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What Happens To Google Employees When They Die?
Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes Magazine reports that employee benefits of Google are among the best in the land—free haircuts, gourmet food, on-site doctors and high-tech "cleansing" toilets are among the most talked-about but the latest perk for Googlers extends into the afterlife. 'This might sound ridiculous,' says Google's Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock, 'But we've announced death benefits at Google.' Should a U.S. Googler pass away while under the employ of the 14-year old search giant, their surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50% of their salary every year for the next decade. Even more surprising, a Google spokesperson confirms that there's 'no tenure requirement' for this benefit, meaning most of their 34 thousand Google employees qualify."
My company offers insurance benefits too, but they don't pay all of the cost.
This is mere marketroid speak for life insurance.
My company, in the finanacial sector, subsidizes almost-free life insurance (~$20/month) that pays out 5x my salary - which is more or less 50% over tens years.
Had they need of attracting talent, they could swallow that lously $20 and just market it as FREE MONEY.
Rise of unexplained deaths skyrocket inside the Googleplex.
That's subsidized by the company. Is this really news? It's also not what most financial advisors tell you to get from full coverage if you purchase your own, either. Standard is 10 years of full salary - a Googler can always purchase more to make up the difference.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
and it's part of social security here (of course you get to pay a couple EURs a month for the privilege). But I guess this over-the-top socialist expropriation of financial assets doesn't resonate with the you folks across the ocean... but it does qualify for a good bullet point in the "benefits" employment contract section. Yep, us european are decadent spoilt brats... :P
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Don't most big companies offer a retirement package that give money out for the life of the spouse?
Sure it will not kick in as quickly as this or offer 50% unless you have paid into it for a long time, but a decade is far to short.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Like many people, I too wonder what happens after death, even to Google employees. Do they go to Heaven or Hell? Do they get uploaded to the web? Do they just expire? Inquiring minds want to know.
One thing is for sure, the dead people don't get money from Google because Google is giving that money to someone else.
Strained marriage, headshot, free money.
When benefits (such as health care and pensions) are subsidized by the taxpayers, it makes sense for a company to provide those benefits. But for things like life insurance, where the company bears the full cost, it makes little sense. They should just pay the money to the employees, and let them decide for themselves what to spend it on.
Google could have this benefit in lieu of paying for policies that pay a multiple of the annual salary like some other companies have. Or they could have policies on the employees that pay Google 10x the salary and they're sharing 50% of that as the as the primary benefit, the remainder funding the benefits for children that carry on until they're 19 (or 23)
What's interesting is that the article says the 50% pay benefit is for spouses or domestic partners, doesn't mentioned beneficiaries. If that's accurate then single employees don't have the same benefit paid out to anyone. That would be different than an insurance policy where you can designate the recipient. The article says that this company benefit would apply to most of their 34k employees, but that would only be the case if most of the employees had partners and/or children.
That's essentially a company-paid life insurance policy of 5x annual salary (slightly less, actually, since it's annuitized). When I worked as a call center grunt shortly out of college, we were given a 1x annual salary term life insurance policy paid for by the company. With an option of paying something like $0.35/month for 3x annual salary term life insurance.
This is really not the crazy-off-the-wall benefit that it's being made out to be. It's good, to be sure, but not unheard of.
Ten Google employees die under mysterious, yet seemingly unrelated, circumstances.
Recommended to the spirit in the sky...
1. Marry someone at Google.
2. Hire an assassin.
3. Profit!!!
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
"but the latest perk for Googlers extends into the afterlife."
To extend into afterlife, they would have to do something for you after you died. For example, if they sent you a new Android phone each year into paradise (or hell, should you go there), that would be an extension into afterlife.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to Google Glass... then you see it!
They are all uploaded to the Cloud.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I'd suspect that the average age of an employee at Google or most tech companies is so low compared to the rest of the business world that they expect to rarely pay out anything. If most of their workforce were expected to stick around till retirement age and it would actually cost them significant bucks due to natural causes versus accidental causes, I doubt they would be offering this benefit.
