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That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

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Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#201

Post by clavalle »

paul wrote: post #30

My daughter had a similar birth and hospital stay, which also produced a million dollar insurance bill. It costs about $10,000/day to stay in the NICU. I was never able work out why it costs so much, except that this is a major profit center for hospitals, and they use the money to cover other, money losing, departments. Fortunately Google is run by good people, and they were never anything other than supportive. I'm…

My father in law is a neonatologist and was given an ownership stake of the NICU he started in a midwestern hospital.

He makes around $4 mil/year.

Granted, he does sometimes stay at the hospital for two weeks at a time with only very brief visits home but at this point he also owns apartment complexes, office buildings, a gentleman's ranch with a few dozen horses and staff and on and on.

I think it is shameful, personally, that he profits so much. He works hard and he saves lives, it's true, but how much is enough?

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#202

Post by smtddr »

shasta wrote: post #78
paul wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of that kind of thinking, which is why I'm glad you aren't running the medical system. Consider who you're talking about when you say, "The cost of replacing the thing".

I agree with your parent and thus don't want you in charge of "running the medical system," either. But we don't have to have one or the other. You buy your insurance policy that covers whatever it takes to save your fetus and I'll buy my policy that doesn't (and spend the difference on improving the lives of my healthy children).

Cruelty#2... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7204184

This kind of attitude is why articles like this get written: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230366140...

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#203

Post by walshemj »

ekidd wrote: post #31

I'm delighted to hear that this child is doing well, and I'm utterly appalled at Tim Armstrong's attitudes towards the lives of his employee's children. Apparently it's possible to pay a programmer $100K/year, but spending ten times that to save the life of one of his employee's children is absolutely unacceptable. I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I hear from an AOL recruiter. The whole point of insura…

What I want to know is what was AOL doing with the money that it was supposedly buying insurance with was it not actually buying insurance but trying to self insure? and using the "insurance monney" to boost its books?

The next Question is are the employees 401k's safe and accounted for or is Aol like Maxwell?

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#204

Post by walshemj »

late2part wrote: post #175
michaelochurch wrote: post #170

Tim Armstrong shows us directly what the upper class actually thinks of us. The mean-spirited worldview shouldn't be a surprise. What is a bit brazen is the "turn the poors on each other" behavior. Usually, it's not so obvious. He had hoped that the rank-and-file employees would, as a response to this phony scarcity (health benefits OR 401k, when the real problem is executive overcompensation) imposed from above, tur…

"shows us directly what the upper class actually thinks of us." #1 - Tim Armstrong is an ugly man and doesn't speak for the upper class. #2 - Many many many readers on HN are upper class.

yes you should never never call out individual emploees in this way WHY the Senior Non exec has not told the Chairman that Mr Armstrong has to go

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#205

Post by zohebv »

pg wrote: post #172
dkural wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your interpretation Paul? What did he say? Do you think Tim did anything wrong or do you advice that Tim sticks to his guns on this one & shouldn't have caved in with that second memo?

What did he say? http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/02/8539961/... He shouldn't have mentioned specific cases. If he felt the company had to cut elsewhere to compensate for high medical costs, he should have left it at that level of detail. But I don't see how you get from what he actually said to I'm utterly appalled at Tim Armstrong's attitudes towards the lives of his employee's children. Apparently…

> Frankly, posting and upvoting that sort of comment is the behavior of a lynch mob.

Posting a photograph of a victim of a lynch mob http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Lynching2...

I think Armstrong might be discomfited by the well deserved online education in social etiquette and the priority of life (of poorer people) over money. He sorely needs it and he will be the better for it, though a complete cure for him seems impossible.

> Did he say that?

Did I call you an ignorant money peddler, who thinks he is very smart because he can micro analyze statements and completely ignore the context in which the statement was made, as per his convenience?

Of course, I did not!

I call you no such thing.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#206

Post by malandrew »

sgk284 wrote: post #133
thaumasiotes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think our medical system needs some rethinking though. You probaby don't want to hear it, but if I were running a medical system I'd decree that gestating one-and-a-half-pound globs (from the article: "One doctor, visibly shaken, described [the fetus's skin] as 'gelatinous'") outside the womb is a waste of resources. To me, if miscarriages aren't the end of the world, neither are "babies" that die of natural c…

If the child lives to 80, she only needs to contribute an additional $12,500 worth of value to civilization per year for this to make economic sense. Another way to look at this: the government has various estimates for the value of a human life. It averages about $7MM. The "extraordinary" expense of this child actually only requires a 14% increase in value over the average citizen to make sense. Most importantly tho…

