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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

#111

Post by Spooky23 »

killermonkeys wrote: post #74
derefr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Accusing politics of being the downfall of some enterprise is a highly purist position. Politics is usually meant as "things that aren't coding that I don't like". Even political virtuosos still accuse blame politics when convenient. I have seen politics kill someone's work and I have seen a project launch by doing nothing but working away and submitting their end product to flabbergasted responses. But it's rarely s…

People call poisonous behavior "politics". Positive behavior is "collaboration".

I've been in situations where politicking allowed the company to pivot from an established, ineffective strategy to an new, better one.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#112

Post by mailshanx »

pritianka wrote: post #3

Its so unfortunate to hear things like this. I knew of a person who was so stressed out by programming in similar situations that he went through a complete career revamp. He changed to law school and went on to work in government. He seems happier.

This makes me wonder if the kind of burnout described by OP has anything particular to do with the profession of programming. We periodically have posts on HN by lawyers who got so burned out by their day jobs that they did a career revamp to become developers...

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#113

Post by keeptrying »

It's not only programmers. Its managers as well.

Its anyone who subsumes their job to be their identity!

At my old company (big corporation) management shuffles happen every 9 months to a year. One manager went from having 45 people working under him to 0.

The guy had a nervous breakdown as well. I heard he swam in one of our large number of fish tanks. That could be a bad rumor though.

Anyway he was admitted and all that. The company did pay for everything till he made it back about 4-5 months later after which he quit. I remember him looking at me down the escalator and saying "its not worth it man - its not worth it."

So don't let your paycheck or your job be your identity. Also understand that programmers at tech companies (except google/facebook) are at the bottom of the totem pole. So political shit and pressure all end up on the programmer. So try to not be a bottom level programmer for long - either become a tech lead or a manager asap.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#115

Post by incision »

mentalthrowaway wrote: post #89

This is only tangentially related, but since I'm posting under a throwaway (I've been on HN for many years under my main nick) and can't really ask anyone to upvote this, I feel that this is my best chance for someone to see it. For the last few months I've been growing more depressed, more anxious, and more stressed. I love my job, but it requires a good deal of interaction with clients, which never fails to stress…

>I know about FMLA leaves of absence, but that requires you (!) to disclose your illness to your employee; given the massive stigma around mental illness, I really, really dislike that option.

Not true.

You don't have to disclose the nature of the condition, simply that a serious condition exists.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#117

Post by ownagefool »

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.

That can be for many reasons but an example of events for me will go like this:-

> Get new job, jump in there really eger, do a good job.

> Face stupid political BS, eagerness disappears.

> Start looking for other jobs, then ultimately quit.

If you keep working hard in a toxic environment you're going to do yourself harm. If you care about doing good work, move company. Many will be content with just collecting a wage though.

As an aside, I'ved worked on a helpdesk and got through about 5-8 tickets a day while colleagues got through 40. Ultimately I was promoted because those 8 tickets were the ones everyone else was skipping because they didn't have a clue what to do. Neither did I, but once I figured it out I did. If your tickets regularly require on average 5 to 6 minutes work, then perhaps you should question the value of the work you're doing.

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#118

Post by philbarr »

mduerksen wrote: post #57

(Generalisation Warning) This is the dark side of the (otherwise desirable) trait of "getting things done" as employee. I you don't actively manage your working hours and hold yourself back , somebody else will suck you out until you have nothing left. At the end, you will be very unsatisfied for some obscure reason: You did everything you was asked for, yet somehow noone appreciates you and you still earn entry-leve…

Some of the best advice I've ever had was, "when you start at a company, it's tempting to try and work your arse off to prove how worthy you are. Don't - you're not proving anything, you're just establishing precedent. Instead, quickly determine what the absolute minimum you can get away with is and do slightly above that. Then work harder for the month before review time so you can justify a raise. The extra effort will be noticed now, but if you'd worked your arse off then that would just be normal behaviour."

Re: I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

#119

Post by pharrington »

tgflynn wrote: post #101
auctiontheory wrote: post #11

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 paternalisti…

I don't like labeling this type of situation mental illness. That suggests that it's only the individual who is ill. It seems to me that situations like this result from a sick system as much or more than from individual sickness.

No one's saying terrible circumstances don't exist. Mental illness is exasperated by terrible circumstances.
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