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165 Comments
- inactive, on 07/06/2008, -11/+49So a company with some of the best benefits in the world is scaling back a little bit in the midst of a recession... At least you're still getting free meals! I have to buy crap out of the wheel o' death. Do you know what it's like eating a four day old microwaved hamburger?!
- nobody98, on 07/06/2008, -15/+53Google is not a charity. Their employees already get kickass benefits and quite a hefty pay I should imagine. Does not seem like that big a deal.
If it is above the market rate and their extremely unhappy about it... why not just put your kids in some other day care centre. Simple. - lonehunter01, on 07/06/2008, -10/+32How dare they charge for services. It's like they're a business or something.
- HawkeyeMatt, on 07/06/2008, -4/+25I always figured the daycare was free along with everything else. Maybe they should scale back on the other free ***** they have? Free gourmet meals and spa treatment or whatever the ***** they have is certainly nice but it might not fit the needs of the employees.
- CatsAreGods, on 07/06/2008, -1/+19This is a laugh to people raising 2 teenagers on a total family income of the same $2500/month (also in California).
- kd420, on 07/06/2008, -12/+29Oh no you'll have to use non-Google day care. At worst, you'll be paying the market rate for childcare, give me a break. Yes, Google could be nice, but they're a business. Don't expect your employer to give you stuff for free just to keep up this "nice-guy" image you are forcing on them.
- inactive, on 07/06/2008, -12/+25Even when Google is wrong, Diggers still suck their corporate dick.
- gryphon50, on 07/06/2008, -7/+20you know, infants should not be in daycare period. I'm not sure about young toddlers either. I know many people have to rely on it but some don't....we know this couple that moved into a half-million dollar house shortly after their baby was born and then of course they "had to" put their baby into daycare because then they couldn't afford to have one of them stay home. If one of you can stay home, it's better for your child.
- siszam, on 07/06/2008, -1/+12They better be paying great money if people have to pay $57,000 or even $33,000 for child care. That is outrageous! An employee could quit, watch three children and make an above average income without ever leaving home. Then they could raise their own children instead of letting strangers do it.....which should be the goal of parenting in the first place.
- cdigioia, on 07/06/2008, -1/+12Price per share is kinda meaningless...
e.g. - Google could make their stock worth about $1/share overnight if they just split it enough times - but the company would still have the same value. - Malarie, on 07/06/2008, -1/+11No offense. but here in Quebec, the government pays for Child Day Care. All we have to pay is 5$ a day. Welcome to Canada.
- SIRBERUS, on 07/06/2008, -1/+11Depends how many shares.
- incongruity, on 07/06/2008, -1/+11Maybe you wouldn't -- but it strikes me as an interesting insight into the way things are going at google... and being childless myself, it shocked me that you'd pay between 30k and 60k to put a kid into daycare. Now, all of the sudden, I understand stay-at-home parents much more clearly.
- LSDRunner, on 07/06/2008, -0/+10To save money they should just offer to temporarily tattoo Google Ads on the baby (the ads change every month. eg. if the kid is fat, SlimFast; Constipated, Exlax.)
Just like the companies that pay for your gas if you plaster their ad on your car. - AzraDarkness, on 07/06/2008, -3/+13WOW!!! My wife is only charging $30/day..I think we are getting the shaft!
- inactive, on 07/06/2008, -4/+14600 people at 65k a year. that's how much GOOG would have to pay to give them all free daycare, at least those waiting in line.
that's 39 million dollars a year, or about as much profit as google makes in 2 hours.
why did google suddenly pull the plug and risk pissing off their employees? maybe this quarter's numbers are not going to be so great.. - techiemac, on 07/06/2008, -2/+11This is easily said enough if you don't have a kid.
Personally, being a dad, and loving every minute of it, daycare is a necessary evil today. My wife and I have to go through the long task of finding a day care that we feel comfortable with (trust me, it is a tough process to find the "right one" where we can trust our first born with) simply to make sure things are square financially.
This is with her working nights and me working days so we can minimize the total "daycare time". But we don't have a fancy car (we both drive Hondas) or a big house (a townhome) by design. I'm happy with what I have, live a comfortable lifestyle, and if one of us lost our jobs, we can avoid losing the house. This is with 2 fairly well paying jobs.
