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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

#291

Post by d13 »

A warning to everyone out there: nobody cares and you’re on your own.

Three years ago my mom died of breast cancer. 6 days later my girlfriend died of the same. I had a stable, unionised job at a public sector company which gave me three weeks off in combined bereavement and holiday leave. At the same time my father was dying of prostate cancer and I was his only caregiver. I requested 6 months work-from-home, which was granted. An extension to that was declined. I had to choose between my father and my job, so I resigned. My life has been left in ruins and it’s going to take me years to put it back together again.

I’ve seen this happen to other people too, in different ways. All of us will eventually be hit with one or two catastrophic life changing circumstances like this which no employers anywhere have mechanisms to deal with.

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

#292

Post by teekert »

vkou wrote: post #128
teekert wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean as a way to show kids that no morality exists in a context that allows one to be a faceless HR department? Despicable.

You make not like how sociopathic bureaucracies running society operate, but it's important to educate children on how not to get screwed by them.

Is it though? Children learn by example, it's better to shown them things we deem normal and/or desired. Things like compassion. Even when being part of a faceless organization. It's about knowing that people far away are still people that love their children too. It is how we prevent ourselves from repeating the darker pages of our collective history.

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

#293

Post by chriselles »

I don’t know the subject of the story, but I knew the brother who worked for Amazon and died of pancreatic cancer.

The date has been adjusted.

A truly wonderful person who exemplified the oustanding people at Amazon in the early days.

And another bittersweet story when it came to Amazon 20th anniversary IDs.

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

#294

Post by NullPrefix »

hawaiianbrah wrote: post #254
crispyambulance wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the employee was making ~300K, we can figure that his manager is probably making 50% to 100+% more. I find it mind-boggling that the manager could not find it within himself to give some slack to the employee. I guess maybe he didn't want to slow down the rate at which he was pulling in F-U money.

I’m a manager and don’t make 50% to 100+% more than the people that report to me that are around my level.

40% more?

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

#295

Post by nodicksplease »

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…

lol. I worked at Amazon as a SDE and this reply is from Typical shit EM from Amazon. Empathy triumphs your weird corporate logic. Don't just work backwards putting yourself in the customer shoes, learn to work backwards from your report's shoes too.

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

#296

Post by throwawaybb1234 »

ctvo wrote: post #208
rewma wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who get fired are far more likely to leave reviews on blind. It is said that the average tenure at Amazon is two years. By your measuring stick, a company that is a revolving door does have the nasty tendency to leave a lot of its employees with plenty of reasons to complain.

There's nothing extraordinary about Amazon having a 2 year tenure average. Here's a somewhat dated (I'd guess it's gotten even shorter since) article from 2018 listing many more company tenures: https://www.inc.com/business-insider/tech-companies-employee... There are many known companies with ~2 years give or take.

Amazonian blue badge here. Throwaway for the obvious reasons.

Last year my two pizza team saw close to half our team members leaving, some with what I call mob-style coerced goodbyes during a daily and some because they were fed up with the absurd working conditions caused largely by the senior manager's career-building goals and his "wins are due to me and losses are due to my stupid minions who need to be fired" mentality.

An internal tool that tracks tenure says I'm already in here longer than 60 or 70% of the whole company, and I've just been here for about 2 years. I came up with a little game I play with the source code repo that I call Monte Carlo phonebook, where I check if a commit was made by anyone still within the company, and more often than not the answer is no

No other tech company I've been in worked like this. At all.

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

#297

Post by fastasucan »

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…

> That man shouldn't have had to work. He should have been safe to be unemployed while focusing on being there for his family.

Or even better, a system that guarantees the ability to be on extended leave with benefits from the state. Its a win-win situation if you don't force employees to leave their companies just because they are in a situation like that. Other than that, I totally agree with what you said.

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

#298

Post by cycomachead »

abandonliberty wrote: post #271
junar wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author seems to mention that Amazon did give him the chance to take FMLA, and he decided against it. > I had a long talk with HR. The response from them was, okay, you have two options here: You go on family leave, or you can perform. Those are your two options. I was thinking, if I take family leave, I get no income. I remember talking to my wife about it and saying, I can’t believe these are my options. So, I ended…

While there's clearly stories of abusive amzn practices, this makes the entire piece seem very entitled. If a person can't do the work they were hired for, they don't usually get paid. That's why there's FLMA, disability insurance, and vacations. Am I missing something? Does Amzn represent themselves any differently? We're only getting one side of the story, and for all we know this person could've been incredibly to…

There's quite a difference between "I can't perform at my full capacity" and "Go home because you can't do any work". And no doubt, unpaid leave in the midst of costly medical bills (even with insurance costs at up) seems like a poor option.

It sounds to me like the author was asking "can you cut me some slack?", which doesn't seem like an unreasonable question. I'm sure there's a million creative ways an employer could have tried to come up with a solution, even if it's not the most desirable... (Part time work? Delaying a review cycle? Just letting a month of work go?)

I'm an educator—and obviously school is quite different from a job—but when a student is struggling outside of class, you figure out ways to still help them learn! Telling someone to withdraw from a course is certainly a necessary and valid option, but it's far from the first thing I'd present to a student. If I were a manager, hell yes, I would try to modify someone's role or duties before just saying "don't come in".

And, yes, this is one side of the story, but if this person were toxic, they could have been fired at any time and for that reason. (I'm going to assume this person is reasonably truthful, otherwise there's nothing to discuss about a fake story, IMO.)

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

#299

Post by cycomachead »

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…

> If he wants to lash out at anything, I suggest lashing out at a system that requires us to work while going through such awful life circumstances. That man shouldn't have had to work.

And yet, this man worked for a company who could very reasonably enact such a system if it desired to, at least for its own employees.

There is no law which requires corporations to do the minimal amount required by the law. The fact that many chose to do so is a choice motivated by profits and expediency.

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

#300

Post by RGamma »

ucm_edge wrote: post #50
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…

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…

A glimpse into the psychology of corporate dystopia.
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