Has Google Lost Its Mojo?

CWmike writes "Google looks as if it's on top of the world right now, holding an ever-increasing lion's share of the search market. So why do I think it's lost its mojo? Let's start with the way it treats its employees, writes Preston Gralla. Another example: Google employees, such as Sergey Solyanik, have started deserting the company. And its share price is down double that of the Dow or Nasdaq since November 2007. Even if Google has lost its mojo, why should you care? It won't make your searches any less effective, will it? Nope. But Google has its eyes on bigger things than search, notably your IT department. It's looking to displace Microsoft with hosted services like Google Apps, Gmail and Google Docs. Solyanik warns that Google's engineers care more about the 'coolness' of a service than about the service's effectiveness." Of course Google employees version of being mistreated is often laughable, and quite a shock when they look for their massage therapist at wherever they end up next.

Comments

simple answer...

[Anonymous Coward]

When they decided to abuse people's right to privacy & do evil things...

Yes

Re:simple answer...

[MrNaz]

Flamebait?

So it seems Google has their own astroturfing team. Now we know what all those PhDs do when they're not sitting on exercise balls, eating sushi and being "creative".

Re:simple answer...

[ultranova]

Ah, but doing evil things doesn't mean that they've lost their Mojo, it just means that they've gained Jojo ;).

Yes.

[Zarf]

Google has lost some of it's Mojo. But the good news is that they still have plenty of Mo-Nay. They are also high on the "X does not suck as bad as Y" matrix.

Re:Yes.

[Ethanol-fueled]

The link on TFS which refers to this page describing "the way [Google] treats its employees" only details how Google raised the charge for in-house daycare by 75%.

Parents lose big when a company downsizes or restructures their benefits. This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

A company I worked for in the past restructured their benefits by changing employees more for their health and dental insurance and "offset" the losses by giving every employee a flat pay raise but after some calculation I found that employees with no dependents benefited from a good raise and only slightly higher insurance payments while those with families(who insured their families, at least) suffered net losses.

Re:Yes.

[Otter]

This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees. It's hardly "age discrimination" to do less of it.

Re:Yes.

[larry bagina]

it seems like it's becoming a benefit that only older employees (ipo-millionaires) and executives (high salary, stock options) can enjoy. Sure, it's offered to everyone, but they're intentionally choosing a very expensive day-care program when a less expensive one was more than adequate. So people who would otherwise use it now go elsewhere (paying full price) while still subsidizing wealthier people who can afford it.

Re:Yes.

[mapsjanhere]

Well, the question is really one of ethics. If I get recruited with "we have the greatest child care in the world at X dollars", and a year later the X becomes X+1000, then I'd be thinking someone lied to me to the tune of $12,000 a year.
Quite obviously not many of Google's employees were using the service anyway (1% daycare spots based on the number of employees, that number should be around 10% realistically), and they still needed to heavily subsidize it. Someone can't do their math, what's bad for business in any case.

Re:Yes.

[mweather]

I'm sure parents will have no problem finding quality daycare for the $36,000/year they were paying Google.

Re:Yes.

[Farmer Pete]

I can't believe you wouldn't ever, ever, ever, ever claim that a person with no dependents gets off better with a company's medical plan...People with zero dependents get screwed royally. In most companies, you have two or three payment tiers. 1 person, 2 people, 3 or more people. The cost increase from 1 to 2 doesn't even come close to covering the extra costs. The costs from 2 to 3 are the same. Don't forget to add in for if someone (gasp) has a large family. Do you have 5 kids? Guess what, you pay the same exact premium as someone with 1 kid. The no-dependents person will end up bearing a portion of the cost of other people's dependents.

I don't like the system, I understand why it has to be, but I will NOT stand and let someone try to make it look like people with no dependents are getting away with something. Even in your situation, the only difference is that the single people have been grossly overpaying for years and years, and now they are getting a slight reprieve from being over charged.

Re:Yes.

[rakslice]

You've hit the nail on the head. If Google's employees are typical of those at non-unionized tech companies, when interviewing for a job they are prepared to have to negotiate for pay and benefits, and even if their job offer comes with few benefits, if they accept the job, they will be prepared to accept benefits other than vacation time at that same level for the entire time they work at the company. But what they won't do is smile and nod if their employer wants to change the rules after the game has already started.

With that said, business needs are what they are. However, Google should at least consider offering a lower quality child care option at a lower price if parents would settle for that (as I assume the lion's share of the value of on-site child care is convenience.)

Re:Yes.

[NetSettler]

Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees.

Only if there is not a compensating benefit that rewards non-parents but is of no use to parents. It really depends a lot on how the benefit package is constructed.

The interesting metric is whether a business has policies that allow its employees to "grow up". If they do not, then eventually as people get older, they will be forced at some point to say that in order to merely accommodate the ordinary and anticipatable life events, they must go to a different company or face a pay cut because the benefits they used to like are now no longer benefits.

For example, why should an employee who has a family at home shopping and fixing food be penalized because of the availability of free food at work that surely must be paid for somehow. Google has an open cafeteria, and tons of free junk food in the hallways, which people who have a life do not need. But it has been said of Google (and I am trying to be neutral about expressing an opinion myself, only observing that it's a topic worthy of discussion) that it prefers employees who are willing to work long hours and sleep under their desks to employees who want to have families and lives outside of work. Now if this were true, you might not see it as age discrimination. And it might really not be. But it's a reasonable observation to make or question to ask, given that the set of people who don't mind this kind of lifestyle is probably unevenly distributed agewise.

So if Google is offering both the daycare and the cafeteria, then maybe it's balanced. But if it's giving up the daycare expenses to focus on cafeteria expenses, then maybe there are questions to ask. Just as one example for conversation--if I knew their benefit policy, maybe something else better would present itself.

In fact, I bet whether you think this is an age issue varies by age, suggesting at least the possibility that some people who thought it wasn't an age issue changed their mind with experience, as well as the possibility that some who are quite sure it's not will eventually come to decide they were wrong.

Google offers itself as an ethical company. Here's my definition of ethical: Ethical means you continue to ask yourself hard questions and to not quite be sure you're ethical. So people will evaluate the answer to these questions differently, but the day Google thinks the questions are inappropriate to ask is the day it's lost its ethics. Ethics are an exercise in continuous choice, and everything about intent. Once choice is sacrificed, you're at best coincidentally aligned with those whose outcomes are the same, but as the result of an actual thoughtful choice. If outcome without choice can be deemed ethical, then there are rocks that may be more ethical than some people...

Re:Yes.

[Otter]

1) I was responding to Ethanol-fueled's point, which has nothing to do with what you're saying.

2) "Lied" is a bit excessive, anyway. Benefits change over time, particularly as companies grow from startups to dinosaurs. As you say, I think there's a lot of managerial cluelessness over there, which the torrent of revenue from AdWords has covered for.

Re:Yes.

[jellomizer]

Well as Google matures so do its employees. As they get older they find the Google culture no longer fits their needs. The projects get boring, working long hours on projects that may or may not give any fruit gets redundant and unappealing. Having to prove to the new Whippersnappers that that crazy way of doing things will not work just as they didn't work when you started working a decade ago. Things like code purity, open source, trying a new windows manager every week... start to see more trivial and has lost its spark or interest, you are happy to use a Mac, even if you are running windows your cool with that to. You focus on your job and doing a good job, but at the end of the day you want to go home with your family.
Over the years you got a lot better at your job you are 3 times more productive then those whippersnappers and when you were a whippersnapper, but the company culture reprimands you for leaving work on time. Younger managers come in straight out of business school trying to prove themselves by trying to change everything even what currently works, just because it worked for FedEx, or SAS.

Re:Yes.

[Otter]

Only if there is not a compensating benefit that rewards non-parents but is of no use to parents. It really depends a lot on how the benefit package is constructed.

I am quite confident that neither Google nor Ethanol-fueled's employer offered precisely offsetting benefits to non-parents at the time of their benefit changes. What would you imagine such a benefit to be, come to think of it?

Re:Yes.

[Original Replica]

Parents lose big when a company downsizes or restructures their benefits. This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

Then by that logic it is a form of discrimination to have those benefits, like child care, that are unusable by employees who choose to not have children. But really it isn't discrimination at all in either case. For it to be discrimination the motivation would have to be centered around age, but really age is just a correlation. I realize that's it's popular to cry "it's discrimination" whenever you want the world to conform to your needs, but really the change is just about money. Sure it might cost a parent more money for daycare, but every dollar my employer spends on daycare is a loss to my stock value or equipment quality or potential for a raise. If anything the subsidizing of child care, family insurance, and other family-centric benefits is discrimination in favor of parents. So please, don't cry about discrimination when the favors done to you are scaled back. Add the difference in market value of the insurance package a family gets to your annual income and see if you still have a net loss vs the "no dependents" employees. You should come out even. The same job deserves the same annual salary + benefits total, anything else would be favoritism.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has lost some of it's Mojo

Speaking as a Googler, "some" is an understatement. The best and brightest have been exiting Google at the earliest for months, leaving behind the political climbers, backbiters and the just plain incompetent. Now Google mainly runs on interns, everybody else is too "smart" to do the grunt work like coding, debugging, or much at all beyond getting face time. The reason for this is simple: narcissistic managers whose main talent is claiming credit for the work of their subordinates while punishing anyone who shows initiative, and thus possibly could get promoted. These days at Google, showing skill and dedication is a great way to get a bad review from your manager. Eric and friends seem blissfully unaware of the developing train wreck.

Re:Yes.

[Xaria]

A well thought-out comment.

Here's an example from the other side. My husband's work offers free alcoholic drinks (they have an entire fridge full) on Friday afternoons. The single workers often hang around on Friday night for games of table tennis and go through a heap of wine and beer. My husband has a wife and kids who need him at home, so he misses out. Do I say this is unfair, that $20 worth of alcohol is going to his workmates every week but not him? No! Because on the other hand, he has a boss who understands that when he has to leave to pick our kids up at daycare it's not negotiable, and he LEAVES. It balances out at the end. People who haven't had kids may say "but he has the OPTION of drinking" but I say that no, he doesn't. Or rather, he does in the same way that they have the OPTION of breeding, but choose not to.

Re:Yes.

[the_B0fh]

Having worked at FedEx, and having had a friend who was a senior auditor at FedEx, I can tell you it is as screwed up inside as other large companies.

And there's no younger managers - it's an old boys network.

Re:Yes.

[SupremoMan]

How does it discriminate younger employees if they will probably have a family later and benefit from the same system themselves? Only way they would be victims of this system is if they paid for it now and it changed before they got their own families...

Re:Yes.

[KGIII]

The assumption is that those saved dollars would go into the pockets of the employees had they not gone into the child care or another benefit. The reality is that we don't know if it would have resulted in higher salaries - the profits may well have just gone to the shareholders.

Re:Yes.

[bnenning]

Google has an open cafeteria, and tons of free junk food in the hallways, which people who have a life do not need.

Gratuitous insult aside, employees with families still need to eat, and their spouses are probably not delivering meals to their offices. Free food is a far more egalitarian benefit than subsidized daycare.

But it's a reasonable observation to make or question to ask, given that the set of people who don't mind this kind of lifestyle is probably unevenly distributed agewise.

The set of IT workers in general is unevenly distributed agewise (and gender-wise). That doesn't make every tech company guilty of discrimination.

Re:Yes.

[Whitemice]

Companies aren't obligated to compensate workers who have to take on additional responsibilities to cover for the workers who chose to have children and then feel entitled.

Re:Yes.

[Whitemice]

...any I worked for in the past restructured their benefits by changing employees more for their health and dental insurance and "offset" the losses by giving every employee a flat pay raise but after some calculation I found that employees with no dependents benefited from a good raise and only slightly higher insurance payments while those with families(who insured their families, at least) suffered net losses.

Uhm... doesn't this just make sense? Providing insurance to a family costs more than providing insurance to an individual. Age has nothing to do with having dependents; I know seventeen year olds with dependents.

So we either (a) socialize primarily medical service or (b) families pay more than individuals.

Personally, I'd choose (a) for economies-of-scale, efficiency, and moral reasons. But since we won't do that we have (b).

Re:Yes.

[jmkaza]

Parents lose big when a company downsizes or restructures their benefits. This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

By the same logic, wouldn't offering ANY kind of benefits to parents be age discrimination against younger workers? Parents don't lose when 'parent only' benefits are reduced, they just no longer get preferred treatment.

Re:Yes.

[florescent_beige]

Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees.

Ex-fucking-scuse me? Reward parents? As if having children is some kind of weakness that shouldn't be encouraged?

Yes I know it's popular to let some kind of economic framework do your thinking for you, which might lead you to conclude that a person that makes a decision that does not maximize personal wealth is somehow "wrong" but...

1. Some people love children.

2. Employers prefer married people with children. Single self-absorbed brats are unreliable.

3. Children are the future customers that the single self-absorbed brats will make money off. However, the single self-absorbed brats believe that the original creation of those customers was a mistake. Single self-absorbed brats are therefore in denial and idiots about this subject. When they talk like having children is a weakness.

Holy heck. I can't reply to everyone who has said something like "why should I pay for something I don't use?" You aren't paying for anything. Your employer is paying for something and if your employer didn't pay that thing, they wouldn't give the money to you because you have proven you will work for whatever you are already being paid.

Re:Yes.

[jellomizer]

But FedEX, UPS, GE, SAS are golden boys for the MBA program. If you approach what they teach you with a closed mind without real world experience (As many of the Full Time MBA who went right after getting their BA in Busisness) you would almost believe what worked for them will work everywhere.

Re:Yes.

[stonemetal]

This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

Sorry no, old people are more likely to have kids who have grown up and moved on this is more like discrimination against the under 40 group who have young children, you know the kind that might actually be at daycare.

Re:Yes.

[blackicye]

Well, the question is really one of ethics. If I get recruited with "we have the greatest child care in the world at X dollars", and a year later the X becomes X+1000, then I'd be thinking someone lied to me to the tune of $12,000 a year.

Quite obviously not many of Google's employees were using the service anyway (1% daycare spots based on the number of employees, that number should be around 10% realistically), and they still needed to heavily subsidize it. Someone can't do their math, what's bad for business in any case.

They could actually very easily lower the costs of this service..outsource to India!

But somehow I doubt the parents would go for it..

Someone can open a childcare center close by and do it for cheaper maybe? if its even worth their time?

Re:Yes.

[R2.0]

You're an idiot. Insurance companies charge that way, and employers pass it along. Why do the insurers do it that way? Because of
A) actuarial tables (kids cost less to insure because they are less likely, on average, to need expensive treatments) and
B) overhead (if it's 1 person or 20 in a family, it's still just 1 account, so the incremental cost of adding a person to the account is less than adding a whole new employee)

Re:Yes.

[stephanruby]

This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

Yes, but mostly younger parents are going to benefit from pre-kindergarden child care. So in a way, it's a form of age discrimination, yes, but one that is directed against the younger parents.

Re:Yes.

[jheath314]

Fair enough, just as talented workers don't have an obligation to continue working for a company that promises affordable childcare and then changes the rules mid-game.

It's not that Google should be required to accomodate families; it just makes business sense to do so. I wonder how many competent and experienced workers Google will lose before they realize that most 20-something whiz-kids will eventually turn into 30-something family guys.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a fellow Googler, I feel compelled to give an alternate perspective.

Every day at work I'm given the opportunity to work with some of the most brilliant, passionate people in my industry solving problems no one has solved, at scales most can only dream of.

All of the managers that I've worked closely with (on up the chain*) are experts in their field, and are very protective of Google's egalitarian culture. If I wasn't prepared for promotion in one cycle, my manager was dedicated to giving me the resources I needed to be ready when the next one came around. Furthermore, a negative review from a manager is hardly damning since promotion is driven primarily by reviews from peers your own choosing. We're very fortunate to have nearly complete control over the promotion case we present. If your peers and manager don't support you for promotion, you're probably doing something wrong.

If you think executive management is overlooking some systemic rot within the company, your stock options (and mine) would thank you for bringing up such problems at the multitude of confidential forums provided to you in lieu public ones. I've found senior VPs within engineering (such as Alan) to be extremely responsive and down to earth. If that doesn't work, it's hard to be ignored when you take a mic at TGIF. If you really work at Google, you should know that the greatest fulcrum for change is the effort you're willing to expend. If you see a problem, fix it. After all, you have a vested interest in the success of the company.

I don't know that the few people leaving for "greener pastures" are a significant cause for alarm. The people that define Google's culture and are responsible for its success aren't here for the fringe benefits; they're here because they love doing what they do alongside smart people they can learn from, who fancy a cold beer and engaging conversation on the balcony (and maybe flying finger darts, or a game of pool) to break up a particularly challenging day of work.

[1] Did you know Eric co-wrote Lex?

~G

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a Googler, "some" is about right and this poster is clearly just bitter for some unknown reason. The majority of the people I work with are incredibly talented coders, who aren't afraid to do the "grunt" work like writing readable well tested code.

In fact, the Google performance review process is expressly designed to identify the talented engineers instead of political climbers, and in my experience does a great job of it. I am not the biggest Google fanboy and I agree it doesn't have the mojo it had as a startup, but I think for a company of its size its doing a better job than everybody else.

And as somebody who complains a lot internally when I see things I disagree with (often with good results), I find it funny you choose to rant anonymously on Slashdot than bring it up internally where people can do something about it.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a Googler, "some" is an understatement. The best and brightest have been exiting Google at the earliest for months, leaving behind the political climbers, backbiters and the just plain incompetent.

If Jeff or Sanjay left, you might have a point. Otherwise it really comes across like you're either not in engineering or you don't know what you're talking about. It's true that the people who only wanted money or publicity have now left, along with some genuinely good engineers, but I can't say I really worry that much. Mostly, the "famous" ones next projects have demonstated just how awesome they were (Cuil anyone?). It's true that we have also lost some good people hired in recent years (~the last two), since stock compensation and the "startup feel" isn't what it used to be. There's only so much you can do about that though. That said, I have never worked with a better group of people, and I even have several coworkers who could retire tomorrow if they wanted to -- yet they choose to keep working. That says a lot to me.

That isn't to say things might not change. However the only exodus I've seen is the "startup people" who would leave any company after it is no longer a startup. Anyone who has ever worked in the SF Bay Area knows the type of person I'm talking about. A company does have to grow up, so you can't keep everyone.

Now Google mainly runs on interns, everybody else is too "smart" to do the grunt work like coding, debugging, or much at all beyond getting face time.

I don't think you work at Google, unless you are on some sort of crazy-ass side project that is going to die. We've never had more than 10% interns in our group, and it's the ye-olde-developers who debug most problems. The idea of interns debugging other's code is almost laughable given the company's devotion to TDD.

The reason for this is simple: narcissistic managers whose main talent is claiming credit for the work of their subordinates while punishing anyone who shows initiative, and thus possibly could get promoted. These days at Google, showing skill and dedication is a great way to get a bad review from your manager.

How does your manager cause you to get bad peer reviews (which is the #1 thing promotion committees will look at)? Maybe if you're getting a bad review from your manager *and* your co-workers, you might want to take a look in the mirror and read some of that feedback.

But you knew how promotions work, right?

Eric and friends seem blissfully unaware of the developing train wreck.

I feel sorry for your group/project/office or whatever, but your experience doesn't reflect any of the groups I've worked with any time recently. Maybe you should request a transfer or a change in managers.

But you know you could do that, right? Or maybe you didn't since you're making shit up.

Re:Yes.

[jussiam]

Maybe the ways of working should be changed. Introduce Scrum to your company, for example, keep the people actually *doing* the job in control of the job to be done.

Ordering people to do more than they are capable of leads to lower quality and lower morale. Add idiotic managers (or co-workers) into it and decrease the efficiency by multiple degrees. Usually the people are ICT-companies' only asset. If they ruin that, well, they ruin the company. It's still the coders who actually do the job that provides actual *value* for the user/customer. Hmm, how much direct value Google's CEO or CFO provides to the customer? None (even the indirect value is minimal).

Re:Yes.

[TheRaven64]

If these people love children so much, then why do they want to work full time and put them in daycare, rather than spending time with them? It sounds like the kind of solution that only works for people who love the idea of children as a status symbol, rather than people who actually have an interest in bringing up their children.

Re:Yes.

[TheRaven64]

JWZ identified the turning point for Netscape, where the decline started, as the point at which they started hiring people who wanted to work there because it was a great place to work, rather than people who wanted to work there to make it a great place. I interviewed at Google about a year ago[1] and I made a point of asking my interviewers why they wanted to work at Google. All five told me that they were there because it was such a great place to work. Looking around, it was hard to disagree with this (it really did seem like a great place to work), but it was sad to see that this was the main reason people went there. I only got to talk to half a dozen people, so maybe I got a skewed perspective (although, I believe, the interview process is meant to select a good cross section of the workplace for each interviewee).

[1] I'd really recommend this to anyone, by the way. I didn't get in, but the mental work-out from the interview was incredible, and I spent much of the next two months implementing ideas I came up with during the interview (and got a journal paper out of one of them).

Re:Yes.

[donscarletti]

Parents lose big when a company downsizes or restructures their benefits. This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

If you're an older employee but have kids young enough for this service, it means that you've had plenty of time to get your capital together without kids, if not its your own fault. Companies usually pay more experienced employees more, even if they aren't any more productive than the newer ones. This is direct age discrimination since young people couldn't possibly have got the experience since they weren't born back then. I have a 22 year old friend with two kids because he had them young enough to be a proper father rather than being frail and tired by the time they reach their teens. He makes a fraction of what guys twice his age make and has no savings to back him up.

But getting back to the point, sure Google senior management are morons who can't manage a child care centre, but what does that matter? Employees don't have to send their child there and most often can't send their child there anyway because of limited places. There are other child care facilities, there is the option of one parent staying at home or both parents working a part week (depending on employer) or the employee can simply endure the price until the child is school aged, they can even leave Google like some sensibly have.

As for benefit restructuring, it doesn't sound malicious, after all, the employer is only hiring one member of the family. It would be nice if they encouraged their employers to have families by supporting them, especially the ones on smaller salaries and less savings, but its their choice. If you are concerned with health and dental coverage, apply for residency in a country that subsides it for their citizens, even the ones without comfortable middle class jobs with benefits. The tax isn't all that much higher and I think the atmosphere is better.

Re:Yes.

[moorcito]

I can't believe you wouldn't ever, ever, ever, ever claim that a person with no dependents gets off better with a company's medical plan

Except that at most companies they do. A person with no dependents typically pays less because in the long run they will typically use less medical benefits than an employee with a wife and five kids.

In my salary range, my current employer charges $13.24 a week for employee only HMO vs. $69.80 for employee+family. Even when I worked for a nation-wide bank or hotel chain the charges were very similar.

Re:Yes.

[corbettw]

Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees.

I'm sorry to have to point this out to you, but people with children are worth more to society than people without children. Perhaps you should read or watch Children of Men to get a grasp on how important having children really is. The greatest advancements in the arts and sciences will mean very little if there is no one around to appreciate them.

