Working at Google? Hefty monetary compensation to kin in case a staff dies in employment

NEW DELHI: Google's employees, who are used to being pampered in the workplace with the choicest fun and games, are in line for generous death benefits unlike those offered by any private employer.

The family of a 'Googler' who dies in harness will get half the employee's salary for 10 years, a plan that came into effect for US employees of the technology company last year. Indian staff will become eligible soon, spokeswoman Paroma Roy Chowdhury said, but did not indicate when.


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"It's extremely generous and pretty much unheard of," remarked Anandorup Ghose, director of compensation at Aon Hewitt, a human resources consulting firm. "It resembles the kind of perks that the spouse of a government employee or armed forces personnel would get."

In addition to a decade of support with the salary for employee's family, Google is throwing in other death benefits. Any stock options will vest immediately, letting the bereaved family sell or transfer the stock as they please. Moreover, the employee's children will each receive $1,000 every month till they reach 19, or 23 in the case of a full-time student.

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Google regularly tops the list of global and Indian surveys on the best places to work. Its Hyderabad office, where the company says it employs "a few more than the number of bits in 100 bytes", is equipped with an indoor cricket pitch, an outdoor basketball court and even a massage centre.

The company's largesse is in stark contrast to the scenario among Indian technology services companies. Most of them have only offered pay hikes in the single digits. Infosys, the second-largest software exporter with about $4 billion in cash, did not do even that - it has frozen pay for its 1.5 lakh staff until market conditions improve.

Hiring at Google is driven by consensus, with at least four interviewers meeting a candidate. Those in programming jobs must be ready to write software code on a board with Google engineers, something of a contest. It employs 34,000 staff globally.

Its ' Googleplex' headquarters in Mountain View, California, is the lap of luxury. It welcomes employees with free food, a swimming pool, a conference bike and even free haircuts on site.

Google, which has nearly $42 billion in cash, has three other offices in India in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi.