If your company is going to provide on-site care, their are really good reasons to make sure its a separate area with its own access doors and strict instructions on whose allowed into the area. Kid's at people's desks is a terrible idea, and frankly deprives the child of valuable play learning time with other children. Webcams should be sufficient for parents.
Some small things to think about:
1) custody disputes are a pain in the butt and you are now part of it
2) going on the theme, who picks up the kid is actually more complicated than just the employee who drops the kid off (come in early with Mom, but get picked up by grandparent to be with other kids is not uncommon) - get this crap in writing
3) get the food correct for the children - you need to feed them - you are now running a restaurant
4) Lysol - wholesale purchases
5) Make sure you follow all codes and do the required number of fire, tornado, etc. drills
6) Read the Early Head Start and Head Start staffing guidelines as many places require you meet those. Also note, those flexible Silicon Valley hours are going to be amazingly fun with staffing requirements.
7) Security camera setup with DVRs - should go just fine with the webcams
8) Be a nice employer and do the assessment tests for your staff
9) know the facility requirements in detail.
If you spend the time and money on setup, you will have an amazing workplace. If you half-ass it, you will be sued a lot.
10) Food Allergies and allergies in general are huge fun. So some kid with a peanut allergy in the day care means no peanut butter sandwiches in the employee cafeteria on the other side of the building.
11) Sometimes kids or parents aren't compatible with day care staff or management or policies, and that's OK when day care management and your management don't report to the same guy and you're not under the same roof, but it gets stressful when you're all one big family. Much like having a company bank or a company store sounds really nice until you look at some historical issues... Now you have employees complaining to their supervisor because the kids aren't getting enough zoo field trips, etc.
Thanks for the details; it makes sense to do this well or not at all. You should move the last line of your comment to the top as the perfect TL;DR: If you spend the time and money on setup, you will have an amazing workplace. If you half-ass it, you will be sued a lot.
Yeah, that would be a TL;DR although I just hit the major points, the devil (and several bureaucrats) are in the details.
I did "data consulting" for the predecessor research program to Early Head Start called CCDP when I was first out of college and it turned into knowing every regulation and rule. Its amazing how computer people become domain experts.
I should add that the Denver II screening is now free and you should check with the state your in to find out what child assessment tools you need to teach your child care staff to administer. We used LAP and E-LAP which were pretty easy and focused on what play activities the staff should do with the children.
Good luck with that. You might want to check the state regs and know that accepting parent food gets you into a whole realm of problems dealing with allergies. Its actually simpler to do it yourself.
I have friends who have run daycare centers and I have had my child in centers that provide food and don't. Providing food, as others have mentioned, puts you effectively in the same category as a restaurant. Having parents provide food seems to be the more common default.
(I think there's a typo there - I believe that "because we do have a commercial kitchen" should be "because we do NOT have a commercial kitchen".)
I'm going to include the list of forbidden foods here. I'm surprised that carrots and grapes are forbidden; I don't know what sort of hazard carrots present.
> NUTS of any kind. This includes nuts in cereal or baked goods.
> PEANUT BUTTER, in any form
> RAW CARROTS, in any form
> HOT DOGS/SAUSAGES link style or cut in circles. They will be served only if diced.
> POPCORN, CHIPS, SODA, CANDY, and PRETZELS are never served (except at parties).
> FRESH GRAPES are never served. In fruit cocktail, you must remove or cut the grapes.
> HARD BOILED EGGS are served only if they are peeled and cut into quarters.
> FRESH FRUIT must be peeled, pitted, and cut. One exception: bananas.
> CHERRY TOMATOES will be served only if they are quartered.
> OLIVES will be served only if pitted and halved.
> SEAFOOD is a common allergen. If there is anyone in a class that has this allergy you may be
> I'm going to include the list of forbidden foods here. I'm surprised that carrots and grapes are forbidden; I don't know what sort of hazard carrots present.
