13 ms·

People don't talk about having anxiety or depression in the office, or mood changes. Its expected that you just hide it. Tech gives you more leeway to do your o

by taurath 11y ago

People don't talk about having anxiety or depression in the office, or mood changes. Its expected that you just hide it. Tech gives you more leeway to do your own thing most of the time which I'm thankful for, but I can't call out to work because I'm feeling extra anxious one day. I DO end up working at home those days, rare as they are. The stigma that would be attached to me as a "weak-willed" person that sometimes has anxiety issues would be devastating for my career - people do not allow others leadership positions unless they can demonstrate a steady hand. Simply the suggestion that you are facing internal strife enough to mention it in the workplace can be a very large hit to your perception as a solid worker. Managers want consistency in the work output above all else frequently, despite all of our emotional hardware. Simply admitting that you have good days and bad days can sometimes feel like quite a feat.

whitegrape 11y ago
Daily standups and a fear of being "caught" on those days where you maybe spent the whole day getting around to doing something that would take you 30 minutes in the zone add to the stress. Standups become vague/dishonest to further hide the issue. The truth is sometimes you just need to blow off the whole day, maybe even a whole few days. A lot of devs actually understand needing to take random days off here and there even without having underlying issues. But it's hard to justify to managers taking those off, even if unpaid (let alone a random week off after you've determined Monday morning you're just not into it at all). I suspect a culture of open slack would make the stressed out employees a lot less stressed out, but it probably isn't great for the business. There was a startup that was hiring in the Seattle area a few months ago that stated upfront they only sort of want you to work 20 hours a week, very loose, I wonder how it's going. This is even worse when you're recovering from burnout. If you reveal you suffered from burnout and are still recovering, you're effectively admitting your productive output is some percentage of what it used to be. Even if you used to be above average, you're implying that you're probably below-average now, and it'd make more economic sense to replace you or at least pay you much less. (And I bet a lot of devs actually would probably give up half their salary in exchange for only being expected to be around half the time, which may be a good compromise.) From the business owner side I sympathize with wanting to have a workforce full of Carmacks. But realistically speaking, that's very hard to accomplish, and there's something to be said for giving even us somewhat defective mortals something constructive to do so long as we're not contributing negative value that isn't based on pure economic utility.
- trafficjam30125 11y ago
  A lot of that stuff is known to have a discriminatory effect, but kept in place regardless. Also: open-plan offices. The fact is that you can't get a sense of a creative worker's capability with a two-week audit cycle. You get noise that stresses people out. Employers know that people have 2-3 good hours per day (that's neurotypical people). The 9-to-5 workday is just to maximize the likelihood of getting that 2-3 hours. If people could work a 3-hour day, the theory is that the ones who aren't on an inside track for advancement would put their good hours into other projects and give the company their crap hours. I don't think that that's fair or accurate, but it is the thinking. Then there's the general problem of a white-collar world so bereft of vision that, in most organizations, we have to inflict stupid stresses on people then measure them based on their decline curves... when any robust, sane, humane system would get nowhere near the right side of said curve.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- gerbilly 11y ago
  >A lot of devs actually understand needing to take random days off here and there even without having underlying issues. Yeah a good manager should let people blow off a day or two once in a while. Especially since these days you are likely to get a text message at any time of the evening or even at night for you to fix something. This reminds me of a time in 7th grade. In that class we had these desks where you could flip up the top to access your books. I was sitting next to Elissa who had a huge collection of wacky packages. [1] You know how everything is funnier when you aren't supposed to laugh? Elissa and I both lifted up our desks, pretending to rummage around in there, and she would show me cards to make me laugh. We both laughed uncontrollably and thought we were getting away with it too. In reality there was no way the teacher didn't know we were goofing off, but since we rarely made trouble he just let us blow off some steam. Each of us makes surplus value for the owners of the companies we work for. Humans need unstructured time, slack, to goof off, call it whatever you want, and not that fake nerf gun levity that tries to pass for it in most startups. [1] http://www.wackypacks.com/ http://www.wackypacks.com/
- 11y ago
sarciszewski 11y ago
I don't know how it is in the Valley, but if someone told me "I'm suffering from extreme anxiety and if I try to force through it I'm worried the quality of my work would suffer, can I take today off?" I doubt I would say no. Depression sucks, anxiety sucks, having both can be personally and professionally catastrophic.
- taurath 11y ago
  Most of the time its not extreme enough to take a full day off. It just means you run at 50%, or 30% capacity. But you can't really speak up about not having that capacity, and if you take the day off it comes out of your vacation. At the end of the week though, the work is done because you buckle down. This is why open offices and daily standups and constant micromanagement are terrifying to me - everyone is VERY happy with my work output and I'm considered an A player, but if you watched me on an hour by hour basis you'd have a much different opinion of me.
  - trafficjam30125 11y ago
    Open-plan is actually sold to employers for its discriminatory "benefit". Mostly it's about age, not disability. People like you and me aren't even on their map. We may be a highly productive (in the long term, though short-term volatility is embarrassing) ~4% of the population but "they" don't care either way about us. They do want to keep "the olds" out, though. Once people have kids, they struggle with open-plan offices. That's because the biologically rooted need to protect someone makes it impossible for you to keep the "you can trust anyone" attitude of college kids and programmers in halfway-house environments. Open-plan forces you to trust randoms with visibility into how you are working, and that's something that's intolerable for anyone who's ever had a disability, anyone with a less-than-privileged upbringing, and anyone who's ever had a child (among other sets of people).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - whitegrape 11y ago
dang 11y ago
There was a not-bad post yesterday about talking about feelings at work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070056. I don't know that I'd want to have a formal check-in process, but I look forward to the day when the barriers between emotional and professional expression aren't so rigid. It seems obvious that we're headed that way. Imagine that you actually could "call out to work because [you're] feeling extra anxious one day". What else would be different?
- 13of40 11y ago
  You totally can, and it's even legally protected: "Hi all - Woke up this morning not feeling too well, so I'm going to stay home today. Thanks, Mike." I had a therapist tell me a few years back that I should call in sick every once in a while and go do whatever I want for the day, guilt free. Best advice I ever got. Doctor's orders.
  - alatkins 11y ago
    Here in Australia we have the semi-serious phrase "taking a mental health day" which is exactly what you describe :)
  - dang 11y ago
    I assumed that what taurath meant is not that he or she couldn't stay home, but that they couldn't be truthful about why. Your solution finesses that with ambiguity, which is fine if needed, but what if people really could just say what they feel?
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      "Not feeling well" is honest though broad. People shouldn't feel bad about telling their boss that. Bosses should feel bad for prying for details. The only point of that would be to judge whether the specific problem is a "real problem". The typical policy these days is to transfer the employee to some sort of disability after certain patterns of absence (X days in a row, Y days over period Z). I feel that is a good compromise. It's also very good for small teams since it's a predictable insurance payment, not a risky hire.
qjighap 11y ago
I find the stigma might be something to embrace in a non-emergency. While employers should absolutely keep an open-door and a supportive policy to these kind of issues, your friends and co-workers are not your psychiatrist or other mental health professional. Telling a depressed person that they should go home and relax with a stiff drink seems like a unreasonable thing to say, it has only become so (relatively) recently. I will also mention that some people have boundary issues due to various conditions and a employer/employee relationship can not support a healthy recovery. Similar to how some psychiatrists don't take their patients out socially. I mention all this as I hope that it makes it your choice to not share and not a onus to stay perfect all the time.
girvo 11y ago
> People don't talk about having anxiety or depression in the office, or mood changes Thats one of the many things I love about where I work currently: we can, and do, all the way up to the top. It makes life a lot easier when I've been able to be open and honest about why things are they way the are at a certain point in time.
calibraxis 11y ago
And it's not just depression — also aggression. Being aggressive spreads mental illness to others fast.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  What does that mean?
  - progressive_dad 11y ago
    I take it to mean, "don't marginalize, punish, and otherwise manage like an asshole. It will ruin your team faster than layoffs."

