It doesn't seem to me that the father of the 18-month old son is trading the chance to spend time with his offspring for cold hard work, but rather trading it for salsa dancing classes, a couple of pints at the bar with his friends, and whatever else fancies him out of the thousands of distractions on campus.
I've heard all too many stories of people "working" insane hours at Google only to find out that they're merely working normal hours and spending the rest of their time living at Google. And it's great to have the option to do that.
(Disclaimer: I've been working/living at Google for 2.5 months now.)
During my time there I remember on guy who was at the office a lot, at dinner time his family would come to Google and eat dinner with him at Charlie's. Sometimes on weekends they would eat lunch with him too.
Just before I left, Google started trying to enforce the 1 guest a month 'rule' where you had to sign in with both who you were visiting, and whether or not you were going to eat a meal. If you were, your guest badge would say 'guest (meal)'. I guess the idea was that one could algorithmically filter out folks who were abusing the option. The security guys would hassle the folks who didn't have '(meal)' on their guest badges.
I saw a lot of people who were visiting "Larry Page, guest (meal)" and I thought that was pretty funny. I also noticed that this guy who used to spend time with his family at meal times now didn't. I felt badly for him. I could not decide if he had been abusing Google before by abusing his 'guest' privilege or if Google was abusing him now by not allowing him this option for some family time. A little of both I guess.
I haven't noticed any limit on guests at Google NYC, either. I was never under the impression that Google didn't want you to have guests.
(I did read something suggesting that you should feel bad for eating more than $3 worth of microkitchen stuff per day. I don't think I hit the $3 threshold, but if I did, I wouldn't feel bad.)
I've heard all too many stories of people "working" insane hours at Google only to find out that they're merely working normal hours and spending the rest of their time living at Google. And it's great to have the option to do that.
(Disclaimer: I've been working/living at Google for 2.5 months now.)