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Mourning loss as a remote team

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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#271

Post by asn0 »

One of the people I managed on a remote team suddenly died one night from an aortic aneurysm. He was in his early 40's, had his teen-aged daughter living with him (who fortunately was away visiting her mom). I'd talked to him only hours before. I'd only met him once in-person, just a few weeks before, when he and I and another person I managed had an informal "on-site". I'd learned recently the two of them had been really good friends for many years.

The company had never had to handle something like this. Thankfully, HR and execs had the right priorities - concern for his family, respect for him and his family in how the news was shared with co-workers (especially with cause-of-death being unclear at first), concern for how it would affect close co-workers and others in the company, awareness that people would need to process and grieve in their own way.

HR talked with the family and got their permission to make an announcement to co-workers, and some guidance on the wording. HR offered to send this, but I felt that would feel too impersonal. I wanted news like that to come across in the most personal way possible, from someone (like me) who knew and cared for him.

The amazing response from the company was a big part of the healing. So many people wanted to do something. The family decided to have a private ceremony, and asked that instead of flowers, donations be made to an animal charity his daughter loved. People really felt for his daughter, and wanted to send cards and letters (which the family was happy to support). One of the teams (that hardly knew him) decided to have a commemoration during their weekly meeting.

The hardest part of all of this was (a) when his daughter called me to arrange for return of his work equipment and (b) when a family member suggested that one way I could help would be to share some of my experiences with his daughter about working with her dad. I have girls of the same age, so pretty close to home. It was hard to write that letter (#b), but it was also healing for me to think about the many positive ways he'd affected me and our team.

A few days later, it felt right to me to have some "closure". I sent a note to the company thanking everyone for the different ways they had respectfully honored our co-worker and supported his family. I also shared some of my memories working with him, and how much I missed his contagious happiness. As sad as it was that he wasn't with us anymore, I wanted to remember how much fun it was to work with him, and that's what I was going to focus on.

I hope I won't have to go through that again any time soon, but when I do, I hope it goes this well.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#272

Post by madrox »

I realize there are toxic side effects to "our team is like family," but it's been important to me to find ways to express any sentiment that recognizes the shared humanity of people coming together to work on common goals. I'm glad to hear the team was given space to grieve. It's not something that comes up in a typical management playbook.

Take care of your team and your peers. You may not be family, but you're something else kinda like it.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#273

Post by halfdan »

anonporridge wrote: post #256
trinsic2 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the rub, at least for me. The poster above you is right, corporations are just corporations. If you look up the etymology of the word it comes from latin: corpus (genitive corporis) "body, dead body, animal body. This is why I think that, more and more, people who have a heart, are moving away from big entities like this. I expect in a couple of generations corporations will be a thing of the past, or somethin…

> I expect in a couple of generations corporations will be a thing of the past, or something so far removed from society, that it will no longer exist as a social norm. Alternatively, in a couple of generations, people who have too much heart/soul and can't stomach being part of a corporate machine will be bred out of the gene pool and/or thrust into the powerless underclass, while the psychopaths that have no proble…

That's not how reproduction works though. The unprivileged often have more kids and people on the corporate bandwagon tend to have fewer.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#274

Post by telesilla »

pizza wrote: post #254
anonporridge wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Once heard this in response to a discussion of an org's virtue signalling. What do you make of it, in this context? A man had been injured on a journey and was lying on the road, wounded. A good Samaritan saw him and helped him get up. Onlookers then retorted, "Well, the good Samaritan only helped him get up to signal their virtue!"

People forget: in this story, the Samaritans were enemies and known to be hostile. So how is it virtue signaling, to another group of people to whom you don't want to belong? In this story it was an act of altruism.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#275

Post by svachalek »

pizza wrote: post #254
anonporridge wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Once heard this in response to a discussion of an org's virtue signalling. What do you make of it, in this context? A man had been injured on a journey and was lying on the road, wounded. A good Samaritan saw him and helped him get up. Onlookers then retorted, "Well, the good Samaritan only helped him get up to signal their virtue!"

In an ideal world, the onlookers are secretly good souls, working acts of kindness and charity away from the public eye. In practice, they typically have no virtue to signal, and their comments are merely a variation of "sour grapes".

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#276

Post by oportunityastro »

gcheong wrote: post #152
simsla wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, NHS waiting times for mental health are abysmally long.

I don’t know what is meant by abysmally long but it seems they are trying to rectify some of the shortcomings. It’s certainly better than nothing at all and I would hope if you’re imminently suicidal that that would put you in the urgent category though: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-people-patients-mi...

Abysmally long means 1 year plus to get an appointment. And you are usually only eligible for a limited course of treatment...if you are fortunate enough to get treatment, most people don't get treatment at all because there aren't the resources (you will get referred to a nurse within your GP, who will have done a few days training on basic advice). If you have anxiety or even something like autism, it can be impossible to get a diagnosis (and btw, this isn't just mental health...I have a physical illness, I have been waiting roughly two years for treatment and I expect I will be waiting at least another year or two...this is something that impacts my quality of life daily, not fatal but annoying enough).

If you are imminently suicidal, you can be hospitalised but there is little to no support outside of that. Bluntly, there are a lot imminently suicidal people and limited resources. If you attempt to commit suicide and are unsuccessful, that wouldn't speed up the process.

Also, it is worth saying the rate of suicide in Scotland is very high. I live in a small place in Scotland with essentially no poverty, and there are still 10 or so suicides every year. I know someone who works as a psychologist within the NHS in Dundee (probably one of the worst cities globally for suicide/deaths of despair), and it is totally out of control. There isn't sufficient funding, and there is no way to acquire sufficient funding...it isn't possible (and btw, it isn't just suicide...heavy drug use in Scotland has been an issue for many decades).

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#277

Post by hashhar »

freedomben wrote: post #166
haswell wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that it’s both. It’s not seriously discussed because it’s under-discussed. I think most people understand the seriousness of cancer, or a heart attack, or other life threatening ailments. They accept that those things are often outside of one’s control, and so there is never any hesitation to take it seriously. When someone in a work setting is diagnosed with something serious, everyone pays attention.…

> 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.

Reminds me of this other comment I made on an old thread discussing this point in a way which hopefully others can relate to at-least a bit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27909275

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#278

Post by oportunityastro »

sgt wrote: post #239
simsla wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, NHS waiting times for mental health are abysmally long.

Surely there is a private health sector as well?

Yes, but it is prohibitively expensive for most people (ironically because the market is quite small...everyone tries to go through the NHS).

The level of underfunding is, however, such that mental health providers are a huge part of the private health sector: Priory Group is a very big one.

Another factor is that a lot of training for psychologists is paid by the NHS, and funding for training has been going down everywhere (even in Scotland, which has a left-wing govt running the NHS).

It is just a resources problem. Even in the private sector, there isn't a supply response to higher prices. Ironically, the UK has lots of people who do undergrad Psychology, just none of them actually go on to practice because entry is so tightly controlled (for some reason, the NHS in Scotland is attempting to train nurses to do psychology with a couple of days training...that is going as well as you can imagine).

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#280

Post by anonporridge »

halfdan wrote: post #273
anonporridge wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect in a couple of generations corporations will be a thing of the past, or something so far removed from society, that it will no longer exist as a social norm. Alternatively, in a couple of generations, people who have too much heart/soul and can't stomach being part of a corporate machine will be bred out of the gene pool and/or thrust into the powerless underclass, while the psychopaths that have no proble…

That's not how reproduction works though. The unprivileged often have more kids and people on the corporate bandwagon tend to have fewer.

They're also the first in line to die via disease, famine, and war.
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