I don't know legally how it works, but my gut says if this is found to be a wrongful termination under state/local/FMLA, then it also stands to reason that this could also be a wrongful death. From 1960, but it covers this line of thinking wrt suicide: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Thank you for finding this, really helpful. I checked PACER and didn't realize it was filed in state court instead.
The complaint is speaking and it is aggressively written and, to my non-lawyer mind, pretty well drafted. If I were Mongo, I would be trying aggressively to settle this and make it go away.
If I were the parents, I would be trying very hard to force any other outcome, preferably one where Mongo pays the biggest public relations price possible for what they've done, assuming the allegations are true.
The way Mongo answers the complaint will be really instructive in figuring out how they intend to play this, and in whether they think there is some explanation that will make this seem less dire.
If you’re doing a restructuring of the company, i.e. mass layoffs, you’re allowed to do it regardless. In some states FMLA/PFMLA a company is automatically presumed a retaliation firing if it’s done within 6 months and the onus is on the company to prove it wasn’t—-the mass layoff is the cover, and large companies know it.
However, the fact that they cancelled her health insurance a week before returning and demanded she returned on a certain date or she’d be terminated despite a demonstrated disability, that’s pretty whack and might be hard to defend as company-wide restructuring.
But on Sept. 13, 2024, she attempted suicide again with the same lethal drug “citing the shame she felt at being fired by MongoDB,” according to the lawsuit.
Surman apparently regretted the decision and called 911 herself — but died on the way to the hospital.
Mongo later backtracked on an offer to retrieve Annie’s life insurance policy for the family, who believe the company fired Annie right before a mass layoff to avoid paying her severance, according to the suit.
MongoDB's behaviour just seems more and more callous...
"""
When she arrived at the hospital and learned that Annie had died, Ms. Connolly
collapsed and screamed non-stop for hours. Hospital staff placed Ms. Connolly in a separate room
for observation, and the doctor who declared Annie dead had to speak to other family members
about what had occurred because Ms. Connolly could not bear to speak to him or to see Annie’s
body.
88. Mr. Surman was alone in the back of a taxi to the airport when he received the call
that Annie had died. He could hear his wife’s screams in the background while he was helpless to
comfort her. He sobbed through his redeye flight to join Ms. Connolly.
"""
Reading the complaint, I don't see any way in which the company is not responsible for this. The about turn in requiring her to come back in couple of weeks or else be terminated is just cruel. Now, I know what companies can be like, and especially if they're doing layoffs, things can get quite bonkers. But ultimately, the responsibility rests with the company: like it or not, an employer in America is responsible for their healthcare, which means you need to be careful when dealing with what happens when you suddenly end it.
From their site: 'Employee mental health and wellbeing is another core focus at MongoDB. It’s important for us to help break the stigma around mental health and provide our employees with the support they need, especially at work. We are dedicated to providing our employees with valuable tools to face all of life’s challenges and offer mental health programs that provide confidential assistance from qualified professionals.'
I worked at a smallish startup where on the wall behind reception in huge raised letters. The owner had installed "company values" like trust accountability, ect. It was referred to internally as the "wall of lies" rather thab reception or lobby. The owner was a total sociopath.
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.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
In civilized countries it is illegal to fire someone on sick leave, and I highly doubt you’d get a permit to fire someone who just got back from sick leave.
I've taken mental health leave (not due to a PIP) and my productivity before and after was significantly different. It was great for my employer that I took it. I'm quite sure I would've eventually ended up with a PIP if I hadn't taken it sooner myself, and the best remedy on a PIP would have been to take mental health leave. Not as a strategy as such, but literally because it would have been the best solution (and I think the only one).
Yes, exactly. Taking mental health leave should be seen as a positive step: an opportunity to overcome whatever difficulties you've been facing, leading to - amongst many other benefits - better performance at work.
Mental health problems are tricky; they tend to creep up on us gradually, and often some form of external trigger is needed in order to prompt us to seek help. So it shouldn't be at all surprising that an employee in receipt of a PIP might take mental health leave as part of a genuine effort to improve their situation.
gp's cynical "counterfactual" suggests that they view PIPs as being purely a sham, intended to always result in dismissal rather than improved performance. Now, that might occasionally be true - but we should be blaming the abusive employer (who is likely acting outside the law) in that situation, not the employee.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
It's not legal to fire an employee on a sick leave in our country. They have to come back to work and then you can fire them. The employer is not paying their wage during the sick leave anyway, they get money from the social and health insurances. So there is very little downside for the company to keeping the employee employed. And if they employee is somehow faking it, that's an issue to check for the insurance companies.
