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Mourning loss as a remote team

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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#301

Post by rvp-x »

9530jh9054ven wrote: post #231
vlunkr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the norm? I don't see why they wouldn't at least announce it an email. It's a bit of a weird topic for a work email, but it's certainly better than doing absolutely nothing.

Depends on the company. I know for a fact that if I died tomorrow, only two people would actually notice at all and neither of them are coworkers. It doesn't seem particularly helpful to send out a notifications to people other then those that would be affected by having to take on my workload. And what good would come from them being told I was dead vs just left?

Not noticing doesn't mean the world doesn't care. There are a lot of reasons people vanish and it's harder to notice the absence of something than its existence, and people usually vanish for positive reasons, so I think nothing of it. I cried after discovering some people I hadn't known personally but were adjacent to me have died. I didn't notice their absence but I can empathize with the suffering they felt before their death, or the feelings of their family coming to grip with their absence.

While I have a strong emotional reaction to it, I don't think it's a bad thing, it is a part of life and a reminder for me to savor life.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#302

Post by samstave »

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 had a colleague die in his cubical at Lockheed...

I was IT director and I had to do a post mortem (no pun intended) about his activities in the facility by checking his badge-ing in and out of various doors to determine the time of death... that was super fn weird.

We were able to determine he went to the break room at ~1am or something, made himself a cup of tea, went back to his cube and died before he even drank his tea.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#303

Post by ianai »

The thing we can all do is be kind. I had a college dorm mate attempt to kill himself over a holiday. He didn’t show any signs and frankly we his friends probably didn’t have the maturity bandwidth to be the solution as we too were teens. I’d say being kind helps.

This is related to why I abhor arrogance or any signs of holding oneself over others. It’s fundamentally unkind. If you truly are the Wisdom In Flesh Come Down From Heaven then you’re breaking your humble vow in any shows of arrogance. So be humble and show us all what you know. Let us learn from your actions and deeds. Don’t tell us your greatness or demand your authority.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#304

Post by jazzdev »

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!"

I don't think of it as virtue signal as much as it is community building, which certainly has a reproductive advantage if the community is stronger because of it.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#305

Post by emerged »

sinsterizme wrote: post #264
treis wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>An individual's relationship with their immediate boss is one of those intimate things in life and it deserves sanctity. I think there's a fundamental divide between people. Some see the workplace and the people in it as an integral part of their life. Others see it as a place they spend 40 hours a week that enables them to live their actual life. Neither are wrong and I think a lot depends on the type of company yo…

I’m of the former opinion and it boggles the mind a bit thinking that some people view the place they spend the majority of their waking hours as ancillary to their “real life.” Maybe my real life is just boring though :p

I felt it was part of my real life. But after leaving the first company (then each subsequent company) I almost never saw any of them again.

People put on a polite friendly face at work, but that doesn’t mean they’re your intimate friends. Sometimes, but I think it’s not so common as you’re implying.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#306

Post by dschulz »

Back in 2020 I could very well have been the Pete in this story. I was struggling so bad with mental health issues, financial issues. On top of that, my father was giving the figh to prostatic cancer. I was just starting working remotely for the first time for a Canadian company. My employers were the nicest guys I have ever meet online and I was thrilled to have been asked to work for them as a software developer. At first I felt relieved because I finally landed in a job to do things I like using the tools I like with great people. Even though I desperately needed money, I was willing to work on a dime just to prove myself that I was sufficiently skilled to be "one of them".

But as exciting as it felt, there was an impedance that made things so difficult for me and my brain. It rapidly started to erode my self-confidence, I began pushing so hard trying to solve every task and every little detail in the most perfect way possible and felt like I was failing at everything. I certainly was failing at one thing and it was communication. The language was a barrier (English is not my native language), and I think there might have been some kind of «cultural mismatch» at play too. In hindsight, I think my employers were also failing to read what I was writing on the wall. I let them know I was struggling with mental health issues and I think I made sufficiently clear what my struggles were. They tried to help me the best they could but kept insisting on things that were irrelevant to me. Apparently they thought maybe I was doing "just a theatre" because I was afraid of asking to renegotiate my compensation (I wasn't). That was particularly frustrating to me.

At some point, feeling like a lightning rod in the middle of a thunderstorm, I was on the brink of doing what can't be undone. I had it all planned.

Lucky me, my wife was wakeful enough to notice what was going on and helped me get out of the pit.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#307

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

veb wrote: post #299
jouleshey wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be because there is evidence that discussing suicide increases the likelihood of more suicides. I'm sure there's more nuance that could be done in theory / I would assume there exists some "right" way to discuss it that may actually be healthier, but it's easier to just look at studies and say best to just avoid it altogether. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262

This is why it's illegal to report deaths as suicides in New Zealand media as well. https://mentalhealth.org.nz/media/reporting-and-portrayal-of...

That link says something different: "a description of the death as a suicide before the coroner has released their findings and stated the death was a suicide"

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#308

Post by dahfizz »

anonporridge wrote: post #260
pizza wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

An evolutionary psychologist might argue something like that. Another way to put it, is that while the individual might act selflessly with pure and honest empathy, with no conscious expectation of something in return, this kind of behavior wouldn't have survived in our gene pool if there wasn't some evolutionary advantage to behaving that way. So, the onlookers would really have to specify whether they're talking ab…

It's not self evident that virtue _signals_ are evolutionarily advantageous. Actually being virtuous is what provides a benefit to your society / tribe / species.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#309

Post by tweetle_beetle »

jouleshey wrote: post #182
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reactions from management and everyone else is typically different for suicides than for car crashes and other causes. In my experience, suicides are hushed and not discussed while car crashes and heart attacks are. It’s a terrible double-standard.

It may be because there is evidence that discussing suicide increases the likelihood of more suicides. I'm sure there's more nuance that could be done in theory / I would assume there exists some "right" way to discuss it that may actually be healthier, but it's easier to just look at studies and say best to just avoid it altogether. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262

> This evidence is derived from three bodies of research: studies of the impact of media reporting on suicide, studies of suicide clusters, and studies of the impact on adolescents of exposure to a suicidal peer.

It later clarifies that the clustering evidence is only focused on teenagers and young adults.

I would assume that those 3 cases are not applicable to the vast majority of full time working environments. If people are using this study as a reason to avoid discussing death by suicide in the workforce, it's because they just don't want to deal with it. If they were motivated by a higher moral purpose, they could ask for advice from a mental health professional or non-profit.

While there may be some cases where it is the right thing to do, silence by default perpetuates the shame and taboo around the subject which can affect the living and prevent them from seeking support.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#310

Post by Aeolun »

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!"

They say that, but what actually bothers them is that it makes them look bad. They might have wanted to help the man, but they all invented reasons not to, because they knew the majority would respond exactly as they did…
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