Six Months On (Episode 22) —On Work and Worky Things
Exactly 5 months before I was admitted to the ICU at Baptist I took a leap of faith and left a job that I had enjoyed for 9 years to join a company that i had never heard of. It had been a good run at the EAST Initiative but after years of working to help the company advance its mission it was time to move on and leave things in the hands of others who will likely take it further than I could. An opportunity had come up that was too good for me to pass up at a small but fast growing company in downtown Little Rock called First Orion. I had pushed my skill set into the cloud computing world and in particular Amazon Web Services (AWS). When I happened upon a LinkedIn email that mentioned a rare AWS position in this area, I knew it was worth exploring. A few weeks later I said farewell to my friends at EAST and showed up for my first day as AWS Engineer with First Orion.
While the company has been around for a few years and was founded by a couple of people who had long-term success with other companies, the mindset of First Orion is that of a startup. It is fast-paced but fun atmosphere with some of the smartest people I have ever met. It is startlingly transparent with its employees about what’s going on both from a financial and a product standpoint. The culture is open and diverse with people from all over the world. I work side by side with people from Denmark, Ukraine, China, South America, Canada, England and Kentucky just to name a few. The beautiful mix of accents and dialects that I hear is a symphony that I could (and do) enjoy everyday.
To be honest it was a bit of a culture shock for me at the beginning in terms of the pace and scale of the work being done. Where I had a handful of servers to work with in previous jobs, here I had over 200 and that number was growing everyday. The good news is that this is exactly what I wanted to do. I was ensconced in the velvety fabric of my dream job so it wasn’t a matter of having to do more. I was getting to do more of what I wanted to do.
After Thanksgiving I went back to the AWS conference in Las Vegas afterwhich Susan and I took our drive into the desert that I previously wrote about. The fact that the company sent me to the conference when I hadn’t even been on the job for six months spoke volumes about how they support their employees. Little did any of us know that their employee support was about to be put through the ringer.
So on Friday, December 16 when I let my boss know that I needed to take the day off because I wasn’t feeling well I was told simply to take care of myself. When I texted him on the 18th that I was going in to the ICU for a couple of days the question that came back was not about when I would be back in the office or be able to work but what hospital I was being admitted to. This is a small thing but it was an indication of what was to come for the next several weeks.
When I woke up in early January and found out that I had been out for over 2 weeks I was concerned about what it meant for me to miss all that time from work. I felt like I had hit my stride in the weeks before all this but when a company moves as quickly as First Orion does, a lot can be missed when you are off the planet for a couple weeks.
When I asked Susan if she had heard from anyone at work she said, “Oh, yes! They’ve been amazing!” She said she had been in regular contact with my boss and he had been by to visit a couple of times. She had also been in touch our recruiter who had helped me get the job had been texting or coming by almost everyday to check on, not just me, but her and the girls as well. One day when Susan wasn’t feeling well, she showed with cold medicine in hand.
The company had sent gift cards for meals and get well cards for me. And one night our Executive Vice President showed up at our house with 2 big pans of food that his wife made. This company (and many others) were not going to let my family starve during this this ordeal.
But of all the kindness and support the company showed, what meant the most was that they made sure to tell Susan (and me when I was conscious) that we didn’t need to worry about anything as far as my job was concerned. All we needed to focus on was me getting better. Now that may be the expected response from any decent company but in the situation we were in, hearing the words meant the world to us.
The day I woke up my boss came by to visit. I don’t remember much about the conversation and with the things i was experiencing I was afraid to ask. I can only assume that Susan had pre-warned him about some of the rambling that I was doing. I have since asked him about it and he assured me that I was fine and actually more lucid than he thought I would be. When he came back a few days later I recall telling him about an idea that I dreamed about for a shared workspace business for tech people with disabilities where the geniuses could work on their brilliant ideas while a qualified assistant would do the physical acts of typing, drawing, speaking or whatever was needed.