> It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
Maybe the companies should ask themselves very hard why this is happening.
Here's another controversial take: as long as healthcare is tied to employment, companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice. If they suck at their job, find them another one at the company -- there has to be something they can do in a company of 5k employees.
Sounds like the kind of thing a union or works counsil could help with: enforcing a fair policy. That and revisiting the concept of at-will employment.
Better way to look at it: why are people so afraid of losing their job, and how do we reasonably remove the fear of losing one? Denmark may provide some good guidance here, as they have a good balance between social welfare and protections and fostering a robust business environment
I suspect a major way for the U.S. would be the one mentioned in the article: make it so that losing your job doesn't mean losing your health insurance. That's a major additional stressor, particularly if someone loses their job because of an illness.
Of course, there's about a negative one thousand percent chance of something like that passing in the current political climate.
If neither option satisfies, we must go up the stack. There is something seriously wrong with a society that drives educated, productive adults to suicide.
The US is somewhere in the middle, right there with some European countries. It's hard to say what drives people over the edge. Surprisingly Uruguay is high up there but Uganda, Ghana and Colombia are low.
> An employer is prohibited from discriminating or retaliating against an employee or prospective employee for having exercised or attempted to exercise any FMLA right.
You can fire someone after they come back but you will need to show receipts. Your employer also doesn't pay you when you take that leave so it would be a strange way to game the system.
I know people who upon getting put into a PIP took a mental health leave as it took them over the PIP time horizon. The mileage you get from this will vary on organization —some won’t want the reputational hit, others won’t care though.
There will always be people who abuse the system, no matter what system you have.
The solution is not to burn down all systems and just wild west everything. No. The solution is to anticipate the fraud, and build it into your margins and planning. Recognize it will always happen. And, in fact, the optimal amount of fraud is never zero. Because preventing fraud, too, has a cost, and it grows exponentially.
>Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
Yes, at least for companies the size of MongoDB
Didn't need much ruminating to come to that answer, but I lack the sociopathic behaviors necessary to run a corporation in the American legal environment.
I feel sorry for this woman. Meta did this to me because they're discriminatory dicks, so I know how she felt. Fortunately, I have a tremendous amount of family support.
Companies are made of people. Companies only use people if the people who make up the companies are ok with it. Being a decisionmaker in a company doesn't give you carte blanche to behave like an amoral automaton.
So no, MongoDB are assholes for doing this. They could have had some humanity and prioritized human well-being over cost savings.
If companies operated as partnerships instead of limited liability companies, then I guess I could buy into this.
But states grant special privileges of capping personal liability for investors. Perhaps states should rethink the conditions for granting this if too many companies act like Gordon Gecko psycho paths.
The British East India company had its charter revoked once it started stepping over red lines. Voters need to reconsider the cart-blanche granting of privileges to corporate entities.
I wish someone had sat me down and told me this as a teenager, especially with the addendum that anything about "family" in business descriptions is nothing more than bullshit/marketing.
I wonder if this should be the case. The state consists of it's voters and it's voted representatives. Companies and the economy in general, are secondary entities (unless you really treat them as people, which opens a whole can of worms, see PACs etc), and a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
As such, yes, be pro-economy, but don't forget the people having to live in that society.
I like this post where you agree with the person you’re replying to and then imagine somebody posting “Wow this was so unexpected because my worldview does not have room for companies to be mean, can somebody explain this??” and calling out that imaginary poster for being naive.
>>"...She asked for an extension to complete her treatment, or at the least a short period to consult with her medical providers about whether and how she might be able to return to work before the treatment was completed. .."
>>"An extension of Annie’s leave would have cost MongoDB nothing. We made it clear that they did not need to pay her or hold her job open for her. We just asked them not to fire her while she was in such a vulnerable state, as we feared that would result in tragedy. We just wanted a little more time to get her stabilized."
There is no plausible need of management that would outweigh simply letting someone stay on the books as "employed-on-unpaid-leave" for some extra weeks or months.
Whoever did this should be held personally responsible for negligent harm.
And yeah, never touching their software, IDGAF how useful it is.
How did that ever get approved? The person who wanted them fired is an asshole, that's given but this is multiple failures. So sad. It's just one employee let them take their leave, it's not worth the legal and now PR repercussions
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.
I'm not American, and neither am I a lawyer, but the elephant in the room is that the workplace is responsible for health insurance, hence terminating her effectively removes her ability to get treatment, too.
Especially in this context, where she asked for at least a minor extension to finish her treatment.
