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I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

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Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#11

Post by auctiontheory »

Mental illness is very common. This story has nothing to do with programming, except that technically strong people are given a lot of leeway for strange behavior, meaning that folks who need treatment often do not get it soon enough.

The other point, and I think by now all of us should know this, is that we are each responsible for our health and our careers - we cannot look forward to a lifetime with a paternalistic employer.

[Update: this was downvoted. I'm not at all harshing on programmers or on mentally ill people. But we need to face reality; doing otherwise serves no one.]

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#12

Post by corwinstephen »

notimetorelax wrote: post #9
Zenst wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secret I ofund out myself is do not mix what you like to do with what you are paid to do. If you like your job fine, but remember you are paid the same. Many many companies will not reward that extra mile and many performance reviews are completely insulting as everybody gets the same % in so many companies and the variation between poor peope and good is probably an extra .5% pay rise. So unless you are working for…

> let them suffer I agree to that. If management doesn't feel pain of its mistakes it does not have an incentive to improve.

This is going to sound insulting and I don't mean it that way, but does anyone ever wonder about the fact that managers are frequently considerably less intelligent than the people they manage? I think that's what drives the frustration a lot of the time. The thing is, just because they're less intelligent doesn't mean they're not good managers, but it think it certainly makes it a lot harder for programmers, who are usually very bright, to accept the choices their managers make when they don't particularly agree with them.

Having said that, I think a good compromise would be to make sure that the people who get assigned to managerial positions have formerly had the job of the people they manage. That way they're likely to understand the pinpoints and the frustrations and be motivated to eliminate them. Obviously not all programmers will qualify for this job, but some certainly will.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#13

Post by oyvindeh »

This is sad, but it's also plain old human psychology.

If you help someone out, you put yourself in an inferior position. If you're always the one sacrificing yourself, people around you will feel more and more superior to you. At some point, they will start expecting that you sacrifice yourself whenever shit hits the fan.

This doesn't mean it's bad to help out, or to sacrifice yourself once in a while. But in order to keep sanity and self dignity, it's extremely important to learn to say no as well.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#14

Post by Ygg2 »

notimetorelax wrote: post #9
Zenst wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secret I ofund out myself is do not mix what you like to do with what you are paid to do. If you like your job fine, but remember you are paid the same. Many many companies will not reward that extra mile and many performance reviews are completely insulting as everybody gets the same % in so many companies and the variation between poor peope and good is probably an extra .5% pay rise. So unless you are working for…

> let them suffer I agree to that. If management doesn't feel pain of its mistakes it does not have an incentive to improve.

I don't think that works because if management is incompetent enough to neglect problems they are creating, do you think they are competent enough to realize they are causing them?

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#15

Post by angersock »

Work-life balance is really important, and having a safety net outside of your workplace and project is key to not going completely batshit.

What's really bad is to find yourself in a position where you see your cofounder/coworker the vast majority of the time, and your work/project gets tangled up in the normal ebb and flow of the relationship.

You really, really don't want to get into a loop where you need to decompress with your best friends, but you can't because you avoid them because your shared work is going poorly, and the work is going poorly because you can't decompress. Yeah, being in that position sucks.

Make sure you've got something positive in your life beyond your current project.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#16

Post by [deleted] »

DigitalSea wrote: post #2

This is sadly a lot more common than people think. I have a similar story from a prior employer, a system administrator who was often asked to fix problems usually caused by bad managerial decisions of which he always flagged initially as being problematic but nobody listened to him, even after it turned out he was right from the start, he was one of those guys who knew their shit. He was a really nice, quiet and res…

[deleted]

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#18

Post by ptaipale »

oyvindeh wrote: post #13

This is sad, but it's also plain old human psychology. If you help someone out, you put yourself in an inferior position. If you're always the one sacrificing yourself, people around you will feel more and more superior to you. At some point, they will start expecting that you sacrifice yourself whenever shit hits the fan. This doesn't mean it's bad to help out, or to sacrifice yourself once in a while. But in order…

If you help someone out, you put yourself in an inferior position.

I don't think so. I don't feel so.

At least when things are reasonable. Rather to the contrary: I feel stronger for being able to help.

Of course, in an unhealthy situation where help is required but not appreciated, and the person who help is not respected, then it's different. Fortunately, not my case most of the time.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#20

Post by derefr »

Zenst wrote: post #5
DigitalSea wrote: post #2

This is sadly a lot more common than people think. I have a similar story from a prior employer, a system administrator who was often asked to fix problems usually caused by bad managerial decisions of which he always flagged initially as being problematic but nobody listened to him, even after it turned out he was right from the start, he was one of those guys who knew their shit. He was a really nice, quiet and res…

Sadly it is more common than people even think. Oddly enough it is always the ones that are most productive and I know from personal experience you can clear 200 tickets in a week and somebody doing the same job and paid more gets thru that in a year and you are the one being shafted as you spend your time doing the work instead of office politics.

Perhaps, instead of seeing your job as "what the job description says", you should see it as "whatever actually gets me rewarded."

Which is to say, at some companies, playing office politics is your real job. "Work" is just a signal you can emit to show that you are willing to submit enough to not get fired.

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