This is the first post in our new series, Upstairs/Downstairs. For every well-heeled AI startup founder or high-ranking tech worker, there's an army of caregivers, tutors, private cooks, and assistants, sweating behind-the-scenes to prop up their lifestyles. If you’re a worker with tea to spill, reach out to joshua@gazetteer.co (and if you want to remain anonymous, remember not to use your work email!).
Last month, I met with a 25-year-old who spent a year and some change as a nanny for wealthy families in the city. Her story, as told to me, has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Gazetteer has agreed to anonymize her story, due to concerns about retaliation.
I grew up in the Bay Area in a very wealthy suburb. I’ve been nannying since I was 18, and all throughout college, that’s how I supported myself.
My first job, I took care of three kids from two families in an East Bay suburb and I was getting paid $20, 25 an hour from each mom. I was making so much money, like, stupid money. They wanted to be generous with me. They bought me presents when they went on trips. They gave me bonuses at the end of the summer. They would give me money at the beginning of the day if we were going out and they'd be like, ‘Buy yourself lunch.’ When I would go back to school, they’d send me updates during the year: ‘We missed you, can’t wait to see you this summer, the kids just started the third grade.’
Then, there’s another family from the East Bay that I took care of during COVID. They both were working from home, and so they needed someone to hang out at home with them and keep their kids from screaming during their meetings. That was my favorite gig that I’ve ever had. They gave me sick pay, gave me paid holidays off. I still visit them every couple of months and have dinner with them. I think I'll be invited to that kid's wedding one day.
I thought it was the best job ever. We’re paid to just hang out with kids and play like kids all the time. It’s just so awesome. I had no qualms until I moved to San Francisco in 2022 and started looking for nanny jobs here.
The first one was watching an 18-month-old baby for a family that rented a whole floor of a building in the Mission. It was a little bit of a culture shock for me.
My problem was their weird dietary shit. One time, I had to make their kid a “pancake.” It was half of a mashed banana, one egg, and spinach — no flour — that I would mash up and fry on a pan, served with a little bit of peanut butter on top. But he wouldn’t eat it. She would be, like, “make him his pancakes,” and he would be, like, “ew, I don’t want that.”
I watched this baby, 18 months old, take a glug of fish oil out of the bottle. And he didn’t even make a face. His mom drinks it, it’s a health supplement thing. He sees his mom drinking it and he’s like, “ooh, I’ll drink it.” Everyone gets to choose how they want to raise their own baby, and I did not disobey any of their rules, but I was weirded out by it.
In July 2023, I found another family to nanny for who lived in a big house in the Marina-Cow Hollow area. They had a four-year-old girl. But it was horrible. It was so horrible. There were just so many red flags.
Let’s talk about the culture first. In these ultra-rich neighborhoods, the nannies take the kids to the park and hang out. If you want your kid to be able to go to the park and hang out, you have to hire a nanny. If you take your own kid to the park, and try to hang out with the nannies and their kids, they won't hang out with you. If you plan a playdate, you have to send your nanny with your kid. They throw birthday parties and every kid comes with their nanny.
This mom knew her daughter was getting left out of all this stuff. She was like, “Please get in the nanny squad, so my daughter can have friends.” But at those parties, the parents don’t talk to the nannies. So I would go to birthday parties with the kid and the parents wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I’ve never felt so disrespected in my life.
During my jobs in the East Bay, the families hired me because they were working. That was my understanding of what being a nanny was: You take care of the kids because the parents cannot. When the parents got home, they wanted me to leave. They were, like, “I’m home with my kids. I want to be a dad. I love my children.”
But at this job, I would be there, and both parents would be home — sometimes asleep. The dad would be in his pajamas all day long. He worked from home; the mom did not have a job. They would be home the whole time, and just want to be alone, even when the child was begging for attention from them. Regularly, I’d have to pull her away. She’d be crying, wanting to hang out with her parents. It was so sad.
If she had a camp or an activity, I’d pick her up and I would be with her until she went to bed. I would bathe her, and I would feed her dinner. They never ate with her. They had a chef come to cook for her. The chef would meal-prep this girl’s meals for the whole week.
They did not, in any way, clean up after themselves. One time, early on, the mom texted me in the morning about my schedule for the day and told me that the four-year-old had peed on the ground in the middle of the night. It was the next afternoon, and no one had cleaned it up. She asked me to mop it after I picked her daughter up.
On the days that I wouldn’t take care of the girl, I would ask her, “what do you do when I’m not here? Who reads to you when I’m not here?” And she’d be like, “I watch Bluey on my iPad.”
I worked for them for a year. A couple of months in, I almost quit on the spot. Their rule was, when you walked in the house, you’d take your shoes off and you’d wash your hands. The kid was so excited to see her mom, she was hugging her mom, but she wasn’t following the rules.
The mom was like, “You need to wash your hands and take your shoes off. If you don’t, I'm gonna put you outside on the street.” And then she started counting. I’d never seen the girl look so scared. She started backing away from her mom, like a learned behavior — like something had happened to her before.
The first time I met the other nannies, they were like, You’re working for her? Oh no. They knew the nanny before me, and she only got paid $20 an hour. She was working eight hours a day, cleaning, cooking, all kinds of stuff and supposedly because she didn't speak very good English, my boss was racist to her. They said, at one point, she even grabbed the nanny’s arm and shook her.
When the nannies found out I was getting paid 25 dollars an hour, they told me I was getting fucked.
[Note: Stephanie Fornaro, the CEO and founder of boutique nanny agency Hello, Nanny! told Gazetteer that $25 an hour in San Francisco is low. “That’s low — in San Francisco?” she said. “On the low end, you’re lucky if you find someone for $38 an hour, but I would say safely, it’s anywhere between $40 to $55 an hour for a nanny.” Fornaro emphasized that any grievances about nanny pay or treatment should be discussed “in a professional manner” with the family or agency. Nannies should also be aware of their contracts and what, if any, non-disclosure agreements they signed.]
This past summer, I had to quit because I got an internship. They got another nanny, but she quit after a couple weeks. I agreed to come back, but texted her like, “Hey, I really need a raise.” I remember writing the text so carefully. I wrote, like, “Money is tough for everyone and I want to be able to put 100% of my focus on working with your daughter. If you're able to raise my pay a little bit, I’ll be able to focus more on that instead of having to find another job.” Weeks and weeks go by, and I text her again. She's like, “Yeah, that doesn't work for us.”
And these people had the money. We went to the pumpkin patch once, me and this girl, and the mom gave me $260 in cash and said, “Is this going to be enough?” When they threw a party at the house and ran out of snacks, she was like, “you need to go get cheese, crackers, and juice from the store.” She gave me $230 and was like, “Will this be enough?”
The job is very intimate. You’re really a part of the family, and before this family fucked me over, I was loyal to them. I loved them, and they weren’t super great to me, but I was raising their kid. I felt a kinship to them. I felt like we were on the same team, and that’s how it has to be. If it’s not like that, it’s so toxic for the kid. When I started, I asked the kid, “Who was your nanny before me?” And she was like, “She left on bad terms.” I know that’s a phrase she got from her mom.
I think this is all part of a larger conversation about what good parenting is. The ultra-rich would argue that they’re giving their kids the best of everything and so their kid is having a better life and a better experience and a better education. But the middle-class girl in me is like, “actually, it’s better to have parents who love you and read to you at night.”
Editor's note: The story has been updated to include additional comments from Fornaro.