So we have not succumbed to the McMansion/Hummer lifestyle simply because we don't care for it and believe the whole lifestyle is irresponsible from an environmental and financial perspective.
But here is why we need to send my wife back to work... kids are expensive today. Totally worth while but seriously expensive. It starts with hospital bills from birth (God help you if you don't have insurance) to all the little things. When I say hospital bills, the normal cost of a birth is $5000. If the kid has to spend some time in the NICU (i.e. if they need an IV, they have to go to the NICU), then it's about $3000-$8000 per day. And the costs keep on coming after they are born. After becoming a dad, I know why parents get excited for diaper sales (a box of diapers does not last long). Now go price a car seat that won't send your little one through the window if some dude decides to rear end you in his Hummer (see above rant about McMansion lifestyle ;) ). Don't forget the stroller with all of this! Oh, and doctors appointments, vitamins, first aid kits, clothes, crib, bottles, pacifiers, etc all add up. This is just for the first year. Don't forget to start a college fund the day your kid is born since it's probably going to cost half a million dollars for my son at the rate tuitions are going up (at least in the US)!
My wife and I planned for all this financially. Granted some people buy a plasma tv instead of setting some money aside for their future family and that is just not right. Part of our financial planning required sending my wife back to work in order to facilitate providing a decent future for my kid. Not to mention we are planning on having another at some point in the future so that requires even more $$$. In today's world, at least in the US, it's very difficult to have only one person working in the family no matter how frugal you are. So daycare is, unfortunately, a necessary evil in many places.
If I had the chance to have daycare at work, then I would jump at it. It comes down to how happy you want your employees to be. Remember, after you have a kid, that's really all that matters in your life. My son is my world and seeing him smile can make the crappiest day the best day of my life. If I could see my son over lunch or take a quick break to hold him for a bit, then it really would relieve a lot of the frustrations at work and make me much more productive.
What's happening here with Google really is a shame. There really are a lot of sharp folks that work there and I have a feeling that some of Google's competitors will offer their employees better "child friendly" perks in order to lure the Googlers away. - dood, on 07/06/2008, -2/+11120k won't get you a 1.2 million dollar house unless you've got an enormous down payment, and based on my calculations $2500/month would be 1/4 that $120k annual income, pre-tax. 25% of anyone's income isn't chump change.
- MasterChi, on 07/06/2008, -0/+8Why couldn't you quit your job and stay home and be a father to the kids? Why does she have to quit and be home 24/7? In a marriage you need flexibility and cooperation......trust me you'll find that perfect lady and she might not agree to be "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" so you might just have to play that role when the time comes.
- Super6, on 07/06/2008, -5/+13Google employees make a lot of money so here's an idea: one parent works at Google, the other own stays home and raises their own kid. Revolutionary, I know, but maybe people should give a shot at raising their own kids if they can afford it.
- aphexcoil, on 07/06/2008, -1/+9Ummm .. $2,500 a month is *NOT* chump change for someone making $120k. I don't quite make that, but I am already taxed to death. Even if I made the extra K to get me to 120, I'd be spending half on taxes.
I don't know what world you live in but $2,500 is NOT chump change. - solstice21, on 07/06/2008, -0/+8"But here’s the real problem: providing day care isn’t an economics experiment, nor should it be just another Google perk, alongside organic food and free M&Ms. Day care matters to people’s lives in a way that few other perks do. There are many people in this country — including, I’ll bet, many Googlers — 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. Yet as the technology blog Valleywag noted recently, Google doesn’t even advertise day care as a benefit for its employees anymore. That’s the real shame"
The article says it all - SpectreFire, on 07/06/2008, -1/+9It wasn't funny the first time you said it. What made you think it'll be funnier the 2nd and 3rd time around?
- inactive, on 07/06/2008, -0/+6I've always wondered about statements like that. Do you sit there and compare and contrast stories and watch for the stories to cross from one domain to the next? Do you read the stories at all?
