281–290 of 618 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quit
I mean, you kinda glossed over 1/3 of the issue... how do you quit “the entire world”? I think the person asking for advice wanted a real answer for “how can one deal with this difficulty”, especially because in the work situation, a new job won’t necessarily make any difference in terms of the internal struggles.
[1] not actually what happened, but might as well have been.
I'm just going to take this story at face value, there's an infinite number of alternate explanations that I'd be powerless to talk about. I've had my own (thankfully brief) moments where I've thought about suicide just from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. Mr Barnett worked for the same company for over three decades and physically watched…
Just to chime in on the 'alternate explanations', I think it's important for anyone with conspiracy ideas to remember that the case he was being questioned in was not an investigation into Boeings liability as an airplane manufacturer, but rather a civil suit he made against Boeing for defamation of character.
I'm just going to take this story at face value, there's an infinite number of alternate explanations that I'd be powerless to talk about. I've had my own (thankfully brief) moments where I've thought about suicide just from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. Mr Barnett worked for the same company for over three decades and physically watched…
> from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. How did you overcome this?
What you want is for people to frequently see “doing the right thing” as the same as acting is what they see as their own interest: if being kind and polite gets you allies at work, and that’s how you get heard, respected promoted, or find a job, then people will be kind.
Things like cost-cutting to the point where there are legitimate risks to life are hard to find; therefore, people see others cost-cutting and getting promoted because they “stayed within budget” but (within their limited direct observation) never sanctioned. Engineers see project leaders getting away with it, but there are not good reputation mechanisms individualized enough: it’s “project managers always push for the cheapest…” Therefore, any PM who tries to go against the grain faces both prejudice and sanctions for not cutting costs.
You can implement reviews, promotions and reputation mechanisms that encourage behaviors that align short-term personal interest with the long-term benefit of the larger organization and stakeholders, but it’s really hard and non-trivial. Large organizations are far less efficient than they could be because of all the self-interested rent-seeking behavior, but the economies of scale are so strong that it doesn’t matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wouldn't be as direct as if the order came from the boardroom. There are thousands of "stakeholders" bound to lose their gravy train, lobbyists, suppliers, "consultants", military industrial complex. It's easy to for one of these to send a "contractor" to stalk, hold the person's arm and "shoot himself" dead. I am not an investigator but this is very very suspicious. He delivered 2 days of testimony and is about t…
So what you’re saying is Boeing has an army of 2000 lobbyists are all ready to kill for financial gain?
Imagine you had a highly lucrative SMB selling Microsoft services to some government/institutional customers, and some big court case threatened to cause MS serious harm, affecting your ability to sell those MS services. If you're a sociopath, you might want to shoot the star witness.
I wish there were an aggressively anti-clickbait news outlet that writes headlines explicitly designed to preempt and neutralize potential misunderstandings. Imagine editors try to anticipate all kinds of ways a candidate headline might mislead the reader, and rewrite the headline to discourage those inferences — succinctly if possible, verbosely if necessary. For this particular piece such a outlet might opt for som…
How about "Ex-Boeing Employee Who Reported Safety Issues in 2019 at South Carolina Facility Dies by Apparent Suicide in the middle of formal deposition which started last week"
I'm just going to take this story at face value, there's an infinite number of alternate explanations that I'd be powerless to talk about. I've had my own (thankfully brief) moments where I've thought about suicide just from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. Mr Barnett worked for the same company for over three decades and physically watched…
> from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. How did you overcome this?
Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quit
I mean, you kinda glossed over 1/3 of the issue... how do you quit “the entire world”? I think the person asking for advice wanted a real answer for “how can one deal with this difficulty”, especially because in the work situation, a new job won’t necessarily make any difference in terms of the internal struggles.
The short answer: you can’t, but you can change which parts of the world you actively engage with.
As someone on a long journey that seems highly relevant to this thread, getting help via therapy is one of the most important things I’ve done for myself.
A job that has sufficient problems and insane levels of stress can make the rest of the world look…different. Quitting my job gave me the mental capacity to find and see aspects of the world around me that are not worth quitting.
It has given me the space to recenter my life on things that support me, and to regain some optimism about what I can do with my life more broadly.
Quitting a toxic environment is an important first step. There are good places left. Good people to work for. Different ways to live life.
Choosing suicide is often related to a deep belief that there are no options left. This is often a result of compromised thinking based on intensely difficult situations/experiences that make it extremely hard to see beyond the current situation. I’ve had periods of dark thinking that I’ve since learned how to manage, and one of the most important things for me was getting a broader perspective on what was happening (and thus possible) outside of my own sphere.