This is too real
The Worst Perk at Google
61–70 of 74 posts
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#62The calculation seems incorrect to me because $200 tax is paid in both options. A Googler can either have $350 a year (in cash), or have the insurance. Thus the cost to the employee is $350 a year, not $550. Provided the self-bought insurance cost is $270 a year, this goes to a difference of $80 a year, or $6.7 a month.
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#63What a strange way of looking at it.
In the US, around 80% of men and 88% of women live to be 65. I wasn't easily able to find stats on how this breaks down across college graduates (or separate it from those who die before they enter the workforce), but for simplicity's sake, let's take 88% average for both genders to account for this.
That means the odds of me dying throughout my entire working life are 12%.
Let's plug THOSE numbers into the equations, assuming working from 18-65, so 47 years.
> Likelihood of death in 47 years = [12%]
> Multiplied by the total payout (median $166k/yr salary) = $500 000
> The insurance's expected value is $60 000
Total payments into the premium are 47 * 550 = $25 850
Now obviously there are some big caveats to this - I would imagine a significant proportion of Googlers retire early, etc., but the maths presented is... at best oversimplified. This is also not some impartial review, this is a company with something to sell. I would be very cautious accepting their 'review' at face value.
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#64What I don’t understand is people making 160k per year worrying about $300 extra tax in a year. It’s just a rounding error, why would you obsess over it?
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#65The first $50,000 of group term life insurance is not taxable, so the tax penalty here should be reduced by about 10% [1]. Second, either Google is getting shafted on their premiums (they may be) and over paying by more than 44% ($200/$450 from the article), or on average this is a net benefit to employees over the possibility of opting out. Consider employees with health problems that could never get term insurance…
I wonder whether they have an external broker, or just self insure? With so many staff, it seems they could quite sensibly operate this internally.
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#66This article is utterly irresponsible. Yes, the expected value of insurance is less than the cost: that is how insurance works. The purchaser is buying down risk. That's how car insurance works; it's how life insurance works; it's how home insurance works; it's even how health insurance works.
Moreover, an overlooked perk is that if one has a dangerous medical condition, then individual life insurance is impossible to get at an attractive price (the ones which require no medical exam still ask medical questions, and if you have a life-threatening condition then you will be denied coverage, which is fair, because the risk is too high), but group life insurance is still available. This is wonderful for those who need it.
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#67This is a complete misunderstanding of probability, payoff, and return on investment. The value of a life insurance policy isn’t in its amortized yearly returns. This policy is not an investment. The policy allows you to pay a negligible amount of money to avoid a devastating situation — family pain and debt that might arise from your death. Anybody who uses this article as justification to end their life insurance p…
Why doesn’t “buy it yourself” solve the problem?
It is only available if you are in good health; if you are in bad health than it is impossible to get life insurance at an attractive price. This is fair, because of course folks in bad health are likelier to die sooner. But that makes the value of group life insurance very high to those individuals — it is a wonderful perk for them.
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#68How does the author know how much Google is paying for the insurance?
My company shows how much the "cost" of any particular insurance they are covering is, but those aren't the actual prices they are paying.
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#69I work at Google I like that this is taken care of for me and that I don't have to spend my personal time trying to research a bunch of life insurance options and figure out what works and what doesn't. I also love that there is some amount of collective bargaining being applied here instead of me making the purchase as an individual. I'll gladly pay a $300/yr premium for that, and the ease of mind that my loves ones…
That’s not how term life insurance works. Either you die and it pays out or you don’t and it doesn’t. It’s not at all like other kinds of insurance.
Every life insurance has clauses that don't pay out under certain circumstances (such as suicide).
And even if they do eventually pay, it matters the hoops they make your family run through and the time they take to pay out.
Re: The Worst Perk at Google
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because this entirely ignores the dimension of quality. I mean maybe they are right, but it's not considered in the analysis. The author recommends I buy Geico life insurance for $156/yr. I have Geico car insurance and have filed claims when people broken into my car. You would not believe the lengths this scum bag company goes to in order to not pay you the money you are entitled to. I don't want my family subje…
Try Amica. They’re amazing and they don’t jerk you around about this kind of stuff.
I looked at Amica for car and renters insurance. They were 4x the price of everyone else.
They wanted me to pay $3000/6 months for car insurance whereas progressive was $650.