If I'm paying a person $200-$300K to build a house and his wife gets cancer; it doesn't entitle him to keep my money. He gives it back because he didn't do his job.
Same principle.
Same principle.
Also, you edited your comment in a way that was deceptive, and didn't say the reason for the edit -- but your comparison is still flawed. $300k to you is pennies to Amazon.
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 that bounds in my view.
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 having a good day and then a bad day.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I assume you're probably early enough in your career you never had to manage people. But when you eventually do, try to separate idealism from reality.
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!
These are not mutually exclusive things, much of the time, but sometimes exceptions have to be made.
> 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 having a good day and then a bad day.
This is a reasonable point, but it, again, does not address my fundamental point: Amazon as a company should have more ethical and empathetic policies. Amazon as a company should instruct managers to help their employees and be willing to back that help up with financial assistance.
Whether it's Jeff Bezos or this person's manager, you seem to want to keep this at an individual level of decision-making, but that's not the change I want to make.
As for myself, I'm not a manager because I don't want to be, and having to enforce policies I don't agree with is one of the reasons for that.
But I don't think it should be necessary and I don't concede that that's the right way for things to work.
I can't comprehend how you can even talk about money until you have helped that guy with all you have. Clearly, Amazon is well enough equipped to first provide support, then ask questions once a situation like that has been resolved.
The way this is being handled is just wrong. You wouldn't treat any of your friends or family members like that, so why do it to your employee?