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Comment by andrewstuart2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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”.

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.

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