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Comment by CoastalCoder | Hacker News Reader

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 Amazon, it sounds like they treated him far better than the legally required minimum. They were paying him a lot of money to do something. When he wasn't able to do it, it's not like they fired him instantly; they even offered him $30k of severance.

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I read the timeline and it seems like he started in mid-late 2018, was having performance problems throughout 2019, and didn't even get fired until mid-2020.

This is super generous, and while I have a lot of empathy for his personal situation, I think he could have had a much different outcome if he would have been more proactive about managing expectations: - Amazon does have a bereavement benefit that you definitely should take if you lose a brother like he did. - There are many opportunities to get help from doctors and medical professionals and document any disability you might have, which can help accessing disability benefits - While family medical leave is typically unpaid, if you are making $300K a year and were presumably making a lot less before you took the job, I think you can reasonably take a few months of unpaid family medical leave knowing your job will be there when you return.

I feel bad for the guy in this situation, but I think Amazon was very generous and gave them every opportunity to perform. How many years should a company wait for an underperforming employee to perform?

I'm not sure how it's done at Amazon - they are, after all, notorious for driving employees hard - but my understanding is that poor performance over a year or so is usually about the point at which firing begins to be discussed at large companies.

And the problem wasn't that he didn't want to perform or was intrinsically a bad employee; the problem was that he literally couldn't due to circumstance. It's not generous to say "well, find a way to work through your wife's brain cancer and we'll keep you on."

Many things wrong with your comment, starting with the fact that firing beings to be discussed only after a year. It actually begins to be discussed immediately after the employee is assessed to be an underperformer. It's only after a year of bad written performance reviews that they can actually start to do something about it, such as put the employee on a "PIP" or fire the employee.

What were the other things?

At the large company I was at firing wouldn’t be a conversation until at least one review cycle of poor performance (every 6mo), more likely after two. The PIP started at the same time as the firing conversation; before that was time given for the employee and manager to try to figure it out themselves. (Which maybe is what you mean by “is assessed to be an underperformer,” but then doesn’t disagree with the comment you’re replying to, really.)

What's the alternative though? Let the employee continue to underperform indefinitely? I feel the same way here. I have a lot of empathy for the author, what he went through sounds like hell. But I'm not sure what Amazon was supposed to do here.

This feels like a failing of the US health care system and social safety net more than anything else. Specifically in this case having to have a job (when you're least able to keep a job) to continue having medical insurance.

> How many years should a company wait for an underperforming employee to perform?

Perhaps wait until after their spouse has died and see if they recover? Even the idea of an "underperforming employee" is specious at best.

This is why I love Italy and France, it is night impossible to fire someone for things like this from tech companies. Of course, they also don't have to worry about going bankrupt due to medical issues. They understand there is more to work than meeting the numbers. It is something you spend 2/3rds of your life doing, and other countries honor that.

[Oh, and also COBRA can cost $3000-$5000/month for shit coverage. Once you run out of money, they come for your stocks, retirement, and house. Source: I incurred over $100k of hospital debt AFTER INSURANCE from an assault that left my arm paralyzed. Why? If the hospital charges more than 125% medicare costs for the procedure, my $700/month Gold Plan didn't cover it. I was let go due to 6 months of absence from work, and then while unemployed and needing physical therapy, the hospital sent a request for tax statements and they began the process of a lien against my property. A lawsuit ultimately saved me, but if I hadn't been a victim, they would have taken everything. Fucking american healthcare is a joke.]

I’ve gotten a couple Cobra offers in the past few years after leaving jobs, both of them with very solid to great health insurance, and haven’t seen a number higher than $1k/month (101% or whatever of the employer cost). What sort of insurance do you have to have to ask for $3-5K/month? That would be 36-60K a year! I’ve never seen a company paying close to that in benefits. And my current employer has a “cost to employer” under $1k/month for insurance.

Have I just gotten lucky with companies with good negotiated deals? (The open exchange plans generally have looked terrible compared to any group plan I’ve had in the last 10 years.)

I've not paid any more than 1k either.

Is this for just yourself, or for you and dependents? I went on a leave a few years ago, and COBRA was $700/mo just for myself (and I'm sure premiums have gone up since then). I could easily imagine that being $3k/mo for a family of four. Maybe $3k-$5k/mo is high, maybe it's normal, maybe my company has a good deal on insurance. Who knows; the entire system is disgustingly opaque.

This is simplistic. The situation in France and Italy can be horrible in many other ways.

There are choices and trade offs. But don’t think that those regulations in France or Italy are rosy in every way, and come at no cost.

I don't even think you can get a Cobra plan for that much money...was this for your whole family? You must have been on the top tier program at your company...

I came away with similar sentiments. I've absolutely no issue with anybody criticising their employment practices in their warehouses or delivery arms - especially the use of contracting companies to isolate themselves from the questionable practices that seem required to get the job done.

However, if they're paying you $300k to do a job, it strikes me as fair that if you cease to do that job you get terminated. Also that's enough money for you to have put in place your own safety net if one wasn't provided by your employer in your benefits.

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.

A 'normal' company would understand that while a persons significant other is dying of a cancer, their work output may suffer as a result.

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.

You might work part-time and so balance work/income and care.

Employment != Sole proprietorship. Employer != Client.

> 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 with major life events.

It saddens me that some of us are so driven by self-contempt that don't realize they are far more than mindless organisms in a big Borg collective, ready and willing to be discarded whenever their productivity shows a drop.

> 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 with major life events.

No country has this kind of benefits for plumbers who are mostly independent.

A plumber will presumably understand the nature of independent contracting.