Re:Yes.

[swb]

So they can have a standard of living that isn't hand-to-mouth? It's really fucking hard to make ends meet at a level that doesn't feel suspiciously like poverty or society-dropout-cult-membership without both spouses working.

There's also both spouses who have paid dearly for post-secondary education and want to put it to use so that they add some meaning and value to their life outside of childcare and homemaking.

I know a lot of people, usually women but some men too, who would love a part-time job that would enable them to do a lot more childcare, but we have a labor market that is quite hostile to part-time employment at meaningful wages.

I don't know where the idea came from that having children was some bad economic choice made by self-absorbed assholes who want to suck up more resources at the expense of all the "smart" people who decided that children were a bad idea. But clearly its seen that way by many people, and the labor market largely reinforces this.

Re:Yes.

[Dr. Spork]

I totally agree. I think Google should offer the same child care stipend whether or not you have your child in Google daycare or some private daycare run by a third party. If you can show that your child is enrolled in one of these, you should get the same "daycare credit." Rich people can use Google's "high end" service if they choose. That would be the fair way to resolve the issue.

Honestly, I'm amazed at how much daycare costs for one child. How is it possible that cheaper alternatives don't elbow into that market? On the other hand, Google daycare must be some sort of paradise for kids.

Re:Yes.

[Knara]

I think the point isn't that children aren't biologically/sociologically necessary to society, but rather that if we're gonna try to promote a society of equals, individuals without children shouldn't be penalized (in the form of financially supporting other peoples' choices to have children, at their own expense) for not having them.

Re:Yes.

[EvilBudMan]

Where I work they pay benefits to the one working there not the dependents. If you want that you have dependents on the policy you have to pay it in full. I realize that it is still a group policy but most dependents are going to be younger and bring the total expenses down. Younger people cost less. Dependents tend to be younger. I fail to see your logic unless the company throws in a little money for anything past 1, but our doesn't.

Now taxes; I hear you there.

Re:Yes.

[corbettw]

People without children aren't being penalized, people with children are just being rewarded. Or do you feel you were penalized when Michael Phelps won his eight gold medals?

Re:Yes.

[Knara]

Allegories are more effective if they are equivalent. "Rewarding" entire groups of people at the expense of other groups isn't really the same thing as participating in an occasional recreational competition that's been inflated to a commercially profitable event.

No Worry

[WiiVault]

Unless Yahoo or MS can get their act together on search and ads Google has little to fear.

Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[BigBadBus]

Look at http://www.paullee.com/computers/index.php and follow the link in the second bullet point. The f*ckers are trying legal tricks to shut me up.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[QuantumG]

That was a great write up man. BTW, you will find that this is the norm. You, as a software engineer, have to learn to manage your manager. You need to correct their expectations by giving them constant feedback. You need to say to them that you're having trouble and won't be achieving the timeline they have proscribed.. and if they casually don't proscribe a timeline, you have to make one up yourself.

Good luck in the future.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[BigBadBus]

Thanks my friend. Two years on, and they're still treating me as a liar.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[glittalogik]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[BigBadBus]

Fair enough. I have worked in some secure locations (alright, military ones), with code pads on the doors, armed guards at the gates, bars on the windows, taped phone calls etc., but even my experiences at the place recounted in my article heightens paranoia to disturbing new levels.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[glittalogik]

I assumed you meant 'prescribe,' which, while an odd choice in that context, would make sense. Mostly I just wanted to use the Princess Bride quote.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[TheRaven64]

It sounds like you probably meant prescribe. There are lots of words in English where the antonyms are homophones and using them interchangeably is likely to confuse readers.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[Smorkin' Labbit]

You are correct that words get their meaning from how it is used, and not how it is defined. However, googling proscribe & prescribe I'm afraid you are definitely in the minority here; at least in written English proscribe almost always is used as it is defined.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[illumin8]

I read your article, and the accounts of your bullying seem very lackluster. It's apparently bullying if after 3 months of producing no results or workable code, your manager forgets to greet you with "good morning" before asking if you "have anything for her." Also, this quote was very telling:

I found the workplace to be oppressive with an undercurrent of bullying, being driven by greed and market forces. Basically, if you can't deliver on time, you're out.

I've got news for you. Every workplace in the world is like that. Companies exist to make money. If you can't deliver the code or product they hired you to deliver within a reasonable amount of time, you're out. Sorry if this sounds a little harsh and not understanding, but it seems to me that you worked there for a few months, didn't deliver any code, then, when you were confronted about your lack of productivity, immediately went to a doctor and got a note saying you needed to be home from work for 2 weeks due to "stress", then turned in your resignation notice and never showed up to work again.

This is the very definition of a lazy employee, and if I were your manager, I would have dismissed you. I'm sorry, but we don't live in a society that is all fluffy bunnies and lollipops where you don't need to work if you feel "stressed" and asking you if you have any code ready is considered bullying... This is the real world where if you don't produce work or something of value, you shouldn't expect a paycheck or something of value in return.

Re:Mistreated? You want mistreated?

[BigBadBus]

That is your opinion, of course. But then again, you weren't there. I truly despise a working environment that treated its workforce to a enforced sauna, expected unpaid overtime all the time, as and when, whose code documentation was poor and asked for code that was physically impossible in the timeframe. Plus, when I was off ill (with a genuine illness, I was put on anti-depressants, in addition to the vitiligo), the company phoned up my doctor and demanded to know when my sicknote expired. No other company I have worked for has ever acted so shabbily.

Media Darling

[bendodge]

Google has been a media darling for a long time. Now that they are finally out of the whiz-bang stage, you're ready to say they're going downhill? No, they've just gotten just about all of the internet that they can, and they are now waiting (and actively pushing) for mobile internet so they can do it all over again.

I'm personally all for trying to expand the economy itself instead of making a complete monopoly (and Google can't get much stronger without becoming a monopoly).

Now we all just get to sit and wait until wireless matures and Google takes over it. I'm speculating they'll start pushing platform-neutral stuff big-time after that (which may mean overt Linux pushing). They can't compete well with MS's enterprise dominance until they've dislodged Windows, but the wireless apple is much riper at the moment.

Re:Media Darling

[Anonymous Coward]

One wonders how Google helping China to field underage gymnasts by making sure their caches were all purged of copies of the real documents is going to play in the media.

Of course, the way the media fawned over the Chinese during the Olympics (Tibet?!?! Huh?), I doubt Google's going to take any heat about that.

Re:Media Darling

[brian1078]

One wonders how Google helping China to field underage gymnasts by making sure their caches were all purged of copies of the real documents is going to play in the media.

Anyone can request to have information removed from the google cache: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=61062

I'm not saying this is how it was removed, but it is possible that there was no explicit action taken by google.

Re:Media Darling

[lgw]

Google enterprise products aren't stopped by the "dominance" of Windows (in the enterprise?) as much as simply missing the mark. Enterprise products are expected to plug into existing mangement frameworks, API styles, etc. Doing some new cool thing isn't useful if it doesn't cleanly interoperate with the rest of the enterprise. Google doesn't seem to get this yet.

Re:Media Darling

[ballwall]

There was a writeup somewhere by another blogger that pointed out that the original blogger misrepresented the google situation. He eventually came to the conclusion that Google's cache was simply a newer version of the spreadsheet and not actively purged.

Which, imo, is a way more plausible scenario than active action on Google's part.

Sorry, no links, google it :) Hopefully china hasn't gotten to the search results.

Re:Media Darling

[TheRaven64]

I don't think Google is aiming at the enterprise yet. Their core market seems to be companies too small to employ any full-time IT staff. For this kind of organisation, a drop-in appliance with no admin overhead is worth a lot more than a Windows (or *NIX) server that needs someone competent to run it.

evil?

[philspear]

One of the "benefits" for working at google is they'll give you up to $5000 to adopt a kid.

Clearly google is paving their own way to cheap underage chinese laborers in a few years.

Re:evil?

[barzok]

Many employers' benefit plans contribute large amounts of money to adoption costs, as well as fertility treatment(s), and paying 100% minus a nominal $50 or so for prenatal care and all well-baby visits for the first 2 years.

Yet they also don't shell out the $10 for birth control pills. They'll pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to get you knocked up & take care of the kid, but won't pay a hundred bucks a year to prevent those costs from being incurred.

Re:evil?

[philspear]

That IS strange. The health insurance industry seems to justify paying for viagra but not birth control based on the technicality that viagra treats a disease but BCP prevents a normal bodily function. A terrible excuse, since any rational person would realize that unwanted pregnancy is a much bigger deal than impotence (and yes I am a guy so I'm not lacking perspective here.)

What possible reason do employers have? Surely it's not so that ultra-right wingers won't protest.

Re:evil?

[barzok]

What possible reason do employers have? Surely it's not so that ultra-right wingers won't protest.

They're offered one or two plans by the only insurance company in town & lack the power to negotiate.

And the employees don't stand up and ask for it (I can't say "demand" because they can't say no - it's take the offered plan or have nothing).

And no one who has any pull has done the math.

And there's probably some kind of weird thing about morals & letting women have sex without having to worry so much about getting pregnant.

Re:evil?

[whoda]

One of the "benefits" for working at google is they'll give you up to $5000 to adopt a kid.

Clearly google is paving their own way to cheap underage chinese laborers in a few years.

HP gave us $10,000.

That's a bullshit story, Sergey!

[Fyz]

Sergey Solyanik just left because the colleagues never referred to him as the cool Sergey.

Re:That's a bullshit story, Sergey!

[omnipresentbob]

But.... Who the heck is he? I wikipedia'd him, and found nothing. Reading his blog, he seemed like the main reason he left was because Google was giving stuff away for free. And that annoyed him. Made him feel incompetent.

Migrating flock

[DeadDecoy]

This actually reminds me of a story of the wandering engineer. They'd work for google, then move to MS because they lack quality control. The engineer would then transfer to Yahoo because MS isn't doing anything interesting. They'd then move to Google and start the cycle anew because Yahoo wasn't on the cutting edge. Maybe the novelty of working at Google, or any other place for that matter, wears off once you've been there for quite a few months and you have the qualifications to change things up. Engineers can be a fickle lot where the interesting aspects of a project outweigh how much it pays.

Re:Migrating flock

[poot_rootbeer]

This actually reminds me of a story of the wandering engineer. They'd work for google, then move to MS because they lack quality control.

And because MS offered a 10% higher salary than they were making at Google.

The engineer would then transfer to Yahoo because MS isn't doing anything interesting.

And because Yahoo offered a 10% higher salary than they were making at MS.

They'd then move to Google and start the cycle anew because Yahoo wasn't on the cutting edge.

And because Google offered a 10% higher salary than they were making at Yahoo.

Re:Migrating flock

[Kethinov]

I've lived this cycle, having worked for Yahoo!, then Google, then back to Yahoo!, and now PayPal. Personally, I don't think my migrations and wanting to change things up every now and then particularly makes me fickle. I'd rather be engaged in my work than eternally loyal to my employer. Too much loyalty isn't a good thing anyway.

Re:Migrating flock

[Surt]

This guy needs to learn how to ask for a raise, apparently. Moving from job to job is such a hassle.

Re:Migrating flock

[lgw]

Sadly, most large companies are structurally incapable of giving an employee a 10% raise two years in a row (or even once in some cases).

Re:Migrating flock

[Austerity Empowers]

You'll always get a bigger raise outside.

I don't think less of Google because of the MS boomerangers. So far not one of them showcased here has had any real interest in technology development, so they seem to belong in MS. All i see is bullshit career development. You went to school to learn engineering, do it or get out.

Now the daycare thing I have a bit more sympathy for, but on the other hand my present company offers none whatever, nor has my past employer, nor any employers I am looking at. However people may have taken their job based on that benefit, so it seems like the right thing to do is to put all new children on the new pay scale, but leave the existing children on the existing scale. Eventually the kids go to school and get out of daycare anyway.

Re:Migrating flock

[Mongoose Disciple]

I've found this to be true also.

It's completely stupid, but companies of any size generally are.

Re:Migrating flock

[dragonturtle69]

I find it humorous when someone has to quit, work somewhere else for six months, just to be rehired for the same position that they left for a 10% increase in pay.

Re:Migrating flock

[CrackedButter]

Seriously you work for Paypal and you're talking about loyalty, I call bullshit otherwise we've one person manning those empty support desks or wait, you just clean them?

Re:Migrating flock

[mikael]

The problem with most companies is that their long-term goals will change after several years, which means while you and the company were both going in the same direction when you started, they are now going in a totally different direction than where that sector of the industry as a whole is going (software service companies may want to try a new brand of hardware, try and enter a new non-core market for the perceived profit margins). So you have to change companies, in order to get where you want to go.

In Silicon Valley, it's easy to change jobs - you still keep your rented apartment/bedsit/room, but simply change your commute which can be as simple as changing the Caltrain station stop and shuttle service, or just taking a different off-ramp from the freeway.

Re:Migrating flock

[Surt]

I don't dispute that at all. The parent implied it was just for 10% raises. If the only reason you're leaving your job is for a 10% raise, you should learn how to ask for a raise at your existing job.

So all this article has to go on...

[Overly Critical Guy]

...is one guy who returned to Microsoft, the price of an employee service was raised, and the stock price is lower than it was at a point in the past.

I don't think that's enough to declare that Google has lost its mojo. Think of how many times Apple was "dying" according to the press. I think this author is just bored with Google and wants to cause a stir.

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[oGMo]

Oh, well, since an Anonymous Coward on slashdot has rated them MS-like, that definitely clinches it. Let's not confuse the issue with facts.

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[merreborn]

I don't think that's enough to declare that Google has lost its mojo. Think of how many times Apple was "dying" according to the press. I think this author is just bored with Google and wants to cause a stir.

Forgive me if I'm misinformed, but as I recall, apple *was* dying at one point, in the pre-iTunes/iPod/OS X days. In 1997, they accepted a $150 million investment from Microsoft, and their stock price was at a 10-year low. They are where they are today only because of an amazing turnaround.

That being said, google is by no means the Apple of 1997.

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[geminidomino]

In all fairness, these days "Don't be Evil" is 99% PR, 1% actual practice. That puts it firmly in the "slogan" box.

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Actually, a whole LOT of people have left Google for Microsoft. It's not widely known because Microsoft doesn't make a big deal about it (unlike Google, who feels a need to make a big press statement when they hire from a competitor).

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[CrackedButter]

The amazing turnaround you refer to is what is known as 'Steve Jobs'. Microsoft's cash injection was only a vote of confidence on their part and a way to be seen supporting another company during the time that the DoJ was giving their ass a once over to check for shit stains.

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[TheRaven64]

Apple died in 1997. NeXT acquired the brand name and was paid around half a billion dollars to take over the company's corpse. Most importantly, the non-compete agreement NeXT had with Apple that prevented them from producing consumer computer stopped applying and they could finally release OPENSTEP-based machines to the general public. Of course, they rebranded it as 'Mac OS X' because Mac OS was a better-known brand than OPENSTEP and they added a MacOS compatibility layer, but since Steve Jobs returned the company has not been Apple in any sense other than the brand.

And a good thing too. Apple of the '90s deserved to die.

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[jackspenn]

...is one guy who returned to Microsoft, the price of an employee service was raised, and the stock price is lower than it was at a point in the past.

Well that and tomorrow I went back in time; gained access to the frozen Google code base and did a replace "mojo" with "Austin Powers' plot" on every class and library I could find.

Re:So all this article has to go on...

[fululian]

Sorry, this is an idiot sig. "Piracy is ethically no different from a mob looting a store whose locks were broken"

This guy is impressed....

[budword]

He's impressed with the rock solid stability of the.......office suit software ? Enterprise level word processor and spread sheets ? Setting the bar pretty low.....

Re:This guy is impressed....

[Kent Recal]

Exactly. That made me laugh, too.
That and his "I need to know how much my software is worth, in cold hard $$$ please".

I'm sure he'll make for a worthwhile manager drone (if he looks pretty in a suit with tie, that is), I strongly doubt that he'll ever become a capable engineer.

Re:This guy is impressed....

[TheRaven64]

How much your software is worth? That's easy. It's how much someone is willing to pay you to write it (or pay someone else to write a replacement). How much a copy of your software is worth? That's much harder, but it's somewhere between zero and the cost of creating it.

Not to worry

[garett_spencley]

All they have to do is find Dr. Evil's secret volcano layer and get it back. They're frickin' Google. If they can't do it no one can.

Wait a minute

[XanC]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them), have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

And a reduction in this silly benefit that you shouldn't have in the first place is age discrimination against you?

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them

Because, as we all know it is impossible to raise children if one of the parents doesn't stay at home.

Other than that, I'd say your argument is pretty solid. Employers aren't responsible for an employee's children.

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

As someone with no children, I think it is awesome.

One thing I hate is people who use their children as an excuse to leave work early or stay back late when everyone else is. It completely undermines team dynamics. I had a coworker who used to use his wife as a proxy-child to do the same thing, that was at least comical.

That said, one thing I hate more is people bringing their screaming spawn into the office. So an on-site daycare (significantly isolated from the work areas) sounds like a freakin' great idea and I'll happily chip in.

Re:Wait a minute

[BitterOldGUy]

such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them

Because, as we all know it is impossible to raise children if one of the parents doesn't stay at home.

Other than that, I'd say your argument is pretty solid. Employers aren't responsible for an employee's children.

Yeah, technically all of you are right. What has been found is that having childcare greatly reduces the stress of workers: they don't have to worry about working late, they can visit their kid on lunch breaks if the daycare is on site, company care is just one trip, it's usually cheaper, etc...

Having company sponsored childcare doesn't mean other employees are getting paid less, is just means the stockholders are not seeing as big of a profit as they could have. If Google really had to pay less because of childcare then they wouldn't be able to get anyone good, especially the childless - they'd all go to higher paying companies, wouldn't they?

As for me, I like in house childcare because you don't get the BS (most of the time) of folks with kids having to run home every time their kid is sick; which makes my life less stressful because then I don't have to make up for them.

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

If they're quiet and polite, then yes, I have no problem with them being in the office. If they're running around and yelling and, ya know, being children then that is not appropriate to an office setting.. people are trying to work.

As for spending time in the office.. no.. I'm not a big fan. I don't expect people to stay late just because everyone else is. But, in modern software engineering, its a team effort. If someone goes home because they need to pick up their kids or whatever, then either someone else is going to have to do their work - and that means it won't get done to the same level of quality - or it means that everyone will be stalled until that person is available again to work. I believe it is a failure of management to require people to work late but, frankly, it does happen and if people are not available to work when it does, then it happens more and more.

Re:Wait a minute

[rtechie]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them), have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

Because life isn't fair.

Because our society has determined that providing child care to working mothers benefits society as a whole and Google is simply conforming to social pressure.

Because Google wishes to attract working mothers as employees and are offering child care as an incentive. Young single workers are attracted by Google's "coolness" and don't need additional incentives.

BTW, Using child care provided by your employer is "make[ing] arrangements for [children] to be cared for".

Re:Wait a minute

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for ... have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

Yeah! And while we're at it, why should I have to pay taxes that go to old, sick and young people I don't even know! It's unjust!

Re:Wait a minute

[AmberBlackCat]

I think the problem is they started out by offering these services and changed things later. Kind of a bait-and-switch.

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

Umm.. I work for a company where everyone is salaried and "at will". My employer can require us to do anything they like because they can let us go without notice and without reason. In the real world (which is where I work) people get whatever conditions they are willing to put up with, and people who don't "play the game" get shown the door.

Re:Wait a minute

[Xaria]

That's only true if everyone is being paid the same salary. I assure you - when hiring, a company considers the entire package, not just the base salary. If you're not good value for money (say, you have 5 kids in subsidised care and don't work any harder than anyone else) you'll miss out on a pay rise when everyone else gets it.

Re:Wait a minute

[Dhalka226]

If Google really had to pay less because of childcare then they wouldn't be able to get anyone good, especially the childless - they'd all go to higher paying companies, wouldn't they?

You're assuming "less" means "less than their competitors," whereas I think most people in this thread mean it as "less than they would pay if they didn't offer X." Maybe that drops them under another company, maybe it doesn't. Even if it does, maybe they also provide Y which is worth it to you, either monetarily because the costs are spread around or just from a comfort/better environment perspective.

Re:Wait a minute

[the_B0fh]

Because you live in an evil socialistic communist state of course!

Re:Wait a minute

[Internalist]

[...] or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them)

Because having Mom stay at home is the "responsible" thing to do? So the choice for women is motherhood XOR employment? I won't deny that having someone at home fulltime is the optimal situation (definitely not always possible), but maybe *Dad* could stay home...?

Re:Wait a minute

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Seriously? "Women should abandon their careers to beome housewives" gets modded +5? WTF is wrong with this website?

If you really need an answer to your stupid rhetorical question:

1. The vast majority of women in the US have little interest in permanently abandoning their careers.

2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.

3. On-site daycare is a good way to attract employees, because it provides a benefit (having your kids in the same building) that is worth a lot more to the employees than it costs to the company.

4. If you lure those employees in with this benefit, thus potentially drawing them away from another job with a better salary, and then ditch the benefit, you're screwing them. I dunno if it's "age discrimination," but it's at least somewhat a dick move.

Re:Wait a minute

[againjj]

If they're running around and yelling and, ya know, being children

You have an odd idea what "being children" means.

As far as the rest, it sounds like we agree that people not being team players is bad, and sometimes management does not properly handle this. However, many people come into a job with constraints (not just family -- how about someone on dialysis?), and sometimes those constraints are not negotiable. If those constraints are not appropriately discussed beforehand, then that is a failure of another kind. If someone is going home to pick up kids frequently, then that needs to be taken into account to prevent barriers to progress. I do not agree that the consequence must be that someone else has to do the work or others will be stalled -- people leave for home and come into work every day at different times and things manage to work just fine. But, sometimes constraints impact work; children are not a special case. Flexibility is necessary for a good work environment. However, I do agree with what seems implied in your statements -- people taking advantage of a situation for selfish gain is generally detrimental to team health.

Re:Wait a minute

[againjj]

That's not what he said.

Re:Wait a minute

[dreamchaser]

I feel exactly the same way about my tax dollars going to fund welfare for people who are able bodied and otherwise capable of fending for themselves.

Re:Wait a minute

[shadow349]

Don't buy them an XBOX.

This is Slashdot; isn't that a given?

Re:Wait a minute

[coleopterana]

Pardon me, but I would be very surprised if Google, unlike the vast majority of all daycare centers (daycare, mind, not pre-k or kindergarten) allowed sick and potentially contagious children. The better daycares I've had experience with will insist that you come and get your child if they have made it in with such an illness. Any illness, no matter how minor it might seem, spreads so quickly amongst kids of that age, especially in close proximity. Plus, though I really don't know if it's a stated or valid reason, I imagine that allowing visibly ill children to remain at the daycare presents some degree of liability that would rather be avoided. But I do think you are right about in-house daycare being a great deal more efficient, especially for a company of sufficient size, especially in terms of worker-parent efficiency.

