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Mourning loss as a remote team

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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#201

Post by pc86 »

refurb wrote: post #102
VariableStar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know if it is the norm but I have also worked at an organization where one employee committed suicide. Leadership said nothing and everything was toned down. Some people spoke up and complained though. My interpretation is that the response was a combination of culture (although suicide is not "taboo" here it is not a preferred topic) and not wanting to bring undue attention to the organization.

What do you mean “said nothing” as in they stopped showing up and management pretended nothing happened? Or the person died and they didn’t say it was a suicide. Because if it’s the 2nd, that seems pretty normal. My right to know doesnt trump the family’s right to privacy.

Framing discussions around cause of death as privacy is a double standard. If you say someone died in a car crash, nobody gasps and tells you to respect the deceased's or their family's privacy. It's so extreme that is anyone even brings up privacy with regard to a death or cause of death everyone assumes they committed suicide, or did something criminal that ended in their death, or something else negative. Cause of death is posted in the newspapers and otherwise discussed in public all the time, there is no right to privacy around that piece of information.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#202

Post by gh0std3v »

> Pay attention to your team. Build closeness. Get to know about everyone’s family and private life. Take mental health seriously and talk openly about it. It may seem like prying, but you might catch a wobbler with a team member that you can address early.

While I think it's important for workplaces to take care of their employees, I feel like Pete's issue was that he was too close to work. And on top of that, he wasn't even an employee, just a contractor with no benefits, PTO, etc.

The real problem here is that Pete was not integrated as an employee. If he were, he could have taken PTO, accessed health benefits, and gotten help. I don't know the complete story, so I won't extrapolate further, but I feel sad thinking that this team almost feels "responsible" for his suicide. It wasn't the remote team's fault for not catching on, it was the company's fault for not acknowledging the health and security of their contractors (who, I reiterate, should have been employees).

Don't mean to offend anyone, I just felt the way contractors are treated is sometimes unjust.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#203

Post by jddil »

Angostura wrote: post #132
jddil wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does. At the end of the day they will (and should) choose to protect the company above all else. That's their only job. They can also want to help people, have a ton of empathy and be literal saints. But that's their personal motivation and not what the job actually is.

I'd be interested to see the logic applied to other jobs. What's your job using this kind of reductionist logic? Are there any jobs that aren't "protect the company" in some way?

If you're working for a for-profit company .... uhh no?

And I'm a software engineer, I solve business problems with code. If I decide to to write some code that doesn't help the company I would probably be fired or at least put on a PIP

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#204

Post by alexashka »

Beldin wrote: post #188
brassattax wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment you realize HR is there to serve the company's interests, not the employee's, your expectation of them changes.

You'd be amazed at how often those coincide if there's not a culture of omerta. It's almost as if happy employees are in a company's interest. Not paramount, but not neglected either.

Culture of omerta - I had to look it up.

There'll always be culture of omerta when you don't give someone a piece of the company.

If I'm an hourly employee, our interests are not aligned. You don't value me enough to share the wins but I know I'll be sharing in the losses by getting fired.

To everyone pretending otherwise - wake the fuck up.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#205

Post by lostcolony »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #171
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but have found turning on the camera and keeping it on for most meeting does help.

During the time of COVID I've had two jobs, one where the culture is (usually) to keep the cameras on at all times, and one where the culture was to keep the cameras off even when speaking. There are benefits to the latter approach ... I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless meetings. But keeping the cameras on does make connections feel more personal and overall I prefer it, particularly fo…

>> I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless meetings.

The fact those meetings are occurring is a failure of the culture, and especially the move to WFH. It's been the key differentiator for me post-COVID; companies that are begrudgingly remote try to keep the office norms in place, just now remote, vs the companies embracing remote finding new workflows, which means leaning on async communication, collaborative documents, etc, instead of meetings, and synchronous meetings only when absolutely necessary.

And it's been eye opening; in those former cases, no one wanted "social" Zoom meetings, myself included. But in those latter, people asked about it, championed it happening, etc.

