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

I&#x27;m surprised the company (not the insurance) had to pay that much for the babies medical bills.<p>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.<p>I don&#x27;t know how much the insurance billed the company (a small one without AOL&#x27;s income), but they upheld it.<p>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&#x27;m inclined to label him a Gordon Gekko-level psychopath.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/08/14/aols-chief-demonstrates-the-worst-way-to-fire-someone/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;susanadams&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;14&#x2F;aols-chief...</a>

There 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.<p>It doesn&#x27;t reflect too well on this guy&#x27;s people skills if something in his brain didn&#x27;t say, &quot;I&#x27;m about to blame sick children for cutting my employees&#x27; benefits, maybe I should shut up.&quot;

<i>&quot;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,&quot; said Armstrong</i><p>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.

Old style, hired gun, selfish, cost-cutter CEO with absolutely no original ideas, or any clue how to turn the company around. It appears AOL&#x27;s corporate culture is as out of date as their products.<p>Why would anyone voluntarily work with someone who&#x27;s obviously such a shitty human being? The board of directors must be as bad at their jobs as he is.

Here&#x27;s the thing, it&#x27;s a hot market, if you work at AOL, just walk out the door. It&#x27;s Feb so you&#x27;re not missing much contribution.<p>Or calculate how much you lost by the decision and go ask for a raise for 4 times as much. Tell them you gave $100 to someone down the street because their baby was sick and so now you need more money because your wife doesn&#x27;t like the way the quarterlies are going to look after you spent $200 million at the bar getting drunk.

This is why both healthcare and benefits from employment beyond cash and salary are many times bad. Companies should have no part in your healthcare&#x2F;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.

This seems more like a political statement than an actual explanation.<p>Armstrong pissed away $200 million on Patch, and is still blaming the $7.1 million in Obamacare costs for reducing employee benefits.

The 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 feel for those poor women whose colleagues probably know about their &quot;distressed&quot; babies.

tl;dr: Tim Armstrong is a sociopath. AOL is a terrible place to work. Take your skills elsewhere.

We just saw that big tech firms collude to hold down employee pay! See <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1699529" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1699529</a><p>That means, in effect, there&#x27;s only one employer in the tech industry. So the labor market in tech is not an example of a perfectly competitive market. It actually follows a monopsony model.<p>In a monopsonistic labor market, raising wages&#x2F;benefits doesn&#x27;t reduce employment, it actually increases employment, increases output and lowers prices...all good things! See my comments here for a fuller explanation: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7185717" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7185717</a><p>Therefore, Obamacare did <i>not</i> hurt the tech labor market. Tim Armstrong is full of $hit. They should take away his degree in economics if he really believes his own bullcrap. He was just covering his own a$$. Maybe what&#x27;s hurting his employees, stockholders and customers is his own overblown $3,216,534 salary in 2011. Source: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/tim-armstrong/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;profile&#x2F;tim-armstrong&#x2F;</a>

Sounds like he just hurt his company&#x27;s prospects for hiring quality employees here in the DMV area with that crap explanation.

Tim Armstrong already has a reputation as being a bit of a jerk: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197081" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6197081</a><p>Previously, though, he was head of advertising at Google (1999-2009), and I don&#x27;t remember him causing much negative publicity in that role.

It&#x27;s not often someones actually makes my skin crawl.