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Comment by dwild | Hacker News Reader

> But what exactly did Amazon do here that was immoral or not ethical?

They made him "choose" between his wife and his works. Well they didn't actually made him choose, as the alternative was inconceivable, thus, they forced him to perform while his wife was in a death sentence.

That's the unethical part.

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No, they gave him options and good ones too. STD, LTD, and a LOA, and including a severance at the end was available to him. He did all the choosing and every step of the way appears to have chosen poorly or chose in favor of the $ over his own mental health needs.

Chose to work there, chose not to take advantage of a LOA, STD, or LTD, chose work over grief for his brother, chose to take a losing stance on his perceived value at the company.

I’m sympathetic to his family tragedy, that’s an awful thing to endure, but this is less “bad bosses” and more “ignorant or greedy worker” in my opinion.

So what should they have done? Paid him a $300k per year salary to do nothing?

They didn't have to pay it directly, but it is common for companies to have contingencies to pay employees 60% or more of their base salary "to do nothing: Amazon was already paying for, in part, long-term disability insurance, but the employee, manager, or - most surprisingly - HR were not in the headspace to even think of this, I assume because the default mode of is adversarial.

It’s the employee’s responsibility to engage STD and LTD. Everything in this article the author was complaining about was either his responsibility or due to poor choices he made.

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