Re:Wait a minute

[pyite]

Yeah! And while we're at it, why should I have to pay taxes that go to old, sick and young people I don't even know! It's unjust!

Even though you're being sarcastic, I agree with you. Why should I have to involuntarily pay for things other people take advantage of and I don't? E.g. welfare, medicare, social security, and the list goes on and on. I pay way more into the system than I get back.

Re:Wait a minute

[shellbeach]

Umm.. I work for a company where everyone is salaried and "at will". My employer can require us to do anything they like because they can let us go without notice and without reason. In the real world (which is where I work) people get whatever conditions they are willing to put up with, and people who don't "play the game" get shown the door.

Out of interest, is there any reason why you're staying with them? That sounds like utterly horrible working conditions to me, and the implications from your previous posts is that having a family/partner/life is frowned upon and discouraged.

At the very least, I hope you're being paid a sh*t load of money to compensate ...

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

Umm.. no dude. The company is a-ok with people running off to pick up their kids and so am I. The problem is people who saying "I have to pick up my kids" even though they have been given weeks notice that they are going to have work late on night X. They use their kids as an excuse to break their agreement that they will work whatever hours are necessary to get the job done.

And, frankly, I'm speaking in the past tense because I hardly ever go to the office these days.

Re:Wait a minute

[story645]

5. Some women just aren't cut out to be stay at home moms

I've done stints as a nanny and day care assistant so I guess I like kids, but I'd lose it if I had to stay home with my potential rugrats full time. It takes a lot of energy and skill and a personality that can handle it, and some mothers and children would be far better off if the mom worked and her kids were in day care. (Or if the dad stayed home, but of course the op didn't mention that.)

I'm just looking at the prices though and thinking google's getting ripped off. The NYT article mentioned that the average cost is a fraction of what google is paying, so if the company wanted to they could easily switch to someone else and not lose much (if anything) in competency.

Re:Wait a minute

[Naughty Bob]

All correct blahplusplus. The term is corporate responsibility.

It's a cliche, but children are the future. Call them tax-sucking, or whatever you like. They'll be paying for you ass to get wiped in 50 years time.

Re:Wait a minute

[mattack2]

Because we're required to pay into what is effectively a Ponzi scheme (Social Security) and welfare and medicare taxes. Get rid of them all.
(Possibly require a self-funded 401k equivalent if people are too stupid to save for themselves.)

Re:Wait a minute

[Whitemice]

Thank you! I think this almost every single day.

Re:Wait a minute

[That's Unpossible!]

Having company sponsored childcare doesn't mean other employees are getting paid less, is just means the stockholders are not seeing as big of a profit as they could have.

Maybe in a vacuum. In reality, if a company is making less profit:

- They pay less dividends to shareholders (as you mentioned)

- They cut wages (perhaps not across the board, which is the only thing you seem to have considered)

- They cut the number of jobs they have available (so maybe the wages don't go down, but the openings do)

- They increase the cost of goods or services they sell

- They decrease the non-wage benefits to employees

- Their stock price takes a hit and the company loses the ability to make business deals, their employees that hold options tend not to make out well, it hurts morale, etc.

Re:Wait a minute

[Snaller]

Because that's how it works in a civilized country.

Re:Wait a minute

[Snaller]

"Employers aren't responsible for an employee's children."

They can be selfish assholes, but then people chose another place to work and they close. Assuming you are skilled labor - if you are without education you are fucked.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

What has been found is that having childcare greatly reduces the stress of workers: they don't have to worry about working late, they can visit their kid on lunch breaks if the daycare is on site, company care is just one trip, it's usually cheaper, etc...

Having an in-house hooker would greatly reduce my stress level. I wouldn't have to worry about getting laid, I could get a quickie on lunch breaks if it's onsite, it would be cheaper, etc. So does that mean my company should pay for on-site hookers, and either lower the salaries of non-hooker-partaking employees, or lower their profits?

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

As much as I agree with you, reality intrudes on my peaceful utopia of eternal life and a ban on breeding.

The USA has 300 million people. That's basically nothing. Australia has a measly 20 million. I don't live in Africa. I don't live in China. I might have a different opinion if I did, but I don't.

Re:Wait a minute

[mtmra70]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them), have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

Because *gasp* thats how public schools are funded....by tax payers who do and dont have children

*passes out from disbelief*

Re:Wait a minute

[jrumney]

As for me, I like in house childcare because you don't get the BS (most of the time) of folks with kids having to run home every time their kid is sick.

Do the company childcare providers not worry about sickness spreading to other children, or taking carers' time away from the healthy children to look after a sick child? Why should company provided childcare be any different than outside childcare with respect to sickness policies?

Re:Wait a minute

[Geno Z Heinlein]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for... have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

You think you don't benefit from civilization? From law, order, a structured society? From the strong caring for the weak? Compassion, sympathy, friendship, co-operation? An educational system? Hospitals, doctors, nurses? The elimination of smallpox? The defeat of people who were gassing Jews? Protection from discrimination against your idiosyncrasies? The remission of the Law of the Jungle? The spare time to do something other than digging dirt for mere subsistence? The technology and luxury for you to post to Slashdot instead of being out hunting and gathering tonight's meal?

Society is a complex web of interdependent relationships and compromises from which you too benefit.

That's why.

Re:Wait a minute

[Tubal-Cain]

but maybe *Dad* could stay home...?

They wouldn't survive.

Re:Wait a minute

[CheeseTroll]

I pay way more into the system than I get back.

...for now.

Re:Wait a minute

[rronda]

While what you say it's true, what makes sense for an individual does not necessarily makes sense for a company. Say you really want to have the best workers in the field. If they happen to have kids and they want to stay close to them while working, having a day care facility is good for the company as well as good for the individual workers who have kids. If you are an employee that does not have kids, you'll benefit indirectly from being able to work with colleagues that have kids and that won't work in your company otherwise (or to the extent that they won't be as happy or as productive as having the day care facility).

Re:Wait a minute

[HadouKen24]

The population explosion is not, for the most part, something that has happened in the industrialized, developed nations. It isn't children in the US, Europe, Australia, Japan, or Canada that are the problem. Instead, it's mostly a consequence of numerous problems, including poor birth control, in developing nations such as Bangladesh. The birth rate in developed nations is actually dropping.

In the global market, the US is moving less and less from being a producer of goods to being a provider of services. Education is becoming more and more essential to economic success. Those who don't have it, lose out, while the more educated do better and better in the workforce. Combined with the dropping birth rate, this means that, for children in developing nations to remain in an economically strong position,there must be a much greater investment in time and money per child during primary education, secondary, and beyond to university education.

Re:Wait a minute

[rronda]

Having company sponsored childcare doesn't mean other employees are getting paid less, is just means the stockholders are not seeing as big of a profit as they could have.

How do you know this for sure?. You will have to factor in the loss of productivity (and therefore company value) related to the stress, sick kids, etc, of workers that don't have their kids in the company day care. Perhaps a subsidy is justified not only from a social point of view but also from an economic point of view too. I'd like to see numbers about this.

Re:Wait a minute

[StormyWeather]

While I somewhat agree with your assertions, I don't know if what most men and women do in the united states could be qualified as a "career". Most just have jobs that they have to go to to get ends to meet (your item number 2).

My wife did have a career, and jumped at the chance to stay home with the kids. We've adjusted alright although I do work my butt to the bone to try and make it happen. She is an accountant, we now call her the CFO (Chief Family Officer), and she really kicks ass about keeping the house running smoothly, and the budget in line. I don't know how any household that can't manage a budget, and live frugally could live on 1 income these days, but I guess plenty of single moms and dads do it.

Re:Wait a minute

[hedwards]

That's not true, age discrimination regulations are unlikely to allow a company to fire, fail to promote or pay less for employees that are older without risking lawsuits.

There are no such protections for those that are younger. So, yes theoretically that could happen, but realistically, it would be unlikely that the costs would come anywhere but from the pay of employees not using the benefit.

Re:Wait a minute

[kd5zex]

It's a cliche, but children are the future. Call them tax-sucking, or whatever you like. They'll be paying for you ass to get wiped in 50 years time.

The productive ones who had good parent(s) and/or good parenting will be footing the ass wiping bill, the children who were taught the tax-sucking lifestyle will still be, you guessed it, sucking taxes.

Re:Wait a minute

[hedwards]

If it makes you feel any better, people with children, the ones that behave in that sort of irresponsible way, tend not to be promoted as quickly.

The reason being that promotions at least in theory are supposed to be handed out for doing good work, making the enterprise more money etc. People that are slacking off for whatever reason are not likely to be more valuable to an employer than those that aren't slacking off.

Sure, as one case it might not work out that way for you, but in the long run over the population it tends to.

Re:Wait a minute

[hedwards]

That is indeed correct. The birth rate for a geographic area tends to move inversely to the rate of development, wealth accumulation and life expectancy increases.

Meaning that nations like India which pretty much requires parents to have many offspring to support them in old age will grow rapidly. Nations like Japan and Germany, which are much more affluent and are not needing children specifically to support them tend to not reproduce enough.

Re:Wait a minute

[markov_chain]

Think about this in Kantian terms. If everyone was to not have any children, our country would cease to exist and we would be overrun by our enemies. Therefore, the childless route can only be an exceptional choice made by a minority of people.

IMHO such people are shirking an important responsibility to society; especially the smart ones. The Bible writers had it right-- go forth and multiply!

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

And there speaks the authentic voice of the neo-con, with the emphasis on 'con'.

No wonder your country is in such dire straits.

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

Yeah, and Santa Claus brings presents for all the good children at Christmas.

The people who get promoted are the people who go fishing or play golf with the boss.

Re:Wait a minute

[kd5zex]

5. Some women just aren't cut out to be stay at home moms

I consider this an excuse and a cop-out, sure being a STHM is hard work but requiring special skills and personality? Please. Working is the easy way out. The families I know where the mom works because she is not "cut out" to be a stay at home mom results in very little profit or even a net loss and is generally in a menial job.
FWIW disclaimer: I am not sexist and have offer to stay at home with the children regularly.

Re:Wait a minute

[blackicye]

2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.

I'm sure what you meant was a lot of households NEED two incomes to maintain their HIGHER standards of living.

Btw, its been this way since the dawn of time when Urgg or Blaggah had more children cramming up their cave they were faced with a few difficult decisions, namely hunt and gather more, eat less, or well..infanticide.

Depending on their circumstances and their environment this was difficult to varying degrees.

At least we no longer have to resort to infanticide with birth control, family planning and more education, what's the excuse for having a family larger than you can afford to feed in the USA?

Having Children is a conscious choice and responsibility for the majority in this day and age, one you should not enter lightly into without being prepared to make sacrifices financially, temporally, in your career or otherwise.

Yes I do know I am making gross generalizations, but am not doing so with the express intent of trolling. I'm just trying to illustrate a point of view.

I don't think the human race is in any danger of extinction at present, and in fact we could probably do with everyone taking it easy for the next millennium or three.

Re:Wait a minute

[John Jamieson]

2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.

Ahh, we are in "America", land of needless consumption.
The VAST majority of my coworkers who think/thought they NEEDED a second income, really did not. They CHOOSE the lifestyle.

I am not criticizing the choice, it is not my business, BUT, We really need to learn the difference between the words NEED and WANT.

Full disclosure, my wife has "halted" her career to raise our kids.

Re:Wait a minute

[syousef]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them), have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

Because the kids that aren't raised properly are the kids that grow up to teenagers who would knife you in the chest for $5.

Why should you pay for roads? Or health care? Or emergency services? Or education? Because without these things society turns to shite. Because you indirectly use them even if you think you don't (Try living in a place without roads)

It's called living as part of a community. Any community that isn't friendly to parenthood by definition will die out.

Re:Wait a minute

[story645]

The families I know where the mom works because she is not "cut out" to be a stay at home mom results in very little profit or even a net loss and is generally in a menial job.

I don't totally disagree. I never said I was talking only about about the high end of the pay scale. I know lots of women with kids, and they'd be good stay at home moms to varying degrees. Some of them aren't the best teachers for kids hitting pre-school age, some need the breathing room work provides, a whole bunch can handle it for a few years but don't want to stay home for 5 or more. It depends on the woman. And some mothers are flat out incompetent and don't have much desire to learn (or the intellect, or whatever.) Honestly, yeah, I do sort of think that anyone who can't hack it as a STHM for at least a little bit probably shouldn't even be having children, but plenty of people have kids even though they shouldn't.

FWIW my mom stayed home with us (I've got a twin) for two years, so I sympathize with STHM's, but she also said any longer and she'd probably have killed us. I've done babysitting stints at a large family (5 kids under 10), a month long stint with a difficult kid, and a 6 month stint at a daycare, and the burnouts as bad as anything I've gotten from school/work, so I've got lots of sympathy for STHM's, and for woman who don't think it's for 'em.

Re:Wait a minute

[shellbeach]

I wasn't asking in regard to the child-care stuff (which I couldn't care less about) -- I was asking because you said that your employer "can let you go without notice and without reason".

And if you're cool with that, good luck to you! I just hope you're getting paid enough to justify the complete lack of job security, is all ...

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

Umm.. that's the norm for software engineers. We have marketable skills.

Re:Wait a minute

[the_womble]

"Women should abandon their careers to beome housewives" gets modded +5? WTF is wrong with this website?

Actually he says, "such as". it is one of a range of alternative solutions. I would certainly advocate both parents spending more time with children, and it is just as good for fathers to stay at home to look after children as for mothers to do so.

1. The vast majority of women in the US have little interest in permanently abandoning their careers.

It would be better for the children if parents worked less and spent more time with them

2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.

Even though, in the vast majority of cases, each parent by themselves earns a lot more in real terms than households with a single earner typically did, say, fifty years ago? It would be more accurate to say they need to incomes to keep up with the lifestyle of other people with two incomes.

3. On-site daycare is a good way to attract employees, because it provides a benefit (having your kids in the same building) that is worth a lot more to the employees than it costs to the company.

True, it is attractive to employees, cut it can be very expensive to provide- as it was in this case. You might be better off just paying people more.

4. If you lure those employees in with this benefit, thus potentially drawing them away from another job with a better salary, and then ditch the benefit, you're screwing them. I dunno if it's "age discrimination," but it's at least somewhat a dick move.

Of course it is not age discrimination. Google's mistake was subsidising it too much, or providing too high a level of childcare, and landing themselves with an unsustainable cost.

Re:Wait a minute

[rossifer]

I pay way more into the system than I get back.

The intelligent and wealthy argue for welfare, medicare and social security because they know that a tolerable sinecure for the poor makes it very unlikely that they will have to deal with significant social unrest and the possibility of a revolution.

You're getting a return on your money, it's in the increased stability of the society around you that makes continued economic development possible. A part of India's current development problems are rooted in the growing disparities between the new wealthy and those in grinding poverty.

Re:Wait a minute

[ultranova]

Why should I have to involuntarily pay for things other people take advantage of and I don't?

Because you live in a society, not a deserted island, so you can't always have your way.

I pay way more into the system than I get back.

On the other hand, by providing a basic living to the poor, you keep them from getting desperate enough to decide that they have nothing to lose since they're going to die of hunger anyway and can thus as well kill you and loot your corpse for spare change.

Social welfare keeps financial inequality from destroying the society. Humans are beasts, and starving beasts are dangerous. It's much more practical and cheaper too to simply feed them rather than trying to control them by force of arms.

Besides, all the rights you have are ultimately based on your perceived value as a human being. A society which doesn't value humans is unlikely to respect their rights either, and a society which lets its members starve to death obviously doesn't value them much. So, to answer your question: you have to pay taxes that support the weak because you live in a nice, touchy-feely bleeding-heart near-utopia rather than the hellpits of ancient Rome or modern-day third-world nations. You poor bastard.

Oh, sorry: even the Roman emperors provided bread to the poor, so they wouldn't riot and kill them. I guess modern-day libertarians can't quite live up to Caligula's or Nero's standards of morality and statesmanship skills.

And yes, that last bit was pure flamebait, triggered after reading one too many "My taxes support the poor ! Waaah !" post.

Re:Wait a minute

[CrackedButter]

A scaremongering economist! Who are my enemies and why would I send my child to fight them? I don't want children (I'm 27), I wasn't aware having a child was an important responsibility to society. I owe it nothing and vice a versa.

Re:Wait a minute

[ronocdh]

Employers aren't responsible for an employee's children.

No, but employers are responsible for their employees. If employees have needs, they need to be met.

Substantial child-raising accommodations are made all over Europe. It's legislated. And it works.

Re:Wait a minute

[mmkkbb]

If your team dynamics rely on people staying late because of peer pressure then your company needs to work on its planning skills.

Re:Wait a minute

[Duc de Montebello]

The population explosion is not, for the most part, something that has happened in the industrialized, developed nations. ... The birth rate in developed nations is actually dropping.

Um, except the US is only the only industrialized country with a climbing birth rate - +0.883% (2008 est.)

Compared to say negative growth rates in the other countries mentioned.

Re:Wait a minute

[wumpus188]

In my 15 years of software development, I always declined and never worked on weekends or stayed late more than 1 hour, and no, I don't have kids for excuse. I guess that makes me a real bad person.

I hate to be harsh, but you and your team are either totally expendable as developers, or just corporate sheeple.

Re:Wait a minute

[sir fer]

One thing I hate is people who use their children as an excuse to leave work early or stay back late when everyone else is. It completely undermines team dynamics.

Fuck the "team" kids come first. Try having some if you ever escape the basement.

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

How do you figure? Seriously man, you don't know shit about me. This is one thing that pisses me off about dickheads on Slashdot. You think you know fuckin' everything. You read one little comment and form an opinion you can't possibly justify without making wild and unreasonable assumptions.

Here, let me try:

When you signed your employee contract did it have a clause in it that said you would work any and all hours required? Did you think that was optional? If you were my employee I would have fired you the first time you said "no, I won't work late" because you lied. We're salaried employees. We get paid the rates we do because we are meant to be professionals who do the job that needs to be done. If you wanna dictate the hours you work, go start your own god-damn company or take contract work.. there's plenty of it.

Re:Wait a minute

[packeteer]

Sure you can, in Washington (my state) and man others you can require overtime and fire someone if they don't do it.

Re:Wait a minute

[MariusBoo]

Are you saying I should pay people not to stab me? How is this different than getting robbed? It just seems to take longer. You know what really keeps people from stabbing you? Fear of prison and/or getting stabbed themselves.

A community is made from individuals that have to take responsibility for themselves. Can't afford kids? Don't have any.

Re:Wait a minute

[blahplusplus]

"IMHO such people are shirking an important responsibility to society; especially the smart ones. The Bible writers had it right-- go forth and multiply!"

It's not that the smart don't want to, it's that the women don't like the smart ones.

Re:Wait a minute

[emj]

Well you proved your point about dickheads on slashdot...

It's a known fact that getting a child can be very bad for your career, one of the reasons women gets paid less. That is an important sacrifice that men should take responsibility for as well. If you ever get children I dearly hope you care more for the children than the "group dynamics", both maybe important but I choose the individual before the group in this case.

So take responsibility and stay home with your children.

---
group dymaics is communism! :-)

Re:Wait a minute

[QuantumG]

Sigh. They're paying you to care. If you don't care, why should they pay you? Seriously.. if the job requires you to be there then you should either be there or get another job.

Re:Wait a minute

[emj]

The problem is that it's not slacking off, it's "I'll go home and take care of my child". Sure you do get less pay if you actualy care for your children, but the question is should companies really strive for dysfunctional families?

Re:Wait a minute

[phillous]

...if only your parent's shared your view.

Re:Wait a minute

[emj]

FWIW my mom stayed home with us (I've got a twin) for two years, so I sympathize with STHM's, but she also said any longer and she'd probably have killed us.

Let the mother have 7 months max, and then make the men take another 7 months. Then take them to day care.

Re:Wait a minute

[phillous]

they have nothing to lose since they're going to die of hunger anyway and can thus as well kill you and loot your corpse for spare change.

What, no epic lootz?!?

Re:Wait a minute

[supertjx]

Because you pay taxes to the government. It's the government's job to take care of the old and sick. it's not YOUR employer's job to take care of the old and sick unless you subscribe to metrosexual bullshit called Corporate Social Responsibility

Re:Wait a minute

[phillous]

Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet. Even though, in the vast majority of cases, each parent by themselves earns a lot more in real terms than households with a single earner typically did, say, fifty years ago? It would be more accurate to say they need to incomes to keep up with the lifestyle of other people with two incomes.

Ok, I live in england, and I'm pretty sure our house prices are way higher than the states, but here's my two cents...
I'm 22, and I work full time in banking in london. Its a long commute, a long day and often means working late and at weekends. I have a girlfriend and an 18mo boy. She stays at home because a) she hated her job and didn't want to go back after maternity, and b) we decided that having a parent around all day was better than daycare.

These are our lifestyle choices, and I accept that. HOWEVER, because of the number of two income families, if you want to buy a house you need two incomes. I have a pretty well paid job and live in a pretty cheap area, and I'm still forced to rent the scummy flat I live in now. If we were to say... double my salary, we could afford to BUY a small nice house. The Problem is that because the MAJORITY of families are dual income, people can afford to buy nicer houses, until it gets to a point where you NEED two incomes to buy ANY house.

The "sexual revolution" has been the best thing for the economy and "growth" since the industrial revolution. I'm happy with the choices our family have made, but we are very poor, financially because of it. The trade off is a happy healthy son and home life. I'd rather my son had a parent all day than we had a nicer house that none of us ever saw because of work/daycare.

Re:Wait a minute

[CrackedButter]

I think you'll find Japan has found a solution to their population population (which is what we're effectively talking about, population decline) and that is to create Robots. What use will a child be then after I've bought the Crushinator?

Re:Wait a minute

[emj]

I find that most parents I've worked with are highly motivated and do their job as well as anyone else, even if they have to go early. They have to, if you don't allow that you might as well have a "no children policy" in the work place, and we all know why that doesn't work.

But as you said later on/earlier your workplace is ok with people leaving to take care of their children, but if my employees were starting to say things like "he doesn't contribute, he just goes home to his child" I would be very worried.

What you are talking about is discrimination.

Re:Wait a minute

[blahplusplus]

"The term is corporate responsibility."

The Founding Fathers (of the US) discoursed endlessly on the meaning of "republicanism." John Adams in 1787 defined it as "a government, in which all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally subject to the laws."

Problem is corporate money buys laws and finances government. To people who are rich, the law doesn't mean much since they have the most powerful insiders anyway. It is impotent because they can afford to buy lawyers and politicians. So they can simply make the law and reorganize the economies in their favor, so the law doesn't really sting because they can block it, anull it or buy new ones.

I'm not sure if there can ever be corporate responsibility. The profit motive is too corrupting I think. I'm reminded of John adams...

