4 ms·

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 ea

by rkk3 5y ago

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.

relaunched 5y ago
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 the ground." It also talks about Jeff firing an early and long-time employee, he did throw a party for him in Hawaii, because Amazon no longer had a use for him. I don't know if either are true, but if true, I could see that attitude creating an unspoken culture of, "I don't care about your problems, we have work to do. If you can't do it, we need someone who can." I can also see how the success and the stock price, given the commitment to work above all, reinforces that mentality.
- gruez 5y ago
  >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. Sure, it'd be great if my workplace kept paying me $300k even if I was under-preforming because of personal issues. However, how realistic is this expectation? Are there any places that keep under-preforming employees for half a decade, or more?
  - notJim 5y ago
    > Are there any places that keep under-preforming employees for half a decade, or more? Microsoft is often recommended for this, and some say Google these days too :).
  - relaunched 5y ago
    Are you arguing that no tech company has employees in most of Europe? It's very expensive to terminate people for cause in Scandinavian countries, France and the England. Just because we don't do it in the US, doesn't mean they aren't doing it.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      I expect that this is also why there are fewer tech companies in Europe than in the US, and why software developer salaries are much lower in Europe than in the US. Companies can't afford to pay top dollar (er, euro) when they have to hedge against being unable to fire employees who aren't doing their work. Not saying either situation is better or worse overall; I expect there are winners and losers in both systems. Or, likely more accurately, the European system creates few big winners, but also few (or no) big losers, whereas the US system gives you the opportunity to be a big winner, but you could also end up homeless. Personally I'm happy with how the US system has worked out for me, but I'm sure there are some people who feel the opposite.
- notJim 5y ago
  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 the US, we have an extremely thin safety net. One of the reasons getting fired from your tech job is so concerning is that even someone in that job is only a few difficult situations from utter destitution and homelessness. That $4k/mo Seattle mortgage burns through your savings pretty quick, and if you have assets of any kind, you won't get any assistance from the state for disability. Even our unemployment benefits won't keep you afloat for long. We should be focused on making these things better, not expecting companies to employee people who are unable to work.
  - relaunched 5y ago
    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.
    - notJim 5y ago
      If the company has benefits that are available, they should definitely point the employee to them. That is just the humane thing to do in my view. When I had a death in my family a few years ago, I filed to use vacation time, and my boss rejected it, because the company had bereavement leave (I didn't know about it.) That was the right thing to do, because it helped me take advantage of all the available benefits. And of course, if companies provide these benefits, that is good, especially since they are absent from our broader safety net. But keeping benefits tied to employment has a lot of downsides, and we should try to move away from that.
    - 5y ago
- SpEd3Y 5y ago
  When you get hired somewhere you sign a contract. In the contract you agree to do work and the company agrees to pay you. You start doing 50% of your work (under-performing) for a bunch of months and the company asks you to fulfill your side of the contract because they are fulfilling theirs. Is that weird? Let's put it another way: You do your job well, the company starts paying 50% of your salary because they have problems. Do you keep working there till their problems are gone? Or after a couple of month you tell them: either you fulfill the contract or we part ways?
iamdbtoo 5y ago
He mentions the family leave option would've left him without any income. No one was asking Amazon not to eat his whole salary, just not expect him to function exactly the same as someone whose wife isn't dying from brain cancer.
- krsrhe 5y ago
  He should downgrade to part-time.
- Domenic_S 5y ago
  He says later that he had enough saved to weather the firing — wouldn’t it have been better to take leave, even unpaid, and know your job is there to come back to?
cowvin 5y ago
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.
- rkk3 5y ago
  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.
cycomachead 5y ago
Hmm...I tend to agree...but why? I would assume his output wasn't 0, so the economics are hard to justify. A typical engineer earns many times their salary in revenue for the company. So, maybe this guys was low performing, but maybe that works out to a wash in terms of revenue per employee. Or maybe, Amazon says "actually, losing $500K to retain good people isn't that bad every so often" -- how many employees can realistically be in the situation? 100 a year? That's what, $50mm...nothing to Amazon in the big picture. Obviously there comes a time when you need to fire people, and we don't have the full picture. But it's also not like this money really matters to Amazon that much either.
tristor 5y ago
FMLA is UNPAID leave, meaning from the day you start until it ends. Being “offered” to lose all of your pay is not much of an offer… in the end the man in the article took the leave and it was used against him during the PIP process.

