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This is something you learn the hard way about neoliberal meritocracy..."They only hire the best and you fight to get there, you're the best until you inevitably aren't at your best...and once you aren't at your best even for a moment of weakness, then you are not the best...and you never were". This is why everyone needs protection from a work culture that burns through people.

In my experience, when you bring up FMLA, then you're going to be fired.

Its a well-intentioned protection, but not enough legal teeth. Corporations have learned how to work around it.

This problem will continue to get worse until workers gain power in our society. Mass unionization or socialist revolution would solve the problem; both are very unlikely.

All that is left is violence; may a thousand Luigi's bloom.

The sad thing is what is expected now: the manager who made this decision will get fired, if we’re lucky. But their bosses who set the policy, incentives and company culture to do this will apologize profusely, initiate some corporate training and proceed to change nothing. And neither will any other company.

All over database software, that functions alright as is.

The state of things feels pretty depressing to me. It feels like accountability at the highest levels is vanishing, especially when I see people like Bezos, Zuck or Musk (or more local leaders outside of my online habits) pursue completely irrational things, with zero consequence. It’s not getting any better; it’s getting so bad even the impact the economy and quality-of-life is getting hard to ignore.

I had this happen to me at a company that is now an IBM subsidiary. I took FMLA leave to get mental health help to cope with the burnout, and about a week after I got back, they took me into an office for a "quick catch-up meeting" where they told me it wasn't working out and that I had to go. I'd worked my balls off, getting promoted directly from product support up to software engineering within a year, but apparently that didn't indicate anything positive to them.

Disgusting. Regrettable.

I’m sure this happens to thousands of people every year in America. It’s good that awareness is being spread about our dystopian hellscape

Hawkernews being unhinged capitalists as always:

aeternum: 18h

Sad.

And perhaps a controversial take but consider the counterfactual: Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave? Get a bad review or put on a PIP? It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.

0xbadc0de5: 3h

This is sad and tragic but ultimately I don't think Mongo bares any responsibility here. If her partner left her while she was having a prolonged mental health crisis, would her partner be to blame for her suicide? I would argue: no.

You're just an expendable cog to the money machine to techbros.

And Mongo is now on the eternal shit list. As far as I’m concerned this is not merely abuse, it is premeditated murder.

Heartbreaking. And revolting. All these companies nowadays bang on about mental health, and supporting diversity, all lip service, of course. But this is utterly despicable, I hope the company doesn't recover from this.

>Capitalism doesn't kill people

They fooled us.

At this point the AIs would be more humane managers anyway

Social murder

Man, I read this as the technology being blamed, vs. her being their employee. I hope her family gets justice for this, but companies seem to be immune from consequences, so we'll see...