"Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000.
At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company’s plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company’s T.G.I.F. sessions — a weekly meeting for anyone who wanted to ask questions of Google’s top executives — to plead their case, and conducted surveys showing that most parents with children in Google day care would have to leave Google’s facilities and find less expensive child care." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet
Strangely written -- hard to believe this is in the NYT: "Faced with this dilemma, Google decided that the way to solve the dual problems of a too-long wait list and a too-large subsidy was — are you sitting down for this? — to get rid of C.C.L.C. and make the Kinderplex more like the Woods!" - Paul Buchheit
Sergey Brin comes off as a real gem. Looks like 'don't be evil' is morphing to 'let them eat cake'. Amazing what a 40%+ drop in share price can do. - Peter Simard
I found it odd that NYT quoted Sergey multiple times but each quote was disputed by Google PR after the fact. Seems like their PR folks are trying to do some "damage control"? - Alex Barbara
$57,000 just for someone to watch your kid? Remind me to not have kids for a while.. - Alex Barbara
Slowly but surely the shine will finally come off of Google and reality will set in. - AJ Kohn
The sense of "entitlement" is pretty stunning to an outsider who is an occasional visitor. It's pretty obvious (to me) that the "gimme" attitude is going to be an albatross around Google's neck when the time comes that their stock price returns from the stratosphere and settles around something reasonable and in line with the true value of the company. - Jason Wehmhoener
Geez. I don't know one solution that didn't generate new problems as a result of its having solved an old problem. Can't win no matter what in the eyes of the media. Also, this is news-worthy enough to be in the Times? - Ginger Makela
I have no thoughts on the day care issue in and of itself but people changing "don't be evil" into "do no evil" makes me grind my teeth. http://www.google.com/search?q... - Erica Baker
@Paul, agreed -- it's a strangely written story. The writer's bias is clear. Using heresay from employees then vaguely referring to the official statements. - Sprague D
$57,000 was for two kids... and after the price reductions, it won't be that expensive. - Michael Leggett
The author feels that employee-provided day care should be a requirement just like health insurance (not sure I agree), but fails to applaud Google's effort to make it available to those that want it. A 700-child waiting list (over 2 years) is unreasonable as is Google paying a $37,000 subsidy per child. I love working at Google... and I want them to stay around. Paying that large a subsidy is irresponsible to its employees and its shareholders. - Michael Leggett
You could argue that they should just lower costs then... but the main cost is the teachers (as it should be). Google believes teachers should be paid more and I'm proud that they are putting their money where their heart is by doing just that. If you don't want to pay so much, you can always find day care else where, right? Am I missing something? - Michael Leggett
When I visited HP I noted that they don't have the coffee carts anymore that they used to have. The employees noted that other benefits had gone away too. When the high profitability phase of a company ends, the benefits usually go away. At Microsoft they tried taking away things too, like towels in locker rooms, and the employees rebelled. - Robert Scoble
wonder what is average daycare costs there, in area? - silpol
It's absolutely incredible that day care would cost more than the mean national income ($48,201 according to Wikipedia). I understand that this is Silicon Valley, and therefore not applicable to the rules of the rest of the country, but still...it's astounding. - Spinn
We were paying $21,000 a year for two kids and that was top of the line in Charlotte. In theory I like the idea of company sponsored childcare but in reality I don't want my employer to have any influence over my kids. - Lori Reed
I posted this to reddit and got on the front page :P - Bjorn Tipling
probably I have to stop bitching about local tax - I pay monthly for not-full-day at kindergarten in about 100 meter from my house about 130 EUR, for full day it might reach 200 EUR/month max, i.e. annually 2400 EUR (~3600 USD)... hmmmmmmm - silpol
"Google can’t just have low teacher-child ratios — it has to have the lowest of anybody." - Shouldn't it be high teacher-child ratios? Unless they want more children to less teachers. - nadim
I had a hard time believing this was a NY Times article when I first saw it. Talks about child care at the beginning, then references a blog post talking about how Google is not a good place to work and then goes on to detail the child care issue. - Turker Keskinpala
@Michael -- $57G's .. not expensive? ... I don't even make that much in 2 years anymore .. - Steven Hodson
