Totally, nail on the head. And folks from my company don’t really frequent HN (although I wish I worked for such a company).
I’ve learned a great deal about how not to run a business, treating employees right, delegating tasks/responsibilities, designing for automation, etc. I do hope when I get my green card to start my own startup (lifelong goal of mine) and try to set an example of everything I see wrong with our industry.
I should be clear, I sympathize with the situation and hope that ameen's employer is not cartoonishly evil, and instead would maybe even realize they have improvements to make. But just thinking about possible outcomes of someone venting on the internet, firing doesn't seem like one that makes any sense.
If they are such a central team member to an ecommerce operation, likely the company feels equally stuck with them (e.g. how many sales would be lost if the site went down while looking for a replacement, and would the company even survive that?).