Just my cynical 2c worth
I work in the IT wing of a bank. My pay is around 50k and if I die my wife gets 350k plus gets half my pension for the rest of her life.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
As a google employee, I hope I can opt out of this.
I hate the idea of anyone (even someone I care for dearly) benefiting from my own death. It seems it could in some circumstances give them reason to want me dead. Never give anyone an incentive, however small, for someone else to be dead...
While sounding somewhat good, this also has a potential downside.
What I am saying is - if you are working for Google and you have a spouse, make sure they don't want to see you dead, because all of a sudden this may become a lucrative enterprise. I mean, there is clearly a well defined step 2 in the: step 1, step 2, profit! scheme.
You can't handle the truth.
More Google employees dying of mysterious causes than microbiologists. More at 11.
Google does not do evil. The employees from the other company (based in Redmond) are not so lucky: they have to go through some blue screening first where individuals responsible for most bugs are condemned to CTRL+ALT+DEL.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/end-of-life-financial-study-0803.html
Most Americans die with less than $10,000 in assets. Typical life insurance pays less than $250,000 and hardly anything outside of government employees get pensions anymore. Even then, pensions aren't safe as several have been wiped out due to the 2008 stock market crash or through bankruptcy. 401k personal retirement funds are the norm or most people and they have tax benefits along with 25% - 100% matching funds from your employer but more and more people either cannot afford to pay into them or are actively borrowing against them. After 2 years of unemployment, my 401k is empty.
I am 40, employed with a very shaky job at $35k less than I was making before and no retirement, no health care, and am racking up debt to pay for more college as I try to get a masters degree to be more employable. My plan is to GTFO of the US and go some place where quality of life is the focus and not on corporate profits... Mars, maybe?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Just because it is not mentioned in the article, it does not mean it does not exist. 1000$ a month for all child benefiicaries. Some tuition payments are there. What I don't know is, if this is in addition to the standard group life insurance offered at most companies. Typically 3X to 5X salary for between $10 and $25 a month. Typically capped at 1X = 50 to 75K. If it is in addition, it is great, but again worth about 20$ a month. If it is in lieu of, then meh, INBD.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
walmart used to have KeyMan insurance on most of there workers and they got sued as they did not pay out.
Now Google is at least paying the family's but they still may be a some risk under the law and having it on all workers may also be breaking the law.
They mention `Google`, one of the greatest tech companies in the world
and 'check' in one sentence.
FWIW: in other parts of the world we do payments via electronic means all over the continent at lower cost and at quicker speeds.
Why didn't an ex-Googler work on the check-problem yet?
Thus is A.I. They simply reincarnate as 0s or 1s and continue taking over the universe.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
They just get archived
I suppose this is going to give google more intensive to: hire younger workers exclusively, hire contractors (as opposed to regular employees), offshore more work, and avoid hiring married workers.
Also, this could get to be a considerable expense. As I understand it, a lot of google workers earn around $200K/year. That is a $2 million life insurance policy for each and every one. No problem now, but what about ten years from now?
'This might sound ridiculous,' but suppose the marriage/domestic partnership is in trouble. Suppose the Google employee intends to leave the significant other. Given the decade 50% salary death benefit, isn’t the significant other incentivized to expedite the Google employee’s death?
HRH The Duke of Windsor
you invented life insurance, and benefits thats going to pile up on you in debt just like GM, it must be nice to be a genius
and move where quality of life is the focus. Will the benefits you are counting on be there? Look at the wealthy countries that have promised their folks health benefits and retirement. Look how many can't pay as the result of the demographics. Politicians promise and leave it to others down the line to deliver on those promises that could never be paid for. Work for a competitive company in a competitive country and you have a chance, lacking either I don't like your chances.
I just got out of the walmart grocery line a half hour ago. It went slowly as a family ahead of me had to find 5 different means of payment for their simple grocery order. Food stamp debt cards, cash, debit cards. Where I swiped one card and didn't even think of the cost.
