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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

Wow the child care thing must really hurt. I could absolutely imagine people making career decisions - not to mention decisions about where to live - based on the reasonable assumption that the child care provided by Google wasn't going to be arbitrarily turned off.

I can't imagine part of the Google hiring process was a note that said "do remember that we might change our mind about providing child care, so don't make any crucial decisions based on the ongoing existence of that benefit".

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"After some reflection, we just don't see how this could be a billion dollar business"

They were made aware that collecting targeting data on the kids in the daycare program would be a COPPA violation.

"The law no longer permits us to show ads to the kids in our daycare."

In the Midwest, I know more than one couple where one has stopped working because the second income was almost completely consumed by daycare.

I'm raising my hand here. I'd have suggested that my wife quit her job to do childcare, but her job is much more interesting than mine and, with the way things are shaping up - software is "correcting" and "robotics" at an even sharper decline - I'll end up doing the kid stuff.

Not that I wouldn't adore spending time with my kids, but I'd have to deal with the ego death career-wise.

Back in the day (early 80's), my dad spent 2 or 3? years staying at home with my sister and I. My mom was working while he was re-training and switching careers at 40. Training to be a programmer on payroll systems. All mainframe HP Cobol stuff. I think I was around 10. It was great, he was going to class during the day but was there when we came home from school and he taught me to play chess and D&D and we always had computers around so that's how I learned to code because he was learning too. I remember watching him coding a lunar lander program on the C64, which he gave me as a hand me down but it had a modem so I could connect to a local BBS (at 300 baud and typing AT commands by hand lol). Later in life he said that was one of the happiest times of his life. Maybe it's harder to pull off that kind of gap now because we are all so focused on overachievement and never being human but he didn't even start working as a programmer until he was in his 40's and had steady work until retirement.

Anyway, in my experience my dad took a few years to do that kid stuff and it really had a positive effect on our relationship.

> I can't imagine part of the Google hiring process was a note that said "do remember that we might change our mind about providing child care, so don't make any crucial decisions based on the ongoing existence of that benefit".

This note is implicit in any exchange with a party vastly more powerful than you.

There's no way anyone made a decision based on that because the waiting list for admission was infinitely long and many parents I knew there were going backwards in the priority queue.

Maybe employees who had made it through that waiting list ignored potential employment opportunities elsewhere because they didn't want to lose that benefit.

Honestly it seems a lot more like a soft layoff for more senior staff who may have kids due to the stage of life they're in, and the path they've chosen.

It's a day care, though. How "senior" could they be?

Exactly. I don’t know why “senior” and “needs daycare” keep getting put into the same sentence in this conversation.

Could you explain why? When I joined Google I was a "Senior Software Enginner" had 1 young child who went into daycare and when my second child left, I was a "Senior Staff Software Engineer". Some of the other parents were similar levels, and the rest were directors/VPs. Like many people in tech/academia, I had kids "late" (starting at 33)

The role of "Senior Engineer" at Google is mostly 28+ year olds, which is the age range that has daycare aged kids. It's also the range that they tend to want to try to keep, compared to the lower levels which are easier to fill with random new grads.

Tech senior

So... Any reason I'm not aware of that "tech seniors" would have a higher disposition to using the day care? Btw, I'm not being sarcastic. I know nothing of Google's benefits operations or demographic composition, let alone varying dispositions to use said benefits.

People usually become Senior Engineers in their late 20s, if not mid 20s. It's the fakest job title in the industry. The majority of Senior Engineers are probably age 28-40 - common ages to have young children.

"Senior" really just means "this person is not straight out of college." It doesn't actually mean senior in the same way that Intel and AMD's "2nm process" technology does not actually correspond to any physical dimension on the die. It just means you have some type of experience.

Those kids are still probably going to need health insurance and food and all that. Probably better for the parents to remain employed.

Is that a thing Americans still grapple with? “I need to keep this job to keep health insurance for my kids”? I thought the ACA helped eliminate that in some way?

There are around 5 million uninsured people in my state, and the Republicans are talking about cancelling the ACA again because apparently that isn’t enough.

Yes, it's still a thing. Unemployed or self-employed people can now purchase insurance plans through state exchanges and there are subsidies available to low income families. But the insurance subsidies that you get from large employers are generally still much better.

Thus we still have about 8% uninsured. Some just can't afford the premiums at all. Others could afford it but choose to take the risk of going without.

Yes, that is absolutely something Americans still grapple with. ACA helps in theory, but healthcare is still outrageously expensive.

Amongst other things, because nurses and doctors are paid very, very highly in comparison to other countries.

In some cases they’re paid appropriately compared to it being low elsewhere. But it’s doubtful that’s a drop in the bucket of where the money goes.

As an American, corporate health plans are excellent, even covering things like IVF. Pretty sure the bare-bones plans are not as comfortable, so yes, “I need to keep this job to have this excellent health insurance for my family”.

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