You’re probably sleeping on the biggest company perk just because you think it isn’t free. You may think you’re maximizing the company perks, but if you aren’t maxing out your 401(k), you’re playing like an amateur. 

Insurance premiums have been increasing at more than double the rate of inflation for the past 3 years. In 2026, employer group plans are expected to increase nearly 8%. 

Short term disability insurance (STD) isn’t sexy. It doesn't attract top talent, but it can keep a company from the kind of tough decisions that can end with lawyers. Many employers don’t even know that the situations that are draining their budget are insurable. 

Is it okay for an hourly employee to work 30 hrs/week (instead of 40) for 3 weeks due to illness without taking intermittent FMLA? Their manager is cool with it and the employee doesn't want to take PTO.

One month your paycheck covers 9 workdays. The next month, it covers 12. You get paid the same each time. If you leave in the middle of your next pay period, how is your pay prorated?

She couldn’t control the mayhem upstream, but somehow she was the one apologizing.  “Have you ever heard of a ‘blameless post-mortem’?” I asked. It’s a concept that I learned from software companies. When a bug causes a major incident, the review isn’t about a bad line of code but the whole causal chain.

Being the only nontechnical person at a tech company always felt like being the office dog - I understood more than people thought, but didn't have the language or typing skills to do anything about it.

This story still makes me laugh... and haunts me to this day. Is a boundary still a boundary if only one person asserts it? Or is it rebellion?

He was quite confident that people always know when their paycheck is wrong. I wish that were always true. Payroll is complex, and you don’t know what you don’t know. I see a ton of these kinds of silent errors with 401(k)s.