Yet I get all sorts of tax benefits including medicare and a tax shelter on my 401k that was 10x what most others in my company had when I retired (both because I made more and because I saved lots more because I could). Yet when I look at my taxes, I get tax subsidies worth probably what their income is from 2 jobs. And the government borrows money to fund this Ponzi scheme so I can increase my net worth, even though I don't spend a dime more. Yet even I make 2% of what a certain Presidential Candidate makes and pay the same rate. Which says his subsidies must be enormous. And we borrow to pay for his offshore accounts.
I'm one of those odd folk who say tax me, I can afford it and I've benefited disproportionately from the system (and worked darn hard for 45 years and lived in the same house for over 30 and married once and never refinanced and saved 30% of my salary even when I was paying off the mortgage. So I live in retirement at the same level as I did while working. Lesson: save.).
I didn't work for the government but my wife did and we pay for the govt health insurance and always have ... the only good thing about it is that we are part of a group that includes young currently working folk so the rates are relatively benign. But of course when she was working, we were subsidizing the retirees at the time.
As a profit center manager, I saw the cost to the company of the company-subsidized life insurance and the benefit varied over time from perhaps 2x to 1x as the cost pressures rose and the profit this quarter emphasis came in. We then bought at a group rate a multiple up to 5x depending on age but the employee paid for it. Once you retired, nothing. And once you retired, no health insurance either even though the company was one of the huge ones and had been profitable for 120 years.
What Google is doing isn't something special, it is something their tax lawyers have said they can do and is part of their becoming a huge company with the accompanying benefits and drawbacks. They compete with other companies for talent. They thought this would help. And probably saw someone die close to the founders and saw it as a good thing to do.
Everyone's life insurance/AD&D/long term disability benefits provide the same thing for around $10/paycheck and there is usually a base level provided at no extra cost. The biggest news here is that Google is apparently developing its own reality distortion field.
It would also be interesting to know how they define "domestic partner."
I worked for a great small company, and "domestic partner" to them meant "the person you have a relationship with, and live with."
Then, we got bought by a giant company, and "domestic partner" came to mean the state's definition. In the state I live in, an opposite sex partner does not count as a domestic partner.* A live-in same-sex partner does count, and you can get domestic partnership benefits.
* It's a bit more complicated than that, I think once you hit age 60-something you can claim domestic partner benefits as a live-in opposite-sex partner. But until then, forget about it.
They just can't be found anymore.
considering their demographic is unlikely to die between the ages of 20-39 (98% of their population):
http://news.cnet.com/Google-hit-with-age-discrimination-suit/2100-1030_3-5283653.html
haircuts - at a local cosmetology school here - go for $5, so not much value there even priced at $30 or $50 a pop every six weeks.
'gourmet food' is an almost meaningless term - you could call Jack in the Box's ciabotta roll entrees 'gourmet' (etc).
the bidet (a high tech cleansing toilet) is common in other parts of the world, but presumably diseases of the bowel aren't really prevented by such things (if you get my drift).
this appears to be a not so subtle planted ad for working at google whose motto 'do no evil' seems pretty obviously not true (if it ever was) with most of their products being little more than spyware for their adware.
Google is against those evil torrent sites (with their latest search ranking demotion claim), but when I want to watch copyright protected media I'll often search youtube and find it.
"Now for the catch. Not leaving for meals means the employees work longer hours. Executives are honest about the fact that their goal is to keep workers productive" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012300334.html
It might be seen that since Google pays so much for its employees it must use every method at it's disposal to then squeeze as much work out of them as possible.
Google got caught making big bucks advertising illegal phama, lying about safari ads, spying on wifi, providing data to the government, etc. So the 'real' price of a haircut, a clean toilet, a niman ranch burger with bleu cheese, and a doctor visit for a healthy 25 year old is apparently... your soul?
Not sure if they still do, but in the 90's, Microsoft self-insured employees (administered by Aetna, though). Makes a lot of sense when you have a young, largely healthy workforce.
In my evil socialist european country, the surviving spouse gets 100% for the rest of his/her life.