Grapes and Carrots are chocking hazards just like Hot Dogs and sausage. Grapes and Carrots are just not worth the trouble they will cause during such a busy time.
> I'm not sure what being rural and low-income has to do with it; can you expand on that?
People sometimes screw up and driving miles to fix the problem is an issue along with causing an unneeded expense for low-income folks. It was just much easier to come up with a dozen different meals and learn to assembly line them.
Mashed carrots really aren't, but monitoring the quality of a mash is probably one step too far, so there goes carrots. Like I said, its a whole lot easier for your sanity to invest the money in the kitchen area and do it yourself or, if you have the business base, to get food delivered on contract.
Sadly, its a real problem every time you put the responsibility on parents. This is just the reality of two systems interacting which should be a familiar theme for the folks on HN.
I also realized I'm dumb, you can't really mash raw carrots.
I'm still not convinced that putting in a kitchen is a better approach than having parents bring food; parents need to feed their children at home anyway, so they're going to have food. And if children have specific needs, parents will be better able to handle those as well. (For instance, the room my kid is in has children aged 4-10 months - the very small kids can only drink milk, mine is at the age where she can eat some pureed foods, and the older kids are happily eating crackers and other stuff.)
Kitchens also take up space - which is probably a bigger concern here in New York than your rural area.
> I also realized I'm dumb, you can't really mash raw carrots.
I'm equally dumb then, but in our defense, someone has probably tried
> Kitchens also take up space - which is probably a bigger concern here in New York than your rural area.
Probably, but an urban area is in a much better position to contract with a local group to buy meals appropriate to the children. I look at it as a point of contention that can blow up. Your now mixing work and life in a very personal way. The easiest way to handle that is to provide the meals and document any issues for individuals that the provider (be it you or a contractor) need to handle. Avoiding problematic parental choices is worth quite a lot in the sanity of your child care staff.
Thank you for pointing out that someone, somewhere has probably tried everything with food and getting pavel_lishin and myself off the hook for being culinary dummies.
> So... just about everything that's not complete garbage that children eat?
Excluding the things on that list still leaves lots of fruits and vegetables.
> I suppose these modern children need to be taught to chew their food and not asphyxiate themselves by vacuuming it down whole.
I know you're being facetious, but small children are at a very serious risk of asphyxiation, and this daycare has four month olds which cannot really handle solid foods yet. So yeah. Modern children need to be taught how to chew, eat, and not asphyxiate. Ancient ones did, too.
Yeah. I stayed home from work a few weeks ago to take care of our six month old, as her daycare was closed. I told work that I would be OOO, but would work if possible.
Not possible. Kids require a lot of attention, and a lot of care. Maybe when she's older, and can entertain herself, but there is zero chance of me getting work done if I'm also taking care of her, and maybe a 10% chance if other peoples' kids running around.
Strictly speaking yes you typically have several hours of "free" time each day while your child naps. The issue (assuming a creative job like a developer) is you have no idea how long you have, or how well they'll sleep, so basically it's very hard to get into the zone with the randomly timed ticking time bomb sleeping in the next room. :)
I will say this about my kid, she's usually pretty good about sleeping at night at six months old. I only typically feel like I need a nap on the weekend.
(Naturally she'll be a nightmare tonight, now that I've praised her ability to sleep.)
Ha yes I was stupid for a long time (as a stay-at-home/starting-a-company dad) and actually tried to work during the kids' naps. Napping myself would have been a much more effective use of my time. Took me a while to realize though.
Which ones? Her first 30 minute one, her second hour-long one, or her third 30 minute one? I suppose, if I didn't need to do things like make and eat lunch, or use the bathroom.
As do i. 3 year old doesn't nap any more, so he just goes for quiet time at the same time as the 1 year old naps. I give him some books, and 1 toy, and it seems to work for the most part.