- Apocalyptic0n3, on 07/06/2008, -0/+6while it's not free, ArvinMeritor (I'm an intern there. Fortune 500 company) has their cafeteria at the world headquarters in Troy, MI fully catered with free catering for meetings and the like. It's awesome. Doubt it compares to Google though just because $12/share compared to $517/share just doesn't compete. lol.
- shark72, on 07/06/2008, -0/+6Nope. Google salaries are a bit below average for the area.
People from say, Cedar Rapids hoot and holler when they see examples of salaries out here. "Hoo boy," they shriek. "I'd love to work as a JANITOR at Google!".
What they don't understand is that a decent 2BR apartment rents for $2000 a month, and that the median home price is north of $700K.
Trust me: if you live out here and work for Google, you'd better hope that your stock options work out. - 1hrSleep, on 07/06/2008, -2/+8They're NOT scaling back. They're actually just making the daycare extremely posh and expensive. Something along the lines of gold plated, organically grown, multivitamin enriched carrots as snacks.
- artwork, on 07/06/2008, -3/+9Either way, there are no perks for singles anywhere :-/
- haikuFU, on 07/06/2008, -0/+6The average Googler makes LESS than the average salary for their field. If you're in charge of anything, you do better, but most people don't.
Silicon Valley is an expensive place to live. If you don't want to drive 4 hours into work in the morning, and 4 more at night, then you will pay for it by living within an hour of work.
No one realizes how insane traffic is, the inconvenience of having to run extra around town for daycare when you get charged $5 a minute for being late, and just the general cost of living in the Bay Area. It's not like the rest of the country. - JasonCox, on 07/06/2008, -6/+11What the heck, I mean I know Google isnt a charity but you'd think with all that cash they're sitting on they could just provide this for free out of the kindness of their heart... But then again Larry and Sergey need a place to park their plane so that's I guess where the money went.
- hobophobe, on 07/06/2008, -1/+6I believe in bringing out the best in people, but $57K/year for daycare is insane. No, really. It is.
Stop trying to be superhuman. It's a disgusting habit. No, really. It is.
For one second stop and ask yourself, $57K/year: how many people _earn_ that in a year?
Thank you for your time. - orirawlings, on 07/06/2008, -1/+6And what alot of you don't understand, is that lots of skilled talent leaving Google because employees can't afford daycare will ultimately cut deeper into profit margins than subsidizing childcare will.
- bjornski, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5There are a lot more people in your situation than those affected by this day-care price hike.
- w09p, on 07/06/2008, -4/+9Absolutely agree w/ above poster - and people love to say that kids are out of control, have behavioral problems up the ass, and are just exceptionally stupid "nowadays". I'd say, well... part of parenting is staying home to parent. It's a tough choice and a sacrifice, but if you can't do it, maybe you shouldn't have them! Families are meant to be planned. It's amazing how some people spend more time thinking about what car to buy than on when to have kids and on whether it's financially, emotionally, practically, and spatially feasible... let alone whether they truly want that kind of responsibility!
Then you get kids in kindergarten who haven't got a clue about the basics... the alphabet, counting, colors, shapes, etc... because their parents never bothered to teach them anything! Teachers aren't parents, and neither is Google. - inactive, on 07/06/2008, -5/+10"Rare Fumble"? as in the "Great wall of China" and having to produce user data from Youtube then? Yeah "Don't be evil" needs to be retired for the new slogan "Be Evil quietly"....
- thcobbs, on 07/06/2008, -1/+6And just what companies are these that pay for your gas?
- haikuFU, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5That's not the issue. Most of these parents want the Camry of daycare, onsite. And, they're willing to pay fair prices for it because they don't have to drive all over town to bring their kids there. The problem is, Google is offering the Bentley of daycare, which costs $57k per year. Only the pre-IPO millionaires can afford it.
Have you ever driven around that area? If so, you would know that taking your kid to daycare, driving to work, and picking him up before you go home is a HUGE time-wasting hassle. Daycare places charge $5 per minute or more for every minute you are late picking up your kid. If you're an hour late because of an accident on the 101, that's $300 or more out of your pocket. That's why most company's provide onsite daycare (some free, some not). - jlachesk, on 07/06/2008, -1/+6The idea is that they shouldn't try to have their hand in everything. The point of the article was that Google dumped a ***** of money into day care. Are they a day care company? I didn't think so.
