Stop doing this.

Can we stop hyperventilating over the Google employee death benefit?

There’s been a lot of coverage in the past few days about an employee benefit at Google: The spouse of a Google employee who dies receives half the employee’s salary for 10 years.

That’s a nice benefit, but the coverage—both in terms of the benefit to employees, and the “harm” to shareholders—has been hyperbolic. Business Insider concludes:

It kind of makes the free lunch pale by comparison.

Targ manure! It does not make the free lunch pale by comparison. In fact, for many employees, the free lunch is the more valuable benefit!