People only have so much time they want to be in meetings online, and making sure it's used to build team bonds, instead of squandered on business problems that could be solved other ways, seems like a huge part of making remote be successful.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#206

Post by anonporridge »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #189
dougmwne wrote: post #13

My partner sat in the same cube pod as someone who took their life. One day they were just gone and a crying family member came by to take away a box of things. There was no official acknowledgement of what happened, no service or memorializing, only hushed whispers. It was terrible. Thank you for your humane response to Pete's death, for creating room for the team to grieve and official acknowledgement that it was n…

That is the worst! I remember when a long-time team member died unexpectedly one weekend. We all learned about it at the Monday standup meeting and we luckily had the common sense to cancel the standup because no one wanted to talk. A number of us went to the funeral and his wife told me (I had met her once before) that she was so happy that his co-workers came to pay their respects. It made her feel that he had a la…

> I hate, hate, hate the way corps try to brush away any unpleasantness like ignoring it means it didn't happen!

I personally don't mind it. It's a good reminder that we as individuals are just replaceable cogs in the machine, that all of us are only as valuable as the productivity we can contribute in the future, and that our sense of loyalty to it should be adjusted accordingly.

Don't ever expect a corporation of any kind to act like a human or a family, because it's not, even if they try to put on a humanoid face.

Having said that, I expect more corporations will start trying to act more humanely in the face of this kind of trauma, precisely because those that don't will engender a sense of deep distrust and disloyalty from their employees, which will make them weaker in the long run. The more generations of people go through the machine and see how it really works, and teach their children the truth, the less they'll be able to take advantage of naivety. This also tends to be a reason that the powers that be want tighter control on social media, so people can't as easily share widely the truth of their lived experience that will preemptively poison the trust of others towards machines designed to use and discard people.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#207

Post by lostcolony »

rvba wrote: post #165
dvtrn wrote: post #88

Pete would ask to work more hours. He claimed he could use the money. He was a contractor remember Amidst the loss here, this line stood out to me and brings to mind all the terrible ways contractors are taken advantage of, or at least, treated and compensated vastly different than their "staff"/"full-time" peers who are often doing the exact same work . For fun, google the phrase "permatemp". E.g. I had a past job a…

MBA way of doing business. On a sidr note: at least they were paid for overtime.

As an hourly employee they legally have to be. If the company doesn't, they're in for a world of hurt if the employee decides to contact a lawyer. That assumes a level of privilege (knowing your rights, having enough money to pay for a lawyer's initial time, etc), but that level of privilege is common in software, so much so that no company with a legal department is going to let it fly to try and treat an hourly employee like a salaried one; there's just too much risk.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#208

Post by s1artibartfast »

darkwater wrote: post #193
freedomben wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mental health issues are hard for some people to understand if they haven’t experienced their own challenges. Bingo. This is the root of the problem IMHO. We're really good at recognizing and empathizing with a gaping physical wound, but if we can't see it/touch it/feel it/etc it's hard to grok.

I think the biggest issue comes from thinking that since it's in the mind and not in the body, you can just cure it by yourself: be happy, not depressed! Which is obviously wrong and comes from ignorance.

As someone who has experienced a lot depression myself and with family, I think the chemical/body mechanism is grossly overstated.

It is a mind problem, but that makes it harder, not easier to address. The only real solution IS "happy, not depressed", but it is terribly difficult to do if you have poor tools and learned patterns.

Medicine can help break up patterns.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#209

Post by Reggie_Walls »

We had an outside facilitator oversee and guide a remote memorial service for a fellow engineer lost to COVID. I would suggest this approach. Their job seemed very difficult, but it was very important and useful to recognize the person lost and share our experiences.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#210

Post by Twirrim »

NotAWorkNick wrote: post #14

Disclaimer: I'm about to disclose some personal information so will probably burn this nick shortly. I am slowly going blind (long, boring story; only relevance to the topic is during a discussion with the eye-guy consultant he mentioned that he had had a close personal friend of his kill himself the day after a night out and that he (the consultant) wished that he had been able to somehow sense that his friend was s…

I had someone I knew from two consecutive jobs commit suicide. We'd routinely cross paths through meetings, water cooler chats etc. Nice guy, smart engineer. Capable of handling stressful incidents without batting an eyelid and spotting the shorted path to the best resolution. The kind of engineer you'd be lucky to have on your service team.

He grabbed me for a lunch time meal about a week before he committed suicide, wanted to chat about my faith. These conversations happen from time to time, especially working in tech which seems to bias towards atheism, so I didn't think anything of it. It was a type of conversation I've had dozens of times over.

In hindsight, of course, it was obvious he was looking for help. I can rationally tell myself over and over again that there was no possible way I could have known, but I highly doubt I'll ever convince myself of it.

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