The reason they '***** up' is because their poor planning is leading to a lot of parents that use this service getting hung out to dry. Instead of building "the best day care in the world" that only the elitist and wealthiest of the Google employees can afford, stick with the company that provides top quality childcare at an affordable rate. - Taedirk, on 07/06/2008, -1/+6That's...nice?
- scrtyfrk, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4I agreed up to a point... Part of the problem is that those perks gives google a competitive advantage when recruiting top talent. However, from the whole article I do get a feeling that there's a lot of waste going on within google. Google has grown in leaps and bounds in the last few years someone needs to reign in that beast before all of the value is gone. Maybe some LEAN or some such thing should be introduced over there.
- 1hrSleep, on 07/06/2008, -3/+7These aren't minimum wage drunks who have babies left and right for benefits. These are professionals who CAN afford them and want them. Professionals. If you want good employees, you have to attract them. You have to keep them happy or else they'll go elsewhere.
The previous daycare plan was perfectly fine for the parents at Google, besides the wait list. If you read the article, they wanted to shrink the waiting list by making it extremely posh and expensive. We have one of these preschool/daycare places around here. It's as big as a middle school and some highschools. This is for pre-school aged kids. Made only for the elite just as the new Google daycare is. And it's considered a complete waste of space by all who don't have kids there.
Google didn't want to help. They just wanted to have the "best" daycare on the block. - Pake, on 07/06/2008, -2/+6Oh wow, you can copy paste the same thing over and over.
Shut the ***** up. - sooner314, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4As a company, I would be more concerned about promoting benefits that appeal to as many people as possible. Catered gourmet meals, on-site spa treatment, oil changes, dry cleaning, etc. appeal to a larger section of the audience. After all, one could argue that such benefits as day care suggests the company is not as concerned about its employees who are single or don't have children.
- tiff54, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4Amen to that!
- darkane, on 07/06/2008, -1/+5Sounds like somebody is bitter that their degree from the University of Phoenix Online isn't paying off like they thought it would.
- shark72, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4Nope. It's kinda like this: say the going rate for a can of Coke is $0.60. Your company subsidizes the vending machines, so you pay $0.50. But, they announce that they're raising prices to $1.00, which is $0.40 more than you can get it for just about anywhere else.
Now, paying a buck for a Coke for the convenience of getting it at your workplace might irk you a bit, but you'll cope.
Now imagine if your company is Google, it's not Coke but daycare, and the price is changing from the going rate of $1500, to $2500. Now imagine that you can't afford $2500 per month.
People at Google don't have to imagine this. They're living it. That's why it's a big deal. - mikinurbook, on 07/06/2008, -1/+5@w09p
Wow, who took a bitter pill? You should be much happier than your tone, or so would (try) to have us believe.
I'm pretty sure you missed the point. In the simplest terms, techiemac had a goal, which he obtained, which has made him happy. You, as well, have a goal which (so you say) makes you happy. The difference? Techiemac's aspirations cost money, and yours puts money in your pocket.
Perhaps you should reevaluate your happiness...I'm just not picking up on it. - haikuFU, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4The main benefit of Google daycare is because it was onsite. Now that it's priced out of reach of most people, people are going to have to use offsite daycare. If you've driven in that area, you would know that traffic is HORRIBLE. Every minute you are late picking up your kid from daycare, you get charged $5 or more per minute. One hour late because of an accident on the 101.... $300.
Just put a damn daycare on site, make it average, charge average prices. Keep the insane daycare for the rich people, but at least provide something equitable for the rest of the people. That's like when I worked for a major luxury car company and got 30% off any of their cars, but 99% of the employees couldn't even afford them with 30% off. - Barackalypse, on 07/06/2008, -1/+5You know $2500 a month is $30,000 a year, or 25% of the net salary of someone making $120k. That certainly isn't trivial. Now realize that the actual take home on that is probably only $85k or so.
- coredump0x01, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4http://www.freegashelp.com/
I cannot verify legitimacy. -
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