"Adams worried that a businessman might have financial interests that conflicted with republican duty; indeed, he was especially suspicious of banks. He decided that history taught that "the Spirit of Commerce . . . is incompatible with that purity of Heart, and Greatness of soul which is necessary for a happy Republic." But so much of that spirit of commerce had infected America. In New England, Adams noted, "even the Farmers and Tradesmen are addicted to Commerce." As a result, there was "a great Danger that a Republican Government would be very factious and turbulent there."

Re:Wait a minute

[wumpus188]

No, my contract do not say anything about "any and all hours required" I have to work. I strongly believe neither does yours (assuming you're in US). What it may say though, is that you're required to perform your professional duty as required to meet the deadlines. I worked in my share of companies and although conditions and work ethics is different, they all had the same problems with deadlines:

(a) Estimations were good and reasonable, but your team underperformed - see my first point;

(b) Estimations were initially off, or became unreasonable due to scope creep, etc. In this case, your professional responsibility was to let your management know about this problem, which you did not - see my second point.

And btw, yes, I do run my own business...

Re:Wait a minute

[demallien2]

Because the smart ones can only be men?

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

Because

(1) the kids raised by your co-workers will one day pay for your retirement
(2) co-workers with a happy and stress-free family life are much more efficient at their jobs.
(3) your salary isn't actually lower. The shareholders make that investment, not you.

Do you actually have kids ?

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

Being good value for money for an employer has often little to do with how "hard" people work. I'd take a happy, efficient, clear thinking dad over any youngster with no perspective and who think they are smarter than everybody else. Besides, over about 45h a week for long periods, productivity goes way down.

But that's just me and my business.

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

And in the case of Google, if they make less profit, it doesn't really matter that much. It only cuts their ability to make poor business decisions like overpriced acquisitions.

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

I agree for the stress levels, but I'm not sure about the productivity :-)

Re:Wait a minute

[vidarh]

For my part, I'd NEVER even remotely consider signing a contract saying I will work any and all hours required. Even if I did, though, luckily where I live and work such a contract can not be enforced and would in all likelihood be illegal.

The reason I would never sign a contract like that is that I'm not cheap and expendable. I know my value, and it's high enough that I can afford to refuse stupid contract terms like that. If more people actually stood up and negotiated their terms instead of accepting whatever is put in front of them, most people would have far better terms.

Here's a hint: Almost all offers are negotiable. In fact, I've never been given an offer of employment where the salary, equity and contract terms weren't all up for negotiation. I usually negotiate offers up anywhere from 10-50%, and if I see contract terms I don't agree with, I strike them out and tell them to fix it. So far every single potential employer have come back with a significantly improved offer and contract.

Hence the GP's comment about you being either expendable or corporate sheeple.

If you're not easily expendable and you dare stand up for yourself in negotiations you won't have crap like that in your contracts.

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

If you want to trust your old age to a robotic minder then all power to you. By the time you need it, it may or may not available though.

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

Oh, don't worry, most men don't like smart women either.

Re:Wait a minute

[CrackedButter]

It may be cheaper than childcare though, thats the thing.

Re:Wait a minute

[Shinobi]

The problem is that it has also lead to children generally having weaker immune systems, since they don't get as much chance to adapting.

Re:Wait a minute

[ThomsonsPier]

Meaning that, if wealthy, there is an argument for welfare, medical care and social security regardless of your attitude to those less fortunate.

Re:Wait a minute

[demallien2]

Lol. A valid point!

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

Not the only one, France is one other exception : +0.5% for 2008. France has highly subsidised early childhood care, it accounts for over 2% of the GDP.

Re:Wait a minute

[rhakka]

As an employer, I know I am not *responsible* for someone's kids. I'm not *responsible* for their health care either (though I might, someday, be legally obligated) but I want a compelling benefit package so I offer it anyway.

If I want to attract the best the brightest... even those who have decided to *gasp* have kids and *gasp* not shut one parent's career down in a screeching halt... then on site daycare is a major draw for parents. as another poster noted it reduces their stress, and it also saves time in their day... time they can spend working, perhaps. No rush to leave at 5 to go pick up the kids. etc, etc.

as an employer, I don't necessarily want to just throw parents to the wolves. a lot of parents are older, valuable employees who have put time into their careers and who now REALLY have a reason to think long-term, and about stability.

I would be stupid to try to attract different kinds of employees with the same palette of benefits. and while the single workaholic is certainly a valuable employee, he/she is not the only one I want working for me.

Re:Wait a minute

[terryducks]

Oh, Grow up and get a real job. Obviously that daycare you're in isn't doing you any good. You're definitely smarter than the rest of the crew and even your boss. If you have a problem with the team and your boss doesn't - YOU have the problem. Talk to the boss and stop wining on the internet. :P

Re:Wait a minute

[JoeZeppy]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them), have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

And a reduction in this silly benefit that you shouldn't have in the first place is age discrimination against you?

another happy John McCain voter :') Republican motto: I got mine, fuck you.

Re:Wait a minute

[JoeZeppy]

Having company sponsored childcare doesn't mean other employees are getting paid less, is just means the stockholders are not seeing as big of a profit as they could have. If Google really had to pay less because of childcare then they wouldn't be able to get anyone good, especially the childless - they'd all go to higher paying companies, wouldn't they?

For employees without children it certainly does mean they get paid less unless the company puts that added compensation/benefit it costs them for providing that care for people with children directly onto their salary in cold hard cash.

so, if I don't wear glasses, no one should have eye care?

If I don't have any health problems, no one should get a medical plan?

If my parents are rich, no one should get social security?

Christ, do you people have any concept of what "society" actually is? Maybe we should all go back to living in caves, and the person with the best spear aim gets all the meat, and everyone else starves. And yes, in most companies I've worked in, you get a certain amount of benefit dollars, to use as you see fit, and if you don't use them all, you get a credit on your pay. But it still doesn't subsidize the entire cost.

The whole point of shared benefits, or car insurance for that matter, is that you average out the cost for some peoples care amongst the whole pool, resulting in lower average costs for everyone. The "value added" is that these people don't go bankrupt, default on their mortgages, clog up emergency rooms for minor illnesses, become criminals and rob others to support themselves, or otherwise become a burden on society. (and by "burden" I mean "cost". You're either going to pay up front to help them, or pay at the end to deal with them.)

That's a concept you either believe in, or you don't. If you don't, then go ahead and opt out. If you ever find yourself or your children with cancer or a serious illness, well you can just take a couple aspirin and go to bed until you feel better.

What's that? You don't have any paid sick days? Aww, that's too bad. Maybe we should have forced euthanasia for people who can't take care of themselves? Fuck 'em if they can't make it on their own.

Re:Wait a minute

[coleopterana]

I think that can definitely be true, however, kids are going to pick up so much funk that attempting to prevent a flu epidemic from a childcare center is still worthwhile. Even with reasonable prevention, kids are just going to catch crap. This obsession with disinfecting everything they touch, however, is somewhat overboard, I bet you'd agree :)

Re:Wait a minute

[quadrox]

I would like to know how you organize work at your company. Are you doing a lot of pair programming?

In our company we use SCRUM and everyone has his sets of tasks to work on during the day, not really requiring any of the other co-workers to be in the office. Of course there is the occasional question that someone else is better suited to answer, or a piece of code needs inspection or something else, but in general I do my work on my own. And there is seldom a problem for me to do it when I want to.

Re:Wait a minute

[ct1972]

Because their kids will pay your social security in the future.

I understand your point, but people who have no children that make this complaint often forget, it's other people's children who will care for them, run the economy, pay the taxes that supply your future care and so on. Even viewed dispassionately, children are an essential part of overall economic survival - have a look at China's inverted population pyramid and consider the problems they will have.

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. It has worked perennially since the 1930s. It only requires the proportion of active workers and retiree to be roughly constant.

Experience shows that even smart people typically underestimate what is required for a self-funded retirement.

Re:Wait a minute

[HuguesT]

Actually parenthood grows on you. Your kids and other people's kids are not the same thing at all. I hated initially taking care of my eldest but now I love it.

Re:Wait a minute

[BraksDad]

This is an insane line or reasoning. Non of my colleagues knows my salary either. Is that discrimination? I may get paid more or less than them as measured against my productivity. You cannot compare the benefits across each employee this way. The benefits are what they are, you apply for a position, get an offer, if you like it you take it. If not, you decline and move on. If I do not utilize a daycare center, but the rest of the package is good enough for me to exchange that huge portion of my life for, then so be it, I take the job and do the best I can at it. If I really need free daycare, I can always look at companies that offer it and only apply there. It may restrict me severly, but it is an option available to me. Of course, I could just find a job that pays a little more to offset the costs as well. OR, I could vote for a Democratic House/Senat/Executive Branch and wait for the state to take the costs from my fellow citizens and give it to me. ;)

Re:Wait a minute

[houghi]

One parent at home, why not? It sure would solve a lot of employment problems.

Now we need to outsource the kids (daycare) and other things. All because we need a second or third car and several TV's and all those other things that the neighbors have. And yes, I am guilty as well.

Re:Wait a minute

[corbettw]

On the other hand, by providing a basic living to the poor, you keep them from getting desperate enough to decide that they have nothing to lose since they're going to die of hunger anyway and can thus as well kill you and loot your corpse for spare change.

Good point. However, the danger there is that when you subsidize laziness, you encourage people not to do anything with their lives. Personally, I see the value in a social safety net (*gasp* a Libertarian with common sense, what a shock!) I just don't want to see people get trapped in multi-generational dependency on the government. It's one reason why I think private charities are better suited to handle that sort of thing, since they can place requirements on their charity.

Besides, all the rights you have are ultimately based on your perceived value as a human being. A society which doesn't value humans is unlikely to respect their rights either, and a society which lets its members starve to death obviously doesn't value them much.

That's an interesting argument. Definitely food for thought.

Re:Wait a minute

[whoda]

I thought kids had stronger immune systems. This allows them to fight off things their bodies haven't encountered yet.

Get chicken pox as an adult and you're in serious trouble.
As a kids disease, its just a week off of school.

Re:Wait a minute

[j_snare]

I have a major issue with one of your points:
2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.

The only reason this happens is because people get used to having that dual income, and can't decrease their spending habits accordingly. If people would live under their means rather than right at the limit, they'd have a much easier time making ends meet. It's extremely frustrating to see people living way over what they need, and not having any savings, then they complain about how they don't have any money. If you make 50K / year, then you really shouldn't be planning your house and car expenses to total 50K / year. Yet people insist on having the nicest car, the nicest house, the nicest TV... Even if they can't really afford it.

Financial planning needs to be hammered into people from day one of their education.

Anyway, as far as the mother having to be home, I agree that it doesn't need to be a woman that stays home, but I still believe that one or the other parent should generally be at home. Realistically, this often works out to be the woman just because people look at the higher paycheck, and it's usually the man that makes the higher amount.

We all make choices, and we have to live with the consequences of our choices. People seem to forget that having kids does have consequences, that you choose to make sacrifices. It's no secret that they cost a lot to raise. And it's no secret that they generally do better with a parent at home. If you're planning on having kids, then plan on taking care of them properly.

Re:Wait a minute

[Shinobi]

It has greater direct raw strength, but as I said, it's not yet adapted to various things. That's why for example chicken pox and other "kid diseases" is something that should not lead to isolation, because an early exposure lets the immune system adapt, so it won't affect them when they become adults.

Re:Wait a minute

[Dog-Cow]

It's a shame your mother wasn't aborted. Obviously she was completely unable to raise humane children.

Re:Wait a minute

[t0rkm3]

Absolutely,

My dad ran a consulting business out of his home office while my mom worked for the USPS. (Chiefly due to her lack of patience for children over the age of five.)

It worked out very well, except I think Dad did spoil that youngest. Isn't that always the case?

Sometimes the male member of the relationship is more suited to childrearing. My spouse and I have plans in case this turns out to be the case with us.

Re:Wait a minute

[derrickh]

No you dont.

You pay almost nothing to the system in regards to what you recieve. I'm guessing you're in the US or some other developed country. So your taxes not only pay for mundane stuff like law enforcement and roads that allow you to travel to almost anywhere in the country. They also pay for the military that , no matter what you think of the government, has on at least 4 occasions stopped this country from being destroyed in one way or another. Your taxes paid to educate the majority of the citizens so that eventhough we all cant compile a Linux kernal, we can read, write, and do fairly high level math. Your taxes paid for a system, while flawed, tries to keep harmful drugs and fake medicine out of a young mother's child's mouth (that would be you). Your taxes make sure that people can't put up 'Whites Only' signs anymore.

All of this may not seem like a lot to you, but trust me, it adds up to a hell of a lot more than the check you dole out every year.

D

Re:Wait a minute

[ultranova]

However, the danger there is that when you subsidize laziness, you encourage people not to do anything with their lives.

I might be cynical here, but... is that a bad thing ? "Not everyone grows up to be an astronaut", as one demotivator put it. If everyone bases their lives around trying to accomplish things, in the financial sense, then most people will lose constantly - after all, there can only be so many winners, and someone has to flip the burgers too. The temptation to cheat - arrange your competitors to have "accidents" in extreme cases - is quite high in such an environment. I see the constant unethical or outright illegal behavior of various companies and can't help but wonder if the (impossible to fulfil) requirement that they increase their profits constantly is mostly to blame.

This of course doesn't mean that all people couldn't accomplish something, only that only a few of them can be financial successes. Most people are mediocre, by definition; and some fall beneath that. If they all have burning ambition and refuse to settle for their position, "cutthroat competition" gets a whole new meaning.

Remember, "bread and circuses" was meant to keep the masses complicit - to make them lazy, to put it bluntly.

a Libertarian with common sense, what a shock!

It is, here on Slashdot at least. I think that the libertarians in general would enjoy a far greater success if they'd keep the people who refer to people as "crotchfruit" and go on about the evil of taxes and the government on leash, and concentrated on talking about liberty. This is especially true when said rant is posted on a discussion forum in a government-built tax-funded Internet :).

In a way, it's a pity. Libertarians actually have a lot of good ideas (or at least ideas I agree with ;), they simply tend to take them to the point where the reduction positive freedom starts negating the increase of negative freedom. Not to mention the return to feudalism, which will happen if the central government is weakened too much, since there's no longer anything to stop the local land/factory/whatever owners from throwing their weight around.

I just don't want to see people get trapped in multi-generational dependency on the government.

One way to avoid this is to ensure that you can improve yourself regardless of your parent's financial situation. For example, here in Finland, not only is education up to and including university level (up to Doctorate, I think) free (paid by the government), but it actually subsidizes the students - just barely enough to live by, but still enough that anyone who honestly wants to better his position in life can go study. Of course keeping on getting this subsidy is dependent on showing continued progress in one's studies.

It's one reason why I think private charities are better suited to handle that sort of thing, since they can place requirements on their charity.

Government can and does place requirements on receiving the benefits. As I see it, the problems with relying on private charities are:

1. You can't mandate that they actually care for everyone, so what happens if there isn't enough ? With state-provided welfare, you can simply make it a legal obligation of the state.
2. Private charities can naturally place any requirements of their charity, such as "you must support the teaching of creationism in the science class to get this benefit".
3. Since the private charity is not anyone's legal obligation, it could dry up at any moment, for any arbitrary reason or no reason at all. Consequently, you can't plan ahead if you're getting it, and thus it becomes even harder to escape poverty. After all, if you save some money (which is often the first step of improving your position in life), the charity-givers could well decide that y

Re:Wait a minute

[afabbro]

I don't want children (I'm 27), I wasn't aware having a child was an important responsibility to society. I owe it nothing and vice a versa.

"Vice a versa"? Your best contribution to society might be to not have children.

Re:Wait a minute

[afabbro]

The Founding Fathers (of the US) discoursed endlessly on the meaning of "republicanism." John Adams in 1787 defined it as "a government, in which all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally subject to the laws." Problem is corporate money buys laws and finances government.

18th century mercantilism is so much better.

Re:Wait a minute

[Acer500]

That's thanks to inmigration bringing some third-world birth rates to your country.

Same happens in many other developed countries (Turks in Germany and Austria, Ecuatorians in Spain, Bolivians over here, etc).

I'm pretty certain that if you clamped on inmigration you'd see negative birth rates (not that I'm advocating it).

Re:Wait a minute

[Katalyst23]

Sometimes I wonder if the smart ones don't want to because they have the intellectual capacity to grasp what a huge challenge it is to raise a kid. I know that's what makes me shy away from the concept of having them.

Re:Wait a minute

[CrackedButter]

doh!

Re:Wait a minute

[wkcole]

such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them

Because, as we all know it is impossible to raise children if one of the parents doesn't stay at home.

Other than that, I'd say your argument is pretty solid. Employers aren't responsible for an employee's children.

With the caveat that I understand that I'm hanging this off of two layers of unabashed flamebait... These bits of DUHHHH make a nice frame with the NYT story behind the "way it treats its employees" link for a missed point.

GOOGLE HAS NEVER BEEN A WORKER'S PARADISE

A lot of IT people have been contacted by Google recruiters in the past few years, sometimes in rather intrusive ways. What one can learn from being a Google recruiting target (assuming you don't just hit delete on the spam... ) is:

1. Google has a severe shortage of mid-career IT pros with really solid experience outside of the academic/ISP/startup world.
2. Google has absolutely no clue about how to appeal to those people.

At one point, an acquaintance of mine who happened to work at Google whined in a rather chatty place with a heavy population of middle-aged sysadmins about how hard it was to find experienced sysadmins, and expressed it in a way that made it clear that there's strong Kool-Aid being passed around at Google that is perpetuating the problem. Google folks seem to think that working at Google is a perk per se and many will try to sell the greatness of that honor further by talking up the many more tangible perks, never understanding that the list of goodies which must seem fabulous to someone whose work experience is Starbucks, maybe a graduate assistantship, and a failed startup is much more likely to look like a baited trap to someone who has more common sorts of serious IT experience. Ironically, the guy who was complaining a year ago about his recruiting difficulties has now left Google...

The child care fiasco is a perfect example of how Google's "good benefits" are themselves part of that problem. On-site child care is a great benefit, and is attractive to many of the people that Google has been trying desperately to attract. However, it is also most attractive to a younger set, people with preschool kids who have not reached the point of understanding that daycare is a second-best choice. For parents with a bit more experience, a gold-plated subsidized child care center at the workplace is just another bar in a gilded cage. Google is unattractive to seasoned pros because part of that seasoning includes learning that a job is rarely adequate as the primary focus of a happy life, and that if you make your job the central focus of your life you are almost certain to end up burnt out on that job and without anything else. Google has worked very hard to attract people willing and able to essentially live in the Googleplex, but by building the company on those sorts of people they have built in a blindness to the needs of the sort of people they will increasingly need to have on board as they try to offer deeper services to more demanding audiences. Of course, Google is far from the first company to have this sort of trouble. Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft have all survived their adolescence successfully and if Google figures out that it actually can learn something from what others have done in the past, they certainly have the resources to make the transition to a sustainable mature company.

Re:Wait a minute

[rtb61]

In the case of google where the majority of the profit is all based upon selling advertising, keeping those sellers convinced of the benefits of that advertising becomes of prime importance. Maintaining a happy workforce is of prime importance, as too much leaking information or conflicting statistics will significantly harm the perceived value opf that advertising price, which in turn would cripples revenue.

Google's revenue has largely peaked and is only increasing as a result of purchased additions to the company and the tail end of overseas expansions. There has been a growing awareness amongst the sellers of the reducing sales benefits of addwords/spamwords which has them going back to more traditional advertising which is starting to hurt googles revenue.

Google has real trouble diversifying as those currently entranced in the senior executive positions have a locked in mind set, or privacy invasive and psychologically targeted advertising and, they really can not see beyond that. Employee troubles are largely just the result of the intensely psychologically manipulative work place losing it's bite, working 20% harder for 20% less, but you get free peanuts only lasts so long, before people actually check the numbers to figure out those two lots of twenty percent pay for a heck of a lot more than the few free perks they are getting.

Re:Wait a minute

[lucifuge31337]

Because, as we all know it is impossible to raise children if one of the parents doesn't stay at home.

Certainly not impossible, but not what I would consider optimal for young children. I made a choice to go to work, buy a smaller house, drive older cars, and have my wife able to stay at home with the children. If you don't want to make those decisions, no problem. But I would have a problem if I were essentially paid less/received less benefit from a company because other people had decided they could "have it all".

Yes, there are single parents out there. They likely need child care during the day if they don't have a family member to do it. But, again, not my problem.

Re:Wait a minute

[blahplusplus]

"18th century mercantilism is so much better."

I would like to hear your solutions to corruption.

Re:Wait a minute

[just fiddling around]

Let's see what happens if said kids need medical care. That's no lifestyle choice, right?

What do we have behind door 2 Jane? Oh Michael we have a few hundred thousand dollars in doctor fees, and our contestant has to forfeit everything AND repay his new debts for 20 years. Thanks for playing!

Re:Wait a minute

[afabbro]

There is none. It's endemic to the species. Most humans are motivated by their own selfish desires.

Re:Wait a minute

[Vexor]

That's assuming skyn..I mean Google's not brainwashing their employees children during their daycare.

Re:Wait a minute

[operagost]

I thought kids had stronger immune systems.

No, just inexperienced.

This allows them to fight off things their bodies haven't encountered yet.

So do adult immune systems, or else we'd all die of the common cold, pneumonia, flu, etc.

Get chicken pox as an adult and you're in serious trouble.
As a kids disease, its just a week off of school.

Adults have more complications, but you're not "in serious trouble."

Re:Wait a minute

[afabbro]

No, but employers are responsible for their employees. If employees have needs, they need to be met.

Um, no. Employers offer an exchange: you do this work, we give you this money. Terms and conditions, enticements and rules, etc. are all negotiable and subject to the market.

Re:Wait a minute

[smashin234]

I am all for the in-house hooker, but my wife insisted that the hooker be less attractive and fatter then her, and since most married women would probably insist the same for their working husbands, your result is:

Helga. 5 foot 2 360 pounds and she makes your dog look like a supermodel. WOOF!

Re:Wait a minute

[afabbro]

Umm.. I work for a company where everyone is salaried and "at will". My employer can require us to do anything they like because they can let us go without notice and without reason. In the real world (which is where I work) people get whatever conditions they are willing to put up with, and people who don't "play the game" get shown the door.

Out of interest, is there any reason why you're staying with them? That sounds like utterly horrible working conditions to me, and the implications from your previous posts is that having a family/partner/life is frowned upon and discouraged.

At the very least, I hope you're being paid a sh*t load of money to compensate ...

Every company (at least in the USA) is at-will employment. Every company in the USA can let you go without reason and without notice. They can't fire you because you're a certain ethnicity or gender, etc., but other than a (very few) protectected category, any other reason is fair game. "We decided that employees may no longer have tattoos - oh you have some? You're fired." "I just don't like you any more." "Oh, you like the Rolling Stones? Sorry, I'm a Beatles man - there's the door."

