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

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

#131

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #101

JohnBooty wrote: post #83

This happened to me, as well. Not my wife and not Amazon, but actually a handful of family members dying over the last year. On one hand I completely understand my employer. Unlike Amazon, they do not have Amazon-style money. They are fighting to survive. Like the author I am not sure what they should have done for me. During the conversation where I was terminated, I told my boss I understood their position. They ne…

I don't get it. Are they also having a hard time hiring people or something? As for your premise of "who the fuck are you trying to hire, here? Exclusively people... without families?", I don't see weird about that. If you're a company of a dozen or so people, it doesn't seem too hard to find a bunch of 22-30 year olds with very little commitments.

    I don't get it.

Understandable. There was a lot of context I left out because it wasn't too interesting and I wanted to keep things under a billion words so I just mentioned the similarities with the linked article.

    As for your premise of "who the fuck are you trying 
    to hire, here? Exclusively people... without families?",
    I don't see weird about that.

Yes, they are having a difficult time finding and keeping people, particularly experienced ones.

The product involves a large-ish amount of customer data, and our experience was that recent grads and "people that just did a 4-week 'Code Camp' style course" are particularly unsuited for that kind of work: they can write basic CRUD till the cows come home, but they know nothing about performance/scaling.

(Best-case scenario: they know they know nothing. More typical scenario: they think they know...)

    If you're a company of a dozen or so people, it 
    doesn't seem too hard to find a bunch of 22-30 
    year olds with very little commitments.

Depending on your jurisdiction it's likely downright illegal to discriminate against employees or prospective employees based on them having families.

But even from a pure self-interest standpoint, if you're strictly hiring people without families you're ignoring a big chunk of the talent pool and if a company's having problems hiring, perhaps that's something that should be re-evaluated.

FWIW, note that I am using "family" here to mean "having any family members whatsoever" -- I'm not just talking about people with children. I don't even have children, myself. But I have family. They die, get married, etc.

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

#132

Post by NBJack » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

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…

I agree this seems to largely be a manager issue, though I would go as far to say it's more prevalent in the company culture.

That said, I also agree this isn't exactly fair on Amazon's part as they were informed, up front, that this was an ongoing issue. The picture this paints isn't then one of "they did their best and were generous"; instead, it's one of "they got what they wanted out of him." Note that by company policy, all employees are given a max base pay of about $160k (including Mr. Bezos himself, which they love to point out during negotiations); the remainder of the $300k would have likely been through stock options, which the author points out were left behind during termination. Thus they were technically paying him almost half plus whatever signing bonus was negotiated.

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

#133

Post by jasonladuke0311 » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

_6hmp wrote: post #57

debacle wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the blind app?

It's a forum for people at tech companies to anonymously talk to other people at their companies in a private forum, or with people at other companies publicly to all members. They validate employment using your email address. As could be expected many of the topics devolve into toxic messes, but there is some useful discussion.

Yep. It sucks in many, many ways, but it also is full of info on negotiation, interview processes at many companies, and salary/offer sharing.

I had no idea how much more money I could be making until I signed up there. Deleted the app as soon as I signed an offer sheet.

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

#134

Post by starbugs » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

asjldkfin wrote: post #104

ivraatiems wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's another dodge. His direct manager is acting on behalf of the company, and in the interest of the company. The company should have behaved better. His direct manager also isn't paying the writer's salary out of a personal bank account. The point is that companies ought to treat their employees with empathy even when it costs them. There are reasonable limits to that, yes, but $300k for Amazon is well within tha…

No, companies should treat its employees with well defined policies that are easy to understand, enforce and audit. Treating employees with something as variable and open to interpretation as "empathy" is what causes companies to implode- because who defines empathy? Who defines where the line is drawn? And why is it fair that some people will inevitably get more empathy than others because maybe the manager was havi…

Sorry, I am old and have more than 10 years of management experience.

You can try to formalize human life with your rules for the next 100k years and it will still not work. There are things that are beyond words and beyond your and my ability to "define".

I am afraid a lot of us have lost any of their inherent common sense, because there was no policy for it.

This is not idealism. This is someone dying. And you are talking about policies. Come on!

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

#135

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

eschneider wrote: post #95

The thing about companies that treat other people badly, be it other workers, vendors, or customers is that , if you work for them, eventually they'll get around to treating you badly. :/

This rule also applies to people who treat others badly.

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

#136

Post by relaunched » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

notJim wrote: post #126

relaunched wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies employ people. People have problems. Firing people, or forcing out people, when they have problems, doesn't sound like a very good place to work. It's very possible that the unspoken culture at Amazon is work hard above all else. If you've read "The Everything Store", there is a quote, something like, (regarding Bezos) "If you're bad, Jeff will run you out of the company. If you're good, he'll ride you into…

Companies employ people to do work . That is the fundamental nature of the relationship. Some leeway is to be expected for temporary fluctuations in the work being done. But in the long term, if the work is no longer being performed at the agreed upon level, the company is not obligated to continue paying the person. In a sense, blaming the company becomes kind of a distraction from the real issue, which is that in t…

To your point, corporations would be happy to have the government take over those functions. But, these are solvable problems. For example, there is no doubt that HR knew that long-term and short term disabilities were options. Google has a death benefit for the spouse and kids, under 21. Top tech companies that have money to burn could probably figure out how to keep you on insurance, as a benefit, during leave.

However, whether or not it's an employers' responsibility, is a culture and values thing - especially if the social safety nets are lacking.

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

#137

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

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…

If many companies are paying $100K/yr, is it really in the public interest to prevent a hard-driving company from paying $300K/yr to employees who want to sign up for that bargain?

If you don’t want that bargain, don’t take it, but I don’t see the public interest in blocking others who do want it from taking it.

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

#138

Post by dlp211 » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

asjldkfin wrote: post #104

ivraatiems wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's another dodge. His direct manager is acting on behalf of the company, and in the interest of the company. The company should have behaved better. His direct manager also isn't paying the writer's salary out of a personal bank account. The point is that companies ought to treat their employees with empathy even when it costs them. There are reasonable limits to that, yes, but $300k for Amazon is well within tha…

No, companies should treat its employees with well defined policies that are easy to understand, enforce and audit. Treating employees with something as variable and open to interpretation as "empathy" is what causes companies to implode- because who defines empathy? Who defines where the line is drawn? And why is it fair that some people will inevitably get more empathy than others because maybe the manager was havi…

Which company imploded because of empathy?

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

#139

Post by munchbunny » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

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.

While an abstract rational actor like a company might come to this conclusion, day to day line managers often do not come to the same conclusions. A low performing employee affected by personal issues is dead weight on said line manager's budget and headcount, and therefore their metrics and their own performance and promotion. The trickle-down performance model often doesn't incentivize long-term-focused management practices.

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

#140

Post by ivraatiems » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #91

ivraatiems wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be the reality in a society with the amount of wealth ours has.

If you make mid six-figures and can’t put together an emergency fund that is on you. He could have made different life choices and spent time with his wife in her last moments rather than slaving away at work.

I agree absolutely on the importance of an emergency fund from a tactical, this is how society is perspective.

But I don't think it should be necessary and I don't concede that that's the right way for things to work.