I suspect the parents have a solid chance of winning this because the health insurance is linked, otherwise I'd completely agree with your opinion. An employer shouldn't be responsible for mothering their employees. It creates perverse incentives on both sides of the contract
Why shouldn't her medical providers be responsible for continuing critical health care regardless of payment? Why is it on the employer who is only tangentially related to this versus the people actually charging large sums of money for medically necessary treatment?
Also, the same health insurance can be continued after termination (with some external payment, of course) in addition to medicaid probably being available. None of that may be easy for someone with mental issues to navigate, but that is systematic.
As for the minor extension, is it clear how long she was on leave and what the conversation had been before the termination? The post said that they asked for small time extension, but did not give any indication as to what was happening before, neither length of time employed before taking the leave, what caused the leave, what was said in terms of a return, how long the absence was, etc. I feel like plugging in different answers for those questions would change how I feel about the culpability of the company in the current legal regime.
“concerns about confidentiality or respect for the persons family” Sooo clearly you didn’t even click the link, given this is a post BY the family to raise awareness of scummy corporate behavior. While discussing mental health and self harm can be distressing, this post seems totally in-line with other HN discussions calling out malicious corporate behavior?
If you believe a person can drive another person suicide through how they act, I don’t see how this would be any different, especially since they both rely on power asymmetry. If we don’t want to hook MongoDB responsible in some manner than we need to remove that asymmetry
Define "drive". Correlation is not causation. It's difficult to anticipate the trigger for a particular action or choice when other circumstances or stressors may have more significant factors that contributed to the decision. After all, many have lost jobs without ending their own lives and many have killed themselves despite high-profile, gainful employment. Instead, holding MongoDB responsible risks incentivizing this company and others to turn away and preemptively furlough anyone remotely approaching the statistical profile of a suicide risk.
I don't know legally how it works, but my gut says if this is found to be a wrongful termination under state/local/FMLA, then it also stands to reason that this could also be a wrongful death. From 1960, but it covers this line of thinking wrt suicide: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Anyway here's the actual complaint (I read it after I wrote the above), I guess her parents/counsel thought the same thing: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docInde...
Thank you for finding this, really helpful. I checked PACER and didn't realize it was filed in state court instead.
The complaint is speaking and it is aggressively written and, to my non-lawyer mind, pretty well drafted. If I were Mongo, I would be trying aggressively to settle this and make it go away.
If I were the parents, I would be trying very hard to force any other outcome, preferably one where Mongo pays the biggest public relations price possible for what they've done, assuming the allegations are true.
The way Mongo answers the complaint will be really instructive in figuring out how they intend to play this, and in whether they think there is some explanation that will make this seem less dire.
If you’re doing a restructuring of the company, i.e. mass layoffs, you’re allowed to do it regardless. In some states FMLA/PFMLA a company is automatically presumed a retaliation firing if it’s done within 6 months and the onus is on the company to prove it wasn’t—-the mass layoff is the cover, and large companies know it.
However, the fact that they cancelled her health insurance a week before returning and demanded she returned on a certain date or she’d be terminated despite a demonstrated disability, that’s pretty whack and might be hard to defend as company-wide restructuring.
from NY Post, https://nypost.com/2025/12/27/us-news/nyc-woman-driven-to-su...
MongoDB's behaviour just seems more and more callous...
This is incredibly sad. From the complaint (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405847):
""" When she arrived at the hospital and learned that Annie had died, Ms. Connolly collapsed and screamed non-stop for hours. Hospital staff placed Ms. Connolly in a separate room for observation, and the doctor who declared Annie dead had to speak to other family members about what had occurred because Ms. Connolly could not bear to speak to him or to see Annie’s body. 88. Mr. Surman was alone in the back of a taxi to the airport when he received the call that Annie had died. He could hear his wife’s screams in the background while he was helpless to comfort her. He sobbed through his redeye flight to join Ms. Connolly.
"""
Reading the complaint, I don't see any way in which the company is not responsible for this. The about turn in requiring her to come back in couple of weeks or else be terminated is just cruel. Now, I know what companies can be like, and especially if they're doing layoffs, things can get quite bonkers. But ultimately, the responsibility rests with the company: like it or not, an employer in America is responsible for their healthcare, which means you need to be careful when dealing with what happens when you suddenly end it.
From their site: 'Employee mental health and wellbeing is another core focus at MongoDB. It’s important for us to help break the stigma around mental health and provide our employees with the support they need, especially at work. We are dedicated to providing our employees with valuable tools to face all of life’s challenges and offer mental health programs that provide confidential assistance from qualified professionals.'
https://www.mongodb.com/company/blog/culture/employee-benefi...
Never trust this horseshit!
