Forum Moderators: goodroi
Google Inc is under fire from a handful of parents who work at the company's Silicon Valley offices for price hikes in the cost of on-site day care services, the New York Times reported on Saturday.Under price changes to be phased in over the next five quarters, parents of a preschooler can expect to pay $1,116 a month by October of this year and $1,710 by October 2009. Furman said the prices, while eye-popping in many regions, are competitive with top-notch day care pricing in San Francisco.
While not as cheap as dropping the kid off with someone who was living barefoot in a hut the year before, it's certainly worth the price to give a kid a head start on life by ensuring they are around intelligent and thoughtful people. Having hung around a playground or two, I can attest that many of these cheap-o nannies are inattentive and a danger to children. I'm talking about nannies who are asleep on the grass while a two year old waddles unsupervised, and infants crying alone in a stroller while the nanny is catching up on gossip with her friends. Most parents have no clue the neglect their kids are subjected to for the $7-9 hour they're paying.
Oddly, they seem to have fumbled the child care issue by implementing an extremely expensive solution and then jacking up the prices employees pay.
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...
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.
From the NYTimes [nytimes.com]
Apparently, part of the issue is that Sergey Brin's sister-in-law is partial to a particular day care philosophy, resulting in the established day care provider being canned and a more expensive program implemented. The firm denies that she had anything to do with the decision.
One of the problem with the old day care program was a long waiting list. The big price jump solved that particular problem.
As the author of the story notes, one might have expected Google to figure out how to scale their day care solution to meet demand rather than taking steps to throttle it.
So, is Google (as the article suggests) becoming just another company?
