The facts:
- you resisted and refused to do many things asked of you by management, OK, but you can't expect that to go over well - you asked to leave instead of dealing with a purely work dispute - you mentioned your mental health and killing someone in the same day - you returned to work and publicly blamed your manager for something incredibly horrific (the death of your child) that they likely didn't even cause (the link between stress and miscarriage is - at best - tenuous [1])
I'm sure you're not a bad person or anything along those lines, I just want to emphasize how a change in approach could likely improve your life. I was curious how you've handled other situations, and I saw in your comment history that you've been fired multiple times. I'd really recommend looking inward and not blaming others for everything.
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-...
I agree that I cannot directly prove the causation. Both my wife and myself feel this is the cause and I think it is reasonable.
There are clear reasons for why people do as they do, and blaming oneself is not the proper solution. My general belief is that care must be taken to understand how to interact with people in a way that they understand, since accurate communication is not an easy task.
You explicitly admitted mental health issues to your boss and threatened to kill someone at work. Regardless of context, just think about the implications of that a few times over in your head. Your manager's only fault in this was taking an entire 4 hours to get security involved.
Miscarriages happen, even in healthy circumstances. It just does. Pregnancy is a much more precarious process than popular culture makes it out to be, where women just sit around demanding ice chips and pickles at odd hours for nine months. There are still a lot of fatal conditions that can affect mother and/or child at any point in the process, even after birth.
The way I coped was by telling myself that if all it took was enough stress while still in the comforts of the womb, our child wasn't ready to survive the rigors of life outside of it. If not my boss, it would have been a random pathogen, allergen or schoolyard bully just the same.
It is similar to saying "hey I'd like to have sex with that hot actor". Saying that does not mean you will go rape the actor. It is just a feeling. Feelings don't equate to action.
I agree action had to be taken; I have no problem with them reacting. My problem is that I had to go to that level to be paid attention to. My stress was absurdly high before this happened, and I communicated it was repeatedly and received no help. When I finally said "I can't take it" I was ignored.
I agree it could have potentially happened without the stress. Despite that the stress definitely triggered whatever the cause was immediately. That was very clear. The doctors did though claim there were zero problems 2 days previous. Usually miscarriage does not occur past the first trimester when all other signs are good.
This is part of the problem.
"I feel like I want to kill John" is absolutely, utterly, undeniably a threat. Management knowing/not knowing your relationship with John is irrelevant. Your claim is that "because I didn't say, 'with a gun, at lunch time' it's not a threat" isn't particularly proof to your point.
> It is similar to saying "hey I'd like to have sex with that hot actor". Saying that does not mean you will go rape the actor. It is just a feeling. Feelings don't equate to action.
Is not particularly equivalent. You changed the meaning from consent to non-consent in defending it - "have sex with" became "rape". If you had said "Hey, I feel like I want to rape that actor", it is not unrealistic to think that, should you have access to that person, that rape is out of the question. Just like you didn't say "Hey, I feel like I want to talk to John" (consensual) versus "I feel like I want to kill John".
I think your repeated inability to understand this is perhaps at the root, or a significant part, of the issue, and I say this sincerely. The lack of empathy you show to that situation, 'how ridiculous is it? they should have known I didn't feel like killing him', is troubling.
I talked to several of them about it afterwards. I asked if they felt that I was being threatening at all. All of them said they understood what I was going through, that it was clear I was extremely stressed and was flipping out. Each of the people I asked said they did not believe I had any intent to kill my coworker, or even that I said it as any sort of threat. In context it was heard as me simply losing control after saying I couldn't handle it and had to leave immediately.
Note that this is the only time in my career I ever actually asked to leave because I couldn't handle a situation. I only even asked because I was very worried I would be fired if I walked out on my own. I have walked out when necessary at others jobs and there was no issue, but that is not the way Amazon is. At least it was not that way on my team.
Typically if an argument at work appears, I would just continue hashing it out till its done and go back to work. This situation was unusual.
Do you think it possible that any of them may not have told you that they felt threatened, imminently or otherwise, even if they had?
Do you think it reasonable for management to take issue with such a thing?
In the opposite situation, what do you would think might happen to management, or the employer, _had_ you later assaulted that person?
