Mental health in software engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#381

Post by tstrimple » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 2:58 PM UTC

fatnoah wrote: post #230

darth_avocado wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s right, because the minute you say you’re taking it for mental health, you get managed out. I’ve personally seen it happen at one of the major food delivery startup, at one of the big social media companies and at Amazon. The steps are the same. First they pile on more work on you, then gaslight you in believing your workload is the same as a junior employee and/or is subpar, then take you on a journey of “help…

This is very different than my experience at another FAANG. One of my reports was able to take a multi-week mental health leave and return without any negative impact on performance rating or career. Of course, mileage probably varies from manager to manager and org to org.

That's been closer to my experience as well. Hiring folks is hard. Hiring good folks is very hard. If you're working with someone who has demonstrated good work before, but are currently not performing due to life circumstances it's often still much more cost effective to try to work with that person to get them back on track than just firing them and moving on. Most places I've worked at would make several attempts to help an employee get back to a better place before moving to release them because they acknowledge it's faster and cheaper than replacing someone.

Most places I've been at will suffer with known weak developers for a long time because a weak developer with domain knowledge is still more productive than many new developers without it and there's always the risk the new hire will turn out to be a dud as well.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#382

Post by paulcole » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #323

paulcole wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better to figure things out on your own than learn that you can always interrupt someone else when you get a little stuck.

Days are often wasted because you do that. That is at best, I'm now up to 4 different implementations of a complex protocol (at months each to build and debug) because nobody asked a question. sure you shouldn't just ask for every problem, but don't struggle too long when someone knows the answer.

I wonder if there’s a middle ground between interrupting constantly whenever you have a problem and wasting days searching for a solution?

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#383

Post by tstrimple » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

shiroiushi wrote: post #304

onion2k wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dealing with the machine rather than people is something I'm willing to run with more than anything, right now. Software engineering is an incredibly people-focused career. You will need to be able to work with other devs, stakeholders, support, users.. everyone really. Going into a tech career thinking that it's somewhere you can avoid people is never going to work out well.

This has not been my experience at all. I do see this in the management layers, even with team leads, but the typical IC engineer does NOT spend any significant time talking with stakeholders, support, or users. They do have to work with other devs, but even that is frequently over chat, and not as much in-person, though it depends on the particular people and the company culture. Yes, you really can go into a tech c…

Are these the engineers who exert no control over their environments and just sit back and bitterly complain while taking no steps to resolve the issues? Those engineers who complain about "stupid management decisions" yet have made no real effort to influence the people and processes which led to those decisions? Sure. You can be a developer and avoid talking to humans as much as possible. You're just not going to be as effective or impactful as someone who does navigate those people problems. The technology is the easy part. How effectively companies navigate human problems makes a huge difference in how effectively they can implement technology solutions and engineers who can help solve those problems are invaluable.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#384

Post by david-gpu » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

seneca wrote: post #274

david-gpu wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While it may sound insensitive, software engineering is nowhere near as complex or stressful as many (but not all) medical roles. It is both mentally and physically less taxing As much as I respect your personal experience, I think you make a mistake in assuming that it is universal. Further, you are also making the mistake of invalidating other people's individual experiences based on your perception of what the a…

> invalidating other people's individual experiences It's called "disagreeing". It doesn't "invalidate" anything.

They weren't disagreeing, they were minimizing other people's suffering and one-upping them. It's not a friendly thing to do and doesn't lead to an open curious conversation.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#385

Post by ThinkBeat » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 4:49 PM UTC

One of the primary responsiblities as you climb the hierarchy is to protect your team / teams / departments from maniacs in other places fo the hierarchy.

That means standing up and saying "No" and sticking to it. Overtime it will show that your people perform better than others since they have a sane person ensuring that they are not on death marches to failure.

Or it can mean losing your job, in some instances.

What would you rather do?

Kill your team by imposing impossivle tasks, due to pressure form the top in order to climb higher in the hierarchy or at least maintain,.

Or be straight and honest, and if nescessary take one for the team-+

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#386

Post by cheema33 » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 6:04 PM UTC

itronitron wrote: post #183

chollida1 wrote: post #177

I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming…

Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information (i.e. flu, back issues, mental wellness, etc...) . It would benefit a lot of people if they were taught basic laws related to employment while they are in school.

> Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information.

We had an employee that used this technique. Too often. When the company needed to lay off people to cut costs, their name got on the layoff list before anybody else's.

