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Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

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Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#21

Post by bhouston »

protonimitate wrote: post #13
bloblaw wrote: post #10

Without an understanding of their motive, I think tying "google" to a person's mental health crisis is clickbait. Folks dealing with mental health issues might end their lives for a variety of factors. This is very sad to hear, but the headline (and article) that attempts to connect an employer to a person's death without any evidence is unfair. Note: I do not work for Google.

An employee of Google who jumped from the Google office is a pretty obvious connection. Don't really see how this is clickbait.

Google employs 200,000 people. Suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100,000 per year. This means there is an expected base rate of Google employees committing suicide per year regardless of working conditions that is likely higher than just 2. Maybe there is a real issue but two suicides within such large number of employees isn’t statistically significant.

EDIT: I added "statistically" in the last sentence to clarify my intended meaning.

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#23

Post by [deleted] »

bloblaw wrote: post #10

Without an understanding of their motive, I think tying "google" to a person's mental health crisis is clickbait. Folks dealing with mental health issues might end their lives for a variety of factors. This is very sad to hear, but the headline (and article) that attempts to connect an employer to a person's death without any evidence is unfair. Note: I do not work for Google.

[deleted]

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#24

Post by everly »

woooooo wrote: post #16
protonimitate wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An employee of Google who jumped from the Google office is a pretty obvious connection. Don't really see how this is clickbait.

I don't think they'd have put Duane Reade in the headline if one of their employees killed themselves. Probably wouldn't be a story at all, actually.

If it happened on the job then, yeah, they probably would. Just like there is a Walgreens security guard in the news currently for killing a shoplifter in SF. If he had killed someone outside his capacity as a Walgreens security guard, they wouldn't describe him as such.

If this engineer had killed themselves in another manner besides jumping off the top of their workplace, they might not be described as a Google engineer.

Edit to add: Statistically, I suspect that there have to have been many instances of Google employees committing suicide outside of work. I doubt those got headlines at all, let alone headlines including Google's name.

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#25

Post by dehrmann »

bloblaw wrote: post #10

Without an understanding of their motive, I think tying "google" to a person's mental health crisis is clickbait. Folks dealing with mental health issues might end their lives for a variety of factors. This is very sad to hear, but the headline (and article) that attempts to connect an employer to a person's death without any evidence is unfair. Note: I do not work for Google.

People also did this with Foxconn. Supposedly at Foxconn's scale, the suicide rate wasn't alarming, but with people living in dorms and having suicide nets set up, it looks bad.

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#26

Post by Jenk »

protonimitate wrote: post #13
bloblaw wrote: post #10

Without an understanding of their motive, I think tying "google" to a person's mental health crisis is clickbait. Folks dealing with mental health issues might end their lives for a variety of factors. This is very sad to hear, but the headline (and article) that attempts to connect an employer to a person's death without any evidence is unfair. Note: I do not work for Google.

An employee of Google who jumped from the Google office is a pretty obvious connection. Don't really see how this is clickbait.

Alternatively it is a high-up point from which to jump that the person(s) has easy access to.

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#27

Post by protonimitate »

bhouston wrote: post #21
protonimitate wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An employee of Google who jumped from the Google office is a pretty obvious connection. Don't really see how this is clickbait.

Google employs 200,000 people. Suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100,000 per year. This means there is an expected base rate of Google employees committing suicide per year regardless of working conditions that is likely higher than just 2. Maybe there is a real issue but two suicides within such large number of employees isn’t statistically significant. EDIT: I added "statistically" in the last sentence to clarify m…

Suicide is tragic regardless of the circumstances, and it's a really bad take to try to minimize this because it's not statistically "significant" or "clickbait".

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#28

Post by totalZero »

bhouston wrote: post #21
protonimitate wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An employee of Google who jumped from the Google office is a pretty obvious connection. Don't really see how this is clickbait.

Google employs 200,000 people. Suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100,000 per year. This means there is an expected base rate of Google employees committing suicide per year regardless of working conditions that is likely higher than just 2. Maybe there is a real issue but two suicides within such large number of employees isn’t statistically significant. EDIT: I added "statistically" in the last sentence to clarify m…

You're assuming randomness among the US population. Might be a good assumption.

However, there are externalities to this suicide that may affect others who work at Google or in NY, and so the story is worthy of being contextualized. It might be clickbait to put the word "Google" in the title but not because of probabilistic irrelevance. People who kill themselves at work have an impact on coworkers and company, no two ways about it.

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#29

Post by relativeadv »

bhouston wrote: post #21
protonimitate wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An employee of Google who jumped from the Google office is a pretty obvious connection. Don't really see how this is clickbait.

Google employs 200,000 people. Suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100,000 per year. This means there is an expected base rate of Google employees committing suicide per year regardless of working conditions that is likely higher than just 2. Maybe there is a real issue but two suicides within such large number of employees isn’t statistically significant. EDIT: I added "statistically" in the last sentence to clarify m…

Bad take

Re: Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

#30

Post by bko »

This is a tangent, but it reminds me of the plot of The Three Body Problem. The story begins with a series of suicides from top physics researchers because physics just stops working for some mysterious reason which is revealed later in the book.

I loved that series of books and this highlights why I like it so much. It's an "optimistic" view of humanity. People are serious in the book so its entirely plausible that physicists are so distraught at the futility of their efforts to understand the universe that they end their life if the universe is broken. And government officials are worried and dig into the issue. The book follows that theme as humanity puts forward a strong centralized effort to combat a threat. Human's aren't just a joke or a stepping stone. It's really a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of sci-fi that makes humans out to be idiots or malevolent. I don't know if it has to do with the book being from a Chinese author

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