Suicide of an Uber engineer: Widow blames job stress

I've heard this advice many times, mostly in shitty memes and as part of /feels/ threads.

I think the problem with it that if you are at that point, you're already feeling utterly hopeless.

Suggesting that someone who's suicidal:

* willingly loses everything in their life

* starts from nothing

* fights their way through the chaos that is building a new life for yourself

* in a strange and unknown place

* with no support at all

is naive and unhelpful.

To me it also feels pretty dismissive, up there with "you should smile more".

I'm not a psychologist but I have observed this kind of syndrome a couple times and I think it's usually more like a performance anxiety. You take the big fish out of the little pond and all the sudden he's a small fish in a big pond and it's a culture shock.

The time lines, the compromises and the urgency are all different at a startup. You are used to being the smartest guy in the room at a mid sized or big place, you go to a small startup that got money because the founders are exceptional and they've staffed up with some exceptional people and they are all running like hell, you might look or feel kind of ordinary and that's a tough pill to swallow. It's especially difficult if you've never felt it before, all the sudden you're "failing" Combine that with a family that thinks the world of you because "you're the best" and I expect it's worse. Or at least that is how I've tried to understand it. There are clearly other issues when it results in suicide though. Again, I'm no doctor, but I try to give them an interview problem they can't solve, I think it's good if they say "I don't know how" or "I can't do that yet"

Another symptom I've observed, when someone is in that space, they often try to do more. Rather than botching one feature, maybe they'll rush and half-ass three or four to try and "make up" for earlier shortcomings. That usually creates a rift with the team that then starts to think less of them, the new guy is a bull in a China shop.

As for management, they share some of it. Uber seems like a broken place in a lot of ways. They should know it takes time to ramp up. Also success begets success, I take things off a new employee's plate when this happens. Make it small enough for them to create a little success and then build on it. In SV there is a large talent pool and a belief that the "right person" is around there somewhere so building long term success might not be as important to some companies.

For the most part, in the United States, this kind of notice is a courtesy not 100% required.

> It doesn't even take abusive bosses who don't like you, although that just makes it far worse.

Far worse.

I've worked at startups where we had to bust ass to get things done... mid-90s... sleeping at the office, going weeks without a paycheck to get the product to launch, living off Jolt and pizza -- and trying to build something that we honestly weren't sure could be built. And even if the work wasn't always done the exact way I would have suggested or agreed with, if I had a boss that took 5 minutes to explain why we were doing it... it was fine. No stress, just get it done.

I've worked at places that didn't require anywhere near that level of focus or time commitment that left me feeling just drained and miserable. Miserable to the point of wanting to pack it up and never see a computer again. Miserable to the point of acting out... little self-destructive things like sending snarky emails, calling in sick to play hooky, or indulging in office gossip. All because I had a boss who just demanded I do things without giving any reason, or who wasn't consistent with their stories.

Now I know enough, years of therapy / career coaching... and just age... when I see someone in a leadership position who just says, "Do what I say..." I start shopping for a new job. Or if they pull any manipulation crap like, "Sally and Mike know about X, but John thinks it's Y, and Sally can't know that Mike knows..." Or just simple lying... if they tell you something different than they tell anyone else. Life's too short to deal with those people.

Transparency, integrity, honesty... without those things in a boss, it doesn't matter how much work there is to do -- it'll be very stressful. It took me 10+ years to really nail down why I was successful at some jobs and not at others... for me, it all came down to the sort of boss I had. Didn't have much to do with me liking the person (or the scope of the work), or vise versa, as long as they weren't Machiavellian we could work well together.

Of course, what I meant was that if your employer is forcing you to work 60 hour weeks you shouldn't fear threatening to quit as if you have to follow through on your threat it's unlikely you will be without employment for long. Unfortunately, in a lot of industries people don't have this luxury.