A salaried plumber employed by a larger plumbing company would reasonably expect employee benefits.

> No country has this kind of benefits for plumbers who are mostly independent.

How about Amazon SDEs?

In Luxembourg, Self-employed can benefit from a Parental leave: https://guichet.public.lu/en/entreprises/ressources-humaines... Everybody pays 24% to the social security and receives benefits when needed.

This wasn't a couple of weeks though. From the timelines in the story it was more than a year. Would you expect to keep getting paid on paternity leave for 2 years?

> Would you expect to keep getting paid on paternity leave for 2 years?

First of all, the article does not talk about leaving for 2 years. I feel you are intentionally trying to put a strawman to avoif debating the real problem.

Secondly, the article mentions performance. According to the article, the person in question was pressured into improving performance or get the axe, in a period where his manager knew very well that his wife was dying. The manager even proposed he was placed in a performance evaluating program renowned to be a compulsive exit door whose goal is to help HR justify their decision to terminate contracts.

And lastly, when my parental leave went into effect I got 16 weeks paid time off. That's loosely half a year. I'm sure this affects performance at the eyes of Amazon. Should that mean that Amazon would be entitled to fire my ass just because I had a child?

I don’t think it’s a straw man, time matters. He joined mid - end 2018 and was fired end of 2020. We don’t know when the issues started, but it very well could’ve been close to 2 years.

My point is the amount of time matters. I don’t think anyone expects a company to keep paying an underperforming employee forever even if there is a good reason. Netflix has a full year paid parental leave policy. That doesn’t mean you can just keep having a child every year and never work.

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...

Are you working as a contractor or employee?

This analogy would work if engineers were paid by some metric like milestone completion. The vast majority are not, but instead paid yearly. And if you want to be a company people want to actually work at, you think of employees as investments so it's some scope even beyond yearly. A few months even of suffering performance is nothing in the grand scheme of things to a company Amazon's size. This is just cruelty for cruelty's sake.

But we don't know how much. What if they made one small bug fix in a week? What if they literally did zero work?

The issue here may have been that the manager had no baseline of 'good performance' that they could expect this individual to 'return to'.

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.

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.

>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?

> 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 :).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> corporations would be happy to have the government take over those functions.

Is this really true? I would think so, too, but if it were, wouldn't we see a flood of companies in the US lobbying Congress to create a government-backed healthcare option, or even single-payer? To the point where it would have been done decades ago, right-wing political ideology be damned?

The cynical part of me wonders if companies like the current situation, since that gives companies more power over their employees.

It was the government themselves that facilitated this situation by freezing wages during WWII. Companies couldn’t compete on salary anymore so they found another lever to pull.

I don’t think companies like or dislike the situation, it’s just the status quo and thus hard to change a trajectory that has so much momentum.

A thousand times this. Expecting companies to be the source of resources that smooth over personal problems actually ends up disempowering workers, who then have to conform to companies' mold in order to receive the benefits. Imagine a similar family situation only the employee was about to get fired for other reasons, and now their health "insurance" has disappeared / skyrocketed as well. As it is, it sounds like OP really needed more routine time off than what Amazon allowed.

Rather than relying on companies as reservoirs of wealth that should be taking care of employees (eg this, healthcare, parental leave, etc), we need to move that wealth outside of corporate control - through a combination of higher compensation, better managing of personal finances, entrenched industry reform, catchall social safety net, etc.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

A 'normal' company would give normal salary not these outsized Software salaries.

I do not know what a normal business is, but this is a luxury that a business with large margins and redundancies might have. A 7 eleven franchisee is not going to be able to afford that type of policy.

I think if we're trying create a sane and decent society, we're barking up the wrong tree by attaching basic human compassion to employment, which is a bizarre choice that I'm guessing can be traced back to ideological polarization in the Cold War. The country wouldn't tolerate a completely pitiless dog-eat-dog system, but private enterprise was afraid of being exterminated if communism got a foothold in society, and they agreed to take on the responsibility of funding and administering the welfare state for everybody who was employed, so the welfare state for everybody else could be minimized and stigmatized. That's the just-so story in my head, anyway.

As a result, we're in this absurd situation where the only way to do the right and decent thing for a poor person suffering a brutal personal tragedy is for them to get paid $300k per year to do an incredibly rare-air information economy job that they aren't actually doing.

I agree, Amazon has a responsibility to this person because that's the system we've built. Amazon is reaping the benefits of the system and shouldn't be allowed to dodge the responsibilities. But my god, what an absurd system we've built.

I think the issue is the time factor.

I think everyone agrees that if an employee is struggling for a short time then there should be some understanding, sympathy and accommodation. But I don't think anyone would argue that companies should do that forever.

The question is how long is reasonable. In this case it looks like it was almost 2 years (mid - end 2018 to Aug 2020). Granted performance issues probably didn't come up right away but from the article it sounded like it came up pretty soon after joining. 2 years is a long time.

Is letting a struggling employee underperform for a while seriously not an option? At the very least, they could have not made this man's last few years with his sick wife that much more difficult because they require him to be functioning at top performance all of the time.

It really depends on how much they are underperforming. Are they late to a few meetings or not showing up for weeks without making arrangements?

He did give the hiring team a big heads up that he rather not take the job than join Amazon. However the big issue is that Amazon's HR could have done so many things differently:

- work with him to get on short term or long term disability - work with him to figure out a way to take the time off that he needed combined with getting back on track - don't judge him on metrics he has no control over

Its a perfect combination of not giving a shit. I understand it costs them money, but Amazon has the money.

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