About a week after I woke up Susan got a message that Libbi, our HR director wanted to come by for a visit. Nothing to worry about but there were a couple of things to go over. This caused a bit of concern for Susan (and me). Not about what Libbi had to say but about what my mental state would be when she was there since lucidity was a fleeting thing for me. While this steadily improved day by day, there was still no telling what I would say next. Libbi had started with First Orion about a month before all this began and we were afraid that I might say something that would cause her to question all hiring decisions that were made before she joined the company. Susan even offered to meet with her alone and, though I fully understood her concerns, I felt certain I could keep it together long enough for this visit.
The morning of her visit we made sure that I was given good cleaning. Susan had brought the clippers from home to give my hair a trim. This turned out to look like something that was a cross between a crew cut and the mange. We got a proper T-shirt from home but with all of the leads and wires attached to me we couldn’t use it without poking holes in it.
Libbi arrived with a big bag full of magazines, books and activities as well as a card from my coworkers. It was a gift bag hand-picked for a geek like myself with a few selections that even a budding geek like Susan could get into. Just another small touch that made a big impression on me.
After a little bit of catching up and updates Libbi said there was a matter that she needed to discuss with us. She explained that while the company does provide unlimited vacation time, there is a limit to the number of sick days we have. Short-term disability would provide a portion of my salary after that but there was a problem. I opted out of short-term disability insurance back at the beginning of the enrollment period in December. I did so because I’ve always opted out of it. Why in the world would I ever need short-term disability? I’ve always been pretty healthy despite my weight issues. Wasn’t short-term disability for people who worked with heavy machinery and sharp knives? That’s an extra couple of dollars a month that I would never use so what’s the point?
One advantage that to all this happening over the holidays was there were a few more built-in company holidays than in any other time of year. Those days didn’t count against my allotted sick leave but even still the day was fast approaching that if I wasn’t working I wouldn’t get paid. These weren’t Libbi’s words but that was the reality of the situation. She said that options were still being looked at but wanted us to be aware of it. I managed to keep it together for the meeting and before she left she reiterated to us that I just needed to concentrate on getting better and to not worry about anything else right now. This was very comforting but the truth is it still gave us something to think about.
Susan and I have been very fortunate in lives together in many ways. While not much in the way of tragedy has happened, we’ve always managed to land on our feet when bumps in the road have come along. A couple of places where I have worked went out of business and we’ve had to change jobs for one reason or another over the years. We also know that not everyone is fortunate enough to manage through life’s normal bumps and curve balls and we are grateful for our ability to do so. We’ve also had pretty good health insurance throughout our careers and we know this is something not everyone has access to. (And those that do seem to be in danger of losing it everyday.) But as you can imagine, this little endeavor of mine that began back in December is quite an expensive one and, since we didn’t plan for it, would end up costing us more out of pocket than we originally planned to spend during this time of year. Unpaid leave was not a luxury we could afford.
But it wasn’t just a matter of getting paid. I had just joined the company a few months ago and was doing something I loved. I wanted to get back to doing that as soon as I could. The company had been so good to us and had come through in every way we could have imagined and some that we couldn’t imagine. I wanted to show them that their efforts during our time of need did not go unnoticed and I wanted to reward them by getting back to contributing as soon as I could. I don’t believe for a second the company would have just left us hanging but I didn’t want that to be a discussion they would have to have. A lot of companies do only what the law requires them to do for their employees and that is their legal right but more and more companies these days are choosing to view their employees as the valuable assets that they are. I had landed at a place that seems to continually look for new ways to make its employees happy and I think that should be rewarded.
We figured it up and based on what we had been told it appeared that i would be able to get through the hospital stay, begin rehab and begin to work from home (as long as the doctor cleared me) and just meet the cutoff date to keep getting paid. If all went according to plan with no setbacks then everything should be fine.
I think you know where this is going…
(Note: I’m happy to say that in the months that followed, First Orion started providing basic short-term disability insurance at no cost to the employees. While this didn’t impact my situation it’s just another example of how much this company values its employees and their families.)
