on-site. You can share commutes; you can use the carpool lane; your schedules are identical; you can pick up your kid in a blink if they get sick; you know they're always close; you don't need to coordinate logistics with a nanny; your time schedules will overlay; and so on.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    > and because the caretakers were in-house employees of Google, they had passed the same high bar as the rest of Google employees I wonder what the equivalent "why are manhole covers round" and "reverse this linked list" questions are for a caretaker.
    - archagon 3y ago
      If anything, Google should ask prospective engineers how they would corral a room full of boisterous toddlers.
      - hansvm 3y ago
        Oh, they already do that. IIRC, the phrasing was "how do you deal with multi-team dependencies and OKR conflicts?"

ziddoap 3y ago

>Relatively few people were able to take advantage of the on-site daycare because of long waitlists I might be parsing this incorrectly, but isn't this sentence saying "too many people used the daycare (long waitlist), so not many people could use it"?

medler 3y ago
But the people on the waitlist are not using the daycare. I don’t know the numbers in this case but you could imagine a daycare with 10 slots and 1000 people on the waitlist.
dfxm12 3y ago
"Nobody Goes There Anymore. It’s Too Crowded" - Yogi Berra The point isn't about popularity (or not) of the daycare. The point is that on-site daycare isn't a competitive advantage for Google, because it is understood that the perk is rarely available.
- ziddoap 3y ago
  >The point is that on-site daycare isn't a competitive advantage for Google, because it is understood that the perk is rarely available/convenient. Except for the people who filled up all of the slots of the daycare, right? Surely it was seen as an advantage to those people, it was available, and it was convenient. Which I think was the point of the original poster. Implying that dry cleaning and daycare have the same level of importance is just kind of silly. However, nostrademons worded it in a way (on another comment here) that my smooth brain was able to parse better, and makes sense/resolves the contradiction I was pointing out.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
nostrademons 3y ago
A better model is "The daycare was supply-constrained and never expanded at the same rate as Google's employee base, so it ended up having little influence on the overall population." That resolves the contradiction while still being an accurate representation of reality. It's the same phenomena as the housing market or California's population today. Both are super expensive and not growing. The reason they are super expensive is that they are not growing, while the pool of potential buyers is.

euroderf 3y ago

> (sometimes as much as $4-5K/month) That's not a service, that's a profit center !