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The most hilarious aspect of this story is it took nearly two months before anyone noticed he was gone.

From the sounds of things, it was roughly a month ("[he] was not in contact with us through most of August and into September.").

That's probably not super crazy for a reasonably senior writer working on "longish" form stuff. While a month is probably a long time, I wouldn't be surprised if a week or two usually passed without touching base. It might take a couple of those "week or two" cycles to notice someone hasn't checked in.

The article also says it wasn't unnoticed, and that they tried to reach him several times in that period.

Yes, it sounds to me like they noticed almost immediately, and just didn't figure out what was going on until a couple of months later because he didn't tell them what was going on.

Yeah. Also when your coworker stops responding or suddenly goes MIA, you don't automatically assume that they've picked up a new job.

Sometimes when an employee stops showing up and cuts contact, they are dealing with mental health issues and good employers see what accommodations can be made.

In this case, it turned out to be something else, but that's why I wouldn't have rushed to fire if I were in HR at the Verge.

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