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My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

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Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#171

Post by s5300 »

Jiro wrote: post #6
mrRandomGuy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 'normal' company would understand that while a persons significant other is dying of a cancer, their work output may suffer as a result.

If I was a plumber, and my wife was dying, and as a result I was unable to repair plumbing, I would not expect anyone to give me money to repair their plumbing, not even if I told them my wife is dying and they should be sympathetic.

Huh.

I have a friend who owns a pool cleaning company, commonly known as pool routes. They contract a large amount of mostly laborers, and give them clients to form a route in which they go pool to pool to clean. 4-6 pools daily during season to my knowledge.

A benefit these independently contracted pool cleaning laborers get:

If you have any sort of personal or family health emergency, other pool cleaners will pick up your route for up to six months, with fully paid leave, and your position guaranteed whenever you're able to come back.

And this is just for cleaning pools.

You don't think plumbers and plumbers unions can do/deserve something close to this or better? Sounds like an awful world to live in if so.

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#172

Post by j_walter »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #87
ucm_edge wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. You always want to be asking HR for an accommodation that is protected by law. Then HR enters into the mode of protecting the company by ensuring they don't get in trouble for violating the law. You go in and say "Hey my wife is dying and my performance is probably going to be impacted, can something be done?", HR may opt to 'protect' the company by starting to build a case for terminating a low perfo…

> You go in and say "Hey my wife is dying and my performance is probably going to be impacted, can something be done?", HR may opt to 'protect' the company by starting to build a case for terminating a low performing employee. That’s the cynical approach, but most companies don’t actually want to lose valuable employees. This is why they have disability insurance coverage in the first place to help cover those gaps (…

Most managers don't either and will deal with some amount of loss of productivity...but part of that is also a calculation of "how long will it take to train a new hire X to do poorly performing employee Y's job" as well.

Now I've heard my fair share of people that claim "I was fired because my kid was sick"...and that might have been the final straw, but it was the other 7 unscheduled absences in the last few months that were not covered under family leave laws that were the major factor. Sometimes managers can't wait to terminate those employees because they weren't good anyway and they are just waiting for a reason to fire them in an easy way.

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#173

Post by gkya »

madrox wrote: post #158

What sucks about stories like this is, while my heart breaks for what this guy went through, managers don't have the same luxury of defending their side of the story to Mother Jones. I worked as an EM at Amazon. I went into this ready to think he had a bad boss (because those definitely exist at Amazon), but after reading this I feel like there's another side to this that has more compassion than is being reflected h…

Fuck managers' side of the story.

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#174

Post by drdeadringer »

In the film "A Good Year", the main character reaches a crossing point between his successful career [high, big finance] and his budding rediscovered life [a vineyard].

He is offered the coveted, prestigious Partnership. Rich for life. Known around the globe. Power. Influence. Move mountains. Meet Kings.

Or.

He can make efforts to reboot a vineyard in another country. It's fallowed somewhat over the decades but it has promise if given attention. The wine was and can be again good; there is a reputation to (re)harness.

His boss calls him to carpet. "So, here it is. Your money or your life."

A vineyard isn't brain cancer; the point remains the same. There are times when you need to choose over the other.

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#175

Post by xtracto »

radicalbyte wrote: post #112
twalla wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I do to get Amazon recruiters to leave me the hell alone is to respond to their emails with a link to the most recent public AMZN snafu and urge them to quit - it's funny/sad how each time I respond I can quickly find 3-5 new links no more than a few months old.

I just tell them how much it would cost to get me to up and move to Canada or the US to work for them, just to be equal to my situation here in Europe. That usually stops them pretty quickly :)

Haha, this is the way.

Over the last 2 years I started to receive a lot of unwanted recruit spam both in my email and through Linkedin. I used to ignore them and get angry. Now my response is quite straightforward: Sure, I am happy to talk if you can offer me $250,000 USD, Work from Home (I live in Mexico) and X, Y, Z benefits that I currently have.

This also applies for the ones that want to have a call to you for a "mysterious client" ( particularly for exec positions), usually just wasting your time. You are the one that contacted me, if you want to get my time better be for something good. It usually isn't.

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#176

Post by kelnos »

majormajor wrote: post #167
SavantIdiot wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many years should a company wait for an underperforming employee to perform? Perhaps wait until after their spouse has died and see if they recover? Even the idea of an "underperforming employee" is specious at best. This is why I love Italy and France, it is night impossible to fire someone for things like this from tech companies. Of course, they also don't have to worry about going bankrupt due to medical is…

I’ve gotten a couple Cobra offers in the past few years after leaving jobs, both of them with very solid to great health insurance, and haven’t seen a number higher than $1k/month (101% or whatever of the employer cost). What sort of insurance do you have to have to ask for $3-5K/month? That would be 36-60K a year! I’ve never seen a company paying close to that in benefits. And my current employer has a “cost to empl…

Is this for just yourself, or for you and dependents? I went on a leave a few years ago, and COBRA was $700/mo just for myself (and I'm sure premiums have gone up since then). I could easily imagine that being $3k/mo for a family of four. Maybe $3k-$5k/mo is high, maybe it's normal, maybe my company has a good deal on insurance. Who knows; the entire system is disgustingly opaque.

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#177

Post by limeblack »

lordkrandel wrote: post #43

Wait a minute. It's for this cases that universal healthcare paid by taxes exists. I wouldn't blame it on your boss or Amazon. It's the USA. A person should not depend on money or productivity to be cured. And a company should not be liable to spend $300000 an year on a non productive employee. Which btw is about 9 years junior developer gross salary equivalent in Italy.

So you are saying Medicaid/Medicare? Where do you put all your money into a house?

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#179

Post by Justsignedup »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #2

I read through the article. I really, really hurt for its author, and pray that I never face similar circumstances. It sounds like he's stinging from his manager not expressing enough empathy. But with the information in the article, I don't really understand what Amazon should have done differently. Unfortunately the article was vague about just how much the author was underperforming. Also, while I'm no fan of Amaz…

He did give the hiring team a big heads up that he rather not take the job than join Amazon. However the big issue is that Amazon's HR could have done so many things differently:

- work with him to get on short term or long term disability - work with him to figure out a way to take the time off that he needed combined with getting back on track - don't judge him on metrics he has no control over

Its a perfect combination of not giving a shit. I understand it costs them money, but Amazon has the money.

Re: My Wife Was Dying of Brain Cancer. My Boss at Amazon Told Me to Perform or Quit

#180

Post by erikerikson »

mabbo wrote: post #153
twalla wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I do to get Amazon recruiters to leave me the hell alone is to respond to their emails with a link to the most recent public AMZN snafu and urge them to quit - it's funny/sad how each time I respond I can quickly find 3-5 new links no more than a few months old.

A thought: be nice to recruiters. They're generally nice people who are underpaid for the work they do (usually). They're in a really tough business. And if you want a selfish take: Maybe today they're working for Amazon, but tomorrow they may be doing the same job at your dream company. They have too many people to try reaching out to, and they may remember your name.

+1

For years I asked them to put me on their do not contact list. I eventually asked someone with authority. Whenever I am still contacted by managers, I simply forward that email with a polite note to that stakeholder. I get apologies and they get a lesson in their responsibilities from someone to which they are liable.

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