Mental Illness and Startups
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Mental Illness and Startups
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Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#2Works great until the startup is successful enough to hire an executive who things that office hours are a more importamt measure of productivity than peer respect or checkins.
It's easier if you're a founder.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#3Trust me on this, most fiction writers can relate to that post 100%. Musicians too, I think.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#4If you are depressed, why don't you just go out and do something really awesome? You have nothing to lose, right? So why not do something adventurous? Sell all your shit, move to Europe or South America, and go start a revolution.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#5If you are depressed, why don't you just go out and do something really awesome? You have nothing to lose, right? So why not do something adventurous? Sell all your shit, move to Europe or South America, and go start a revolution.
I can't speak generally, but when I'm depressed none of the stuff you listed has any appeal. Even much simpler easier things, like sex or sunlight are covered in a terrible veil. The world looks drab and unfriendly. My sensory perception gets altered, everything looks and feels different.
It's hard to think, it's hard to talk with people--- the social scripts are all broken and the baseline feeling of my reality is warped into something ugly. When I'm depressed there is nothing "really awesome", it just doesn't exist.
On the other hand, I've found the whole condition can be fluid/mutable and have felt these sorts of low states much less often since I started meditating and paying attention to my internal state.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#6"you don't have to be mad to work here but ...."
i've found smaller companies are much more tolerant & flexible with nutters (like me).
there seems to be more focus on results than politics. in larger places I've felt more pressure not to rock the boat, and produce the illusion of work, rather than actually delivering things on time. it doesn't seem to matter if you actually do anything as long as you look like you're not doing /nothing/.
and I don't mean a startup. even startups can grow into kafkaesque nightmares because it's the only way they've ever thought to run a company. really, you have to be in a small, autonomous group if you want to get away with not being that normal.
the moral is: being a startup in and of itself is no guarantee of tolerance for off kilter people, the people and culture within the company are important. there is a correlation between small companies/startups and tolerance, but it isn't causation.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#7While I don't disagree with this statement:
There are people who think that depression means 'feeling low', and that if you try hard enough, you can 'snap out of it'. These people are idiots. It's not a matter of being strong enough or dedicated enough. For me, like most people with depressive illnesses, there will be times when I just plain can't. In my worst states I can barely remember what a for loop does, let alone code one. Accept that there will be times when you can't work, and make the most of the times when you can.
There is an approach called "behavioral activation" that my psychiatrist taught me. Basically, instead of saying "I'll do it when I feel better", you say "I'll do it so I'll feel better".
Doing things I didn't feel like doing, that felt almost impossibly difficult (like putting on real clothes and going outside) was probably the most effective tool I've ever had with dealing with depression.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#8Works great until the startup is successful enough to hire an executive who things that office hours are a more importamt measure of productivity than peer respect or checkins. It's easier if you're a founder.
The moment an executive thinks that, it's no longer a startup, pretty much by definition.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#9If you are depressed, why don't you just go out and do something really awesome? You have nothing to lose, right? So why not do something adventurous? Sell all your shit, move to Europe or South America, and go start a revolution.
I can't speak generally, but when I'm depressed none of the stuff you listed has any appeal. Even much simpler easier things, like sex or sunlight are covered in a terrible veil. The world looks drab and unfriendly. My sensory perception gets altered, everything looks and feels different. It's hard to think, it's hard to talk with people--- the social scripts are all broken and the baseline feeling of my reality is w…
Indeed, that's one of the ways that you diagnose depression.
If the things that once made you feel really awesome (sex, motorcycling, coding, gaming, cooking, whatever) no longer hold any appeal for you, that means you're very likely not merely "feeling down" but actually clinically depressed.
Re: Mental Illness and Startups
#10Trust me on this, most fiction writers can relate to that post 100%. Musicians too, I think.
I wonder how frequent is depression among programmers. That's not something people like to blog about.