it showed up over night and now the phrase adult day care is everywhere. Where do y'all get your talking points from? Is it a rss feed I haven't heard about?
I'm a parent who has had children in day care for the last four years. The parallels between daycare for our toddlers and what many startups and big tech companies have provided and allowed to transpire are very clear to me and many of my peers. As a sibling comment stated, we've been using the phrase within our circles for many years. Those circles? Private group chats and friend groups. Mostly due to the climate in tech of mob mentality, groupthink, and the reaction against thoughts that run afoul of the orthodoxy of the week.
Your choice of wording suggests that you find the phrase or concept offensive, which would be understandable. But attacking the phrase as a talking point is shallow.
On the Internet, a new or rare term can suddenly start spreading like wildfire if it (a) is applicable to the topic everyone is suddenly talking about, and (b) perfectly captures something that people already recognise. It’s just life. It doesn’t mean everyone is an idiot or wrong or whatever. It’s just a word that works in the situation.
Yep, I understand how virality works. But virality works through networks. So when a word starts you can understand stuff about it through which network it originates from.
This can be something as silly as fan groups of a certain tv show, or as dangerous as propaganda from a foreign nation.
Adult day care has been used to describe tech companies for well over a decade in my circles. I usually saw it associated with start-ups in the past, but due to the recent trend of influencer-driven marketing videos (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgaZsbXeddY but there are much more egregious examples) for large tech companies it has seen a resurgence.
what circles are those? I cannot seem to find any references to the term beyond this year.
> for large tech companies it has seen a resurgence.
it seems more like a bad attempt at insulting people who are trying to make work less shit. i will save my opinion at whether those attempts are more or less useful, but seems entirely another dumb culture war
I'm sorry, but allowing employees to put in a couple of barely-productive hours so THEIR work is less shit is utterly insulting to the people who strive to make companies function. Work is work -- if it wasn't, then it would be called something different. I would perhaps feel otherwise if compensation took this and a multitude of other intangible factors into account, but it doesn't so the derogative sticks for me at least.
I mean some jobs requiere more or less training. No one is a competent product manager at 22, so of course that girl is going through orientation and training and not doing 8 hours on her first day.
My senior PM, who has experience in several big companies, and was well aware of our team stll took a couple weeks to get up to speed with how everything worked etc.
I don't think her onboarding day counts to call Google an adult day care. And seeing things like free lunch and a treadmill desks are just tools companies like google use to keep you longer in the office and maximise your time not things to take care of you. Its more work, but mango flavoured.
Work is work, but the same way we think of weekends as normal, or 8 hours as a normal amount of time we could think about 4 days, or having a gym next to our work as work. Being sad at work isn't a feature in my opinion
https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1584636815281033216?... is a better example. It's not real, since this is a very poorly executed marketing exercise where they contracted an influencer-type, but it and videos like it are still driving the recent influx of "adult day care." Despite not being real, it's real-adjacent enough to not come across as satire. I have certainly witnessed plenty of people spend their days like this in tech companies.
Also note that I never personally said Google is adult day care, I was simply pointing to a culprit in the trend.
> still driving the recent influx of "adult day care."
perhaps we jsut have different definitions of adult day care. But that girl had a coffee and some snacks in the office. Which seems entirely reasonable. Being able to work from the rooftop might be a bit "fancier" but tbh I have seen dudes take work calls in rooftop bars for years and no one calls Morgan Stanley an adult day care.
I thought the adult day care was more related companies having talking sticks and mental health days. Which sure some do, and I can find it silly sometimes, but who knows how dysfunctional that team was and whether that works for them. I am sure if I explained to my parents what Agile is, they would also laugh in my face. Our work can look silly to others but work for us.
She didnt show any of her work but i dont think a video of her adjusting roadmaps and having a call with the stake holder of the API team their deadline is blocked by would really make for good instagram content.
I have a friend who was a mechanic, and he used to always do a drive around the block when a hard job (like an engine change) was done to make sure it was all alright. He would tell you about driving a nice car etc, but I didnt just imagine he didn't work the rest of the day, that was just the part he shared. Same reasoning with that PM. (Funny that both of them were PM thought).
idk the whole "adult day care" seems needlessly antagonistic for how people make work be less garbage. Specially holding against them things like free food which are "perks" only offered to keep people working longer
One problem with a humorous (yes, I am not all serious all the time) comment like this is while there could be some degree truth to it -- provide a source if so, please -- it smacks of exaggeration.