I hope so too. I've had to work next to a fussy baby in a office, and it is the pits. I've even taken a baby and did some walking to try to get the kid to nap. We were a child care program so I guess it did come with the territory sometimes, much like being called by a head teacher to go to a site and act as a substitute when it seemed liked the plague had arrived. I'm pretty sure none of that would fly in a normal office setting.
I don't know that the math is right in this piece. In one paragraph they make mention of "a yearly tax credit of $150,000", then in the next they say "With a yearly tax deduction of $150,000 and a second deduction of 35% of costs (35% of $1 million = $350,000), that’s a total of $500,000 in costs recouped, or 50%."
Credits and deductions are not the same thing. A credit is netted against your tax bill, a deduction reduces the taxable amount of your revenue. A $1 deduction therefore provides a much smaller benefit than a $1 credit.
>The federal government ... grants a qualified child-care program a yearly tax credit of $150,000. In addition, the government allows a company to deduct 35% of its unrecovered costs from its corporate tax bite.
This may just be unfortunate phrasing. The author uses the word "deduct" but then says its deducted "from its corporate tax bite", not EBITA. As you point out a reduction in EBIDTA does reduce the tax bill, just not 1:1 like a tax credit. The phrase isn't clear that its another tax credit or a deduction.
I suspect the math is right but the writer doesn't understand the difference. 150k credit + the standard 35% rate on 1m cost would be 500k net. But this only actually works if you would have had to pay 500k in taxes to begin with. If you're losing money or doing other tax avoidance stuff, you don't actually get the full benefit.
The article waits until the end to mention that Patagonia's been doing on-site child care for decades, and before considering tax advantages. I've been considering agitating for a small trial program at my job just because it'd make the place more human and welcoming.
Patagonia has been making a concerted effort to raise awareness of on-site childcare in recent months; this article appears to continue that mission.
From a scrappy start-up perspective, Chouinard claims that having a ready bank of testers was important for the development of Patagonia's children's clothing line.
Welcoming for parents perhaps. People who don't have, don't want, and don't like kids would probably find having kids at the office to be distracting and annoying at a bare minimum. I don't even like offices with a "Dog friendly" rule. I'm at work to work. I don't want to deal with my coworkers pets and offspring.
We have so many tax benefits for corporations that offer employee services (health care, child care, retirement savings) -- why should these tax benefits be tied to employment and not be universal? Why is childcare offered by an employer to an employee deductible, but, not when the employee purchase it directly? Why does a 401k have such a higher pre-tax maximum compared to a personal IRA? Why isn't personally purchased health insurance deductible?
PR piece or not, USA really is behind the curve when compared to other modern, forward-thinking countries. There was a great discussion here maybe a year ago about an american family moving to Switzerland or something along those lines and reaping insane benefits to their family and financial wellbeing.
Neighbors are friendly to each other in the USA. It depends a lot on where you live, especially whether you're surrounded by homeowners vs urban transient renters. It's not that renters are necessarily unfriendly, but they aren't as invested in neighborly relations since everyone is so transient.
Midwest: starting to wish my neighbors would leave me alone, what with all the casseroles on my doorstep and invitations to euchre night.
Seattle: I couldn't even tell you the race of some of my neighbors, as I never see them outside. I know they exist only because I see the car pull into the garage right before the garage door closes. Of the neighbors with whom I'm friendly, or at least talk to once in a while, the majority aren't from U. S. See also: "Seattle freeze".
Well, I'm in Northern New England, so I get it. Around here nobody's going to talk to you unless you make the effort. People just default to leaving each other alone. But they're mostly nice folks if you reach out.
A good read also would be Let My People Go Surfing[0], which explains a little bit more of the philosophy of the company and decisions like this, as well as why they decided to try to run their business in a sustainable way. The founder of the company really didn't have a goal to dominate the market he was in, he just wanted to sell some items to fund what he really enjoyed doing.
This really warmed my heart. It's amazing when a company treats its employees like human beings. It really shouldn't be that amazing. It should be an everyday thing ho-hum thing. It's really surprising that more companies can't see the ROI.
