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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

#261

Post by s1artibartfast »

uncomputation wrote: post #228
caeril wrote: post #223

Ha, of course it's Mother Jones. I don't even know what to say. 1. You had stable employment, with an employer that you knew would be understanding. By your own admission, you knew the Amazon horror stories. But your greed won anyway. 2. "I remember talking to my wife about it and saying, I can’t believe these are my options." What kind of a dirtbag unloads the side effects (all of which he's responsible for) of his…

Jesus christ. The author said he needed the money to help support his wife’s medical bills. Show some compassion if you’re going to comment.

Needed is subjective. We don't know if he had $1 in the bank or $1,000,000. I have seen plenty of people who can't "afford" to take unpaid time despite the latter.

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

#262

Post by tcmart14 »

NavinF wrote: post #248
HelixEndeavor wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it? "Your circumstances have us believe you're not the best fit for the company" is a scandal? Should Amazon be required to hire anyone who walks in the door?

Of course refusing to hire someone because their SO has cancer would lead to a scandal, LMAO. I assume you're joking

I hope so. Its reasonable for that response if its the case where the person does not have the technical ability via their prior experience. But that line of reasoning for a candidate to not be hired because of their spouse's ailment is just morale bankruptcy.

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

#263

Post by jjeaff »

m0zg wrote: post #203
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (…

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.

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

#264

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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…

This is America. Sure you have benefits, you think, if you have a job, but a huge number of the outcomes where you need those benefits result in you losing your job and no longer having them. And if you get too expensive and start showing up on the company's benefits cost, they are strongly incented to find alternative means for removing you from the payroll.

Really, work-provided benefits mainly serve the purpose of preventing people from voting for universal benefits. Of course the percentage of people dealing with the cases where you really need (and they don't want to pay) those benefits is very small, so the number of people that fully understand the situation is very small.

Benefits exist for the benefit of the company: to retain people, keep them bound/disincent them leaving, and to appear "competitive" with other companies. Whether they ACTUALLY will hold up is a gamble, and often up to munificience of your "benefactor".

To emphasize, when you MOST need benefits, you are LEAST valuable to the company providing those benefits.

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

#266

Post by kamaal »

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 (…

>>but most companies don’t actually want to lose valuable employees.

The word 'valuable' is just a marketing term. Just like the work 'rockstar developer'.

Unless you are like the top 1 - 2 people relevant to a very important project you really are not valuable in any meaningful sense to the company. You might be expensive in terms of time to replace. But you really are not valuable in any real sense. These companies have high attrition rates, people leave all the time and they just do fine.

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

#267

Post by pcglue »

gkya wrote: post #202

Reading the comments on this topic, I can't but feel validated for having quit my programming career right as it started. You lot sound so absorbed into your privilege that you can't even begin to think about the human side of the story, and it really shows that your "oh I can't begin to imageine how hard this is but..." is performative. It shows that you never really had to deal with this sort of stuff, be the perso…

May I ask what you did when you quit programming? Are you still doing the same thing now?

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

#268

Post by Domenic_S »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #75
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another HN user posted—and then deleted—this comment: > I worry that many people in such a situation may not have the right frame of mind to be able to find, read, understand, and absorb what is normally quite dry reading material requiring often ending in something requiring exceptional perseverance. (I noticed because I was writing a reply.) I think it’s a good comment! And I think that is why you do it now. It’s j…

That’s actually misleading, but a common misconception: The process is much less demanding than trying to continue working a demanding job at Amazon, for example. Disability claims are a common target for fraud and abuse so getting some early documentation from a medical professional is important. Engaging with medical professionals is something anyone with debilitating depression should be doing ASAP anyway, so it’s…

In addition, in three of the Big Tech SV companies I’ve worked for, the leave process isn’t even handled in-house. They contract a 3rd party who tells the company “yes this person is going on valid medical leave, expected return date mm/dd/yy” and they handle getting doctor’s notes and so forth. It is surprisingly private and straightforward.

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

#269

Post by carlivar »

scruple wrote: post #216
w0mbat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah me too. All the assholes went to Facebook. Only one person I like went there, and he quit.

Interesting. My (small, n=3) list of supreme assholes who I never want to work with again also ended up at Facebook.

I told Facebook recruiters to stop contacting me because I will never work for them due to my personal ethics. Maybe others have also done this and Facebook's talent pool is the remaining assholes.

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

#270

Post by Domenic_S »

madrox wrote: post #232
sangnoir wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was at turns informally warned, encouraged to take leave, and offered severance. Both these options would leave him without ongoing income and would do nothing to help him as a person[1]. They'd neatly solve the employer's problems though, and it's apparent who you more closely identify with in this story. 1. As someone else mentioned, short- and/or long-term disability was the mutually beneficial solution, but…

Yes, as an EM, I'm inclined to think of managers as people and not mustache-twirling villains who think of nothing but their 10%-30% bonus. Most of the ones I worked with are. Ad hominem attacks aside, though, is it not important to have full context before we get out the pitchforks...especially if we feel like there's probably some missing? The only information we have about this situation is the word of a fired emp…

I share your sentiment of wanting the full story… surely Amazon has short term and long term disability insurance on offer to employees, I wonder why that wasn’t an option?
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