Of course, everyone else in the company may quit if they hear about it, no one may want to work there, etc.

Re:Wait a minute

[operagost]

I think you'll find Japan has found a solution to their population population (which is what we're effectively talking about, population decline) and that is to create Robots.

They eat old people's medicine for fuel. And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free; because they're made of metal, and robots are strong.

They also push people down stairs to protect them.

Re:Wait a minute

[smashin234]

That entire controversy about women getting paid less was found groundless in the end. I would hate to break it to you, but the statistics were based on a fallacy and today women get paid the same if not more then men in the same position.

Of course, when dealing with Simpson's paradox, anything can come out wrong, but lets not stop that from showing us the truth: companies care more about how productive and resourceful you are then anything else. There are plenty of workers who twiddle their thumbs half the day and then work overtime because their group somehow didn't finish the work for the day.

As for taking responsibility for your children: Yes do so. But have you seriously looked at the economics of having children? You do realize that having ONE working parent seriously makes your resources stretch to the breaking point with even just one child? And most people have 2.5, so doing the math its just obvious that its not always possible to stay at home with the children.

BTW: I do not have children, but I have some understanding of the responsibility and economics that goes into having them.

Re:Wait a minute

[HerbanLegend]

When children have a consistent primary care provider for the first two years of life, research has shown that the children have high-quality lasting attachments and are healthier and happier. Children need to have a parent with them at all times during the first two years... that much we know for sure. We also know that children who are breastfed for two years enjoy lifelong protection from certain diseases and are smarter and have fewer health complications.

So I ask you - do mothers need to stay home? Well, no, but if you are willing to have a child, then perhaps you should consider doing what's best for them as well. Short of full-time live-in wet nurses, I can't think of any other way to give our kids the best possible start.

Re:Wait a minute

[mattack2]

I'm not a neo-con. I am as much voting *against* McCain as I am voting for Obama. I disagree with some of Obama's beliefs, but disagree with McCain's couple of most strongly held beliefs *more*.

I also hold some very far 'left wing' beliefs too, about environmental topics for example. So don't call me names, especially ones that don't apply.

Re:Wait a minute

[animaal]

A community is made from individuals that have to take responsibility for themselves. Can't afford kids? Don't have any.

Firsly, a healthy community is made of a mixture of people, including the young, the old, and the sick, who cannot take responsibility for themselves. A community where everybody takes responsibility for themselves is also known as a gang.

Secondly, there is some logic to saying that it's a bad idea to have kids that you can't afford. However, whether or not you can afford kids partly depends on the aids (financial and otherwise) that are provided by society. If these change, people can be left in trouble.

Thirdly, you are very unlikely to take responsibility for yourself forever. I don't know what country you live in, or how wealthy you think you'll be, but most retirement investment products are pyramid schemes. They depend on a larger population of young people, whose current premiums are paying the pensions of the smaller population of old people. As long as the population of contributors keeps growing, there's no problem. But it does mean that even with the pension investment product that I assume you're paying into, when you retire you'll still need a larger population of paying young people to provide your retirement income. Most societies recognise that a growing population of young people is necessary to the economy and to the society, and so they encourage childbirth with incentives (financial and otherwise).

Re:Wait a minute

[Shinobi]

Actually, the immune system of a child has greater raw strength.

The adults immune system works on adaptation. An example already given in this thread: A normal healthy kid that gets Chicken Pox shrugs it off fairly quickly. If you never had it as a child, instead getting it as an adult, a normal healthy adult, it'll knock you out for quite a while, possibly even to the point of inflicting chronic pain, for the rest of your life. So yes, there can be serious complications.

Re:Wait a minute

[uniquename72]

Wow. Yes, in the event of an exceedingly unlikely expensive medical emergency that's not covered by the working spouse's insurance (which every responsible parent has), then both parents may in fact NEED to work.

Is that the response you were looking for?

Re:Wait a minute

[D Ninja]

No, for always. I will not get social security. I may use Medicare - I don't know. Welfare...hmmm...don't see it happening.

Obviously I can't predict the future, but, for the most part, I do not see myself using those "public" services.

Re:Wait a minute

[chill]

Seriously? "Women should abandon their careers to become housewives" gets modded +5? WTF is wrong with this website?

I'll let this slide because of your high user ID, but dude -- this is Slashdot. Most of these people can't get DATES, much less reproduce. Their ideas of women come from 1) mom -- take care of my every need; 2) Hollywood -- dorks eventually get girls, and their bodily makeup is between 30% and 60% silicon; 3) Anime -- the tentacles go where?

Re:Wait a minute

[syousef]

Are you saying I should pay people not to stab me? How is this different than getting robbed? It just seems to take longer. You know what really keeps people from stabbing you? Fear of prison and/or getting stabbed themselves.

No, I'm saying you should contribute happily to society so that all of it's members receive the opportunities you seem to take for granted. When you were a child, you benefited from public education and healthcare didn't you? Why do you begrudge putting money back into the system to provide the same for others?

A community is made from individuals that have to take responsibility for themselves. Can't afford kids? Don't have any.

What you're saying is similar to: Can't afford to build roads across the whole country? Don't buy a car.

You really think people take on endevours in total isolation from society? People can only "afford" kids because there's communal infrastructure in place. Unless you're completely self sufficient, as in grow your own food, make your own clothes from animals you hunt down and crops you grow.

It's cliche but no man is an island. You may phrase it so it sounds reasonable: Why should I pay for others? However you've completely ignored the fact that others paid for you too.

Re:Wait a minute

[shellbeach]

Every company (at least in the USA) is at-will employment. Every company in the USA can let you go without reason and without notice. They can't fire you because you're a certain ethnicity or gender, etc., but other than a (very few) protectected category, any other reason is fair game. "We decided that employees may no longer have tattoos - oh you have some? You're fired." "I just don't like you any more." "Oh, you like the Rolling Stones? Sorry, I'm a Beatles man - there's the door."

If that's really the case, I'm so glad I decided not to work there ...

Seriously, man, that sucks balls. Most other first world countries have decent unfair dismissal laws, not to mention governments and unions that stand up for the rights of workers.

Re:Wait a minute

[NateTech]

Technically NOT HAVING KIDS greatly reduces the stress on what otherwise would have been parents.

Personally I keep wondering why people treat having children as not an OPTIONAL thing to do.

People who have kids already get it FAR better in taxes in this country than those of us who CHOOSE not to. You'd think they could suck it up a bit when it comes to taking care of THEIR offspring.

News flash: Stop having kids if you can't afford them.

Re:Wait a minute

[afabbro]

I'm not saying it's common, just that it's the law. The tradeoff is that we have very low unemployment.

Vacation...

[serviscope_minor]

Interesting. Looks like it starts at 15 days, and moves up to 25 days after 6 years. Their 6 year level has reached the mandatory minimum number of paid vacation days in many EU countries.

Is that mistreatment? If you've come from Eurpoe, then it may feel that way.

Re:Vacation...

[petes_PoV]

don't forget the statutory maximum number of working hours per week we enjoy too.

Re:Vacation...

[Rogerborg]

Remember to add 14 days for all the Amerika == Teh Gratests Federal holidays though, including Washington Day, celebrating the birthday of George Washington, born February 22nd, and celebrated in the 3rd week in January.

Re:Vacation...

[xaxa]

I wondered if the equivalent days in the UK (there are 8) were in addition to the 24 days (28 from next year) or included -- it turns out that they can be included in the mandatory 24 days. I don't know what standard practise is, but the last company I worked for gave 24 days + the 8 days anyway.

Re:Vacation...

[larry bagina]

Unless you're a gov't employee, only half or fewer result in a day off.

Re:Vacation...

[s7uar7]

It's the jobs with the largest pool of labour that are most likely to include public holidays in the yearly allowance - low paid and unskilled.

Re:Vacation...

[Austerity Empowers]

In the part of amerika I live in, you get 8 days. In engineering, I've been able to negotiate salaries by 10-20%, but have never gotten a single hour of extra vacation.

There's no minimum vacation days that I know of, 10-15 seem to be standard. Google is pretty generous if they give 25 after 6 years.

Re:Vacation...

[sconeu]

Uh... what?

You're thinking of Martin Luther King's birthday (1/16, then Monday-ized).
Washington's birthday is now (more or less) combined with Lincolon to be Presidents Day (usually the third Monday in Feb.

And also, "Remember to add 14 days for all the Amerika == Teh Gratests
So other countries don't have national holidays? Thanks for the info.

Re:Vacation...

[Computershack]

And that's why we kicked your ass about 232 years ago.

You didn't kick our asses at all. We deemed you so unworthy that we just used a "rent an army" to keep you in check whilst the real British Army was off continuing expanding our empire.

Re:Vacation...

[Llywelyn]

14 days for all of that? Where the heck are you working?

Most places give between 6 and 8 of those days off, unless you work for the government.

Re:Vacation...

[Frosty Piss]

Most places give between 6 and 8 of those days off, unless you work for the government.

Indeed. As a government employee (and member of AFGE (AFL-CIO)) I get 30 paid days a year, a huge number of sick days, and a great health plan. Shitty pension plan, though.

Re:Vacation...

[The Dancing Panda]

First, the third week of January is MLK Day, not Washington Day. Second, We don't get off for Washington's Birthday, though it used to be a school holiday, along with Lincoln's. We combined them to Presidents' Day a while back, and most people don't get off for it (school holiday. No mail, No banks, everyone else works). It's in mid-February.

Re:Vacation...

[vidarh]

You may be right, but I've never seen anywhere where the mandatory vacation includes the public holidays.

In fact, even very low paid retail jobs don't generally do that. Large retail outfits like Marks and Spencers even have significantly more generous vacations than the norm. Not long ago their vacation days topped out at 35 days a year for long serving employees, but even after a year or two you'd be at 27. Don't know if that's changed recently.

Again?

[sandysnowbeard]

I swear an article of this sort appears every so often. It ultimately amounts to geek gossip.

To paraphrase, Google was put on Earth "to show us what it's like to be really, really rich."

Re:Again?

[pxlmusic]

and rubbing in for the rest of us the perks they get

short answer: no

[petes_PoV]

google is still an astounding success and will be until something better comes along. Think: years.

As for how it treats it's employees, maybe it's escaped your notice but we're in a recession. Expect to get *****ed on from a great height - you'll get your revenge when the next boom happens.

all about money

[Anonymous Coward]

From Sergey Solyanik:

"I need to know that the code is useful for others, and the only way to measure the usefulness is by the amount of money that the people are willing to part with to have access to my work.

Sorry open source fanatics, your world is not for me!"

"All of them are free, and it's anyone's guess how many people would actually pay, say $5 per month to use Gmail. For me, this really does make the project less interesting if people are not willing to pay for it."

bottomline is...

Rule 1: I should earn $$$ for a project to be interesting. And I don't know the semantic difference between "open source" and "free".

Rule 2: I should earn $$$ when I'm earning even more $$$...

Re:all about money

[TheRaven64]

The other poster commented that he didn't understand Google's business model, but it sounds like he has a pretty tenuous grasp of economics in general. If he is ever promoted to a management position, I'd make sure you didn't own any shares in his employer.

infant care

[Lord Lode]

Quoting: "Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500"... WTF? How much do people in the US earn? This amount of money per month, is what is almost the total monthly salary in Europe is for many people! How could you give that for just infant care?? Renting an apartment is like 400 euros per month, much cheaper than this infant care (even the so called cheap $1425 one)! How do you pay for rent, survival costs, and saving, if you have a baby and use that infant care?

Re:infant care

[acecamaro666]

that is what infant care costs....and why many families have two people working. After child care costs are factored in, it turns out one spouse is making maybe 1 - 3 dollars and hour.

Re:infant care

[maxume]

$1425 * 12 = $17,100.

I don't know the numbers, but I would expect that most engineers working at Google are taking home upwards of $60,000. For two parent families, the infant care is something like a $40,000 win.

Re:infant care

[rho]

This is also happening in California, which has some of the highest prices (and salaries) around. An utterly ordinary 2 bedroom, 1 bath house would sell in some places for $300,000.

Re:infant care

[Moggyboy]

What the hell part of Europe do YOU live in? I lived in Ireland last year and was paying 1100 euro a month for a one-bedroom apartment, and not a spacious or luxurious one at that!

It's all relative to the cost of living, buddy.

Re:infant care

[rsborg]

Quoting: "Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500"... WTF? How much do people in the US earn?

Yes, life in the Silicon Valley is very expensive. Of course, when we used a daycare for our kid last year, we only paid $1400/mo for full-day coverage, in the Silicon Valley... and there was no subsidy for us.

For $2500/mo, you can get a very experienced, full-service Nanny to come to your house and take care of the kid(s) for 40/hr week.

Life in other parts of the US are much cheaper (though places like Seattle, New York and Boston are probably comparably expensive).

Considering the median salary of your average Silicon Valley tech worker is about $80k, and that the average two-income couple would probably be making slightly above-average salaries (most likely have been working for 2-3 years or more), you're looking at $175-200k income. Single-income couples where a parents stays at home to care for the kid(s) aren't really target market of daycare centers.

Re:infant care

[roach2002]

In Mountain View, a 2 br, 1 ba would cost:

$400k for a condo in a crappy area
$650k for a townhouse
$800k for a standalone home.

Re:infant care

[Surt]

Euros != dollars. The current rate is like 1.5/1.
People working on the SF peninsula and on the Island of Manhattan earn about twice the national average, and the prices of everything (housing, child care) are double also.

That makes your multiplier 3:1.
So now imagine paying ~400 euro for excellent child care.

Or maybe just to give you ideas of the prices:
broken down house in worst part of town: $450,000
decent house in tolerable neighborhood: $800,000
3br/2ba in good school system neighborhood: $1,200,000
rent 2br/2ba, 1200sf over train tracks: $1800 monthly
rent 2br/2ba, 1200sf nice area: $2800 monthly
Food is around $500 per person per month (depends on how you like to eat of course, this assumes mostly grocery shopping/self prep food and a purchased lunch, if you prefer a restaurant for dinner, a decent one sets you back about $30/person per meal).

single-earner income for a software engineer with 5 years experience starts at about $90,000 / year. No experience is around $60,000. 10 years $130,000.

Re:infant care

[Un pobre guey]

In Europe, you work to live. In America, we live to work.

There are good and bad aspects to both. Choose your poison.

Re:infant care

[SevenSpirits]

that is what infant care costs....and why many families have two people working.

There's something wrong with this picture.

Re:infant care

[Awptimus Prime]

Well, this is for a company who is getting one of the better day care services and the employees are making over $70k a year on average.

If they require day care on this magnitude, both parents probably work, and the way the cookie tends to crumble is usually a spouse making around the same, so assume a household income of $140k a year.

Then, you get a tax deduction on each kid at the end of the year, which turns into a few thousand more dollars.

More people need to pay attention to this stuff when they make fun of the US being in recession. It's at a low and we can still afford to blow thousands a month on things we really don't _need_. ;)

Re:infant care

[lgw]

Yes, yes there is. Quite a few American families have the lower-earning spouse making less (take home) than they pay for child care and similar services. People don't value "stay at home parent" at all these days, so parents work harder for less money to avoid the social stigma.

Re:infant care

[lgw]

Google hires fresh out of college at around $90k (it's screwing up payscales across the Valley). But your math is flawed, as it's rare for both parents to work at Google. Still, if the second parent is making $60K they clearly come out ahead.

Re:infant care

[rtechie]

As another poster has said, that's a GROSS underestimation.

In Mountain View you would really expect to pay between $650,000 to $850,000 for such a home, depending on the square footage and whether it was a standalone home or townhouse. You might be able to get something cheaper if it were literally falling down.

Re:infant care

[againjj]

Google employees can make six figures -- I was offered that less than two years out of grad school. Remember that the salaries in the bay area are quite high -- but then so is the cost of living. Day care costs less in many other places. Also, the only people who pay for day care are those people who have salaries high enough to make day care worth while. For example, my wife would not be able to pull in an income that would cover more than the cost of daycare and other expenses related to working, and therefore doesn't work, but instead cares for our child at home.

Re:infant care

[Milkweed73]

I would bet your off by about 20,000.00 a year for an engineer salary.

Either way, these are the numbers you have to start crunching when you live in the bay area.

Hmmmm:

2 engineers make 120,000.00 together

7,500.00 Net
-1,425.00 day care for 1 kid
-2,500.00 Mortgage
-1,000.00 food
- 500.00 heath insurance
- 250.00 car insurance
- 400.00 gas
- 400.00 misc utilities
- 350.00 misc baby items (diapers, clothes, etc)
_________
675.00 Net a month

Woohoo livin the high life in the bay area :) Of course with the increase in day care.....

Livin in the Bay Area = Priceless oops I mean Bankruptcy.

Re:infant care

[Kent Recal]

Remember we're talking about google here. They apparently pay very well...

Anyways, I sincerely hope the poor parents will somehow manage to find a fulltime babysitter outside of google for their $1,425 dollars/month.

Re:infant care

[TheGratefulNet]

In Mountain View, a 2 br, 1 ba would cost:

funny ... I'm now doing an apartment/home search and we're starting out from mtn view and slowly moving 10, 20, 30mi away in our daily searches.

I saw this:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3192/2796221986_d76ae43a95.jpg

I believe that was a $2000/month place, or very close to that range. 2 or 3 br, 2flr, 2car garage, middle unit. but, well, I *guess* you could get all the 'internets' and free cable/phone service you wanted. not hard at all. maybe this was a hidden benefit?

THIS is what I'm seeing, or stuff close to this, in my apt search. the bay area is *tough* right now on rent prices since everyone is afraid to buy and the housing market is on the downward spiral. the fact that places with 'junky exposed wiring' (the house, inside, was close to the outside condition) are going for about $2k/mo in the bay area.

Re:infant care

[B1ackDragon]

Just thought I'd chime in...

Where I'm living, currently going to grad school, child care is $400-$800/mo. (and at the $400 range, it's like a chick with a van). For reference, rental rates here are ~$500 for a two bedroom on the low end.

My wife works and does ok, but not great. After running the numbers, if we ditch luxuries and really squeeze the budget (and stop saving!), well we still wouldn't quite be able to make it.

Things will change for us of course, but I think there are a lot of people today who are in similar situations and not just because of grad school. Between child care costs (or the opportunity cost of a single income family) and health insurance costs, people on the "low" end of the income scale are finding it pretty difficult to live what used to be a normal life.

At least child care costs are region dependent though. I could be wrong on this last point, but I believe health insurance generally costs as much in the city (where 60K/year is livable) as it does in the rural sticks (where 60K/year is quite good).

Re:infant care

[CodeBuster]

How do you pay for rent, survival costs, and saving, if you have a baby and use that infant care?

Silly Europeans, we refinance our mortgage and max out our credit cards! Endless debt, it is the American way. In fact we can barely afford our finance charges. We even have trillion dollar wars! Who needs childcare?

Re:infant care

[maxume]

Take home of $90,000?

Good point on the math, but (financially!) they come out ahead if the second parent is taking home $17,101.

Re:infant care

[lgw]

Good point - it's take home pay that matters. And this is California, so you're lucky if the take home pay on $90K is even positive.

Re:infant care

[roach2002]

I was giving prices mostly to counter:

"An utterly ordinary 2 bedroom, 1 bath house would sell in some places for $300,000." since for $300,000, in Mountain View, you'll get nothing. Not even a crappy 1 bedroom, 1 bath foreclosure.

If you're looking to move here, and are looking to get a better/larger/whatever place *and* you're willing to drive, then you have options. For example, if you want to work in San Jose/Mountain View, you could live in Fremont or Santa Cruz and save a lot of money. Or if you work in San Francisco, you could live in Fremont or Dublin.

Trulia does heat maps for house prices. Check out http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/ if you want an idea of a city you might get a good place you can afford. Granted, Trulia gives you house prices and not rental prices, but it will give you relative expensiveness.

Re:infant care

[Surt]

Sorry, to clarify: my numbers were for the SF peninsula where the aforementioned google is located.

Re:infant care

[story645]

Where can you live in Manhattan for 2800$????

Harlem? I'm looking for a place near school now, and 1 bedrooms start at about 1400 a month, but they go fast. (And the guarantor/rent requirements are insane; you've basically got make so much that you could afford something in a better neighborhood.)

Re:infant care

[conufsed]

Wow, i'm paying about $1200AUD a month for child care, after goverment subsidies, and it really strains our budget.

Re:infant care

[jrumney]

The situation is the same in UK. After factoring in childcare (for one infant and one preschooler) and commuting costs, my wife makes about a pound ($2) an hour and that's in a reasonably well paying job. In fact her real earnings are probably negative because of the tax benefits that we no longer qualify for with our combined salaries. Obviously she doesn't do it for the money, but if she stayed at home and looked after the kids for 5 years, she'd be unemployable in her field.

Re:infant care

[dragonturtle69]

That was why my wife chose to quit working. By the time the second car payment, insurance, and all those takeout meals were added up, we gained $50 a month net with her staying home and dropped those bills. Eating out 4-5 days per week for 5 people is expensive. Gasoline usage was halved. As for the reason my wife quit and not me, I made more money at the time.

Re:infant care

[sallgeud]

It likely has to do with the types of teachers they have. TFA mentioned 200 educators and 700 kids. If you figure these supposedly highly degreed people make an above average si-valley income which has to be MINimum of $50k [probably more]. That's a little over $14k per kid just to pay for the teacher.

When you add in the cost of the facility, insurance, toys, educational materials, electricity [or solar panels], managerial staff, accounting, etc.... it's not totally unreasonable for that number to double in your average daycare.

Zoom back out to the midwest where your average daycare provider has no advanced degrees. There may be 1 or 2 with good degrees in a daycare with 100+ children. You'd have anywhere between 15-30 children per adult, unlike the 3-4 children per adult @ google.

I think most people not living in the valley and/or not working for a company like this would also find that $1425 number to be shocking. Even the best private schools in my area don't cost that much... but also don't have the student teacher ratio seen @ goog.

Most parents I know are paying about $500/mo for all-day daycare... and similar amounts for all-day pre-school. The prices go up and down depending on quality of staff, facilities, etc... and often the best deals are through local churches [of which we have a ton around here].

Re:infant care

[gphilip]

How much do people in the US earn? This amount of money per month, is what is almost the total monthly salary in Europe is for many people!

This amount of money would be more than the yearly income of 99% of the people in India!

Re:infant care

[Mumei no koshinuke]

An engineer's salary here in the valley might be $7-12k per month. About a fourth of this goes to taxes. Decent apartments here are $1,500-2,500 per month - that's not much cheaper than the infant care. (400 euros - I wish! I'm paying three times that...)

Keep in mind the cost of child care and housing is usually split between two working parents, each making a good salary. Of course having kids stretches most families a bit financially, but I think most Google employees should be able to afford this.

That said, I can see how a family which had planned for the low rate could be really pissed at the sudden change.

Re:infant care

[vidarh]

To be fair, move equally far out of Oslo that most people happily commute other places and you'd find a lot of cheaper options.

