Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope AOL's board docks Tim Armstrong's pay for the reputation damage he's done to his company's brand this week.

There's a lot more to this story. Yes, they moved from matching 401k contributions as they are made (which 92% of companies do) and switched to making a lump-sum, once-a-year match for employees still employed on Dec. 31. The negative effect of this is twofold:

1) The employee lose the benefit of dollar-cost averaging on the match (but not their own contributions)
2) If you leave the company for any reason, you forego that year's cumulative match.

Armstrong was really despicable though. First he blamed th Affordable Care Act, saying it was a $7 million expense (as if this is material for a company with $2.4 billion in revenues and $996 million in profits, that happens to pay him an exorbitant sum). Then, he literally blamed it on the "distressed babies" of exactly two babies of AOL employees. So basically he told AOL's employees to suck it up because two employees had babies born with special needs.

Again, if I was on that board, I'd be all, "what the fuck, dude?"

I thought health care expenditures were supposed to be private. What's next? Will he blame psychotherapy costs due to someone's divorce?

My guess is that AOL, like most large companies, is self-insured. So, they know full well when a couple of employees have a lot of costs. I don't doubt that it's technically true that the pool's cost increased due to two babies. But it's pretty crass to blame the rise in premiums on them. That's how the cookie crumbles.

Also, the notion that the ACA was the added expense is ridiculous. Without the ACA, AOL's health care costs probably would have risen even HIGHER than they did.