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Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

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Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#111

Post by dionidium »

jacquesm wrote: post #107
derefr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short-term point sampling can do you more harm than good—this is as true in medicine as it is in investing. There's nothing wrong with getting an MRI every year if you aren't actually looking at it on its own, but rather diffing it in a time-series, and extracting chartable statistics from it, to see if anything in your body is getting progressively [adjective]er each year. This approach won't actually tell you if yo…

You are tying up an MRI machine that might be put to better use.

You're implying that MRI machines are 100% utilized and that any usage prevents some other usage. Surely that's not actually the case.

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#112

Post by sukilot »

larrys wrote: post #5
testingonprod wrote: post #2

It is at these times we must confront our own mortality.

When I started to see similar things happen to friends or acquaintances when I was about the same age every time I heard of someone getting sick or dying prematurely I would say to myself "time to buy that Porsche you always wanted". So I did. My parents generation worked hard but never spent any money always assuming they would live to a ripe old age.

You can do so much better than buying an expensive toy. Why bother working so hard to blow it on something silly?

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#113

Post by sukilot »

kayoone wrote: post #22
[deleted] wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

It's obviously not about money, he was trying to say that one should not pass everything off until you are older, because there is always a Chance that you wont get old.

If you will your savings to a worthwhile institution, there's no problem.

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#114

Post by jimjam7382 »

beachstartup wrote: post #102
pen2l wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of 2 guys who had a case of "sudden death" in the valley, both from heart attack, both were using stimulants and working very long hours in their startups. I know from previous threads that a lot of folks in the valley use stimulants to get through nights without sleep, to work with high focus, but guys you have to be careful. Stimulant use aside, keep in mind cardiovascular diseases is one of _the_ bigger kil…

uhm, by all accounts (especially the video in this thread where he says as much) this guy was far past the working-long-hours phase - the company was mature and he stressed work life balance. i think mentioning stimulant abuse here is a little ... shitty of you, to be honest. some people just die young/young-ish of natural causes. i personally know several people who have had freak heart attacks or brain conditions a…

Hard to believe this was just death by "natural causes." It's dangerous to speculate, yes, but I think we can all safely assume that he had access to the best of the best in terms of healthcare. To die suddenly at his age with no warning signs at all is very strange.

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#115

Post by jacquesm »

dionidium wrote: post #111
jacquesm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are tying up an MRI machine that might be put to better use.

You're implying that MRI machines are 100% utilized and that any usage prevents some other usage. Surely that's not actually the case.

You don't need them to be 100% utilized, it's not the machines that are the problem but the technicians operating them and the doctors interpreting the results and so on.

There is a whole team clustered around an MRI machine and tying up the machine is effectively tying up the team.

If everybody got an MRI every year on the off chance they might have something then the machines would not be available to those that actually need them (because they have symptoms that require an MRI to narrow in on a cause).

And that's besides the whole fall-out further down the chain in case something does show up that does not generate symptoms and even further down the chain where probably un-necessary operations will be performed on symptom-less patients.

Doing the right amount of screening is a really hard problem. Getting an MRI done every year just because you can afford it is probably not even near the right amount.

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#116

Post by benatkin »

sukilot wrote: post #112
larrys wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started to see similar things happen to friends or acquaintances when I was about the same age every time I heard of someone getting sick or dying prematurely I would say to myself "time to buy that Porsche you always wanted". So I did. My parents generation worked hard but never spent any money always assuming they would live to a ripe old age.

You can do so much better than buying an expensive toy. Why bother working so hard to blow it on something silly?

No matter where you spend it, money goes somewhere. Why shouldn't people at Porsche be able to earn money from someone who wants and is able to afford one of their cars?

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#117

Post by bau5 »

jimjam7382 wrote: post #114
beachstartup wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uhm, by all accounts (especially the video in this thread where he says as much) this guy was far past the working-long-hours phase - the company was mature and he stressed work life balance. i think mentioning stimulant abuse here is a little ... shitty of you, to be honest. some people just die young/young-ish of natural causes. i personally know several people who have had freak heart attacks or brain conditions a…

Hard to believe this was just death by "natural causes." It's dangerous to speculate, yes, but I think we can all safely assume that he had access to the best of the best in terms of healthcare. To die suddenly at his age with no warning signs at all is very strange.

Even if you can afford it, you've got to ask for it, if you're in the tech field. A professional basketball player, and probably also a coach, is going to have their physical health watched over, whether they take the initiative or not. Wealthy people in many other fields are free to go to the doctor as rarely or as often as they want.

That said I think his wife probably made sure he got good access to healthcare, if he didn't take the initiative himself. But it probably is somewhere between every three months and every year. Major sports players, top celebrities or Paul Atreides have the level of access that make it extremely rare, but a well connected tech executive just has a level of access that reduces the risk somewhat.

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#118

Post by bigtunacan »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #103
beachstartup wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uhm, by all accounts (especially the video in this thread where he says as much) this guy was far past the working-long-hours phase - the company was mature and he stressed work life balance. i think mentioning stimulant abuse here is a little ... shitty of you, to be honest. some people just die young/young-ish of natural causes. i personally know several people who have had freak heart attacks or brain conditions a…

Generally places stress work life balance because the organization doesn't actually afford its members a work life balance, so the perception of it existing has to be constructed through propaganda. i.e. If you already have work life balance, there's not need to stress it.

This is just not true. Tech culture is rife with long days, nights, and weekends. In my experience, companies that truly care about work life balance often have to remind people of this just due to the fact that so many people are used to this culture and often have a difficult time escaping the mindset.

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#119

Post by joelberman »

izacus wrote: post #69
adevine wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption that "it does make a difference between death an survival" in not necessarily born out by the data. There has been a big push back recently against using an improvement in 5 year survival rate as an indication of success in the war on cancer. For example, if a new diagnostic test lets you find out you have cancer earlier, but you still end up dying at the same age you would anyway, the 5 year survival…

I'm not sure I understand your point - are you arguing that finding cancer earlier does not increases chances of treatment and survival? Do you have any reliable data on that?

When I had cancer I just wanted it gone. Since it could be cut out, I went with that. Every time I caught a cold I worried that it had returned. I did not want to be on the wrong side of a statistical curve. That others survived would not have comforted me as much as knowing that I would survive. Your mileage may vary.

Re: Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

#120

Post by wpietri »

mreiland wrote: post #104
beachstartup wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uhm, by all accounts (especially the video in this thread where he says as much) this guy was far past the working-long-hours phase - the company was mature and he stressed work life balance. i think mentioning stimulant abuse here is a little ... shitty of you, to be honest. some people just die young/young-ish of natural causes. i personally know several people who have had freak heart attacks or brain conditions a…

why is it shitty? I didn't take it as him implying that's how the CEO died, just that it's an issue that happens a lot in silicon valley and it's dangerous because you can die unexpectedly due to a heart attack.

Worst case, he's implying that illegal drug use is a factor in the death of somebody known to people here. Best case, he's bringing up something irrelevant on a thread where people are paying their respects and/or dealing with a deep and sudden loss and is doing it in a way where he's oblivious to the possible implication. Either way, I think shitty is a reasonable word.

If he wants to talk about an issue in Silicon Valley, he can do it pretty much anywhere but this one page.

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