by rkk3 5y ago

relaunched 5y ago

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 the ground." It also talks about Jeff firing an early and long-time employee, he did throw a party for him in Hawaii, because Amazon no longer had a use for him. I don't know if either are true, but if true, I could see that attitude creating an unspoken culture of, "I don't care about your problems, we have work to do. If you can't do it, we need someone who can." I can also see how the success and the stock price, given the commitment to work above all, reinforces that mentality.

gruez 5y ago
>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. Sure, it'd be great if my workplace kept paying me $300k even if I was under-preforming because of personal issues. However, how realistic is this expectation? Are there any places that keep under-preforming employees for half a decade, or more?
- notJim 5y ago
  > Are there any places that keep under-preforming employees for half a decade, or more? Microsoft is often recommended for this, and some say Google these days too :).
- relaunched 5y ago
  Are you arguing that no tech company has employees in most of Europe? It's very expensive to terminate people for cause in Scandinavian countries, France and the England. Just because we don't do it in the US, doesn't mean they aren't doing it.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I expect that this is also why there are fewer tech companies in Europe than in the US, and why software developer salaries are much lower in Europe than in the US. Companies can't afford to pay top dollar (er, euro) when they have to hedge against being unable to fire employees who aren't doing their work. Not saying either situation is better or worse overall; I expect there are winners and losers in both systems. Or, likely more accurately, the European system creates few big winners, but also few (or no) big losers, whereas the US system gives you the opportunity to be a big winner, but you could also end up homeless. Personally I'm happy with how the US system has worked out for me, but I'm sure there are some people who feel the opposite.
notJim 5y ago
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 the US, we have an extremely thin safety net. One of the reasons getting fired from your tech job is so concerning is that even someone in that job is only a few difficult situations from utter destitution and homelessness. That $4k/mo Seattle mortgage burns through your savings pretty quick, and if you have assets of any kind, you won't get any assistance from the state for disability. Even our unemployment benefits won't keep you afloat for long. We should be focused on making these things better, not expecting companies to employee people who are unable to work.
- relaunched 5y ago
  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.
  - notJim 5y ago
    If the company has benefits that are available, they should definitely point the employee to them. That is just the humane thing to do in my view. When I had a death in my family a few years ago, I filed to use vacation time, and my boss rejected it, because the company had bereavement leave (I didn't know about it.) That was the right thing to do, because it helped me take advantage of all the available benefits. And of course, if companies provide these benefits, that is good, especially since they are absent from our broader safety net. But keeping benefits tied to employment has a lot of downsides, and we should try to move away from that.
  - 5y ago
SpEd3Y 5y ago
When you get hired somewhere you sign a contract. In the contract you agree to do work and the company agrees to pay you. You start doing 50% of your work (under-performing) for a bunch of months and the company asks you to fulfill your side of the contract because they are fulfilling theirs. Is that weird? Let's put it another way: You do your job well, the company starts paying 50% of your salary because they have problems. Do you keep working there till their problems are gone? Or after a couple of month you tell them: either you fulfill the contract or we part ways?

iamdbtoo 5y ago

He mentions the family leave option would've left him without any income. No one was asking Amazon not to eat his whole salary, just not expect him to function exactly the same as someone whose wife isn't dying from brain cancer.

krsrhe 5y ago
He should downgrade to part-time.
Domenic_S 5y ago
He says later that he had enough saved to weather the firing — wouldn’t it have been better to take leave, even unpaid, and know your job is there to come back to?

cowvin 5y ago

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.

rkk3 5y ago
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.

cycomachead 5y ago

Hmm...I tend to agree...but why? I would assume his output wasn't 0, so the economics are hard to justify. A typical engineer earns many times their salary in revenue for the company. So, maybe this guys was low performing, but maybe that works out to a wash in terms of revenue per employee. Or maybe, Amazon says "actually, losing $500K to retain good people isn't that bad every so often" -- how many employees can realistically be in the situation? 100 a year? That's what, $50mm...nothing to Amazon in the big picture. Obviously there comes a time when you need to fire people, and we don't have the full picture. But it's also not like this money really matters to Amazon that much either.

tristor 5y ago

FMLA is UNPAID leave, meaning from the day you start until it ends. Being “offered” to lose all of your pay is not much of an offer… in the end the man in the article took the leave and it was used against him during the PIP process.