Quite true! But he died well before the interior layout was finalized; Steve Jobs passed not long after they had decided on the circular form and locked down the location. The building is a month from opening to its employees. Attacking Steve Jobs’ parenting skills because they didn’t have a childcare facility during Wired’s tour strikes me as a bit… opportunistic.
6 Likes
Well. Feel free to call my company and talk to them. Again, as a father of 3…it never has bothered me once that they don’t have one. I work remotely when I need to. My kids seemingly have turned out fine. It smells fine to me.
Its not an argument. Its the fact that many (probably most) corporations don’t offer it. And I can only speak from my personal experience, but its been perfectly fine over all that my company hasn’t. There have been hassles at times, and its been inconvenient sometimes. But overall it has never been an issue.
But what in the hell do I know.
- You ignored most of the substance of @Blaze_Curry’s comment in your response and went for Jerry Springer-style “You don’t know me!” instead. Poor form.
- You’re generalizing from your own experiences to an unreasonable degree.
Wow, must be really convenient to have that option. Not everyone does, you know.
But that’s not a valid rebuttal to the argument that specific corporations should offer it.
You’re not limited to what you know now. You can listen and learn, presumably.
15 Likes
Yes, they managed to have more than one bathroom.
I think someone feels guilty for venerating Jobs. I agree it’s a bit too much.
2 Likes
If it’ll be so full that it has a waiting list then it’s at 100% capacity. What’s the problem with that? From what I’ve seen, on site gyms are free but on site childcare costs money. That means the cost of the gym is coming out of your salary, but childcare is at least heavily subsidized by membership costs.
3 Likes
My son works at Apple.
While on vacation with him in Monterrey, we went to the Aquarium.
He bought a $300 membership to get in because Apple matches (100%) of his tax-deductible contributions such as this one.
They also have a “concierge” service for helping employees secure services, such as childcare, outside of the company. I agree with offering childcare at one’s place of work, but I also see the flip side on this.
It could be argued that having to forfeit childcare if you wished to leave their employ would be another set of “golden handcuffs”.
They certainly aren’t perfect, but a hell of a lot better that the vast majority of other companies.
10 Likes
No problem with it being at 100% capacity. I’m not denying that it’s a very desirable perk, but an Apple Daycare would surely be a ‘premium’ facility and will cost much more than a comparable off site facility. Maybe I’m wrong, we may never know. I’m just stating that is why, among other reasons, why I don’t use ours. Our gym is not free and I know a couple other companies near me that don’t offer it for free either. But I’m in the midwest. I suppose many SV companies do offer that as a free perk, which is great. It’s $60 a month for me to use my on site gym. I’ll stick with $10 a month planet fitness. 
So put your kid on a treadmill all day while you work, and hey, you could even hook it up to a generator so they help power the building. No problem!
5 Likes
Here’s how stupid I am: I always figured insanely wealthy corporations paid for the employees’ onsite gym membership and daycare use.
8 Likes
All I was saying is that the stated excuses don’t hold much water to me–not that you’re a terrible parent who couldn’t possibly raise children or that your company is evil. Childcare might not make sense–my guess is that the decision was made because of ROI or culture they wanted to foster. Gyms and walking paths look better in a brochure and attract different people.
5 Likes
[quote=“Ericb, post:27, topic:101116, full:true”]It’s $60 a month for me to use my on site gym. I’ll stick with $10 a month planet fitness.
[/quote]
At that rate, it’s not a perk designed to attract and keep employees, it’s more of a side business. I wouldn’t use it either. Just like that 100% full years long wait list daycare isn’t really functioning correctly either.
All of these things are like subsidized onsite cafeterias. Making them attractive to employees is a way to attract and keep better employees. Just like office decor, distractions, and company culture.
It’s all part of trying to be more competitive and keep employees. In the case of things like daycare, gyms, cafeterias, dry cleaners, coffee shops, banks/ATMs, clinics and other external services. They’re about making the employer attractive by eliminating travel time. It’s easier to travel farther to an office if you don’t need to leave it for much. This increases the potential employee pool allowing for finding better employees instead of just ones that are closer.
In Apple’s case, they’re investing a significant amount in the new building and filling it with a large workforce. That workforce needs to get there from some travel distance. It’s not that they “should” do this to be “good”, it’s that having it would make them a more attractive employer with better employee retention.
6 Likes
I replied rather harshly, so my apologies in that regard.
Those were two of the biggest but not only reasons they chose not to have on site daycare. My attitude about the posted article is simply that Apple isn’t doing anything different than many corps do including my own. If on site daycare is that important to an individual, then seek employment at a company who offers it.