Businesses are not charities. They need to make money. And if an employee is not pulling their weight, sooner or later they will be let go. Using the law to extend your stay can only go so far.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#387

Post by mjr00 » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #288

mjr00 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctor, lawyer, and athlete are "jock" professions, while software engineering is very much a "nerd" profession. These words represent status and general level of attractiveness and therefore access to attention and sex. This is just your perspective and, IMO, it's pretty warped. Software engineering is not a low-status position, even compared to doctors and lawyers. You aren't lacking in status or not having sex b…

> Software engineering is not a low-status position Pay is not status. Software currently pays quite well, but in most companies today a developer is at the very bottom of the status curve. Developers are no longer allowed any say in what to build or how to build it, they are micromanaged by product managers and program managers and team managers and required to give daily status reports ("agile"). (I say "used to" b…

> Pay is not status. Software currently pays quite well, but in most companies today a developer is at the very bottom of the status curve.

This is your own perspective, and again, it's extremely warped. If you think developers are at the very bottom of the status curve, go sign up to be your company's janitor, receptionist, HR/"talent acquisition", junior accountant, or any "operations"/"administration" role. Someone's gotta order and restock all the free beer and snacks in your office, you know.

And other than the janitor, those positions are all still likely 9-5 salaried positions that pay decently. Go be a retail worker, hotel staff, or waiter/waitress and enjoy being shit on by both your manager and your customers all day. Then come back and talk about how being a software dev is low status.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#388

Post by pradn » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

It might be helpful to catalog a few reasons why software engineering can be so stressful. Many of these are common to other professions as well, to varying degrees.

* It's hard to predict how long something will take so you stress out when you take longer. Even if requirements are clear, all sorts of things can delay implementation: debugging, build issues, plugging in dependencies, bugs in underlying libraries. All these can take a limitless amount of time.

* Complexity can be overwhelming. Staring at a thousand line, convoluted class can make you shut down, just because it's too much.

* Being new and not able to produce at the same level as others. This one hopefully goes away after some time as you ramp up, but you might be new at different projects in the same team.

* Changing requirements, increasing scope.

* Priority inversion - you depend on another team for your work, but they aren't working on it, and you have to answer for that.

* Having to give an update at a status meeting when you know you haven't made as much progress as you'd like.

* Feeling bad about your productivity, so you don't take care of yourself (wasting time at night), are tired, and aren't able to be productive the next day. This whole loop can last for a long time if you can't break it.

* You can't ask for help because you feel like others will think you're stupid for asking those questions. And you can't make progress bc you really need to know those things.

Many of these things are exacerbated by life circumstance, social position, personality, previous mental health history, and management/peers. The way you can improve this stuff for yourself is by having a solid wellness routine (exercise, sleep, diet), good communication with your peers/manager (this is a chicken/egg situation), and pushing for reasonable organizational changes. Of these, only wellness is totally under your control. The others require people around you to change, which may not be possible.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#389

Post by euroderf » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #369

euroderf wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds enlightened. A lot of the comments here seem to use the term mental health days without irony quotes. A mental health day is not a psychological crisis. It is a plea for a timeout from the workaday grind.

I didn’t put the quotes to indicate any irony, just that they’re explicitly different to your sick days and allotted differently. I was interviewing at a company recently and they called out that they offer 1 mental health day per month, in addition to other benefits.

Curious - is it a "use it or lose it", or can an unused MH day be carried over to the next month ?

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#390

Post by partdavid » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #177

I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming…

I've had some bad patches but I don't think they were unique to my profession. Sometimes it was my boss. The tech landscape in the late '90s at Internet hyper-growth companies, when I started, is way different than it is now--I, like you, would be pretty surprised by any company taking an explicit stance against "mental health". But I'm also different now--I've had enough experience to be both in a different place in my career and to know what is or isn't a good fit for me in terms of work style.

My experience, your experience, Vadim's experience--interesting as anecdotes but none of it tells us anything about the "profession" without numbers.

So my intuition is that Vadim overstates the case as a whole, but it's still interesting as an anecdote because what I think he's feeling is pretty common and it's interesting enough to read what worked for him and what advice he has for someone who feels like that.

I do think that in reality it's rare for an engineering leader to take "mental health" days off but all of my engineering leaders have taken plenty of time off and encouraged others to do the same. I haven't worked at a death march cadence in probably almost a decade (and I quit that job pretty quickly when it started). I don't think your experience is homogeneously true, I think people are pretty reticent to take time off (it's why "unlimited PTO" even works in practice) and it's probably worth it to continue asking why.