AOL chief cuts 401k benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies”

Wow. A billion dollars in profit, 12 million in his pocket each year...but the 7 million for health care has to come out of the employees&#x27; other pocket.<p>Also, the fact that he&#x27;s blaming two babies - I find it highly unlikely, statistically, that two such cases blew the cost of premiums for a group as large as AOL. I&#x27;m pretty sure they had more employees with cancer that year, for example, and that&#x27;s also super-expensive.<p>This guy is despicable.

They make 1.04 billion in profit each year and 9 million has him worried? It also seems to be a breech of trust that he outed 2 women and their children in this. I wonder if coworkers will have any backlash against these women. If that does happen it then it could easily become grounds for a lawsuit against AOL.<p>Also they spent $405 million on an acquisition in August (8 months ago): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL</a>

It&#x27;s pretty distressing to me that these people are like &quot;eh, I&#x27;ll just cut a few million in benefits for ALL MY EMPLOYEES, blame obamacare and pocket it myself.&quot; Because we need to get people angry at the idea that their fellow man is getting adequate healthcare!

The distressed babies thing is bizarre since when does a company have to pay extra out of pocket for something like that like Armstrong is claiming? Isn&#x27;t that the whole point of Insurance, in case something bad happens insurance pays?

Well, the &quot;distressed babies&quot; comment is par for the course from Mr. Armstrong. He is not doing any other tech companies CEO any favors. He does remind me of the one psycho that attends a peaceful protest, but gets all of the press coverage to show the protest in a bad light. He says foolish things so he is the representative of all tech CEOs in an unfriendly, as of late, press.<p>As to the health insurance, yes, its going to go up for most and with higher deductible and premiums. All the rhetoric now meets the pavement.

Wow ! Obviously sexual discrimination and workplace bullying are in favor at AOL.<p>Seriously, this sounds like another &#x27;top notch tough businessman&#x27; appointed at immense salary.<p>My experience has been the first person normally claiming they are top notch is none other than themselves, and otherwise prosperous companies with generally good prospects seem to bleed money shortly after their arrival (normally into their pockets) and end up as burned out shells being sold off piecemean with some golden parachute to the outgoing top notch guy before he repeats the performance or retires to a recently purchased, by a tax haven based company, island in the Carribean.<p>And as proof of true sexual equality, there are examples where the he is a she.

It disappoints me to read the knee-jerk reactions here by those who obviously have not gone through childbirth. To help some of you along, a &quot;distressed baby&quot; would be his way of saying that the mother or baby experienced trauma or were under life-threatening duress either during childbirth or prior. This is not that unusual - things like umbilical cords wrapped around a neck, a small birth canal, and other reasons can cause significant problems during childbirth. How many millions of women and babies have died during childbirth? Half of the commenters here are acting as though childbirth is always a safe process.<p>The guy used a term that the writer of the article took offense to and you guys are making a huge deal of it. Get over it. Imagine yourself having to tell the same story to 100 reporters 100 times over two days. You&#x27;d try different ways of saying it and, no doubt, at least one of those times you&#x27;d use a word or phrase you wished you could take back.<p>If you&#x27;re unhappy that he&#x27;s bitching about paying for healthcare, fine - let that be why you complain. But stop falling for the buzzfeed&#x2F;linkbait BS titles and &quot;tricks&quot; that authors use to try to make stories facebook-worthy.

Can someone please explain what a &quot;distressed baby&quot; is in this context? And why did AOL foot a million dollar bill for each and then blame the mothers?

I should point out however, that this 401K match at the end of year practice is already a standard at IBM, which is probably the worst place to work at in the Silicon Valley today.

I wouldn&#x27;t have expected this sort of behavior from a big tech company like AOL.

Obamacare: the perfect scapegoat for large companies trying to cut costs.

As an AOL employee, this news and other internal news really, REALLY makes me want to reconsider my options.

From my view, this is a case where random big box mgt consulting firm (McKinsey, PWC, Booz) found some loose cash on $xM engagement.<p>Tim then publicly regurgitated much of the internal deck logic. Obamacare may have been his own (questionable) addition - but the two distressed babies was definitely in the deck.<p>Whichever consulting firm it was obviously need&#x27;s to coach those CxO&#x27;s better on implementation.

The video did not include any comments about million dollar babies. It did show him saying a 3% match on 401k is a great deal... which it isn&#x27;t.

And here I was being sympathetic to &quot;healthcare problems&quot; until he threw those two mothers under the bus with that backhanded remark. Has this guy shown no class while at AOL?<p>I&#x27;d like to think AOL has made a meteoric turnaround with HuffPost and Patch especially (the content is better than the local papers in my suburban hellhole, which isn&#x27;t saying much) but maybe I spoke too soon.

On a semi-related note, what makes fetal distress cost a million dollars to recover from? I would have thought by now this should have been part of every pediatricians runbook. I am not any where savvy with medicine and also apologize in advance if this sounds insensitive. That is not my intention. I am curious as to what would make these costs be so high.

<i>&quot;For employees leaving to go to other employers, not matching those programs was probably the last thing on the list for us in terms of employee benefits that we wanted to keep.&quot;</i><p>I can&#x27;t imagine what must be at the top of the list if &quot;no healthcare&quot; is a the bottom.<p>Sounds like even the CEO agrees that AOL is a shitty, shitty place to work for.

If you&#x27;d like to let him know what you think about this, be sure to check him out on twitter @timarmstrongaol<p><a href="https://twitter.com/timarmstrongaol" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;timarmstrongaol</a>

I love how he starts the video posted in the article off with &quot;We are in the most intense talent space in the world&quot; Well good sir don&#x27;t expect to keep any of that talent. This sickens me.

Someone at work gave me her email address, and it was an AOL address. I felt like I had discovered a new living fossil, still in her thirties (guessing).<p>And that&#x27;s how I know that AOL, somehow, is still kicking.

Why would anyone with career options choose to work for AOL? He might as well have posted a billboard declaring, &quot;Top talent not wanted.&quot;

If I was a woman working there...I would GTFO. Hell, if I was any female&#x2F;male&#x2F;other working there, I would GFTO.

What right does Mr. Armstrong have revealing private medical details about policy-holders to the public?

Nut.

To everyone who&#x27;s saying &quot;they make X billions in profit each year and can&#x27;t afford Y million!&quot;, that&#x27;s not the point. It&#x27;d be irresponsible of him to simply eat the extra costs. Hopefully, people wake up and realize what a horrible law Obamacare is and demand it be repealed.