Asking (telling) you to leave until the situation changes is the "safest" (even if it turns out to be un-necessary) approach.
I say this not to wish you ill. You seem like a sincere, passionate person. If anything, it seems that your biggest challenge might be processing other people's perceptions of situations. It's an important, though not always easy, skill to develop. I myself have had challenges with processing social cues, or determining what is appropriate or not.
Yes, I considered that someone in the group did feel very threatened and either didn't want to speak to me about it, or that one of the people I did speak to was scared to admit it. It's possible, but the people I spoke with seemed very genuine. If people took issue I believe it was a logical issue not a "I feel threatened" problem.
If management is going to have a cow about this, they really should step in a lot sooner and not have allowed it to get to this point. The whole problem is that management doesn't care enough to setup an environment where stuff like this can't happen.
I said this to HR and security, and I will repeat it: If I wanted to hurt someone as everyone is implying, I wouldn't have said anything about it and would have just done so. It's not logical. I was well aware people would flip out when I said it, and I wanted something to be done to resolve the situation. My statement was more a cry for help than anything.
If anyone actually legitimately thought there was any actual concern I would hurt the person, they shouldn't have allowed me back into the building at all for a long period. I was allowed back in a week later and easily had the access to hurt the person had I intended in any way to do so. I had and still have no such intent. I consider the person to be my friend.
Time does not remove the pain I feel. I will continue to feel it. My wish is for large companies to behave better and not force situations on employees that cause things like this to happen. Especially not to software engineers just trying to do our job.
I agree that the company and everyone involved is just trying to resolve the situation and follow policy. That is not enough. People need to have humanity and compassion. At no point did anyone apologize for the pain I went through. At no point did I receive a personal letter from Jeff Bezos that he was sad it happened. I don't think Jeff cares at all. I don't think the company cares.
Perhaps it is all my fault. I don't think so. I'm no dummy. A lot of things indicate the situation could have been avoided had many people involved acted differently. There is blame on all sides. I can own up to not being perfect. I made mistakes. I was terribly upset. I've grown from it. It still hurts though.
I don't think my problem is an inability to see other perspectives. I can readily see them and explain them. The problem is that with tons of people around no one ever actually tried to actually resolve any of the tension. I know it is yucky to get involved in tense situations, but just letting them grow beyond control is bad and hurts people.
Your boss handled this horrifically. And had many many opportunities to defuse and de-escalate before it got to the state it did.
And that is entirely his fault, not yours.
That's why I suggested you think about the implications a few times-- it wasn't the only thing you said in that context. Some random actor isn't within reach of your impulsivity, so there is less of a perceived threat.
The equivalent of what you said was "I am having trouble controlling my impulses. Hey I'd like to have sex with [female coworker]." Still not only inappropriate for work, but it changes the tune to one that might have come from the mouth of John Hinckley, Jr.
> I agree it could have potentially happened without the stress. Despite that the stress definitely triggered whatever the cause was immediately. That was very clear. The doctors did though claim there were zero problems 2 days previous. Usually miscarriage does not occur past the first trimester when all other signs are good.
I don't disagree that the stress was the catalyst, but don't read so much into the doctors' status reports. They're always going to be tempered because they don't want to be stressors themselves. You're latching on to that to continue blaming your boss.
Everything could have progressed fine until birth, where physical complications happen, tears occur, sepsis sets in and you lose wife and/or child. Or one/both contracts MRSA after a c-section. Or eclampsia. Or pneumonia. Or goes anaphylactic from dairy in the formula. I've witnessed them all. Thankfully everyone recovered, but it was still harrowing.
The risks of pregnancy are always downplayed.
I've done this too. However, you have to be prepared to walk or be prepared to buckle down and do the work. At the end of the day, they are paying you to do what they want you to do.
> I said "I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon]."
Sure, maybe you said it in a moment of passion, but there is no way in hell they can just let that slide.
> During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened.
Also, no chance in hell that a company is going to continue letting you do this, and in many cases you would be fired on the spot.
This is 100% on you, and sure, due to stress, but your story showed that Amazon was actually a lot more forgiving than many companies would be.
