I feel for those poor women whose colleagues probably know about their "distressed" babies.
Luckily, thanks to "Obamacare" they can leave AOL and know they will be able to have affordable insurance.
AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
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Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#12There are things you tally in the back of your mind as costs -- like, for example, a couple of outliers in the health benefit cost spreadsheet that correspond to newborns with urgent medical needs -- and then there are things you kinda-sorta bring up to the media as having caused you to cut benefits back.
It doesn't reflect too well on this guy's people skills if something in his brain didn't say, "I'm about to blame sick children for cutting my employees' benefits, maybe I should shut up."
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#13The worst thing about a struggling company is the petty, demoralizing measures management takes to cut costs. Save a few million in 401k costs but waste eight figures in decreased productivity, increased employee turnover, and lower morale overall. This seems shortsighted.
I'm confused as to how this will actually save them any money over time. Won't it just encourage everyone who wants to quit to wait until the 401k payout date to the extent possible and then do it all at once?
People don't always optimize. I've known two people in this situation who left money on the table. Even if you quit on Jan 30'th, that's one month of money left on the table.
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#14The worst thing about a struggling company is the petty, demoralizing measures management takes to cut costs. Save a few million in 401k costs but waste eight figures in decreased productivity, increased employee turnover, and lower morale overall. This seems shortsighted.
I'm confused as to how this will actually save them any money over time. Won't it just encourage everyone who wants to quit to wait until the 401k payout date to the extent possible and then do it all at once?
They could fire a lot of people before the end of the year...
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#15I'm surprised the company (not the insurance) had to pay that much for the babies medical bills.
I had a friend die to leukemia a year ago (she had just turned 27). 6 months prior to that, her first month in Stanford Hospital for chemo led to a bill to the insurance on the order of one million dollars.
I don't know how much the insurance billed the company (a small one without AOL's income), but they upheld it.
Tim Armstrong is the same CEO who last year fired Abel Lentz, chief creative officer of Patch, on the spot during his company-wide layout call [1]. I'm inclined to label him a Gordon Gekko-level psychopath.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/08/14/aols-chief...
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#16This is why both healthcare and benefits from employment beyond cash and salary are many times bad. Companies should have no part in your healthcare/insurance, retirement savings or any other private aspect beyond reimbursing you for costs. I think independent pools of healthcare is the only way, outside of a company, wider nets with less impact.
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#17"We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general," said Armstrong AOL does something like $2 billion in revenue per year. This cost would have been a fraction of one tenth of one percent of revenue. What. a. shithead.
He's saying he's cutting 401K matching for people who leave the company during a given year so that the company can continue paying for extraordinary medical costs for its employees.
It's a tradeoff, and morally it looks like the right one to me. Pay less to people who left to the company so you can continue paying more in health benefits to those who remain.
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#18tl;dr: Tim Armstrong is a sociopath. AOL is a terrible place to work. Take your skills elsewhere.
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#19Old style, hired gun, selfish, cost-cutter CEO with absolutely no original ideas, or any clue how to turn the company around. It appears AOL's corporate culture is as out of date as their products.
Why would anyone voluntarily work with someone who's obviously such a shitty human being? The board of directors must be as bad at their jobs as he is.
Re: AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worst part is it doesn't appear to be struggling, but the CEO painted the only two options of dealing with $7M in increased healthcare cost as either passing it on to the employees, or decreasing some benefit.
If management is going to do something to anger the workforce, it's in their interest to get workers angry at each other instead of management.
No, it's really not.