About 3 weeks ago Valleywag posted a story on a mess up that seemed to be happening over at Google with their child care programs. After taking their child care program in house they significantly increased the fees to the point that the child care became totally unaffordable for many of the employees. Some say this was part of a plan to greatly reduce the number of children on their waiting lists for child care spaces! Here is an excerpt:
Google no longer advertises subsidized daycare as a benefit to its employees. So why is the company building luxuriously unaffordable child-care centers at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and closing down Kinderplex, a more affordable center operated by an experienced Silicon Valley daycare provider, CCLC?
Today, the New York Times also ran a story by Joe Nocera. Here are a few of the highlights:
Do you think you know how this story ends? You’re probably guessing that because it involves “do no evil” Google, Fortune magazine’s “Best Company to Work For” the past two years, this is a heart-warming tale of a good company reversing a dumb decision.
If only. Although Google is rolling back its price increase slightly and is phasing in the higher price over five quarters, the outline of the original decision remains largely unchanged. At a T.G.I.F. in June, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said 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,” according to several people in the meeting. (A Google spokesman denies that Mr. Brin made that comment.) On Monday, Google began the first phase of its new day care plan, letting go of the outside day care firm it had been using.
Valleywag have posted another story today on the ongoing Google child care fumble:
So Google has on its hands a disaster: A disaster for parents, a disaster for children, and a disaster for Google shareholders. How does Google respond?
Not by fixing the problem, but instead by lying to a New York Times columnist. Nocera, a famed reporter, quotes Brin twice. Google PR repeatedly denied that Brin made these comments — an unbelievably brazen act, considering the remarks were made before large groups of Google employees. A sampler:
At a T.G.I.F. in June, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said 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,” according to several people in the meeting. (A Google spokesman denies that Mr. Brin made that comment.)
But parents who talked to me said that several times during the six-week-long day care brouhaha, Mr. Brin made comments indicating that he viewed the whole thing as a giant economics experiment. “This is a supply-and-demand issue,” he told one group of parents — adding that Google needed to charge what the market would bear. (Through a Google spokesman, Mr. Brin denies making such a statement.) Given that Google has lots of pre-I.P.O. millionaires, it can clearly charge a lot.
As I look on the benefits section of the Google employee recruitment webpages I note the folllowing quote:
"Benefits Philosophy: We strive to be innovative and unique in all services we provide both to customers and employees, including our benefits and perks offerings. We realize and celebrate that our employees have diverse needs, and that this diversity requires flexible and individually directed support. Our priority is to offer a customizable program that can be tailored to the specific needs of each individual, whether they enjoy ice climbing in Alaska, want to retire by age 40, or plan to adopt 3 children."
Hmmmm…after reading about this mess it would seem that it might be better to stick to ice climbing in Alaska than to be try to have children and work at Google in Mountain View, California.
Further, the move to the Reggio method is very interesting considering that the founders of Google were graduates of Montessori programs as children.
Google…what are you doing? What if all of the child care centres in North America decided to increase their fees as a way to eliminate waiting list problems….hmmmm…maybe we would solve the child care crisis we are facing! Hey…Google maybe you are onto something…..on second thought NOT.
