Comment by KVFinn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KVFinn | Hacker News Reader

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>I'm not a Reddit user, but the vitriol seemed pretty commensurate with what motivated it, which among other things included the despicable (and possibly illegal) firing of an employee for having leukemia (more or less).

That employee got cancer in 2012. He got a salary for almost two years while too sick to work, of the total three years he was at the company. Four months of that salary undo Pao. Then he got an additional full year of health coverage when they finally couldn't wait any longer to fill his position. He was never well enough to even move to the Reddit officers, which was the plan when they hired him in 2012.

That's not just not despicable, it's laudable, and it's better than how you'd be treated at 99% of companies in the US. And somehow this became twisted by the furious mob into a story about a vicious CEO firing someone for having cancer?

(Legally in the US you are guaranteed three months of unpaid leave for getting sick. Although ironically in this case this employee didn't even qualify for that since he got sick before he was at the company for 12 months.)

That this became the battle-flag for everyone to pitchfork is appalling. Seriously appalling.

A few things:

> somehow this became twisted by the furious mob

There's no mob here. If anything, most people seem unfamiliar with this episode.

> Legally in the US you are guaranteed three months of unpaid leave for getting sick

Except where one qualifies for protection under the ADA [1].

> That's not just not despicable, it's laudable

There are two things here. That Reddit maintained the employee for nearly two years, as you say, is clearly laudable, though this decision predated Pao. My overall view of the situation, and likely this goes for others, is in how it was ultimately handled, where Pao said one thing to the employee then did another, more than once. I can see a situation where this could have been handled openly and candidly, with humanity, but that's not what happened.

Maybe in the end he would have relapsed again, and maybe his doctor would have determined that he was too sick to perform his duties, and maybe firing him for that actually would have been legal (without knowing his ADA status we can't know), but that's quite a few 'ifs'. Not knowing what would have happened, Pao could have addressed the uncertainly in an honest way, but instead she chose to lie to and then fire the employee. I'm not a one man mob, and I respect your difference of opinion, but that to me is despicable.

[1] http://www.cancer.org/treatment/findingandpayingfortreatment...

>There's no mob here. If anything, most people seem unfamiliar with this episode.

Top post on multiple reddits, various random threads upvoted to /all, brought up in this thread by multiple people as a reason the CEO was despicable.

>There are two things here. That Reddit maintained the employee for nearly two years, as you say, is clearly laudable, though this decision predated Pao.

While she was CEO he got 4 months of the almost two years of paid time while he was unable to work. Also under he he got an extra year of medical insurance.

>Maybe in the end he would have relapsed again, and maybe his doctor would have determined that he was too sick to perform his duties, and maybe firing him for that actually would have been legal (without knowing his ADA status we can't know), but that's quite a few 'ifs'.

He was supposed to move to the office in 2012. He was never well enough to do so. At the time he was finally let go, he still didn't have a move scheduled. He was still 2 to 3 months away from being able to to start the job. Note his woolly timelines, especially in his followup comments, where 5 months later he was still not ready for full time work.

Changed your mind is not lying, "Sorry, we actually need to someone to start this job immediately, we can't keep waiting."

All this is giving him the most charitable reading of his posts, a post he made at the height of rage at the CEO filled with obvious dog meat like: "Does anyone know of any Reddit alternatives?" "I don't know anything about why Victoria was fired, but he's some speculation as to why she was fired." Etc.

So yeah, I find it despicable that people find this despicable, that comments all across the internet are calling her 'human garbage' and whatnot for treating an employee better than 99% of other companies would have. It's absurd. The story should have been, "Wow, reddit treats employees amazingly!"

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