All public culture documents are bullshit. It always comes down to your direct manager and what they believe in.
And whether they have stones or not, or whether their manager is a bully, and so on and so on ...
I worked at a smallish startup where on the wall behind reception in huge raised letters. The owner had installed "company values" like trust accountability, ect. It was referred to internally as the "wall of lies" rather thab reception or lobby. The owner was a total sociopath.
Elephant in the room is that the healthcare is tied to the employment.
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.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
In civilized countries it is illegal to fire someone on sick leave, and I highly doubt you’d get a permit to fire someone who just got back from sick leave.
> It's already becoming a common strategy
I've taken mental health leave (not due to a PIP) and my productivity before and after was significantly different. It was great for my employer that I took it. I'm quite sure I would've eventually ended up with a PIP if I hadn't taken it sooner myself, and the best remedy on a PIP would have been to take mental health leave. Not as a strategy as such, but literally because it would have been the best solution (and I think the only one).
Yes, exactly. Taking mental health leave should be seen as a positive step: an opportunity to overcome whatever difficulties you've been facing, leading to - amongst many other benefits - better performance at work.
Mental health problems are tricky; they tend to creep up on us gradually, and often some form of external trigger is needed in order to prompt us to seek help. So it shouldn't be at all surprising that an employee in receipt of a PIP might take mental health leave as part of a genuine effort to improve their situation.
gp's cynical "counterfactual" suggests that they view PIPs as being purely a sham, intended to always result in dismissal rather than improved performance. Now, that might occasionally be true - but we should be blaming the abusive employer (who is likely acting outside the law) in that situation, not the employee.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
It's not legal to fire an employee on a sick leave in our country. They have to come back to work and then you can fire them. The employer is not paying their wage during the sick leave anyway, they get money from the social and health insurances. So there is very little downside for the company to keeping the employee employed. And if they employee is somehow faking it, that's an issue to check for the insurance companies.
> It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
Maybe the companies should ask themselves very hard why this is happening.
Yes. This is already the case in the E.U. and Australia.
Depending on the nature of the leave, this could've also been unlawful in the U.S. due to the Family Leave Act.
Here's another controversial take: as long as healthcare is tied to employment, companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice. If they suck at their job, find them another one at the company -- there has to be something they can do in a company of 5k employees.
this is too radical even for china or like good ol USSR… damn dude :)
12 replies →
Sounds like the kind of thing a union or works counsil could help with: enforcing a fair policy. That and revisiting the concept of at-will employment.
Better way to look at it: why are people so afraid of losing their job, and how do we reasonably remove the fear of losing one? Denmark may provide some good guidance here, as they have a good balance between social welfare and protections and fostering a robust business environment
I suspect a major way for the U.S. would be the one mentioned in the article: make it so that losing your job doesn't mean losing your health insurance. That's a major additional stressor, particularly if someone loses their job because of an illness.
Of course, there's about a negative one thousand percent chance of something like that passing in the current political climate.
If neither option satisfies, we must go up the stack. There is something seriously wrong with a society that drives educated, productive adults to suicide.
The US is somewhere in the middle, right there with some European countries. It's hard to say what drives people over the edge. Surprisingly Uruguay is high up there but Uganda, Ghana and Colombia are low.
Yes. This is The Family and Medical Leave Act.
> An employer is prohibited from discriminating or retaliating against an employee or prospective employee for having exercised or attempted to exercise any FMLA right.
You can fire someone after they come back but you will need to show receipts. Your employer also doesn't pay you when you take that leave so it would be a strange way to game the system.
I know people who upon getting put into a PIP took a mental health leave as it took them over the PIP time horizon. The mileage you get from this will vary on organization —some won’t want the reputational hit, others won’t care though.
There will always be people who abuse the system, no matter what system you have.
The solution is not to burn down all systems and just wild west everything. No. The solution is to anticipate the fraud, and build it into your margins and planning. Recognize it will always happen. And, in fact, the optimal amount of fraud is never zero. Because preventing fraud, too, has a cost, and it grows exponentially.
>Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
Yes, at least for companies the size of MongoDB
Didn't need much ruminating to come to that answer, but I lack the sociopathic behaviors necessary to run a corporation in the American legal environment.
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I feel sorry for this woman. Meta did this to me because they're discriminatory dicks, so I know how she felt. Fortunately, I have a tremendous amount of family support.
Really quite nasty of the company.
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Companies are made of people. Companies only use people if the people who make up the companies are ok with it. Being a decisionmaker in a company doesn't give you carte blanche to behave like an amoral automaton.
So no, MongoDB are assholes for doing this. They could have had some humanity and prioritized human well-being over cost savings.