"If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to “scale” day care for everybody no matter what their salaries." - Gabe Schaffer
Even $33k for 2 kids seems like a lot -- at $16/hr it seems like you could just hire a babysitter for 8 hours a day to watch your two children. For $57k you could just hire a child psychologist full time. - Gabe Schaffer
@Steven I didn't mean it wasn't expensive. It is expensive. I meant it won't be as much as $57k. Maybe I'm not being fair... but I thought the article was bias (not invalid). It does raise some interesting issues... are companies responsible for providing child care? Something seems backwards with how we live when we work so much that we expect our employer to take care of our children. I don't know the answer... but good things to think about. - Michael Leggett
So basically by having my wife stay home and do a superb job of taking care of the kids and the house during the day she is worth about $90,000 a year. Thank you babe! You are awesome! - Christian Burns
But what about people who don't have kids, should Google pay them because they are saving the company money? And what about those people who want to have kids, but can't meet the right person, should Google pay for dating services? Google is an awesome place to work, and sometimes they go overboard. Witness the swimming in place pools with lifeguards that almost nobody used. Let's agree to compare them with other companies. It's only fair. - Chris White
hmmm... let's see, four years ago, i was making $45 000 a year before i quit to take care of my daughter full time while my wife continued her job; because it made more sense than spending my entire salary on a nanny just so i could go to work. plus i get to hang out with my kid(soon to be kids) all day and do cool stuff like help them learn the alphabet, count, play their first casual computer games, go to the park, swim, museums, etc. there's always that option. - Nathan Eckenrode
It seems like everyone has ideas on how to do this at a lower cost than Google. Maybe someone should open a competing "google" daycare near the Google campus -- from the sounds of it there would be hundreds of eager customers. - Paul Buchheit
I'm interested to see if these kids actually turn out to be uber-smart. How many of the Googlers went to intense, research-driven, daycares like these?We'll see in ten to twenty years, but at times, one has to wonder how people ever became intelligent without having the latest and greatest learning craze forced down their throat. A better indicator of their intelligence will most likely be how much learning is re-inforced (deep breath here) at home by their parents, instead of video games and TV. - David Adewumi
I thought Dave was a BOGU person myself: Bend Over and Grease Up - Dennis Howlett via twhirl
did you not try to cross sale and make a muppet / puppet series on McCain ? That would have been a blast .. - Peter Dawson
+1 for presidential debate videos w/ McCain and Obama puppets - scott anderson
Yeah with the Winer puppet moderating? Nah, the Winer puppet would be too busy donating money to the Obama puppet. - Tony Kanzia
yes, this McCain /Obama Puppet show would be freaking great..troll the archives and create a freakier script of their real time sound bites :)_ - Peter Dawson
I like the Winer as moderator idea. Of course the questions would be totally biased to promote Dave's point of view and include commercials for his web sites along with the occasional McCain shout downs. - scott anderson
Who is Rush Linbaugh? (Honest question, I know nothing 'bout US TV) - Yuvi
Yuvi: he's a right-wing, neo-conservative radio talk show host. Have you seen any footage of Fox News? What they do on their network is based on Rush Limbaugh's work. He's one of the forerunners of the idea that news should include the commentary and opinion of the presenter. - Mark Trapp
Good move, Noah. It's the weekend and all. ;-) Yuvi: he's a right-wing radio host. His show runs daily on hundreds of stations. - Chris Baskind
Yuvi - he's got talent on loan from God. A conservative commentator with the largest radio audience in the U.S. - Hutch Carpenter
Hmm. Same thing happens here, kinda. Just that it's fed as *news* itself, rather than as *opinion*. The two major news channels are owned by the two major political parties here. Owned as in physically owned by the party leaders, financed by them, etc. More like propaganda machinery and less like news channels. - Yuvi
Hey, at least they're up front about it. Here, all mainstream media has consolidated into "the big 5:" 5 conglomerate multi-national corporations that are ostensibly privately owned. The one with the most share, NewsCorp (which runs Fox, Fox News, among other properties) is run by Rupert Murdoch, who consistently argues two things 1) that he supports the neoconservative movement and 2) it's not the responsibility of the media to provide objective and unbiased coverage. - Mark Trapp
Mark Trapp very interesting that we tend to agree! - Igor The Troll
Yes, they are "very" upfront - the logos for the channels are the party logos themselves ;) - Yuvi