How about we stop couching all of our goals in terms of how they serve the corporate bottom line? All this does is make that bottom line the only real goal. People being able to live comfortable and happy lives is a good even if it doesn't pay for itself.
Am I the only one who feel sorry for the guy sitting behind that mother occupied with her child. Perhaps he might be annoyed? :)
I am all in for an onsite child-care facility as long as it is a standalone facility. Looking at the pictures, it looks like children are all over this office. Not being a parent, I can still comprehend the hardships of new parents who have to juggle between childcare and full time jobs. But having a baby does not give you a golden ticket to do whatever you want (NYC subway stroller parents please don't ram in a Humvee size stroller during peak hour). You have to respect the common shared space such as office space. Some people are not that fond of cute pudgy babies, not to mention the distraction etc..
I do support an onsite childcare facility and wish more companies will do the same but they should make sure that kids stay inside such facilities only where parents can check on them during their breaks.
parents please don't get defensive here. This is just an opinion not an ignorant insensitive slur towards parents and their young ones
You have to respect the common shared space such as office space.
That works both ways. If you believe parents shouldn't bring their children to the office space because they should respect you and your desire for children not to be there, then it's only reasonable that you should respect their desire to have their children with them. Whether you're fond of babies or not is irrelevant; the important thing is the impact on the business. If having children around means an overall productivity drop then they're a net loss, and a dedicated child-care facility is a better option. But if the parents in the office are more productive with their children close by, to a point that outweighs the loss of productivity from the non-parents, then children in the office is a positive. Few workplaces have ever measured that, so there isn't a simple "it's worse with children around" answer.
Plus, and this is really important, there's a distinct danger that employers who say they don't want children around the business using that as a way to limit opportunities for women (albeit subconsciously; few would admit to it). That's something to guard against.
That works both ways. If you believe parents shouldn't bring their children to the office space because they should respect you and your desire for children not to be there, then it's only reasonable that you should respect their desire to have their children with them.
You do know realize that an office space means a space for employees to do work for someone who is paying them. It is not a space for their children or parents or grand-parents or cousins or favorite stuff toys.
Like any space, an office space is whatever the people occupying it choose to make it. We don't live in a videogame where all of the architecture and its uses are hardcoded. We aren't sims.
I've been in office spaces that were spaces for quiet work, heated discussions, listening to music together, nerf battlegrounds, emotional reconciliation, alcohol-infused parties, Quake tournaments, and philosophical debate.
Humans and their activities defy simple categorization, despite how much our industrial mindset might encourage us to treat them—us—as cogs in a machine.
I think you're relying too much on the photo-op images rather than the points of the story text itself.
An employer offering in-house childcare has benefits, this does not necessarily mean your kid will be sitting on your desk and you will be taking care of it.
No, the practical answer is to treat humans with respect and dignity, and give them office space that is private with a door that closes. The fact that we are so willing to be treated so poorly and then blame parents with young children for noise is beyond me.
You know my office used to have speakers in it? That we played music on? That bothered no one because the door was closed!?
Wait, what? This is Hacker News, where bringing your seven mangy dogs to the office is practically required. I know they get in the way of the ping-pong sometimes, and gnaw on the cables for the PS4, but you can just feed them some snacks from the jerky dispenser if they bug you too much.
I've worked both in a traditional environment (I drop the kids off at daycare before work, and pick them up afterwords), and a remote work environment (I walk into my office, the kids are on the other side of the door, in the care of a nanny).
I feel more guilt being in the same house as my kids, and not being involved, than I did with them at a separate daycare.
It's nice when I eat lunch or take a break, to be able to walk out and hang out with my kids. It's not nice when I'm on a conference call, and I can hear the wailing on the other side of my (well-sound-insulated) door when someone stubs a toe, and feel guilt that I'm not involved.
