Let me begin by saying that one of my children spent a year in a highly regarded preschool that subscribed to the Reggio Emilia principles (frequently sending teachers over to Italy to observe the methodology firsthand) and I think it was a crock. Or maybe my child just wasn't suited to it. Whatever, I just want to deflate the Reggio Emilia balloon a bit because it is so uncritically accepted as objectively wonderful and it wasn't for us. On to Google.

In thinking this over, here's what I think the story is: Google seeks to attract the smartest, most capable people for its higher-level positions. It offers great pay and other perks to this end. We are in the middle of a baby boom and a lot of these people now have young children. A relatively low-cost way to attract these people would be to offer state-of-the-art daycare on campus. Let's say it costs $60,000 per child, the average such worker has one child in the right age range (some have two, some have none), and Google bears the entire cost. There might be quite a few upper-echelon workers who would be willing to take a pay cut of more than $60,000 to work in a place where their kids are within yards of them, in a great facility full of the children of other brilliant people, especially if the alternatives to Google (other potential employers) don't offer anything comparable.

What's the problem? If daycare is free, everyone will want to take advantage of it, including and perhaps especially those lower in the organization hierarchy. That can get expensive. Furthermore, there are only so many available spots so now the waiting list is two years. Fine, so Google will put the power of economics to work and charge something for it, and make up for it by paying more in salary to the higher-ups (money is fungible). It probably works out more or less the same tax-wise, but the effect is to remove the subsidy for the lower-income workers and shift it to the upper-income workers, which of course winds up making it unaffordable for some. The higher-ups might actually prefer it this way, as the facilities are now less crowded and all the kids are the children of the most successful people at the company (no "undesirables," though of course no one would ever say this out loud).

The only reason this is so obvious is because of the history of childcare at Google. It used to be cheaper. They used to have (in effect) a two-tier system of a "good" daycare and a "great" daycare, which they almost certainly got rid of because they realized that would really cause class based resentment. Just imagine the start of every workday, when the two groups of kids get separated and sent off to their different facilities. Wouldn't the resentment be palpable (hey, they've got smartboards in their classroom! They have classroom pets and live puppet shows and a pediatrician on staff!)? If a kid in the "lesser" daycare fell and broke his arm, imagine the lawsuits (how come the teacher/child ratio is so much lower at the better daycare? How come the play environment is so much safer?).

Had Google started out with the fanciest possible daycare, and charged accordingly, I doubt this would have angered so many people. By offering it somewhat more broadly at first, and attempting to distribute it in a more democratic way (with a waiting list for which there was no charge), they created a sense of entitlement in their workforce. They never meant to do this; I'm sure that this facility was always meant purely as a perk to attract top-flight people and not as something to offer the hoi polloi.

Companies do many things for their top people, such as paying for country club memberships or cars. Much of this is hidden from everyone else. The childcare thing is a benefit that everybody finds desirable, and in fact was at one point offered to everyone at Google. Suddenly it's yanked away and given the country club treatment. I think this was a terrible public relations decision by Google, though I have no problem with offering expensive daycare that the employee pays for, or even limiting access to the workers Google most wants to attract.

isn't taking offense Broadsheet's entire raison d'etre?