Igor and Noah. I'm not entirely sure what either of you are doing here on my feed, considering your history and the evil you've spread. Which you are currently engaging in a productive discussion, and have yet to attack me on Friend Feed, you are attacking my friends. You are not welcome in my discussions. - Erin Kotecki Vest
I was willing to let them be civil, for the sake of my current jimmy carter role...but then I looked at their feeds. Apparently nothing has changed - Erin Kotecki Vest
Am I one of the only crack-headed conservative contrarians you allow around your feed? Be honest - how close to blocking me have you come? :-p - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Kids, (Igor and Mark) being upfront about being racists/sexist isn't really a point in their favour. Just sayin'.... - leigh himel
lol Mark. I love a good, intelligent, or at least respectful debate. And I have only ever blocked abusive idiots. If you start doing what they do, and call me a Nazi Whore and make reference to how I need to die, or attack my friends and all...then I'm blocking your Mashable ass. And not even Pete's cute face will save you! lol. But until then it's away too fun to keep you and your silly Ron Paul ways around ;P - Erin Kotecki Vest
Don't worry about Rush: he's going to work forever, since he said he won't stop until every American agrees with him. - steplow
I think the concept of "objective, unbiased" media is total crap. I once had an editor ask me to seek out someone from a known right-wing loon think tank to balance the right-wing think tanker who had expressed a moderate, reasonable (and EXPERT) point of view. Why should I have to be a vehicle for someone's spin when the point is the TRUTH? Murdoch is right. Media shouldn't have to be objective and unbiased, it should report the TRUTH. Truth has no bias. - Andrew Feinberg
"The court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users. The VPPA passed after a newspaper disclosed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental records. As Congress recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and deserves the strongest protection." - Marcos Marado
suddenly I lost the will of watching videos on YouTube... - Marcos Marado
"Google's framework for writing C++ tests on a variety of platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows CE, and Symbian). Based on the xUnit architecture. Supports automatic test discovery, a rich set of assertions, user-defined assertions, death tests, fatal and non-fatal failures, various options for running the tests, and XML test report generation." - DeWitt Clinton via Bookmarklet
Google's C++ test framework, open source under a BSD license as of today. - DeWitt Clinton
So the time elapsed between the first note and his first comment was 15 minutes. So Robert, did you gulp it down and ask her to do dishes? Were paper plates involved? :-) - Louis Gray
He never said he wasn't using his iPhone under the table. - Andrew Feinberg
Sounds like our dinner conversations - my wife has to pry the iphone away from me during dinner - Jesse Stay
This really makes me think that I could have a future in consulting if I so desired. - Vince DeGeorge
agree with the others, this does not shock me whatsoever; I could make a couple of guesses of who your customer is but won't. - Lou Paglia
ok, I will not be surprised in the future then! I knew the market for consulting was wide open, but god damn. this is just the most extreme example I've seen yet of what everybody else here apparently already knows - even the most successful cases of web 2.0 are wide open as examples for huge numbers of people. - Marshall Kirkpatrick
I thought it was like an analysis of what those companies are doing well that would be news to those folks - not the fact that they existed! Oh, and Louis - they had heard of ReadWriteWeb, but they had never heard of TechCrunch ;) - Marshall Kirkpatrick
it also means that a lot of our "analysis" is rooted in air ... life is elsewhere - gregory lent
Blocked. Sorry. You earn a 24 hour penalty. Anyone who begs for Followers gets put into the penalty box. Calacanis is still there. Gotta bring him out and see if he's still begging. - Robert Scoble
No Robert he setup a private email list guess who is on it? :) - Fred Grott
Alrighty, now you owe me an almond joy! <grin> - Cheryl Allin
every time scoble types a butterly flaps its wings somewhere in indonesia - Cee Bee
LOL @ 24 hour penalty. Why not call it time out? haha - Mona N
I'm with Robert. Are you giving away a macbook air or something too? How about you create great content and wait for the fame instead ;P Calacanis is out of my penalty box...Brazell is IN! - Erin Kotecki Vest
Just look at how many comments and added followers Aaron has gained by begging for FF followers and getting blocked by Scoble. I'd say that's a gain by any stretch of the imagination. - Ben Parr
Scoble does have a point - but only because you actually posted 'beg' in all caps. But hey - if you wanna close the deal - you gotta at least remember to ask and have a call to axn. - Sonciary Honnoll