On site, but separated, child-care is I think the ideal solution for working parents and the workplace. It gives parents the ability to visit their children when they have a break, or need to breastfeed. It gives them a bit of space, so they don't feel obligated to be involved in the tens of minor-crises that occur every day in the life of a child.
It also keeps a bit of separation between "work" and "family" time, which even as a very involved father I feel is valuable.
That's not how it works. The desire for children to not be there is so you can concentrate and do your job. Children being children is going to be distracting to everyone, and cause a drain on everyone else's productivity. Not to mention that having small children around would likely cause a number of people to search for alternative employment.
EDIT: This is in response to the idea that one has to respect parents wanting to have their children at their desks. I'm fairly certain the photos in the article are stock photos, and I'm fully in favor of having a separate day care facility.
Of course not. What we're talking about is parents being discriminated against, and the number of documented cases where women have been discriminated against for having children (leaving to look after them, being passed over for promotion because they don't work late, etc) is considerably higher than men, so if you're suggesting there might be parity in discrimination you'll need to find some evidence to back up that point.
Those are posed pictures for a PR piece. Don't take it literally. They are probably a bit ill-conceived, since pictures of happy kids in the care centre and happy workers in the office might have got the message across better.
I expect most parents are like me: happy to have a kid-free zone to get some stuff done.
I have two small childern and thought the same thing. Bringing an infant/toddler around to meetings would be highly disruptive.
I would prefer having a shorter workday where we can just efficiently get stuff done and then go home to the kids.
It's also a little disappointing the way the writer completely writes off men being caregivers to kids.When I started reading the piece I was thinking "yeah, onsite childcare would be kind of nice," but nope, apparently the writer thinks this only for women.
I worked at a dog-friendly office for a while. People brought their dogs in and let them roam around the cubicles while we worked. I'm not sure what else to say about it, other than your comment reminded me of that. Work still got done, and people seemed to like it (I'm kinda neutral on dogs myself).
I also went to a college where there were
some (relatively) older students who were married and had kids. Many of them brought kids to class (mostly sleeping infants). It looked difficult for them, but good on 'em for continuing their education. Didn't have much affect on my learning.
I'm positive you're not the only one to feel that way. But it's not the only way to feel either. The child-free office is a socially constructed expectation, it's not an absolute. Some people balk at the idea of casual dress, ping pong tables, dogs in the office, etc.
I would personally love to work in an office where people were welcome to bring their kids. I'd happily deal with the interruptions and inefficiencies. If the company thought the benefits outweighed those costs, I'm game.
If we're dealing in hypotheticals, what if your personal productivity went down, but the overall productivity of the company went up, due to factors such as the ones mentioned in the article?
selfish, thoughtless, demanding, lack of understanding.
Calm down sir those are some harsh words. Subways are dangerous disgusting disease-prone place anyway for young infants. Maybe parents should use cabs often. Cab fares should be included as part of child-care costs which most parents include in their detailed plan before they decide to raise a child.
It is funny you talk about perspectives here and yet you assume that I have a “certain” perspective by you just observing what I said. I believe perspectives can be learned from observations or experiences. I have observed enough in NYC by observing the lifestyles of people here and obviously engaging them into conversations. Your perspective comes from your experience of being a parent, the hardships and struggles you have faced while living in NYC.
By "NYC parent" you mean people who actually live here especially in Manhattan and I am excluding tourists as NYC parents as it is beyond me that why in the world would anyone want to bring their young kids on a trip to the New York City! Why did you never think about moving to somewhere peaceful as in New Jersey to raise a family? A lot of my coworkers moved there the moment they decided to have kids. I will move there or to some outer borough or outside of NYC eventually if I decide to have kids of my own one day.
I have seen parents fighting with homeless people on the subways when they try to interact with their kid. I have seen parents using twin-strollers just for one kid. Confirmed by my own neighbor, this is actually a “trick” that most young parents use in NYC. It apparently gives them more room on the walk path or in the subway and they can use the secondary space for groceries etc.