I agree that they cannot let such a statement slide, and that is why I said it, because nothing else I said in the week before this was acted on. I was ignored in every other plea for some sort of intervention. My manager could, though, have simply asked me if I meant that and I would have explained that, no, I was just upset. We could have walked over to the person I was even referring to and worked it out immediately on the spot. I told him about when I came back to work and he was sad and had no hard feelings towards me.
I agree no company would allow it. They would look for a legal way to get rid of anyone saying such things. I told them as much. That said, listing that as the reason for termination is not legal. I did do my job in a professional sense. Freely sharing what I believe to people who listen is free speech. You cannot legally be fired for your opinions that do not affect your work; at least not as the listed reason.
I could have simply been terminated with no cause listed. That they did not due that is great; but it was not out of any caring for me. That is simply the way the company works; which I agree is a good thing.
The worst part is that my story is not unique. The level of stress and resulting poor mental health is, in my opinion, very high there. I don't think they are doing what is necessary to improve that. ( despite trying )
I'm generally on your side here, but that statement is absolute bullshit. Your employer also has the right of free association, and can choose to no longer associate with someone who states they wish they could commit violent acts against their coworkers, regardless of how serious those statements are.
That is why most states are "at-will", meaning that they don't need to list any reason. I am not saying that they could not fire me; they certainly could have. They simply cannot list the reason officially as "because you told people about this event that happened and gave your opinion on it".
If they said "we believe the employee is violent and threatening" that would be a valid reason. I am not. I may get upset and stressed but I have never laid a hand on anyone in my life. There is no evidence to support the claim that I am violent, because it isn't true.
There are also more complex things going on here than just whether or not I can be fired and they can "get away with it". The real issue is that they don't want anyone to know what happened because it makes them look bad.
For that, it actually doesn't matter if I am a raving lunatic or not. The simple fact is they want to cover up the whole situation and make it go away. That is the worst part of all of it.
Your employer is not obligated to enable or allow you to be spending your work day complaining about them instead of working under the guise of "free speech".
That is something that has been true at nearly every company I have worked at. Amazon is not different in that regard, at least not on the teams I was involved with there.
There are a lot of social events at Amazon. I did not spend my work time approaching random people at their desks to mouth off to them. That would be weird and stupid. I simply shared it with people during social conversations at social events where we are encouraged to interact with others.
During social events, I am quite sure that free speech covers what I say.
And in these cases, when challenged, they have been found to have the right to do so.
Free speech rights regard the ability of the government to restrict your speech, not your employer.
Free speech rights also do not come with "freedom from consequences of such speech".
It's not always worth openly pushing back on job requests. It sounds like you are honest to the point of self-sabotage.
I wish you and your wife well.
At Amazon it is encouraged to strive for the highest quality despite the tension created. I actually object to their suggested methods in that regard. I think it is better to have social cohesion both within and between teams, but that is not how you are trained at Amazon to deal with things.
I was encouraged to push back on things that I did not feel productive. It wasn't done out of a desire to rebel, but to do as was desired of me. My personal preference is to just do the best I can to keep stress down and accept things for the sake of happiness of everyone rather than make a big deal of anything.
We've had a tasks over the years that were lame/boring/whatever. My response to my developers is always the same, "Somebody has to do it. That somebody could be 'Jenkins'. I give you every Friday afternoon for L&D. Hint hint."
Also, actively refusing to do work that needs done isn't the best approach. Voice your opinion, then do the work. Repeat until your manager gets the hint. If he doesn't, find another job (because the manager isn't doing his job, and nobody should spend their career working for somebody not doing their job).
Realize that we have one very biased viewpoint with some very broad claims that cannot be verified.
He "was told to do many things that [he thinks] was not a valuable use of [his] time". Not his call. He doesn't get to allocate his time to parts of the project he feels "deserves" his attention. In some regards, it feels a little arrogant.
And he pushes back on them. He _creates_ the very stress he is decrying here. His capacity to deal seems to be quite low.
And then he asked for a day, blew up, then got two weeks. He apparently was told he was going to be on leave for two weeks, but assumed he was being fired. And since, in his mind, he's always right, that's the mindset he went home with.
