> some amount of collective bargaining being applied here instead of me making the purchase as an individual.

The whole point of the article is that Google's pricing is terrible compared to the open market. If they actually did any bargaining they did it this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPqAcOnEBUI.

Having competitive rates and having HR helping out the family when an employee dies can be completely orthogonal.

No, because this entirely ignores the dimension of quality. I mean maybe they are right, but it's not considered in the analysis.

The author recommends I buy Geico life insurance for $156/yr.

I have Geico car insurance and have filed claims when people broken into my car. You would not believe the lengths this scum bag company goes to in order to not pay you the money you are entitled to. I don't want my family subject to that if I die.

Try Amica. They’re amazing and they don’t jerk you around about this kind of stuff.

I looked at Amica for car and renters insurance. They were 4x the price of everyone else.

They wanted me to pay $3000/6 months for car insurance whereas progressive was $650.

Isn't it guaranteed issue? That's an expensive option.

> I like that this is taken care of for me and that I don't have to spend my personal time trying to research a bunch of life insurance options and figure out what works and what doesn't.

Doesn't Google accelerate RSUs upon death?

Does Google help the family with detailed claim resolution in the event of an employee's death? I don't have evidence either way, but that seems more personal than I'd expect.

To be honest, I don't know the detailed structure for this as I'm relatively young and have the luxury of it being out of mind at the moment.

What I know is that you will for sure have allies that you wouldn't have on an individual basis.

For example, my wife would be able to call up my colleagues (from my team that I work with every day) and ask for connections to HR or whatever. They would definitely help her because 1) they care about me as a person and 2) they are invested from a game theory perspective, because they also want to know that they'll be paid out if the same thing happens to them.

Most likely, there is some existing structure to actually help, as Google is at the scale where this kicks in non-zero times.

However, I just looked it up on the internal search and as you'd expect, it differs based on your country and its laws. So I can't speak for all Googlers

I get what you're saying, but at 29 what would I have done with life insurance? I had no spouse or children. It seemed like all they were asking is a way to opt out.

True but at the same time, Google has all sorts of weird perks that we can't opt out of and essentially pay a tax for.

For example, some parts of campus have swimming pools and endless treadmill pools. I don't swim so I get zero benefit from this. Meanwhile these things definitely cost some amount of money to service and maintain. We can't opt out of that.

We can't out of Google throwing massive holiday parties that I don't think are a lot of fun.

In the end, it's just kind of a package deal. Given that Google comps relatively well, the point is to just be happy with the money you are making and not stress too much about optimizing <$1000 at a time

Every life insurance has clauses that don't pay out under certain circumstances (such as suicide).

And even if they do eventually pay, it matters the hoops they make your family run through and the time they take to pay out.