I live in one of the most densely packed boroughs of London, and still have a 50 minute commute in to the centre. That's a pretty normal commute in a lot of larger European cities - since I moved here my commute has varied from 30 minutes to 70 minutes. At the time I had a 30 minute commute I was paying through the nose for a single room in a flatshare, but I was in the dead centre of town, more or less (Marble Arch, as in the arch was literally a stone's throw from our livingroom window)

I now pay the equivalent of 1200 Euro/month on a 235k Euro mortgage for a 3 bedroom house + garden. Even making room for higher interest payments, 400 Euro/month could finance a 600k Norwegian kroner mortgage pretty easily.

My brother has a decent sized 2 bedroom flat priced at around 900k about 30 minutes drive out from the centre of Oslo, so finding somewhere decent to live within a commutable distance for 600k doesn't sound so hard, though admittedly it's been a few years since the last time I had to look for a place in Oslo.

The centre of Oslo is ridiculously expensive even by Norwegian standards, but the great thing is that Oslo is so small that a short commute can still bring you to reasonably priced areas. No such luck in London...

Re:infant care

[WhatAWendy]

As for the reason my wife quit and not me, I made more money at the time.

Funny how frequently it works out like that.

Re:infant care

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, there has got to be a Yakov Smirnoff joke in there somewhere.

Re:infant care

[lucifuge31337]

that is what infant care costs....and why many families have two people working. After child care costs are factored in, it turns out one spouse is making maybe 1 - 3 dollars and hour.

Which I TOTALLY do not understand. I've seen the same thing as well. Why would one of the parents just not STAY HOME WITH THE CHILD? You can probably end up saving more money that way by not paying someone to clean your house, buying actual food (not prepared crap), etc. with the time you have left over.

Re:infant care

[Quikah]

The health and car insurance numbers you give are way too high. Where I work (silicon valley), health insurance is $130/month for family coverage with HMO or $180/month for PPO. Taking out the employer's contribution would bump it up to about $500 for the PPO, the HMO is about $420, but we are talking about Google, so they obviously contribute a lot to the health insurance.

My car insurance is about $350/6 months, however that is only for a single driver, but even doubling that doesn't come to the 250 you claim.

Re:infant care

[rho]

Yikes. I was going from memory, but it's clear my memory is 10 (or 15, or more) years out of date.

My point remains--California has a whacked-out market.

Get the mojo back

[eclectro]

Invite random users onto the party plane.

If that can't be done, launch a competitor to ebay.

Mistreatment

[Adrian Lopez]

"Of course Google employees version of being mistreated is often laughable, and quite a shock when they look for their massage therapist at wherever they end up next."

Surely you're not suggesting that benefits listed on Google's website is proof that their employees couldn't possibly have any legitimate complaints? After all, even if Google does pamper its employees, unless you can point to an actual example of a "laughable" claim of mistreatment all you have is a list of perks that in no way support your statement that "Google employees version of being mistreated is often laughable".

Food

[quarrel]

It's always all downhill once startups start cutting back on the food perks.

From the linked Valleywag article:

"
Google's food perks on the chopping block

There's no such thing as a free dinner. A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon." The changes will be announced to Googlers on Monday. Workers at the Googleplex will remain amply fed, with free breakfast and lunch -- dinner will be reserved for geeks only -- but it's still a shocking cutback.

Last year, when we aired the mildest speculation about Google cutting back on free food, commenters were outraged. Google has long milked its cafeterias for their publicity value; company executives have crowed about the company's resistance to recessions and its commitment to coddling its employees. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin even promised shareholders they'd add perks, rather than cut them.

In 2004, they wrote:

        We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge ... We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.

What went wrong? ...
"

--Q

Re:Food

[nate nice]

"What went wrong? ..."

Share holders are penny wise and pound foolish. It isn't about the longterm investment but the quarterly or annual review. Eventually, when the stock starts to lose value, you simply have to make changes (drop operating costs) to make revenues reflect a larger profit.

The good news is most companies just fire a bunch of people. Google just happens to be taking away free dinner.

Re:Food

[BlueBoxSW.com]

Dinner for Geeks only? For once it pays to be in that population.

The real problem is Click Fraud. One of these days their advertising program is going to have to cut out click fraud, and their profits will drop by 75%.

Re:Food

[blamanj]

They've already posted a correction. Google is still feeding their employees.

http://valleywag.com/5041464/dinner-saved-for-googles-geeks

I can pinpoint the exact day

[jgarra23]

When they bought that stupid 767 jet.

Do no evil? Is it only polluting when someone from the middle class does it or do all these environmental gripes apply to rich people too?

How about donating 10% of what B. Gates does to charity Goog? Do no evil?

Re:I can pinpoint the exact day

[Danzigism]

google.org is your answer. but there isn't one person at Google that is worth as much as Bill Gates is. yes they are a large company that makes a lot of money, particularly more than Microsoft, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is what raises and donates money. As individuals I should add. Respectfully. MS as a whole doesn't do much donating besides charging less for their licensing in 3rd world countries. google has given the world free access to loads of information and tools. their profit pays for their massive amounts of employees. we're comparing apples to oranges here. but i understand and agree with you to a certain degree. but to say they aren't sticking to their motto is just a little preposterous.

Re:I can pinpoint the exact day

[Oswald]

For what it's worth, Microsoft makes more in a good quarter than Google makes in a year. I can't tell if that affects your point because I couldn't actually figure out what that was.

Re:I can pinpoint the exact day

[Blakey Rat]

yes they are a large company that makes a lot of money, particularly more than Microsoft,

Uh, they do? When did this happen?

They might make more money "at advertising-related businesses," or more money "with online products," but they're not even close to beating Microsoft yet.

Re:I can pinpoint the exact day

[nitroamos]

When they bought that stupid 767 jet.

Hey -- they use that jet for charity!

Over the last couple of years, my roommate has participated in several astronomical observations (in connection with NASA) of meteor showers using the google plane. The jet is used to get them high enough up that they can avoid light pollution.

Now, whether Google get's their money's worth out of it, I don't know.

Re:I can pinpoint the exact day

[BIGELLOW]

Actually, when they did the calculations as to how much several private jets would pollute the air versus a single 767 that could hold a lot more passengers at once, it was determined that the 767 was more efficient, less pollutant, etc... It's like taking a bus instead of several cars. Essentially, they are carpooling on a grand scale.

On a side note, the 767 has nothing to do with Google, per se... and more to do with the owners. If you are going to nitpick about the owners' personal lives to declare Google as being evil, you might as well just say all organizations (including non-profit organizations) are evil because all people, in general, are evil.

Re:I can pinpoint the exact day

[Danzigism]

oh oh. i do apologize. let me put it into words you might be able to understand a little better.... MS IS R BIG COMPANEE N DUZNT DOUGHN8 2 CHARITEE, BGATES IS TEH CHARITEE MASTUR N U MITE HAFF A HARD TYM UNDURSTENDIN DAT... U C, GOOG ACTLLY DUZ DU ALUT UF CHARITEE WERK U JUS HAF 2 OPN YER EYES!

Re:I can pinpoint the exact day

[Oswald]

Yeah, that's it. It wasn't that your post was rambling, incoherent, poorly-worded, and inaccurate. I just can't read standard English.

Stick with that story.

What I'd like Google to do

[bogaboga]

While I understand that Google must increase shareholder value at all cost, I would like to see Google do the following:

Respond to Yahoo Mail's new web mail's interface. I find Yahoo Mail's scrolling calender events found at the bottom while composing email really sweet. The whole [new] interface is quite impressive.

Google should put more efforts into getting KDE 4.1 up to "standards". Right now, KDE 4.1 really needs lots of work. The Summer of Code efforts leave the situation still wanting.

Get GMail out of beta. Heck, it's been over 2 years!

Google should walk the walk...that is make ODF documents, .ogg streams searcheable from www.google.com.

What do you think?

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[Nerftoe]

Get GMail out of beta. Heck, it's been over 2 years!

Wow.. it's actually been over four years. I just went back through my inbox and found my "Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know" welcome letter dated 8/24/2004.

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[That's Unpossible!]

Tell me, what is GMail non-beta going to do differently than GMail beta? Will it be faster? Have more features? Fewer bugs? (I am not aware of any gmail bugs!) What??? I'm dying to know, because Gmail currently rocks, and this non-beta you speak of sounds amazing!

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[caffeinemessiah]

I am not aware of any gmail bugs!

Try viewing only the unread messages in your multi-page inbox without typing in an arcane search query with modifiers.

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[bogaboga]

...what is GMail non-beta going to do differently than GMail beta?...

Well, in terms of functionality, I guess there will not be much of a difference. In terms of changing people's mind sets, getting that "beta" label off will certainly help matters on my side.

I have been trying to move our school email system over to Google. This "beta" thing does not my efforts at all.

In fact it is a show stopper. Keep in mind, my bosses are not that tech savvy, so even when you inform them that GMail has nothing to do with what I am proposing, they still point to Google's beta web mail. It does not help at all.

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[lucas teh geek]

Get GMail out of beta. Heck, it's been over 2 years!

Announcement date wa April 1st, 2004. it's been over FOUR years. I think dropping the "invite-only" system is as close as it's ever going to see to leaving beta... not that it isn't already better than plenty of not-beta webmail sites

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[lucas teh geek]

you seem to have pretty specific demands, so I'll assume you're not too scared to venture into gmail labs.

1. I think first you need to opt-in for gmail labs, I dont remember where i did that but it was probably on the "What's new" page
2. settings -> labs -> quick links = enabled. save.
3. back to your inbox -> add quick link -> enter "is:unread label:inbox", sans quotes

yes, you need to enter a search term; but it's only once, and after that you have exactly what you want with a single click

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[BIGELLOW]

Why would we want Google to make Gmail's interface more like Yahoo's? Isn't the point of having competing companies to have a variety for us to all choose from? If they all just copy each other, we won't really have much of a choice but brand-name alone, and that's for middle-schoolers.

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[bogaboga]

Why would we want Google to make Gmail's interface more like Yahoo's?

Did you even read my post? If you did, you definitely did not get it. Where do I ask for more of Yahoo Mail's interface for GMail?

Here is what I mentioned...

I would like to see Google do the following: Respond to Yahoo Mail's new web mail's interface. I find Yahoo Mail's scrolling calender events found at the bottom while composing email really sweet. The whole [new] interface is quite impressive.

I just would like Google to respond to what Yahoo have done with their web mail. Just a response. As I write, Google folks have not done anything to counter Yahoo Mail's improvements.

When it comes to the calendar on GMail, one has to "search" for upcoming events. For Yahoo Mail, these events scroll at the bottom in an un-intrusive manner. That's sweet. GMail can have the same feature withoput necessarily copying Yahoo Mail.

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[BIGELLOW]

Oh, I see. So if by "responding" you would also be satisfied with a "no, we're not going there"... then that's cool. I thought you meant "respond" by implementing something similar, but in a different way. Because, after all, if Google just kept implementing similar features to Yahoo, but in a different way... this would make Yahoo the leader and Google the follower... just in a different way.

What Google just needs to keep doing is what they have been doing. Let them make Yahoo think about copying them, but in a different way.

Gmail is for communications... from one person to the next... I don't need "events" scrolling at me. That's what a calendar is for. Now, if Google were to integrate Gmail and Calendar more, that would be great... but that's already in their plan. So, asking them to "respond" to Yahoo would either mean that Google's existing plan is already a response, not yet implemented... or that Google needs to change its plan to respond. Again, I think they should just keep doing what they are doing.

Re:What I'd like Google to do

[DerekLyons]

I would like to see Google do the following:
 
Respond to Yahoo Mail's new web mail's interface.

Heck, I'd settle for Google responding to Yahoo Mail's old interface.

It's no mystery...

[Tetsujin]

He's where he always is, in his volcano observatory right in the middle of Townsville...

share price argument is not correct

[pyrrhos]

I am not a economist, but it seems to me that the share price a company that has a large price/earning ratio is largely based on expected increased future earnings. This acts like a multiplier. Its price will fluctuate more than a company with a lower p/e.
So it seems to me only natural that google's share will fall more than average when prospects are bad.

Why pick on one benefit?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

All these benefits are just there to attract and retain staff. It is ridiculous to pick on just one or two because they don't apply to you.

What about their laundry service? Why should they provide that? What about the people who have their own washers at home?

What about the car servicing thing? What about the people that don't have cars?

What about the bus service with Wifi? What about people who live close and don't need the bus?

By your logic all these are discrimination against people who don't need these services.

Re:Why pick on one benefit?

[sexconker]

They all are, and they will all be cut as Google learns that it has to run like a business, and not a buzzword.

All that glitz came about because of the IPO.

Google sells stock and ads. That is NOT a business model.

Re:Why pick on one benefit?

[Iamthecheese]

Really? No Model?

Their profits ony rose 13% in the first quarter! And they're not the number one company in the world for laying out cash for child care anymore! And my foi gras was .03 cm under standard size! waaaaaaa!

Re:Why pick on one benefit?

[Arccot]

All these benefits are just there to attract and retain staff. It is ridiculous to pick on just one or two because they don't apply to you.

What about their laundry service? Why should they provide that? What about the people who have their own washers at home?

What about the car servicing thing? What about the people that don't have cars?

What about the bus service with Wifi? What about people who live close and don't need the bus?

By your logic all these are discrimination against people who don't need these services.

Agreed 100%. If you want a service they don't offer, then submit a request for it and see what happens. If other people are using services you don't use, chances are the company has it because enough people find it useful to offer.

If they charge more for a service than in the past, it's not "discrimination", it's because they're changing the service or don't want to subsidize it so much. Discrimination is not hiring you because you have kids; not raising the cost of your subsidized child care.

Re:Why pick on one benefit?

[sexconker]

Profit for what product?

Google rode the hype train.
It's crashing.

They can't continue to run ultra modern offices with hippie rules and generous benefits. They have to start acting and operating like a business. Especially since the only "products" they have are completely intangible services that can be had elsewhere in nearly identical form, for the same price.

Normal Evolution of a Publicly-Traded Company

[darrylo]

I don't understand the fuss. Like it or not, this seems to be the normal evolution of any "startup company" that becomes a publicly-traded company. Often, when any type of economic difficulties hit, benefits can be lost or reduced, and -- surprise, surprise -- they don't often come back. One big issue is that the investors have, of course, a lot of control, and investors want profit (think Carl Icahn, people). Management doesn't look good if they can't deliver sufficient profit, and so there's incentive to not increase benefits.

I'm not even going to touch the google services issue. Let's just say that some google services appear to be stagnating (minor tweaks don't cut it), and google is opening itself up to a competitor leapfrogging them. (Yeah, with Yahoo in not-so-good shape, Microsoft is probably the only company that could do that .... Bleah.)

Crackpot conspiracy theory

[Vexorian]

Ever since cuil was up, we get one of these random [attack-google!] stories every once in a while, I guess it is a coincidence, but could we try one with foundation later? I mean, "a guy deserts google => google lsot its mojo" err...

Re:Crackpot conspiracy theory

[twodayslate]

So true. Google has not changed much. If google was so interested in it's "coolness" they would have changed their main page by now.

Re:Google will lose all of it's Mojo

[clem]

Actually, since the machines are incapable of generating their own mojo, we'll all be enslaved in a virtual reality as our mojo is harvested from us.

Mojo?

[FonkiE]

The first 3 pages of a product are price grabbers or some bullshit. Not the company page, no review, nothing.

Google is at it's worst since the beginning :(

Not that I wish it would be like that... there were a lot of ups and downs already.

yeah baby

[heptapod]

> 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,"

> a number of Googlers have left recently to join start-ups,
> hotter companies like Facebook -- and even Microsoft.

GET THIS MAN A CHAIR TO THROW, STAT!!!

When you're on the top of the hill...

[QuietLagoon]

... the only direction is down.

Re:When you're on the top of the hill...

[greatgreygreengreasy]

What if you built your spaceship on top of the hill?

Re:When you're on the top of the hill...

[nitroamos]

... the only direction is down.

unless it's actually a saddlepoint, in which case you just have to rotate, and then you can start climbing again.

What's wrong with charging for day care?

[Jane Q. Public]

Parents who expect to get day care for their kids as a free ride really piss me off. Why should the childless pay for somebody else's kids, so that the parents can have a cushy job?

I realize this is an unpopular view with some, but if you can't afford to have kids (and raise them, and school them) then you shouldn't be having kids. And if I worked at Google, I would be damned if I would want to pay for YOUR kids, so you can have a job at Google. That is not the way life works.

What ever happened to those particular values of the 50s, when one parent would say to the other, "Well, Johnny is 3 now, and you just got a raise... maybe we can afford to have another kid!"

I am with Sergey... I am not very sympathetic. They want the very best day care -- to the tune of $37,000 a year! -- then they can pay for it.

Day care is NOT like public education, in which everybody has a stake. It is the duty of the parents to care for their kids until they get to school age. If they cannot, they should put the kids up for adoption. It is not ethical to expect the public (or their co-workers) to subsidize their children.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[hublan]

Daycare is just as much of a child storage as the public school system is.

If you RTFA, you'll see that Google's problem is that they didn't just go for good daycare, they went for the -awesomest- daycare program they could find, because the person responsible for initiating the program could afford it.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[Eli Gottlieb]

It is not ethical to expect the public (or their co-workers) to subsidize their children.

18 years from now, do you want there to be a civilization, or not?

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[CityZen]

Perhaps one of us has missed the point. The article says that Google had started out with good daycare that people could afford. Then they changed that to the very best daycare that money could buy, at prices that only the very rich could afford. The good daycare was no longer an option, but probably most people still wanted that option.

When a company stops considering what the common employee wants and only considers what the richest executives want, then you might also wonder how long they will remain in touch with what their common customer wants.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[Just Some Guy]

Parents who expect to get day care for their kids as a free ride really piss me off. Why should the childless pay for somebody else's kids, so that the parents can have a cushy job?

Because age correlates highly with job experience and with having kids. If you want to attract experienced workers, you need to take care of the ones with children. Any other questions?

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[chitokutai]

I don't think the childless should have to support those who decide to have children, but you might consider that it's the children that will be supporting the childless when the childless retire and rely on social security to make it from month to month.

Japan is a good example of how not providing affordable living conditions can affect social stability. It's estimated that by the year 2050 the population will begin to shrink, and where as there are now 20 young people to support 1 old person, by then it will be something like a 5 to 1 ratio. The US is lucky the there are still around 2.1 children per family, but in places like Europe and Japan, a lack of children is going to have severe consequences in the near future.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[DerekLyons]

Civilization has survived quite well for thousands of years without nanny states or nanny corporations.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[twostix]

Holy shit, what world are you living in??

You're going to lecture about how life works when you live in a delusion of what things were like in the 1950s?? There was no such thing as the contraceptive pill in the 1950s you IDIOT. Women got pregnant whether they liked it or not, abortion was illegal and MARRIED MEN didn't wear condoms.

As for the rest of your post, yeah it's MORE ethical to have a belief system that requires parents to give up their children for adoption than expect society at large to help them pull up the slack a bit. Of course a rugged individualist such as yourself will surely commit suicide the *moment* you become a burden on anyone else. Like when you get old and expect those "other people kids" to wipe your arse and feed you your mushed up baby food.

Your beliefs and mindset do not match up to any society that has ever existed, and never will.

Nice attempt to socialise the ideal of private business though, if the owners of a business want to have a daycare then who the fuck are you to tell them otherwise. And tell me oh please, how other employees are paying for the daycare? Because i jsut assumed you know, that it was the shareholders paying for it...you know the people who OWN the company. If you don't like it, get a job elsewhere, you agreed to your conditions of employment and the pay rate and benefits (or lack of if your childless).

Hypocrite.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[innocent_white_lamb]

it's the children that will be supporting the childless when the childless retire and rely on social security to make it from month to month.
 
Why would ANYONE retire and rely on social security, childless or not? Isn't that what savings are for? You know -- retirement funds and all that?
 
Or am I missing something?

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[Jane Q. Public]

When did I say there was a contraceptive pill in the 50s? Excuse me, but if you think that I thought that, then you are the idiot, not me. Just what is it that you have been trying to read into my words that I did NOT say?

What I was referring to were the stated values. You know, the stuff that was always on family television.

Why all the vitriol? You can disagree with me if you want, without all the name-calling and anger. But I do have to wonder: where did you get the idea that I expect other people's children to feed me and wipe my ass? I mean, really. WHERE THE FUCK did you get that idea? I sure as hell did not state it anywhere. In fact, I implied the contrary.

And as for the last part, you are wrong, at least in part. Companies cannot have infinite expenses. Companies are expected to make a profit. If the expenses get too high, it is NOT just stock dividends that go down, it is also salaries. And if you don't believe that, then you are living in a much more fanciful world than you accuse me of being in.

I will accept your label of "hypocrite" on the day that you show me that I actually have been. Until then, stuff it up your ass.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[Alascom]

>I am with Sergey... I am not very sympathetic. They want the very best day care -- to the tune of $37,000 a year! -- then they can pay for it.

"They", being Googlers, do not want they very best daycare at $37,000/year. That was some recent Ivy league MBA graduate, newly into management that organized that catastrophe, not the employees. Googlers would be very happy with 'decent' daycare at a reasonable rate.

I do agree with Sergey that an ill-conceived sense of 'entitlement' exists, I have complained about it growing steadily over the past 4 year and its steadily getting worse. Its not enough to have bottled water, some employees demand a particular brand, 'Smart Water'. WTF. Google even tried to limit the bottled water usage by providing filtered water dispenser and giving out cool reusable bottles, but the complaints persist to this day.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[twostix]

Yes, TV is very representative of reality at any given time.

This vitriol is reserved for the most selfish, shortsighted FOOLS who run around these sites.

You are a hypocrite because you whinge about things like a PRIVATE company running a daycare for employees as though it's "socialism" (because people who work there who don't have kids have no choice about working there do they?). But one day, you'll become a burden on the rest of society, it's INEVITABLE. And when that day comes it'll be everyone elses kids that shoulder you and carry you until the day you die. But don't worry about it, the vaaaast majority of us in larger society are willing to accept that to make a society run you have to give a little. And that there's always going to be a tiny minority of greedy short sighted fools who'll give as little as possible, whinge about what they do have to give...until it's time for them to take, then as far as they're concerned they're getting what they deserve.

To put it into purely economic terms for you, those of us who have kids are shouldering an enourmous burden financially and socially that EVERYONE (that includes YOU) are going to benefit enormously from in the coming decades. It's you who is indebted to me, not the other way around. But don't worry about it, I wont make a big deal about it, that's what civilised society is all about, a bit of give and a bit of take.

99% of the population seems to get this idea, why is it so under-represented on this site?

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[OneSmartFellow]

...those of us who have kids are shouldering an enourmous burden financially and socially that EVERYONE ...

Only if you raise your children well, otherwise you are adding to the burden for those of us who are.