He blames his wife's miscarriage on his manager. Because "she was so stressed" over it. Let's ignore how this guy seems to turn everything into a life or death struggle. Stressing himself out so much at work that he gets a 2 week furlough, the stresses out so much during the furlough, that the shorten it to a week.
And despite claiming earlier that being fired at that moment would leave him homeless in the street, a mere 4 months later, he acquired enough capital that a $30k severance was enough of an addition so he could work his startup for a year. 4 months. From homeless to having a year's worth of backup.
And apparently was able to find a job. Which he probably could have done 16 months ago as well.
When someone's life is crisis after crisis and nothing ever seems to be their fault, you really have to wonder just how biased their views are.
I mean, he's down to essentially blaming not wanting to follow Amazon's style guidelines on causing his wife to miscarry. How about this? Don't want your code held up on styling complaints? Follow the fucking guidelines. Regardless if you like them or not. Those guidelines are for company-wide consistency, not anyone's personal preference. And if those guidelines are what he was complaining about, it's no wonder he's had 8 jobs in 17 years. He's so goddamn convinced that only he knows the one true color of the bike shed, that anyone who disagrees must be wrong.
And it doesn't matter just how good that person is at other things. If the minute you ask something of them that they disagree with, they shut down, you just can't work like that. Discussion is fine. Disagreement, to a degree, is fine. But when a decision is made, it needs to be executed.
Regardless, if an employee comes to me so stressed out they can’t work, and asks to take an afternoon, I’m sending them home. I might very well start the PPI process as they’re driving home, if I thought the situation was unrecoverable.
If one of your team members is under obvious stress - and is asking to leave for the day - fucking let them leave for the day.
If you don't do that - if you continue to poke at someone who's obviously having a hard time - then yes, you're a dill-hole.
I think there should be some concern for a person's mental health. And sometimes I think people should be allowed to take a day off just because they can't mentally cope at work.
I don't think that every claim of such is valid. If someone comes up to me and says the government radio signals are causing his brain to fill up with wrongthink, he may be under "obvious stress", but it's a problem solely on his end. He doesn't need a mental health day, he needs a psychologist.
And that's an extreme example.
I mean, look at the guy, he took a two week furlough and found a way to make that stress him out. Everything stresses him out. You can't not stress him out.
I requested style guidelines to be put in place and would be happy to follow them. Amazon does not have style guidelines for the code in place. It was and is legacy code with no documented styling. The style I used was a modern proper one. The style complaints were arbitrary and came from a junior engineer. They were not based on mature reasoning or proper practice.
I readily agree that I could have just said "I don't care" and lowered my stress level significantly. The stress was partially my own fault. I don't disagree with this. This is a big reason why I started my own company rather than immediately returning to another "corporate job". I needed to recover such that I can do my job without anything remotely like this happening.
Based on my past experiences, if you are forced to stay home at all, you are very likely getting fired. The reason I wasn't is less to do with them telling the truth, and more to do with the fact that the projects I was working on had high dollar value for them and they wanted me to keep working.
I started my company with around $35k on hand. I did not have any more money than that. My co-founder also contributed some of his money as well to cover expenses during the year. We lived frugally. There is no hidden saved up money here that I had to make it work. I am still broke to this moment because of this.
I have a lot of experience in the industry; it is not significantly hard to find a place that will hire me. Finding a job that is a good fit is more difficult.
Whatever guidelines I am presented with I follow.
It might serve you to consider that you don't have sufficient information to cast the sort of judgements you are on me.
You control the entire story here. We only have the information you have provided in this post and only your post history to judge your character.
But I prefer to separate the facts of the matter from the opinions. You said the style complaints were arbitrary. Style is arbitrary. Arguing for "mature reasoning" or "proper practice" is subjective. As long as there isn't anything really out there, most styles are fairly reasonable.
But they let you go anyway afterwards. You're so convinced of your necessity, but ignore the very real fact that they existed before you were hired and continue to exist after you get fired.
I didn't want to make the assumption that that $30k was effectively your only money. But still, they would have offered you a severance 4 months ago had they planned on letting you go as well. What else changed in those 4 months?
Do you find it odd that for some reason you cannot fit in any job you take? I find it hard to believe that all 8 companies you've worked for have been that bad.