I suspect Google has simply taken out insurance policies against all their employees for between 5x and say 10x their annual salary. Given the likelyhood that few "googlers" will die in a given year, the cost is probably pretty minimal to Google.
Am I criticising them for doing this, heavens no, but this is something the average person could probably set up themselves using life insurance.
Ten years of half pay equals something less than 5x annual pay, given the time value of money - maybe about 3x base salary in death benefits?
What is the real cost of 3x base salary for most employees? Not that much - but how many have such coverage? Not that many I suspect.
The "news" is that Google is doing what a good financial planner would suggest YOU do.
Ken
I said 35K LESS. I used to make 80K. I also have all the debt of someone at that level (about $1400/mth just in debt). A typical Googler pay is around $125k plus. They are at the top of the pay scale. So 50% for 10 years would be $625k PLUS whatever life insurance they had. At that income level I would expect at least $1 million.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Just FYI, we don't get free haircuts. In Mountain View, there's a business that offers onsite haircuts; they service us, and many other local businesses. Nothing to see here as far as that is concerned.
I think my missus gets 3.5x my salary as a lump sum.
Makes me wonder when I see she has "innocently" abandoned a pair of her shoes at the top of the stairs..
Well,
Once they die, they will be judged to see if they pass their "I did no evil test" and depending on that either:
They go to heaven where everything is easy to find and no searches are required
-or-
They go to hell where everything is easy to find and no searches are required.
WAIT!... WHAT?
Most large companies self-insure health benefits in the US. It's not unusual at all; it makes the benefits cheaper; as an added bonus, they become governed by the rather loose ERISA law instead of the (usually stricter) regulations of 50 different states. I'm sure there are other advantages, but you'd have to ask an accountant what they are.
My company does this; they hire an administrator to handle claims, but the funding to pay said claims comes direct from the company's coffers. Why pay an insurance company to assume risks you can easily cover yourself? No matter how sick I, my or any of my colleagues, or our families get, we are unlikely to pose any acute financial danger to a company pulling in $B/quarter.
There is no such thing as a "standard" amount of insurance. Any financial adviser that says such a thing is either lazy (because he doesn't want to calculate your actual insurance needs) or lying (if you don't really need ten years of coverage) or both.
How much insurance SHOULD you get? Enough to meet the reasonable financial needs of your heirs that cannot be met because of your missing presence and salary.
A single person with no dependents can get by with minimum coverage; enough to cover his/her funeral and "wrapping up" expenses. $25-50k would almost certainly be more than enough.
A sole-breadwinner with a large, young, family, may need a policy for 20 years or more of income.
(And although you didn't mention them, I won't even get into how ridiculous whole-life policies are for the majority of people, yet they are very popular with many "financial advisers".)
For myself, the 2x pay that my employer provides free of charge is more than enough. My wife is perfectly capable of doing just fine, financially, without me, and vice-versa.
I think the heart stops too.
"He wondered briefly what it would be like, working all your life for one zaibatsu. Company housing, company hymn, company funeral."
"What Happens To Google Employees When They Die?"
They become dead. Next question.
Oh, its actually an article? Well then, it should read: What Happens When Google Employees Die?
Considering it's supposed to be an article instead of a thinly veiled slashvertizement, I still say it's all hogwash; Totally just hypothetical conjecture. No one really knows what will actually happen until we test the hypothesis.
Murder?! NO, Science!
Life insurance policies normally don't.
There are many people out there who might be tempted to Marry, Kill and Enjoy 50% salary for 10 years!!
They go to the big Cloud in the sky.
Thanks, I'll be here all day. Try the fish.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Potentially any Google death affects me. Basically all people involved in the FOUNDING of the thing OUGHT to be alive and very ready. This sounds more like a threat or a warming warning before annoucing what they did not say...
What happens if an employee changes his spouse/partner, doesn't record it and dies? What are the implications? What about a person who declares more than one current partner (as some sects might)/ How will the distribution be? OK
'This might sound ridiculous,' says Google's Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock
Yes, a title of "Chief People Officer" does sound ridiculous.