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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

#281

Post by Ekaros »

uncomputation wrote: post #238
caeril wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What they offered me was almost $300,000 per year. That was a shitload of money in Tennessee. You can’t really say no, right? If more and/or better medical coverage was on offer from AMZN, it would have been mentioned. Note that he didn't say "That money would give us much more headroom to cover the deductibles or non-covered procedures." No, he said "That was a shitload of money in Tennessee." It was always about…

I suppose. The decision was unwise given his family situation at the time, but it’s hard to put the blame on the loser here and let Amazon get away scot free while treating people infamously bad. The blame is on both parties here, but you seem to only blame the individual rather than the company. Edit: On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know why Amazon compensates so highly but all of their consumer-facing s…

Clearly they pay for that right to treat people badly. And people still choose the pay... So maybe blame can't be placed on them.

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

#282

Post by rewma »

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 (…

> That’s the cynical approach, but most companies don’t actually want to lose valuable employees.

By Amazon's measuring stick and internal policies, underperforming employees are to be discarded almost immediately, after undergoing a pro-forma performance review program which seems to be tailored to gather accusations to make a termination un-suable.

It is said that Amazon's average tenure is two years.

If there's a company renowned for not giving a damn about their employees, it's Amazon.

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

#283

Post by Ekaros »

ivraatiems wrote: post #25
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #14

I don‘t understand how someone smart enough to make 300.000 a year (That is an insane fortune to almost everyone, even in first world countries) feels entitled to a month-, year-long reduction of performance expectations because of personal tragedy. There are thousands waiting for his position and they would kill to get it.

Human beings are entitled to a little empathy from other human beings.

Effectively tens of thousands of dollars stops being little empathy to me. I think reasonable move would have been new role like warehouse worker with new pay and clear expectations to fullfill.

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

#284

Post by rkk3 »

cowvin wrote: post #226
rkk3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was offered a Family Leave option, but the details aren't shared so it's hard to judge... Terrible situation for the author, but expecting the company to eat the 500k/year he was costing them doesn't seem fair either.

Family leave typically means you stop working while on leave and there will be a job waiting for you when your leave ends. Like with parental leave, you are typically expected to rely on government programs like disability insurance and such if you need to do so for a long time.

Ok, so you are saying he keeps his job & gets paid disability & presumably keeps his nice health insurance package from working FT? Yeah that seems like something I wouldn't utterly dismiss out of hand.

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

#285

Post by refurb »

JimTheMan wrote: post #279
refurb wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical bankruptcy is still an issue in places with universal healthcare like Canada. Why? Even if all your bills are paid you still have a mortgage, food, etc. And even if you have long-term disability payments, it’s often some fraction of your existing salary requiring you to keep working to pay all the bills.

Medical bills are overwhelmingly huge in the US. Getting rid of them would decrease the problem to simple unemployment. Sure being unpaid for a time is bad, but you won't be massively in the red... And this specific example, the guy is well off. Which if not for medical bills, they'd all be fine. To reword your comment, " Something very bad is happening, but because the remedy wouldn't completely go away it's not wor…

Way to twist my words. I never said it wasn’t worth doing.

Grandparent said “this is why universal healthcare exists” and I noted that it wouldn’t solve the problem. Dude still needs a job and his wife still has cancer.

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

#286

Post by m0zg »

jjeaff wrote: post #263
m0zg wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wish more people got it through their heads that HR _is not_ and _will never be_ their friend or savior. Their only loyalty is only to the company, by design. There are no exceptions to this that I have seen in 25+ years in the industry. The extent of whatever help you might get out of them is whether or not there's a risk that the company would come out worse on the other end if that help is not provided,…

I think that is overly cynical. While it is true that HR is there to protect the company, there are lots of cases where incentives are aligned and so your benefit is their benefit.

The point (which you half-missed) is that the vast majority of people don't even know what those incentives are and think HR is there for them. Whereas it's only there for "them", as you pointed out, if they could bring a lawsuit against the company, and in no other case. That is, it's not there for "them" at all.

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

#287

Post by ajb »

0xy wrote: post #259
ajb wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only available to people in the US and South Korea at the moment, apparently. A pity, but I guess they need lawyers in every country they do business in.

This isn't true, there's plenty of non-US people on Blind including me.

Currently to register in the app you have to select US or South Korea. They are setting a strong expectation that you should only do so from one of those countries, which makes it seem unlikely to me that I will find any colleagues -most of move would not think to fake their location. They also won't let you leave a review without a location in the US or South Korea. Makes it all a bit pointless if your company is not in those countries.

Maybe they changed this since you registered?

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

#288

Post by maccolgan »

rewma wrote: post #35
Jiro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. When I filed for paternity leave, I was paid quite a few weeks for not working at all, because the country where I live understands that workers are people who have lives and struggle…

Then you wonder why the egregious cost of maternity leave keeps popping up everywhere regularly, you are making the assumption that people in "the country where I live" like what's happening...

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

#289

Post by maccolgan »

aaomidi wrote: post #17
MattGaiser wrote: post #3

1. How do other companies handle these situations? How do you effectively handle an employee rendered unable to perform their job due to tragedy? This came up with Atlassian a few weeks ago, and they have a much better reputation than Amazon and it doesn't seem like they handled things in a great way either. The reality is that you might just need to terminate people who cannot perform, no matter what the reason. 2.…

> I am obviously sympathetic to his plight, but at this point Amazon has that reputation as a brutal employer. Every ex-Amazonian I have known in real life has told me that the pay is so that they own you, whether 3PM or 3AM and they have no qualms about firing you (a former co-worker who was with AWS said that if I ever take an AWS role, don't get a full year lease for a condo in Seattle). Not to blame him, but it i…

Que people bitching that Amazon moved to China and is now a Chinese company. (I don't necessarily believe that'll ever happen but imagine HN if that happened)

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

#290

Post by raxxorrax »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #4

A tip: If anyone finds themselves in a tragic situation like this where they can’t work but also can’t afford to take leave, investigate your short and long-term disability benefits ASAP. Also read up on the documentation necessary to begin disability claims. Engage with a doctor early on who can document the severe depressive symptoms that are preventing work (which the author specifically cites in his anecdote). Do…

It also allows the company to plan eventual absence of an employee, which is important to keep things running.

Still, a company as large as Amazon has no excuse for this behavior in my opinion.

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