It might serve you to consider that we are hardly the best judge of our own character. We have a great ability to rationalize everything we do and no one thinks they are the villain. Remove your ego from your story and actually look at it objectively. Ignore how you felt, see what you've done. Would you hire that guy?
As a result of that, he was unable, I believe, to see the extreme stress I was under despite me telling him I was in the week leading up to what happened.
His huge mistake was to ignore my plea to take the day off to feel better and be able to handle the situation. Had he done so I believe everything that happened could have been avoided.
I do believe the manager is at fault and caused the situation by this, but I don't think it makes him a terrible person or anything. I respect him as trying to do his job.
Boring is not so much what was stressing me; the stress was due to silly things holding up the approval of code that saves the company tens of thousands of dollars per week. I had production ready code that was being delayed by styling complaints. ( white space on blank lines )
Code review that improves code I am all for. Code review that holds up valuable fixes for weeks for silly reasons is not good and makes me feel upset.
I did continue to do the work, and voice my complaints, it just eventually got to the point I couldn't handle the stress, so I talked to my manager to ask how to move forward. He did nothing to really relieve my stress and just ordered me to do it anyway ( which I did; even under all the stress )
After reading your account, I agree completely. I spent nearly 6 years at Amazon, and I know how it can get.
> I did continue to do the work, and voice my complaints, it just eventually got to the point I couldn't handle the stress, so I talked to my manager to ask how to move forward. He did nothing to really relieve my stress and just ordered me to do it anyway ( which I did; even under all the stress )
This comment isn't aimed at you, but at anyone who may find themselves in similar circumstances: leave work immediately for the day. What would happen if you came down with food poisoning or started coughing uncontrollably? You'd leave without a second thought. Do so in this circumstance - send the "I'm not feeling well, heading home" email and get the fuck out of the situation that is causing the uncontrollable stress. Get some perspective and address the situation the next day.
While there, I was told to do many things that I think are not a valuable use of my time. I pushed back on many, and attempted to keep productive. It was very frustrating and stressful.
Eventually the stress came to a head and I vehemently told my boss that I thought the task I was being told to do was idiotic. I requested to go home for the day sick for mental health reasons, as I was unable to cope with the stress that moment.
My boss refused to let me leave for the day and continued arguing with me. The discussion then obviously went too far and I said "I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon]." I meant it only as an expression of the intensity of how much I was upset. The friend I mention knows this also and would confirm this if asked. I was just freaked out and stressed beyond my capacity to deal.
My boss forced me to go back to work after this exchange. After 4 hours he then came and got me and took me to a meeting with HR and security. They accused me of threatening to kill my coworker ( which is a horrible misunderstanding ) I explained clearly that I meant no such thing, and pointed out that I asked to and needed to leave for mental health, and they didn't care.
They said I have to go home at that point and would be forbidden from returning to work for 2 weeks. This upset me further. I assumed I would never be returning and was being fired. I pleaded with them to just give me the day off as requested and they refused. They forced me to stay home for a week.
I went home and told my wife what happened. She had just passed the first trimester of her pregnancy. She saw the doctor about the pregnancy 2 days previous and the baby was perfectly healthy and there were no problems.
After learning what happened to me at work, she was so stressed over it that she started bleeding later that day. If I was fired at that moment I would lose my house and be homeless in Seattle; I didn't have the funds to endure that.
She had a miscarriage 2 days later as a result of the stress and worrying. She nearly bled to death. My child died because of Amazon's reckless disregard for mental health.
Amazon did allow me to return to work after a week. I went back to my job and had to continue working for the same manager responsible for my child dying for another 4 months.
During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened.
Eventually HR approached me and told me I could not keep telling people and they would fire me if I do.
They gave me the following four choices: 1. Quit of my own accord and tell whomever I want ( no severance ) 2. Continue talking about it at work and get fired 3. Stop talking about it and retain my job ( my performance was high and I had recent great reviews; they had no other issue with me ) 4. Accept a severance of $30,000 and leave the company peaceably ( layoff )
I chose option 4 and started my own startup ( carbonstate.com ) I only had enough funds to run my startup for a year, and have not made any money on my product. I have since had to rejoin the industry to pay bills.