Just having and rearing children is not enough, you need to build them into concientious, responsible, truthful citizens who have many of the same qualities you seem to have.
Keep up the good work, though. I, for one, and quite happy to let your child wipe my arse.

Re:What's wrong with charging for day care?

[Jane Q. Public]

I agree with your general statement, but I disagree that this person has the qualities you seem to attribute to him. In fact he displayed the opposite. So I wonder how you made the connection?

Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[Wee]

You think Google would offer a higher salary? Not if your just a normal engineer guy. They'll give you what they want to give you, and you better be grateful you're getting the offer in the first place, buddy.

I made probably about 20-25% less than my similarly-employed friends. Google likes to say that it compensates in other ways. I calculated that the free food alone was worth about $8000 per year to me. The yearly bonuses were beyond generous. I negotiated a good stock grant when I was hired. But the actual pay pretty much sucks, and they're cutting back in all sorts of ways. I saw it happening starting in late 2006, and it kept on rolling. They'll cut back on perks and then try to convince everyone they have the best thing going regardless, especially with regards to recruiting (keep pushing that 20% project myth, guys...). A certain TGIF is a good example (TGIF is a big gathering in Charlie's Cafe every Friday at 4:30, where Larry and/or Sergey and/or Eric talk about company issues and take questions).

During the QA portion, a guy got up and asked about our health care plan. Apparently, it wasn't as good as Microsoft's, yet in a then-recent magazine article, Eric said that we had the best benefits in the world and was really talking up the perks - even as they were routinely being scaled back. So this guy was comparing notes with his MS buddy and our health plan wasn't all that great (the dental in particular was worse than some government jobs I've had). Eric said he'd look at it and get back to us. (One of the things I really liked about working there was that sort of transparency and openness.)

Couple weeks later, same guy gets up to ask about what they found out. Eric says they did the numbers, and it was going to cost a few 10s of millions more per year to implement a comparable health plan. So, no dice. The crowd generally grumbled, and Eric was quick to pipe up with "But just think, by working here, you get to change the world!"

Was shortly after that I gave serious thought about examining my options. I'm not sure if/how that influenced my decision to leave, but some kool-aid you should never drink.

No, the only way to get more money at Google is to work 80 hours a week or sleep with someone important. Leaving and coming back won't do it, unless you're a high-flier and they're trying to headhunt you back for some particular reason.

-B

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[chromatic]

"But just think, by working here, you get to change the world!"

The proper response is "Do you want to put ads on everything for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"

ugh! Not another "is xxxx dead" story!

[Uzik2]

1. Pick something popular
2. Write stupid story about it's faults. Title your story "is xxx dead?"

Give it a rest! Get a new formula.
Is this the only thing they teach in journalism/blogger school?
How about some NEWS?

Not even close

[Wee]

I just sold my 1500 square foot, 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath house (on a spacious 5500 square foot lot) in Silicon Valley for $875,000. I bought it for $750,000, and had to spend close to $100,000 in repairs and updates over the last 4 years. I priced it to sell, and it was only on the market for 6 days. I probably could have held out for more, but I was done and wanted out of CA for family reasons in my home state.

When I forst got to California and told people what I bought, and for what, they had one of two reactions:

1. You got a good deal!

2. How much repair does it need?

You could tell who had live in the Bay Area by which they had.

-B

Re:Not even close

[Wee]

The repairs included quite a lot of structural repair, a completely new roof, rebuilding a deck, foundation work, etc, etc. we did update the kitchen, but mostly because the adjoining laundry room had rodents at one point and all the lower cabinets smelled or old urine. We replace everything with your basic Sears stuff. It's roughly equivalent to Ikea. The counters were no-name solid surface.

Had no choice. Moving in from out of state, we had to spend the money we made on the house sale on another house. I like doing things around the house, and so didn't mind a project.

And actually, I misspoke about the numbers. We put closer to 60K into it, so we made a little money on the sale. No chance of keeping the tax rate, as I'd never want to move back to California. We have 3x the house we had before, thanks to the down payment.

-B

Re:Not even close

[corbettw]

I'm surprised you didn't have a third reaction: You got ripped off!

look in the mirror

[EdelFactor19]

This is not age discrimination; this is age indiscrimination. You are being treated the same as everyone else. Thinking that you are entitled to a bonus of having a service provided for you at a discount merely points out the obviousness of your obliviousness.

Having families has nothing to do with it. My working mother and father have a family but guess what, myself and my brother have graduated from college. We have our own jobs and are ineligble for benefits under them ANYWAYS.

You made a choice to have a family as big as you did, when you did. No one made that choice for you, not your co-workers, not your boss, and not your CEO. The expectation that you should get special treatment in any way shape or form demonstrates that you WANT to discriminated against for your personal decisions. Age has nothing to do with it, there are 20 year olds with kids, and there are 60 year olds with kids.

No one is forcing anyone to use the in house daycase. You don't like it? Bring your kids somewhere else.

Did you ever consider for a moment that the ones being discriminated against were the ones w/o families, who were SUPPORTING your choices? They took away a fairly universal consistent amount of money from everyone, and gave everyone some back.

Why should you get more of a raise? Do you work harder or more than a single person? Are you so naive and idiotic as to suggest that you should get paid more than someone who does the same exact job as you, with equal output, but doesn't have kids? Equal work, equal pay, be you man, woman, married or single, with or with kids, gay or straight. Whether you are 4'7" or 7'4". Any thing ELSE is discrimination.

People like you who walk around thinking that they are entitled to have others support their decisions make me want to vomit...

If you can't afford to have kids, then don't. In the wise words of one of my favorite teachers ever:
"If you have a problem, I expect you to solve it. Don't make your problems my problems. I have enough of my own already, just look at me."

Piracy and looting ethical equivilents? Wrong.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Piracy is ethically no different from a mob looting a store whose locks were broken.

You're kidding right? You think Piracy and Mob looting are ethical equivalents?

You're fucking crazy - looting is generally a non-violent crime, but hundred of ships are attacked in pirate attacks off the Somali coast & Malacca straights every year. Resulting in the death & injury of hundreds, along with kidnappings, destruction & theft of property, etc.

Basically - go back to ethics school & try to learn something this time.

In that case...

[The Monster]

The word doesn't *mean* anything.. it's meaning is agreed upon by the speakers of the language and so long as you know what I'm saying then the word does have that meaning - according to any sensible definition of "meaning".

Take a flying fsck at a rolling donut.*

*by which I really mean "Surely you can see that redefining words to mean something completely different causes problems in apprehending what was meant by the speaker."

Re:In that case...

[QuantumG]

Dude, it's called language. Go read some linguistics.

Who says it is the top of the hill?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If you're still going up the hill it might be a long way to the top.

Re:Google can be easily beaten.....

[coryking]

Is this some kind of evolved version of Ron Paul spam? Help me out, I'm confused here.

Google is already old news just ask the users.

[StrangerAtRandom]

Yes Google is on the way down Just ask several hundred thousand users who google used as gunia pigs for a "new improved" iGoogle home page. Which left users wondering why google did not leave a Opt-out of the experiment for their users who did not wish to participate. http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Web_Search_Help/topics Then there is the fact that the experiment has been on going for close to two months, and the employees at Google seem not to be reading the surveys that we were supposed to fill out. As 99% of users are asking WHY google forced this upon them and ignoring the requests asking for a link to UN-DO what Google has done to their home pages. Check it out you could be next..

Re:Google is already old news just ask the users.

[Frosty Piss]

Yes Google is on the way down Just ask several hundred thousand users who google used as gunia pigs for a "new improved" iGoogle home page. Which left users wondering why google did not leave a Opt-out of the experiment for their users who did not wish to participate.

I'm sorry, do you pay to use the Google Web page? No? Don't like it, use MSN.

Re:Google is already old news just ask the users.

[StrangerAtRandom]

It's the matter of principal, nothing more. So if MSN decided to make you have to view a 30 second add, everytime you clicked a new email, or went to a different page, would that upset you? I am sorry we are cutting on your google, Its a fact Google is on its way out. Its to bad as I once defended Google the way you did, I was a die hard Google fan just like you, and would cut anyone down who even mentioned that google sucked. Well Its a FACT, they have become just like the others yahoo and aol. They only care about the money, and not the users experiance, and thats what attracts MOST users to google. Well DOWN with GOOGLE.. As they feel they have the right to just change things around without explanation or notice, reguardless of what the people who make there business a business have to say about it. Just because its free, does not mean that we will follow them..

Yes, I do know what it really means. Thanks.

[Minwee]

I had heard that Google had some pretty comprehensive benefits, designed to ease the transition from Mom's basement to corporate life, but this is just silly.

According to their benefits page, Google offers not only free lunches, massages and car washes, but also "AD&D insurance".

Because when your eleventh level cleric gets killed by a lich, you really need that coverage to help you deal with the loss.

What? What?

[east coast]

It's looking to displace Microsoft with hosted services like Google Apps, Gmail and Google Docs.

You know, I hate to tell people this but most people really don't have a hard-on to see MS die. For the most part, in the professional world, people are going to use what works best in their environment regardless of branding or cost (within reasonable limits of course). It's pretty poor when you support "the other guy" because you hate someone else so much that you simply can not stand to see them succeed. In real life when you put that attitude into action you'll find that you waste a lot of good time and money on trying to sink the other guys ship when you could have done it by improving yourself and not only defeat them but also come off with a better product. What's the saying? There's no revenge as sweet as success? Spending resources to beat on someone else is counter productive and, frankly, petty.

wtf?

[lucas teh geek]

some guy nobody ever heard of left, so they might of lost their mojo? wtf?

what's more, the guy appears to have a pretty shitty attitude:

I can't write code for the sake of the technology alone - I need to know that the code is useful for others, and the only way to measure the usefulness is by the amount of money that the people are willing to part with to have access to my work.

what the hell would make something think that "amount of money extracted from customer" is the only factor in determining usefulness?

Re:Google can be easily beaten.....

[geminidomino]

Holy SHIT! The Jawas Have taken over the fed!

It all makes so much sense. We're in iraq not for oil, but because they need a desert to test their new Tiger Sandcrawler 16-B!!!!!!

For the love of God, man! CALL HAN SOLO!!!!!

DEAR LORD THAT 401K Matching! ITS FREE MONEY!

[Lershac]

Thats crazy if I am reading it right. I would be living like a pauper and socking everything away and take that 50% matching.

Meals too wow.

They must be killing it to afford that.

Life and AD&D Insurance?

[macraig]

From the Google employee benefits page:

- Life and AD&D Insurance

Hey, does this mean, if I croak from playing too much AD&D and the resulting malnutrition and poor hygiene, that they'll pay my family a big fat payout to enshrine me and my platinum-plated D-10 dice?

Re:Life and AD&D Insurance?

[markov_chain]

It means if your level 10 cleric dies, you get to start your new campaign with 1 million gold coins.

On company-supplied child care

[DesScorp]

Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them), have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?

And a reduction in this silly benefit that you shouldn't have in the first place is age discrimination against you?

My wife is a stay at home mom. We made the decision to forgo a second income for the benefits of actually raising our kids at home, at least at very young ages. We never wanted to be one of those couples that had a child, and then had it in some form of third-party care two months later for career's sake. I very much sympathize with what you're arguing.

However, this is the Bay Area we're talking about, a place that's become notorious for being both child-unfriendly, and a mecca for young, single, childless workers with high skill. In that kind of atmosphere, a top company wanting top talent should consider on-site childcare as a perk if they want to keep these studs past age 30 or so. Sooner or later, nature calls, and most of them marry and start families. Google, for all its fame in supplying wild perks, is actually wise in supplying this one. They don't have to, but they have been smart in doing so. Top companies supply top perks if they want to stay top companies. You'll never see Goldman Sachs, Mercedes Benz, or Harvard cheaping out on their benefits.

That said, if there's any truth to the quote the NY Times attributes to Sergey Brin ("no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of Googlers who felt entitled to perks like bottled water and M&Ms), then it sounds like something is indeed turning sour at Google. It seems like every hot company that skyrockets eventually has to come back to Earth hard. If this is indeed happening at Google, perks will soon be the least of their problems.

Re:Yes, I do know what it really means. Thanks.

[worthawholebean]

There's free breakfast and (I think) dinner. I spent a few days at the Googleplex last month, and there is free food everywhere as well as ping pong tables, pinball machines, etc. At night they often hold meetings of area interest groups. There are many, many other benefits.

This is it??

[mccabem]

A disgruntled employee and stock price? Tell me again how stock price is correlated with performance? Ditto for disgruntled employee?

I'm not arguing that Google hasn't turned evil/lost its mojo/whatever - I'm willing to consider it. But are you serious these are the "arguments agaist"???

And for the last time: Benefits are a luxury. Your pay is your pay. Duh...don't let em sell you the sizzle!

Heh...on that note I'm not mad I RTFA'd, but I will say they poured more thought into the headline than the article. Sizzle in deed.

-Matt

Housewives

[DesScorp]

"Seriously? "Women should abandon their careers to beome housewives" gets modded +5? WTF is wrong with this website?"

Well, obviously we'll have to do something about that "differing opinions" stuff here. Can't have any of that. Thanks for pointing it out; the management will take care of it.

And now a question for you; what do you think about the legions of women that have decided that, well, yes they'd prefer to give up their careers because they consider raising their children job Numero Uno? Since we've been 3 decades into the sexual revolution now, many women have decided that they can't have it all, at least not in any meaningful sense. Is there something wrong with them?

Re:Housewives

[emj]

And now a question for you; what do you think about the legions of women that have decided that, well, yes they'd prefer to give up their careers because they consider raising their children job Numero Uno? Since we've been 3 decades into the sexual revolution now, many women have decided that they can't have it all, at least not in any meaningful sense. Is there something wrong with them?

Nothing wrong with them, it's a problem with the workplaces, it's pretty easy to let someone take a child leave for a year or two. But as long as everyone thinks it's impossible to have both a child and a work it's never going to happen where you live.

It works if you care about it, as some countries do..

Re:Housewives

[corbettw]

Nothing wrong with them, it's a problem with the workplaces, it's pretty easy to let someone take a child leave for a year or two.

So someone decides to have children, and now their employer has to keep their job on hold for up to two years in case they decide to come back to it? How does that make any sense?

Re:Housewives

[t0rkm3]

I think your oversimplifying the perceived problem.

My wife and I agree that a stay at home parent is paramount in our strategy to raise children. Anecdotally we've noticed the difference the quality of life experienced by the children, to the point where my wife cares for my little cousins until my uncle (a single dad) gets home.

Their grades and behavior immediately improved.

There are several studies that hint toward children with a stay at home parent having greater social empathy and stronger self-image. Not to mention better performance in just about every area that can be measured.

It could easily be argued that the studies are skewed in conception or missing another factor, such as wealth, but they might not. My family wasn't wealthy, and sometimes we were destitute, but someone was always home. Seems like it might give a child solace, don't you think?

hmm...

[XanC]

Time to sell short?

Re:hmm...

[RedWizzard]

Time to sell short?

Last December the share price peaked at $715. Now it's $483. It may well fall further, but the best time to sell short was 9 months ago.

Playing Devil's Advocate...

[DesScorp]

This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.

Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees. It's hardly "age discrimination" to do less of it.

Well, if you as an employer value experience on the job over youth, you could argue that it's more important to subsidize those older workers with kids than it is to pay young childless newbies more.

Unless of course, you're one of those companies that want to chase out older, expensive workers, in favor of youngsters you can hire cheap, burn out, and begin the process again.

On a side note...

[skyggen]

Indifference to google losing it mojo. I would like to attack hosted web apps. Never going to happen as long as phone and cable companies continue to provide jenkie bandwidth at ridiculous prices with terrible SLAs. Doubt me, think what driving would be like if your car was in the same condition as the roads. I don't doubt home users will use it because man did people ever buy in the ford pinto. If anyone knows the pinto, you know you would rather be in a manga in Tokyo then a pinto.

Google's real luxuries

[Timbotronic]

Why waste money on employee benefits when you can reinvest in taking photos every 15m out here?

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[drsquare]

I calculated that the free food alone was worth about $8000 per year to me.

Assuming you work five days a week and have two weeks off per year, that works out at $32 a day. Do you weigh 400 pounds or was it lobster every day?

As a googler

[Anonymous Coward]

As a googler who doesn't work in Mountain View, (there are a lot of us) this whole childcare benefit isn't even offered to us. It makes me laugh how upset folks are in MTV - they scream bloody murder and swear this will hurt recruiting - yet distributed offices are growing just fine without the benefit.

Plus, I figure that mostly senior folks, aka pre-ipo folks, benefit the most from child care since they signed up early - and they surely can afford to pay for their full share.

Despite not getting this benefit I'm perfectly content at Google - maybe a little annoyed that folks in MTV want more while our office cuts back - but all in all, I still work on interesting stuff so you won't see me bailing to a competitor anytime soon.

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[Wee]

We were allowed to bring a guest twice a month. I did that more often than not. And I ate breakfast and lunch virtually every day, plus snacks and drinks throughout the day. The SmartWaters they had are like a buck each. The Naked Juice in the lobby fridges are $3-$4. I ate dinner there a couple/three times a week. They brought in food on weekends as well.

Sometimes it actually was lobster (though more likely crab and/or shrimp on Seafood Friday's at Charlie's). Sometimes a weird meat cut I'd never heard of. I had squab one time. Sometimes it was a celebrity guest chef. Bought elsewhere, it'd probably work out to more than $8K. They served very good food. I ate at home toward the end of my stay there, but it's a conscious choice you have to make: Go home and cook, or stay a little late and eat there. Traffic was better past 8pm anyway, so the lazy choice was usually taken.

And I only weigh 190, same as when I started work there. :-)

-B

turnover? hire me?

[gelfling]

I'll work for them. Tomorrow. Contact me Google.

Little boys in a mans world

[twostix]

Sorry, to all you childless bachelors out there, but my loyalty lies 110% to my son and family not to you or anybody else outside my family, I already have precious little time with him as is, I don't care if you or management or *anyone else* thinks I'm a team player or not, truly. I do my contracted work, take my pay then I'm outta there.

It does go both ways as well. People without kids bitch that people with kids leave when their child is sick (you know, to be *parents*) or whatever, but then people without kids want to work their lives away, then expect us to as well? Sorry if your to spineless to stand up to your boss that's YOUR problem, no one elses. Otherwise you enjoy doing it, and well if you expect me to work late and have my boy miss out on seeing his old man before bed because you have nothing better to do than work for an extra few hours you can fuck right off.

The worst thing here, is that the 90% of people complaining about "people with kids" statistically, in a a few years when they grow up will BE "people with kids". Then will understand, not through a selfish hypocritical flip-flop, but because when that little tacker comes along you have *no choice* as your brain changes and with it your priorities, whether you like it or not.

And we *people with kids* were all just like you once, I even used to bitch about *people with kids*, just like you.

Ironically all the people without kids bitching here will then bitch about how people don't, you know, "be a parent" to their kids in the multitude of other stories regarding kids. Well I'll tell ya it's a little hard when you all expect us to forget about them for 8-12 hours a day and see them awake for twenty minutes, because we know how much your going to cry because you choose to marry your job/company and we treat it like a means to an end and leave on time.

So much juvenile idiocy in this thread.

Re:Little boys in a mans world

[methuselah]

"So much juvenile idiocy in this thread."
So you jump right in with some other kind of your own. Look your family is no one else responsibility. No employer really cares about your priorities. Wearing them on your sleeve like some kind of badge of honor does not make you a hero. It make you a manipulable target. Life is full of choices and they come with consequences. It is not incumbent on anyone to deal with or be sympathetic with the consequences of your actions. To insist that anyone care is "idiotic". I agree that work is rendering service for pay. Pay is associated with the value of service rendered. Nothing more than that. As for forgetting about your kids for 8-12 hours a day who in their right mind would pay you to sit around and think about them.

Of course I RTFA.

[Jane Q. Public]

Where else would I have gotten that $37,000 figure? That was part of my point.

Maybe it's the customers who want 'coolness'?

[Fleeced]

Solyanik warns that Google's engineers care more about the 'coolness' of a service than about the service's effectiveness.

I don't think that's entirely true. Like all companies, they are concerned with maximising profit - which they do by maximising use of their products. So, the question is whether users care more about coolness or the effectiveness of the service (and whether Google anticipates the correct answer to that question)

not entirely

[CaptainNerdCave]

what about the fact that so many people have illegitimate children by 25? i get a kick out of reading some personal ads in the paper, and i've started seeing NK in addition to NS for 18-24 year olds; that's right, "no kids"

No, nobody missed the point.

[Jane Q. Public]

Google decided to CONTINUE the daycare, but at a high cost (for what they felt was best-quality care of course).

The POINT is that people complained. They still wanted their $37,000 care, but wanted others to pay for it. And if "the company" is paying for it, then when it all boils down to it, other employees are actually helping to foot the bill. That's the way it works. Money does not grow on trees.

That was my point. If they want that kind of daycare (or any, for that matter) they should pay for it. Why should other people foot the bill?

Re:No, nobody missed the point.

[freedom_india]

And if "the company" is paying for it, then when it all boils down to it, other employees are actually helping to foot the bill

Ahhh.. No. if the company foots the bill for daycare, the money does NOT come out of employees or even executives' pay.
It comes out of the corporate taxes that companies pay: federal and state.
The $37000 the company spends is completely tax deductible. That is why corporates always pay lower taxes than individuals.

Huh?

[Jane Q. Public]

You think lack of company-bought daycare will cause the fall of civilization? I think not.

Keep in mind that when "the company" pays for something, that comes out of profits, and eventually that all boils down to what people get paid. So their fellow workers are actually helping to subsidize the deluxe daycare... which is NOT fair. Or ethical.

Re:Huh?

[Eli Gottlieb]

You think lack of company-bought daycare will cause the fall of civilization? I think not.

The text I quoted said "the public". I think I can pretty reasonably expect society at large to subsidize certain things for everyone's children because those children are the future of that society.

Welcome to modern, First-World countries, where we've made having a kid so damned expensive that if you don't subsidize it publicly people just stop having children and blow their time and money on sex, drugs, rock, roll, computer parts, fancy vacations, alcoholic drinks, and various other pleasures because it's become too much effort to bring up children all on your own.

Of course, it's not like more primitive societies didn't make accommodations for children. Pregnant women have always received special consideration. Back before there was public healthcare you expected the other members of your village/tribe to make sure your kids learned proper behavior, didn't run away, and did their job(s). "Subsidizing" children is just a new form of what humanity has always done for the sake of its own survival, except that parents no longer require their children as a retirement system so all of a sudden everyone who chose not to have children can freely express their disdain for their own legacy (or lack thereof) without having to fear winding up beggars on the street in their old age as a consequence.

Keep in mind that when "the company" pays for something, that comes out of profits, and eventually that all boils down to what people get paid. So their fellow workers are actually helping to subsidize the deluxe daycare... which is NOT fair. Or ethical.