9 replies →
If companies operated as partnerships instead of limited liability companies, then I guess I could buy into this.
But states grant special privileges of capping personal liability for investors. Perhaps states should rethink the conditions for granting this if too many companies act like Gordon Gecko psycho paths.
The British East India company had its charter revoked once it started stepping over red lines. Voters need to reconsider the cart-blanche granting of privileges to corporate entities.
I wish someone had sat me down and told me this as a teenager, especially with the addendum that anything about "family" in business descriptions is nothing more than bullshit/marketing.
That is broadly true, but it's possibly better to pretend it isn't, because it is self-fulfilling.
The less people expect ethical behavior, the lower the pressure people feel to behave ethically... and repeat.
I wonder if this should be the case. The state consists of it's voters and it's voted representatives. Companies and the economy in general, are secondary entities (unless you really treat them as people, which opens a whole can of worms, see PACs etc), and a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
As such, yes, be pro-economy, but don't forget the people having to live in that society.
6 replies →
> Really quite nasty of the company.
> This is a sad situation
I like this post where you agree with the person you’re replying to and then imagine somebody posting “Wow this was so unexpected because my worldview does not have room for companies to be mean, can somebody explain this??” and calling out that imaginary poster for being naive.
But this is particularly egregious
>>"...She asked for an extension to complete her treatment, or at the least a short period to consult with her medical providers about whether and how she might be able to return to work before the treatment was completed. .."
>>"An extension of Annie’s leave would have cost MongoDB nothing. We made it clear that they did not need to pay her or hold her job open for her. We just asked them not to fire her while she was in such a vulnerable state, as we feared that would result in tragedy. We just wanted a little more time to get her stabilized."
There is no plausible need of management that would outweigh simply letting someone stay on the books as "employed-on-unpaid-leave" for some extra weeks or months.
Whoever did this should be held personally responsible for negligent harm.
And yeah, never touching their software, IDGAF how useful it is.
Sickening
It's expected because of a large swath of defeatist citizens making comments like this. If we don't make this normal, it won't be normal.
8 replies →
How did that ever get approved? The person who wanted them fired is an asshole, that's given but this is multiple failures. So sad. It's just one employee let them take their leave, it's not worth the legal and now PR repercussions
This is sad, and if true as presented a big suit for MongoDB
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.
I'm not American, and neither am I a lawyer, but the elephant in the room is that the workplace is responsible for health insurance, hence terminating her effectively removes her ability to get treatment, too.
Especially in this context, where she asked for at least a minor extension to finish her treatment.
I suspect the parents have a solid chance of winning this because the health insurance is linked, otherwise I'd completely agree with your opinion. An employer shouldn't be responsible for mothering their employees. It creates perverse incentives on both sides of the contract
Why shouldn't her medical providers be responsible for continuing critical health care regardless of payment? Why is it on the employer who is only tangentially related to this versus the people actually charging large sums of money for medically necessary treatment?
Also, the same health insurance can be continued after termination (with some external payment, of course) in addition to medicaid probably being available. None of that may be easy for someone with mental issues to navigate, but that is systematic.
As for the minor extension, is it clear how long she was on leave and what the conversation had been before the termination? The post said that they asked for small time extension, but did not give any indication as to what was happening before, neither length of time employed before taking the leave, what caused the leave, what was said in terms of a return, how long the absence was, etc. I feel like plugging in different answers for those questions would change how I feel about the culpability of the company in the current legal regime.
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I think the Head of HR should face legal repercussions and have a full audit. I guarantee you that they have committed other crimes....
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“concerns about confidentiality or respect for the persons family” Sooo clearly you didn’t even click the link, given this is a post BY the family to raise awareness of scummy corporate behavior. While discussing mental health and self harm can be distressing, this post seems totally in-line with other HN discussions calling out malicious corporate behavior?
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MongoDB the database is product of MongoDB the company.
Apparently.
I’m not sure about third party responsibility for suicide. It’s a horrible, tragic situation.
If you believe a person can drive another person suicide through how they act, I don’t see how this would be any different, especially since they both rely on power asymmetry. If we don’t want to hook MongoDB responsible in some manner than we need to remove that asymmetry
Define "drive". Correlation is not causation. It's difficult to anticipate the trigger for a particular action or choice when other circumstances or stressors may have more significant factors that contributed to the decision. After all, many have lost jobs without ending their own lives and many have killed themselves despite high-profile, gainful employment. Instead, holding MongoDB responsible risks incentivizing this company and others to turn away and preemptively furlough anyone remotely approaching the statistical profile of a suicide risk.