I am sure the rewards are worth any struggles you face :) If it makes you or anyone feel any better I always try to give up my seat in the subway to a parent...
We own two pretty small strollers for kids of different ages, but for the sake of argument...
Let's say a family owns one stroller. It is large (one of those top-of-the-line models), and it was a gift from a registry. The family usually stays in Brooklyn, but occasionally rides the subway into Manhattan.
You want a family to buy a second stroller just to save a few inches on those occasional trips?
Or let's say you're a parent or nanny responsible for watching a child. You don't want to stay home all day, so you pack the supplies necessary to travel around and do stuff. Which requires space to hold things.
You want that caregiver to travel in a taxi all day instead of the subway?
It's easy to judge from afar. Life with kids is hard and expensive and complicated. Becoming a parent changes your perspective.
Apparently to the perspective of "fuck everyone else". These little fold up strollers are not that expensive, and a friend of mine bought one for when she would take her baby on the bus. Or, as someone else suggested, take a taxi/Lyft/Uber.
Just because you're a parent doesn't mean everyone should bend over backwards for you.
Please don't patronize other users by telling them to "calm down", "don't get defensive", etc. The root cause is that your comments were casually insulting; adding further casual insults doesn't help. A much better strategy is to edit such swipes out of your comments to begin with.
> Subways are dangerous disgusting disease-prone place anyway for young infants.
Have you ridden the New York subway, or taken care of an infant? They're not crawling on the floor, putting random things in their mouth. And other subway riders aren't spitting at my child when I take her on the subway, either.
> Maybe parents should use cabs often. Cab fares should be included as part of child-care costs which most parents include in their detailed plan before they decide to raise a child.
In your magic world where cab fare is paid for, sure, I agree. But in the real world, there are people who can't afford cabs, but still need to take their child to the doctor, or to daycare, or to a family member, or wherever.
When we picked out our stroller, we definitely picked a smaller one - both as a courtesy to everyone around us, but also as a convenience for us. You think it's fun being bumped by a stroller in a subway car? Imagine how fun it is trying to negotiate a stroller through one. And onto a elevator. And on the street.
Imagine a scenario where your child is surrounded by sick people in a subway during winter and all of them are coughing and sneezing. Heard of crazies pushing onto the subway lane? Or the extreme humidity these days that make the subway atmosphere like a baking oven where your child is constantly crying in agony and discomfort. Yes that would make NYC subway dangerous and disease prone for the safety of the child.
> surrounded by sick people in a subway during winter and all of them are coughing and sneezing
Fair enough; poor people during winter should just push their kids in a stroller 30 blocks through snow to the pediatrician.
> Heard of crazies pushing onto the subway lane?
Yup. Happens so rarely that my kid is in more danger when I'm pushing her across a crosswalk.
> Or the extreme humidity these days that make the subway atmosphere like a baking oven where your child is constantly crying in agony and discomfort.
That is a definite concern in the stations, but the trains themselves are air conditioned.
But the end point is that it's public transit, and it's ridiculous to suggest that certain members of the public are assholes for daring to use it just because they have children.
Some small things to think about:
1) custody disputes are a pain in the butt and you are now part of it
2) going on the theme, who picks up the kid is actually more complicated than just the employee who drops the kid off (come in early with Mom, but get picked up by grandparent to be with other kids is not uncommon) - get this crap in writing
3) get the food correct for the children - you need to feed them - you are now running a restaurant
4) Lysol - wholesale purchases
5) Make sure you follow all codes and do the required number of fire, tornado, etc. drills
6) Read the Early Head Start and Head Start staffing guidelines as many places require you meet those. Also note, those flexible Silicon Valley hours are going to be amazingly fun with staffing requirements.
7) Security camera setup with DVRs - should go just fine with the webcams
8) Be a nice employer and do the assessment tests for your staff
9) know the facility requirements in detail.
If you spend the time and money on setup, you will have an amazing workplace. If you half-ass it, you will be sued a lot.