Actually... no. When "the company" pays for something it comes out of the firm's profits, which would eventually boil down to money for reinvestment and for shareholder's dividends. You're incredibly naive if you think putting more money in corporate coffers by cutting daycare benefits would lead to higher pay for the workers.

It's obviously Google's choice whether to continue or cut the daycare benefits, but someone somewhere has to make the outlays so that parents can afford children, or we'll find the Japanese population collapse happening worldwide.

Mickey Mao

[IHC Navistar]

I think Goolgle started to rapidly lose it's "Mojo" when it started sleeping with the land of Mickey Mao.

Google has pretty much turned itself into an electronic handmaiden at the whims of the Chinese Government. One they started abusing their massive amount of clout by selling out to the Chinese, people got wise and started to realize that Google has become a "Little Brother" who is easily controlled by Big Brother.

Get real.

[Jane Q. Public]

By the time today's children are well into the work force, THERE WON'T BE ANY SOCIAL SECURITY left. Or if there is, it will be so paltry as to be a joke. Don't you read the news?

* I * am certainly not counting on it being there. Yet I have paid into it my entire adult life.

Regardless, child care is not the same as public education, and never has been. Our society has done just fine without "company sponsored" daycare -- up until a few years ago -- and my prediction is that it would CONTINUE to do fine in the future without it.

I repeat: like Sergey, I have very little sympathy. If they can't afford to raise them, they should not be having them. I don't want to pay for them. It is that simple.

The U.S. is not "lucky" in that respect at all. The people of the U.S. have been RESPONSIBLE about their birth rate. If the other nations can't or won't in this 21st Century, then the hell with them. Let 'em fail. There are no real excuses for that anymore.

I am aware that this is unpleasant subject matter, but it is real. Somebody needs to bring it up, rather than pretending it does not exist. I could say even stronger things about other nations failing to be responsible... but I will leave it there.

The United States is not perfect... especially under this administration. But there are some things we are doing properly, and population rate is one of them.

Re:Get real.

[chitokutai]

You definitely have a point about social security not existing, but taxes are still paid by citizens, and less citizens mean less taxes.

The U.S. is not "lucky" in that respect at all. The people of the U.S. have been RESPONSIBLE about their birth rate. If the other nations can't or won't in this 21st Century, then the hell with them. Let 'em fail. There are no real excuses for that anymore.

And not to nitpick, but this statement makes no sense at all. Responsibility has nothing to do with a higher birthrate. Societal factors directly influence a couple's choice to have children, and if couples don't feel that the environment is conducive to having children, they don't. And it's strange, because you said that if people can't afford to have children they shouldn't, but now you're telling me that people in Europe and Japan, who can't afford to have children and aren't, are being irresponsible?

Re:Yes, I do know what it really means. Thanks.

[Minwee]

All cleverly designed to make leaving Google and working at any other company the single most painful experience ever, especially for someone who was hired straight out of University.

The whole thing is the perfect cover for a James Bond style villain and his army of disposable henchmen. When the Googleplex moves to the inside of a dormant volcano with Sergei's face carved on the side and the Orbital Mind Control Rays are deployed, you'll know that I was right.

Clarification

[Jane Q. Public]

I did not state this clearly, but part of what I meant was: this whole "Social Security" concept in which older people RELY on younger people to pay their way is flawed at its very foundation. Social Security was originally sold to The People as something of a "forced savings account"... the money was supposed to be invested for you and you would reap the benefits when you retired. Supposedly, they did that because people were not saving money on their own, leading to an unstable economy, and to exactly the problem they were trying to fix... older people who had no money on which to retire!

But they DID NOT invest the money... instead, Social Security devolved into a "contract between the generations", in which the younger people, on a day-to-day basis, were paying the retirement income of the older people. What an astoundingly bad idea! Guess what they ended up with? Exactly the problem they were originally trying to fix: older people who had no money for retirement, precisely because they were now relying on the government dole, which now comes straight from younger peoples' paychecks.

I have nothing against the old lifestyle in which grandma and grandpa stuck around on the family farm after the kids got older and took over the business of running it. But that is not what we are talking about here. Instead, we have forced government seizure of funds which they mismanage and then dole out in ways they decide for themselves. Not a good thing at all.

In any case, as you say, Europe and Japan are going to be in trouble over that very issue. We will too, but not so much. And again, I have no sympathy. The system put in place to solve the problem actually did nothing but perpetuate it.

Then it's other taxpayers. Big difference?

[Jane Q. Public]

Someone else is STILL footing the bill. Or a large part of it anyway. And that is my main point.

No, not really.

[Jane Q. Public]

What I intended to state is that they WERE not being responsible.

And I disagree. The decision to have children, in the 20th and 21st Century, has had everything to do with personal responsibility. I am not trying to denigrate the "person on the street", but we have had adequate contraceptive and educational opportunities. I do not believe a nation can excuse itself by saying that "cultural values" caused its excessive population, when it has been so obvious -- for tens of decades -- that it is a real problem.

Re:No, not really.

[chitokutai]

But we're not talking about excessive populations. We're talking about underpopulation.

Take a look at the birth rate for countries in Europe and Japan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate

It takes responsibility to have and raise children, but it doesn't make someone irresponsible to not have kids. This is what I'm arguing. Cultural factors will have a strong influence on a couple's decision to NOT have children, and factors like unaffordable childcare only make the decision to not have children that much easier.

Like I said, companies (society) shouldn't feel required to assist people who do have children, but a lack of assistance isn't without consequences.

Pardon me. My mistake.

[Jane Q. Public]

I am tired, and thought you were saying something else.

Of course it has

[melted]

It is now huge (read, you have to play political games to get ahead), its share price is not going anywhere (read, there's no potential to get rich quick) and it is "blessed" with a workforce in which they have cultivated a sense of entitlement (read, once you take anything away, no matter how small the perk, the response will be swift, merciless and disproportionate).

Frankly, based on what I hear from ex-Googlers, if I wanted to work for a big company, I'd rather go to Microsoft instead. There's more structure there, wider variety of projects, and rules for promotion although not set in stone and not always followed, are better defined.

That's better than MSFT, actually

[melted]

At Microsoft, you get 15 days to start with (although they've flirted with 10 days for new hires a few years back, but someone beat them with a cluestick after a couple of months of that), and you get 20 days after 6 years. To get 25 days you need 10 years with the company.

There is a way. Or is there ?

[Teisei]

You don't get error if you use Firefox's User Agent Switcher addon and choose to use "Internet Explorer 7 (Windows Vista)". However, you are urged to download Silverlight and Move Player (both .exe files) so I think it won't work. Even so, I haven't tried running Windows version of Firefox on Wine.

Re:There is a way. Or is there ?

[Teisei]

Oops, sorry. Wrong article.

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[emj]

And I only weigh 190, same as when I started work there. :-)

If you eat good food at regular hours you usually don't gain weight. Because you tend to eat less candy.

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[CrackedButter]

I like the fact you worked out the $8000 in a breakdown and then asked if he eat lobster, because it could be a bit much and you shouldn't trust numbers alone. Pure class, well done on the common sense angle and you know that Lobster is overrated.

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[Wee]

I don't eat candy. I never have. When I was growing up, my easter baskets had nuts and jerky in them instead of candy. -B

Or For Fuck Sake, Stop the Astroturfing!!!

[theolein]

This same article by this same cretin at Microsoft was posted here about two months ago. I know that the slashdot editors only edit when they think it will raise the hitcount, but really. Stop this crap.

Microsoft FUD, as usual.

[miffo.swe]

This is just the usual Microsoft trying to badmouth the competition. In this case its about developer mindshare and staff.

I keep seeing these articles about Googles demise, evilness and other complaints but to date not one of them has been of any value whatsoever. To an outsider it really looks like a concentrated effort from Microsoft of purporting a pretty descent company in a bad light.

Works only for a short while

[Lonewolf666]

It seems there are lots of people who consider themselves better because they work ridiculous hours. Here's news for you:

It works only in the short term, like the last few days before a deadline. Over longer periods, exhaustion will drive your productivity below that of someone working 40 hrs/week. For a nice summary see http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php.

But many managers and employees still seem to believe in 50-70 hour weeks.

Reality bites

[amn108]

Even a child should know that everything has a beginning and an end. Empire like Google starts to eat its own self with time, and collapses under its own weight. This is part of life, and Rome and a lot of other attempts to be larger than life went this way. And the more one is trying to fight this tendency the more weight it carries, and the harder is the fall. What do you expect, Google to stay on top forever? This only happens in fairy tales. The reality has something to do with particle physics, I am sure :-)

Unfortunately, not that unusual.

[Lonewolf666]

1) Clueless managemement wants quick results on complex projects. Not so rare, you just got unlucky in picking a bunch that has a bit more exaggerated expectations than usual.
2) Planless shifting around of "human resources". Again, it happens.
3) On top of that, it seems cooperation with some of your colleagues did not go that well.

All of those things have happened at one time or another to me. Fortunately not all at the same time, but it still led to "unplanned carreer changes". So I guess you'll have to accept that it could happen again.

I'm not sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Netcraft confirm this?

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[IamTheRealMike]

Another Googler here. I just gotta say, 20% time isn't a myth. It is wildly misunderstood, even within the company IMHO.

I'm working on my 20% project right now actually (well, I was until I saw this story anyway ;) I do usually get to dedicate about one day a week to it, although that "day" is sometimes a mix of 20% coding and email on my regular project as well. Here are some things I've found:

• 20% time does not magically appear. Meetings don't move themselves, colleagues don't stop asking questions, urgent email doesn't vanish. You have to be disciplined to make 20% time happen. In case you think this doesn't apply to you because your job is so tough, I work in SRE and am constantly being interrupted by random stuff breaking in production, or people who need a ticket resolved right now because otherwise it'll block their progress. It took a long time to learn how to take 20% in this environment, but it is possible with a combination of delegation, careful timekeeping and sheer stubbornness.
• 20% time doesn't have to be on your main project. Between fixing problems in our datacenters and capacity planning, I'm writing what will hopefully one day be a new launched product (a web app).
• There is a process for 20% projects to graduate into full staffed projects. I'm hoping to take my project through it in the next few months. This is make or break for my little codebase - it's pretty ambitious and if it doesn't make it to a real Google project, I'm not sure where I'll take it. But I do feel reasonably in control of this process. I guess we'll see how it goes.
• Management has always been 100% supportive of this, even though it means they lose 20% of my time from my main job and might lose me for good from my current project and team. That is appreciated.

Generally, I'd say 20% time is a great idea, but I think management of it is harder than it appears. If your team sets very aggressive goals for itself and that means you feel you can't take 20% time, that's something to take up with your management and your team. Remember, EMG have clarified this on several occasions - your manager cannot deny you 20% time in perpetuity.

Re:Yes, I do know what it really means. Thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the Googleplex moves to the inside of a dormant volcano with Sergei's face carved on the side and the Orbital Mind Control Rays are deployed, you'll know that I was right.

No we won't. That's what the mind control rays are for!

Government programs have indirect benefits

[sjbe]

Why should I have to involuntarily pay for things other people take advantage of and I don't? E.g. welfare, medicare, social security, and the list goes on and on. I pay way more into the system than I get back.

Really? You're sure you pay more than you get back? Prove it. And be sure to count the indirect benefits as well as the direct ones.

Look, I'm no fan of our social security system & medicare system either and I certainly wouldn't argue that they are any sort of model of well managed programs but there are benefits I receive now and others I get later. Right now it keeps some of my older relatives from depending on me directly for financial support beyond my immediate ability to pay. You'll have a hard time convincing me that bankrupting a lot of families could in any way benefit either one of us. Through a system where we all pay to help each other when we need it, we all (theoretically) benefit. Just not all at once and not necessarily at the time we pay in. Benefits are not always direct but that doesn't mean they aren't there. Life's more complicated than the number of zeros in your bank account.

Later on I expect I'll receive some benefit of my own directly. (how much is another question...)

Don't rant unless you have a solution

[sjbe]

Because we're required to pay into what is effectively a Ponzi scheme (Social Security) and welfare and medicare taxes. Get rid of them all.

And replace it with what? Yep, the funding model for social security is stupid. It's also not going away since a LOT of people depend on it, probably including some of your relatives. So what's so solution Mr. Smartypants? Have people starving in the streets and let the old folks die because screw-em if they can't afford proper care?

It's fine to rant against social security but only if you have an actual solution to the real world problem in mind.

(Possibly require a self-funded 401k equivalent if people are too stupid to save for themselves.)

Ha! You've never worked in finance have you? I have and most people are terrible investors. I wouldn't trust my own mother to make sensible investments in a million years. There was a time before about 1930 when the government wasn't involved with people's savings and only lightly regulated the financial sector. Then a little thing called the Great Depression hit and it occurred to some folks that maybe helping each other out and keeping an eye on the excesses of Wall Street wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

Re:Don't rant unless you have a solution

[mattack2]

Replace it with *people being responsible for themselves*.

Plus, I already gave a possible solution, a mandatory 401k for those who can't get one from their employers (and *possibly* even do something like a small tax break that would go into the 401k-ish thing for those who put in more than some minimum amount, to simulate employer matching funds for those who don't get them).

I've been putting about the maximum (possibly only not when the limits went up) all along, and even at my low rate, it's grown into a decent amount of money. I have 2 more decades before I can even start thinking about taking it out, so lots of time to grow in stock funds.

Re:Don't rant unless you have a solution

[mattack2]

Oh, and I forgot some other choices -- people taking care of their own families, or charities/soup kitchens. Basically any place where the monetary distribution is voluntary, not forced upon us by the government.

BTW, even though I've paid into Social Security for a long time now, I would give up any benefits if I didn't have to pay into it anymore. Make some cutoff age whereby they won't get Social Security benefits, then let it go away over time.

Housing costs

[sjbe]

Ok, I live in england, and I'm pretty sure our house prices are way higher than the states

That depends entirely on where you live in the US versus where you live in England. Some places yes, some places no. Live in Manhattan or parts of Connecticut and you'll find prices as high as anywhere in the world. Go more rural and you can live much less expensively, albeit with some trade offs. (not necessarily bad ones either)

Whether you need two incomes to buy a house depends very much on the size of the first income and the location and lifestyle you choose to live. You'll have a hard time convincing me that there is no place in all of England that you could not buy a house with just a single income. Might not be where you prefer but I'm pretty sure it's possible.

From a Googler

[Anonymous Coward]

Until recently I used to be a Google engineering manager. Not anymore, I've moved back to being an "individual contributor". This is a pattern I see quite often among the old timers who don't want to fight it out in the new political world that Google management has become. Management is now the playground of the politically savvy and ruthless. I've worked in consulting, and it was easy to separate the hard nosed career-minded individual from the normal. So at least the rules of engagement were clear. At Google it's different, because the performance system penalizes anyone who is not "popular" all the career-minded ones are "well-liked" and "great party companions" until you meet the sharp end of their knife in your back.

Google is still full of smart people, but a different kind of smart. Looking at the psychometric assessments (MBTI or other) of employees at company trainings over the years is illuminating. About 6 years ago the bulk of leadership used to possess geek-like traits, and over the recent years (even in engineering) the population has become more balanced like the rest of the real world. Politics and ruthlessness comes in for free.

Eco-Mojo

[jackspenn]

Google makes it's money selling advertisements. (no surprise). Companies and people paying for AD space is up in economic booms and down in downturns(should be no surprise). So it makes sense that Google should see a revenue shrinkage over the next 2-3 years (my prediction of recessions initial period before recovery) as some companies die all together and others cut costs. Also with downturn they don't have to provide the level of incentives to keep top notch people given fact that the uncertainty in the market will help keep employees. Plus they hired too many people as of late so if people leave it helps them get books more in line anyway.

Knock off the bullshit, you're just lying

[D.McGuiggin]

"My emplioyer can require us to do anything they like..."

That's just garbage. They can't require you break the law for example, even in "at will" states.

Re:No they won't, save that bullshit

[Naughty Bob]

My furious little crosspatch, D.McGuiggin. Please try to relax, or your stony, shriveled heart will explode before your investments mature.

All my love, Naughty Bob x

Re:No they won't, save that bullshit

[Dog-Cow]

I hope then, that when you are physically unable to take care of yourself that you are terminated with prejudice. Messily and painfully, so that at least you will provice entertainment value to someone, as you have not provided any other sort of value so far.

Precisely the Point

[bobobobo]

$2500 a month is a lot, and the vast majority cannot afford this. This is the reason, why so many employees are upset about this. Only the higher up exec. types can get their kids in. More info can be found here

Re:Google will lose all of it's Mojo

[illumin8]

Actually, since the machines are incapable of generating their own mojo, we'll all be enslaved in a virtual reality as our mojo is harvested from us.

Wait a minute, don't MMOs do that already?

World of Warcraft, harvesting geek mojo since 2004.

Re:Higher salary? Not bloody likely

[Wee]

Generally, I'd say 20% time is a great idea, but I think management of it is harder than it appears. If your team sets very aggressive goals for itself and that means you feel you can't take 20% time, that's something to take up with your management and your team. Remember, EMG have clarified this on several occasions - your manager cannot deny you 20% time in perpetuity.

I was in SRE as well, oddly. My manager dragged her feet and generally refused to hear anything about 20% time. We had 3 reqs open, and her feeling was that if we're needing staffing so badly then we can't have one guy off doing something else one day a week. I took it up the chain, and was routinely told it was my manager's decision, as she knew the status of the group. I actually tried to leave the group toward the end there, but there's really no clean way to go from SWE to anything else. My manager refused to entertain the notion of me leaving her even more short handed. When I left the company, I hadn't written a single line of code in over 9 months, and needed to scratch that creative itch. So, I had to leave the company as there was nowhere to go. I've heard horror stories about the SWEs in like Ads or Search -- they're stuck and can never leave the group. That's really sad.

Prior to my last attempt at getting on with a 20% project, I came up with a plan that involved people covering, me covering them, milestones, schedules, buy-in from the other group, etc. You're right, 20% time doesn't magically happen. But if you have a bad manager, it won't ever happen -- regardless of what EMG claims. I only had two managers at Google. Neither had been there very long, and neither allowed me to work on a 20% project. In my exit interview, the HR guy said "Well, I'm glad to hear you liked it here. People don't leave Google, they leave their manager. Sorry...". The money and perks were nice, sure. But the work itself sucked. So I do something I enjoy now, and am vastly happier.

I used to feel really bad about telling interviewees what my experiences with 20% time were like, but I couldn't lie to them. And every single one asked about it during the interview. All I could do was shrug and say "well, if you get a good manager, life at Google will be good..." The implication being if you get a bad manager then you'll grit your teeth until you vest a little and then you'll bail out.

I'm glad you have the ability to work on a 20% project. But from my experiences during the 3 years and change I was there, it's the exception rather than the rule, by a huge margin.

-B

Re:You first

[statemachine]

Ah, the anti-tax idiot. Yes, you are an idiot.

First, we'll stop maintaining the street in front of your house and bar you from driving on any road that you haven't paid into personally.

Next, we'll tell your bank that your mortgage is no longer insured by the federal government, and you'll need to buy expensive mortgage insurance. On top of that, FEMA will no longer come to your financial aid in the event of a natural disaster.

And those firefighters who show up at your house when it's burning? They will only make sure your neighbors' houses aren't affected... unless you prepaid your fire district for assistance!

If you have a medical or police emergency, we can't deny you help, but you just may be bankrupted from the bills for service!

And remember how your road isn't maintained any more? Just think about the extra few thousand you'll be spending each year on costly repairs and maintenance for your vehicles. What? Washboard surfaces and potholes aren't kind to your suspension, chassis, and delicate electronics.

You are an idiot because you won't have any money left for your investments -- unless you're ultra-rich. Do you believe you're ultra-rich?

We can all go back to unmaintained dirt roads, paying full cost for schools, and paying exorbitant interest rates for loans in exchange for little to no taxes. One needs to only look back as far as the 1930's... or the 1880's if one's feeling adventurous. According to your philosophy, those were great times!

You first, indeed!

Re:Google will lose all of it's Mojo

[Zwicky]

Wow! Then imagine the records the machines are going to set at the next Olympiad. (I hope they're Daleks so the guys who designed that logo can be exterminated).

I for one etc etc

You like ASSUMPTIONS, don't you?

[Jane Q. Public]

You are ASSUMING that I will BECOME a hypocrite in the future... and you have no basis for that assumption!!!

It just so happens that there is enough money that I never need be a burden on society. The only people who will be wiping my ass will be WELL PAID for it, from money I earned MYSELF, HONESTLY, without exploiting others.

So all your assumptions are nothing but that: imaginary, projectionist bullshit. You are projecting on me your fears for the future. A psychologist could have a lot of fun with this.

The fact is that your statements about me have no basis, and you should get some professional help for all your anger about imaginary, fearful things.

By the way: the idea that *I* would benefit financially from YOUR kids is the greatest assumption of all. There is very little basis for this claim, and I would challenge you to back it up.

Now, the idea that I might benefit from future generations is an idea that has a lot of merit. But YOUR kids are not "future generations", which is a general concept. Your kids are YOUR KIDS. And if you bring them up to use the same level of intellectual rigor that you have applied to this conversation, then I despair for those "future generations".

You are a fool who makes emotional arguments without logic behind them, and as such you are the ENEMY to a bright future, and I dare say YOUR kids might share those attributes, because there is every reason to believe that you would be teaching them those same values. Therefore you have been arguing against yourself, through sheer incompetence.

The idea that 99% of the population might "get" your stated, erroneous claim is a sad idea, indeed. Let us hope that instead they display at least the average intelligence they have in the past.

By the way:

[Jane Q. Public]

I do not know where you got the idea that I said there was anything wrong with raising kids. And I certainly did not say that it was not expensive. What I said, in a nutshell, was: * I * will pay for my kids, YOU can pay for yours. If you have a problem with that, then you can just go stuff it. Period.

I already stated that, as an exception, I accept the concept of paying taxes to support public schools. THAT is something that benefits everybody. But the subject here was not public schools, it was paying for private day care, so that certain people can have jobs that they would not be able to have without it. And that is a false economy: others pay so that the few can benefit.

That is NOT an "American" ideal. Despite your sarcasm, it is in fact a socialist concept. One that has historically demonstrated its own folly. China is, of course, the classic example. They have so far made it work in a gross sense, but the ignorant "masses" have no idea how much the rest of the world pities and laughs at them for THEIR (the government's) hypocrisy that is so obvious to outsiders. Further, their socialist system is gradually breaking down, now that the people are learning how much better capitalism actually WORKS.

And one more 'by the way': the word "whinge" is archaic and almost never used in the United States, though it is still used often in Britain. If you from the UK, why the hell are you arguing with an American about an American company and American policy??? We do not respect your willingness to allow yourselves to be subjected to a police state government mentality in spite of historical (and even recent) evidence that it is a bad idea. Despite the fact that it has seemed to be a worldwide trend, we have been resisting it a great deal more than you have. Who the hell are you to be lecturing about socialism?