That still doesn't maximize overall benefit. What if the money were instead spent on 10 individuals that needed 1/10 the money to save their lives? The cost benefit analysis to determine what medical issues make most sense should try to maximize the number of person-years-lived across the entire population.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#207

Post by malkia »

Helping others is something that we did for very long long time

"The third stage, based on findings from Europe between around 500,000 and 40,000 years ago, sees humans such as Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals developing deep-seated commitments to the welfare of others illustrated by a long adolescence and a dependence on hunting together. There is also archaeological evidence of the routine care of the injured or infirm over extended periods. These include the remains of a child with a congenital brain abnormality who was not abandoned, but lived until five or six years old. The researchers also note that there was a Neanderthal with a withered arm, deformed feet and blindness in one eye who must have been cared for, perhaps for as long as twenty years."

http://news.discovery.com/human/neanderthals-were-compassion...

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#208

Post by robhu »

mindcrime wrote: post #196
anigbrowl wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He chose to make it specific, rather than just saying 'employee medical insurance costs were higher than expected.' By using the specific medical problems of two families to cast management in a positive light and also to justify changing the firms pension contribution structure to be less generous, he made the decision to present these issues as a zero sum game in which the beneficiaries of medical insurance - somet…

All of that may, or may not, be true. But none of it addresses the issue I was questioning, which is how anybody can claim to understand "Tim Armstrong's attitude towards the lives of his employee's children" based on nothing more than this one news article. I'm saying we shouldn't be rushing to judgment, and creating this caricatured images of Armstrong (or anybody else) and basically screaming "off with his head",…

It's not based on 'one news article', it's based on something Armstrong said (and planned to say) which is /reported/ in a news article.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#209

Post by luckydude »

yscale wrote: post #195
luckydude wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once a childless single white male programmer. Oh, and an asshole. Didn't realize it at the time but I wised up. Give him time and cut him a little slack, he's entitled to his opinion.

He's entitled to his (ignorant) opinions, but he's not entitled to be so pointlessly rude and cruel with his method of expressing it. If this was a dinner party, I'd quietly ask him to excuse himself, and he'd never be invited again. His choice of language was pointlessly cruel and outrageous.

I suspect he didn't view it as being rude, he viewed it as doing the right thing. He probably truly believes what he is saying, I used to think stuff sort of like that. My guess is he is somewhere between 23-32 years old, that was my stupid range :)

I guess the point is don't assume he's being an asshole, a real asshole would troll harder. I think he believes what he is saying. Yeah, it's rude but I'm not sure I'd be willing to write the guy off.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#210

Post by selmnoo »

clavalle wrote: post #201
paul wrote: post #30

My daughter had a similar birth and hospital stay, which also produced a million dollar insurance bill. It costs about $10,000/day to stay in the NICU. I was never able work out why it costs so much, except that this is a major profit center for hospitals, and they use the money to cover other, money losing, departments. Fortunately Google is run by good people, and they were never anything other than supportive. I'm…

My father in law is a neonatologist and was given an ownership stake of the NICU he started in a midwestern hospital. He makes around $4 mil/year. Granted, he does sometimes stay at the hospital for two weeks at a time with only very brief visits home but at this point he also owns apartment complexes, office buildings, a gentleman's ranch with a few dozen horses and staff and on and on. I think it is shameful, perso…

Speaking as someone who is also familialy-related to a neonatologist and a cardiologist -- both of whom earn more than a few million per year, I'd say they deserve every last dollar of it. They had to go to school for some while, and work under very tiring schedules. Hell, their schedules are still to this day pretty sucky -- they often tell me how much they envy me for my startup I'll-do-whatever-I-want-whenever-I-want lifestyle.

I think they both earn somewhere between 2 to 5 mil/year, but they spend it extravagantly and handsomely -- that's a very good thing. They're spending it on boats, cars, houses, nannies, restaurants, vacations, etc. etc. They're keeping the money going, they're spreading it out. They save lives, get money, and then help the economy by spending this money.

Now, what IS shameful is what the salaries of these social-app CEOs are. Why is Zuck worth some 20 BILLION? He's just going to sit on it, unlike my uncles he's not going to spend the majority of it. Zuck isn't helping the economy, Uber isn't helping the economy (it's externalizing costs, privatizing profits -- if they didn't exist that'd be a good thing). What is shameful is the profiting from rent-seeking, from making a killing on capital gains, etc. etc. Getting a few million per year isn't that bad, because believe it or not, in the large scheme of things that's little money -- most importantly, it's money that one can realistically spend from year to year. Spending a billion -- that's a challenge.

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