Ferd, go away. And I don't follow Scoble either. ;) I may do it for a MacBook Air. This MBP is pretty heavy to lug around all the time. I'd like to try an SSD for a change. - Cyndy
I added you, and won't even block you for asking. I need to hunt down more FriendFeed friends too, especially with Twitter being a PITA lately. - Kelby
here is an easy way folks, hover over posted by friend of..click subscribe..75% add you after you do that :) sh..do not Tell Robert - Fred Grott
Instead of begging for followers, I usually just follow people I find interesting. They usually follow back - Shey
I'm not really sure whether to laugh, cry, or #suckit - Andrew Feinberg
still, i think Gawker is very competitive in terms of blogging jobs with most full-time folks making 3-5k a month/36-60k a year. That's a BIG number for folks working from home in the journalism/editorial space just out of school. Most folks make 20-35k out of school. - Jason Calacanis via Bookmarklet
additionally, the five bucks for every 1,000 permalink page views (i.e. NOT the homepage, which is 70% of the traffic) is probably the break even point for Denton/Gawker. So, there is no downside to giving 100% of that money away to his bloggers because it only drives more folks to the homepage/builds the brands. Denton is very, very smart. - Jason Calacanis
more than some entry level print writers make. - Andrew Feinberg
"20-35k out of school" Wow, I guess it really pays to get an Engineering degree. B.S. Engineer's pay starts at 50-60K or more depending on the type of engineer here in California. - Jeff P. Henderson
Jeff: developers/engineers are typically 3x the cost of editorial folks. So, yes, learning how to code is a very good idea. It would take five to seven years to reach 50-60k in an editorial job on average--and there are many folks with 20+ years not making that amount. Also, keep in mind that the cost of living in the Valley/NYC (and to a slightly lesser extent LA) are 30-50% more than the place s inbetween. - Jason Calacanis
Gawker network does 200m+ impressions per month. Quantcast, directly-measured figures. - john conroy
I hate to be cynical, but their ratio of two developers to six bloggers/copywriters/PR peeps sounds about right. When your product is a commodity, marketing makes all the difference. - Jake
gotta love technology and the ability to tag mp3 files in del.icio.us, grab the rss feed, then have them embedded in your friendfeed. sweet! - (jeff)isageek
No more software engineers in 2016? Are these guys on crack? - Gavin
@Gavin, even more hilarious -- no auto mechanics in 8 years because cars "run on software". So why are people moaning about the price of gas? Stick a floppy in the tank! - Sprague D
1999 called, they want their horrible navigation back. FC really needs to improve the usability of their site. - Devlin Dunsmore via twhirl
concur with Devlin, awful navigation. Ironic though that FC is criticizing bloggers for making snarky comments when the commentary they are making is snarky itself - Duncan Riley
I think there's a difference btw blogs dying and having the title blogger. blogging is already integrated into so many different job functions. Who knows, in 2016 the term blogger could be extinct because it will be synonamous with reporter, or marketer, or CEO... - Adam
I blog for my a particular constituency of my company's market; just started doing it, someone had to - Shannon
There will always be jobs for people who author content, though the title "Blogger" may be subsumed into various roles. Truly professional bloggers (no, not really an oxymoron) may simply be thought of as writers, analysts or journalists, while the rest of us will remain the amateur pundits we are today. - Barry Graubart
I've never been paid for it, but plenty of paying jobs have come out of it. - Rick Grant
I think the future holds more jobs to become remote, then corporate, we're already seeing this, and it saves corporation tons of money, including the employee...example > employee travel w/ this gas situation - Petes2Cents.com
My blogging and social networking participation doesn't appear in my job description, yet it has absolutely contributed to the success of my business. I spend an hour a day on it, and the payback is more than any other hour of the day in terms of direct/indirect contact with my customers. - Ed Brill
I just got the VP at my company into blogging and he's hooked. He's getting feedback from customer's in the form of comments and is gaining leads from search results. I don't think blogging will die in eight years. - Shawn Farner via twhirl
Content creation will always exist and connecting with community never stops. I blog because I want to and its had big benefits on my visibility inside and outside of the company. - Alex
even more hilarious -- no auto mechanics in 8 years because cars "run on software". So why are people moaning about the price of gas? Stick a floppy in the tank! -----I can't keep laughing! :P - Jia Liu
![Marilyn Monroe [ARHman, Pixdaus]](http://pixdaus.com/pics/12152569633YJKVFf.jpg "Marilyn Monroe [ARHman, Pixdaus]")