I think people rag on Apple and other large companies because they can change the standards. My own little thing is that the lack of support for working parents mean a) educated people have fewer kids and b) one parent drops out of the workforce to care for kids. Individual companies may not care about this.
I don’t think onsite childcare is the best use of resources. It only works for larger companies and you’re then limited if you don’t like the staff or cost. But onsite childcare is really nice if traffic is terrible and an offsite daycare would add 30-60m in commute time (which cuts into working hours).
6 Likes
Your excuses for your employer here are really really weak.
-
Insurance. Insurance is just money. It’s not a real problem. You don’t have to insure the whole place as a daycare anymore than an entire mall is insured if there is a daycare somewhere in it. The easiest way to provide this benefit is surely to contract with a daycare provider, and get preferential slots for employees, then that company deals with all the details.
-
They want people to go home to their family? What? That makes absolutely the opposite of sense, they told you that and you bought it? Firstly you list off a bunch of recreational amenities they have added, which are added solely to keep people at work rather than having them go to their own gym, or go to the doctor, or home to their family. They obviously want people to stay on the campus because they want them to be at work MORE. And yet somehow you think that softball fields at work make people leave, but daycare at work would make them stay extra hours? Huh? Daycare on site eliminates the travel time between work and the daycare. That extra time could be used for work, or it could be used for family. But extra time on the ball field at work is certainly not time with family.
Reality is, companies are run mostly by older rich men. They aren’t mothers. They don’t have young children anymore. Many of them had stay-at-home wives or nannies when they did. They have never wanted or needed a daycare at work. They have never wanted to have lunch with their kid during a workday. They have never had to take a kid to a doctors appointment in the middle of the day and ended up just taking the whole day off because its such a schedule disruption to go to and from work, to and from daycare, and to and from the doctor. They have, however, wanted to be able to pop over to the gym at lunchtime. They are solving their own problems.
Anyway, fine, they don’t want to provide that benefit. Its certainly not standard. But if they did they would be solving a lot more difficult problems for employees than the lack of ball fields. I think its pretty stupid really if you are going to start spending that kind of money on employee amenities and are doing the ‘big campus’ thing to not run a nice pre-school. No other amenity is going to attract and lock employees to you like that, particularly women (which all such companies claim to want), and employees will happily pay market rates for it, so it won’t cost more either.
“it’ll be full” is another silly excuse. Its another way to say “yea, but when we build one too small that will also not work”. So don’t build it to small… I expect the best way to do it is to put it on the edge of the campus, so it isn’t really fully inside the perimeter, and oversize the daycare and make it non-exclusive. This really isn’t rocket science.
11 Likes
you are just wrong about everything here.
Your company can afford it, certainly Apple can afford it.
And having daycare on site does not mean you don’t leave - it does mean you save time by not having to make a second stop and you actually get to spend more time with your family.
7 Likes
The lack of daycare in the new Apple campus is troubling, but as a Cupertino resident, I find the real problem to be the lack of housing in the area. Apple built this gigantic new facility that can seat tens of thousands of workers… but where are those workers supposed to live? If you don’t live here or haven’t read about this lately, the rent anywhere within 20 miles of Cupertino is through the roof and traffic from more distant areas is almost constantly congested.
To be fair, Apple is far from the only source of this problem. Google continues to spread through Mountain View and Sunnyvale, and neither of those cities is interested in housing (affordable or otherwise). So we have a complex problem caused by multiple sources: companies that don’t give a good goddamn about their workers, cities that prefer the tax money from companies to the expenses caused by actual citizens, NIMBY inhabitants who don’t want to let the riff-raff in or dilute the astronomical prices of their property, and rent-seekers who want to keep rental competition tight so that they can charge ridiculous rates.
11 Likes
Yeah I am wrong. ok.
I don;t want to spend time with my family at work. I want to spend time with them at home. When I am at work…I want to get work done and then go home to my family.
But sure. I am wrong. My kids turned out fine. But I am wrong. Does the company have money for this, sure they do, never said they didn’t. But I am wrong. Awesome.
Took all this time to realize I was wrong. Thank you so much for setting me straight.
2 Likes
my company is run by a woman. but sure.
1 Like
Seems a bit sexist doesn’t it? Why do women need more daycare than men?
You know what else Apple doesn’t do? Provide free food for employees and their families, provide free laundry, or provide free gyms. The gyms and food are subsidized, but they still charge for them. BFD, if people don’t like the perks Apple provides (or doesn’t), they can work elsewhere. That’s why it’s a perk.
5 Likes
Assuming that Apple accompanies this design decision with a similar philosophy on work/life balance. Given Steve Jobs’ habits during his life, that’s far from a given.
1 Like