by taurath 11y ago

whitegrape 11y ago

Daily standups and a fear of being "caught" on those days where you maybe spent the whole day getting around to doing something that would take you 30 minutes in the zone add to the stress. Standups become vague/dishonest to further hide the issue. The truth is sometimes you just need to blow off the whole day, maybe even a whole few days. A lot of devs actually understand needing to take random days off here and there even without having underlying issues. But it's hard to justify to managers taking those off, even if unpaid (let alone a random week off after you've determined Monday morning you're just not into it at all). I suspect a culture of open slack would make the stressed out employees a lot less stressed out, but it probably isn't great for the business. There was a startup that was hiring in the Seattle area a few months ago that stated upfront they only sort of want you to work 20 hours a week, very loose, I wonder how it's going. This is even worse when you're recovering from burnout. If you reveal you suffered from burnout and are still recovering, you're effectively admitting your productive output is some percentage of what it used to be. Even if you used to be above average, you're implying that you're probably below-average now, and it'd make more economic sense to replace you or at least pay you much less. (And I bet a lot of devs actually would probably give up half their salary in exchange for only being expected to be around half the time, which may be a good compromise.) From the business owner side I sympathize with wanting to have a workforce full of Carmacks. But realistically speaking, that's very hard to accomplish, and there's something to be said for giving even us somewhat defective mortals something constructive to do so long as we're not contributing negative value that isn't based on pure economic utility.

trafficjam30125 11y ago
A lot of that stuff is known to have a discriminatory effect, but kept in place regardless. Also: open-plan offices. The fact is that you can't get a sense of a creative worker's capability with a two-week audit cycle. You get noise that stresses people out. Employers know that people have 2-3 good hours per day (that's neurotypical people). The 9-to-5 workday is just to maximize the likelihood of getting that 2-3 hours. If people could work a 3-hour day, the theory is that the ones who aren't on an inside track for advancement would put their good hours into other projects and give the company their crap hours. I don't think that that's fair or accurate, but it is the thinking. Then there's the general problem of a white-collar world so bereft of vision that, in most organizations, we have to inflict stupid stresses on people then measure them based on their decline curves... when any robust, sane, humane system would get nowhere near the right side of said curve.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
gerbilly 11y ago
>A lot of devs actually understand needing to take random days off here and there even without having underlying issues. Yeah a good manager should let people blow off a day or two once in a while. Especially since these days you are likely to get a text message at any time of the evening or even at night for you to fix something. This reminds me of a time in 7th grade. In that class we had these desks where you could flip up the top to access your books. I was sitting next to Elissa who had a huge collection of wacky packages. [1] You know how everything is funnier when you aren't supposed to laugh? Elissa and I both lifted up our desks, pretending to rummage around in there, and she would show me cards to make me laugh. We both laughed uncontrollably and thought we were getting away with it too. In reality there was no way the teacher didn't know we were goofing off, but since we rarely made trouble he just let us blow off some steam. Each of us makes surplus value for the owners of the companies we work for. Humans need unstructured time, slack, to goof off, call it whatever you want, and not that fake nerf gun levity that tries to pass for it in most startups. [1] http://www.wackypacks.com/ http://www.wackypacks.com/
11y ago

sarciszewski 11y ago

I don't know how it is in the Valley, but if someone told me "I'm suffering from extreme anxiety and if I try to force through it I'm worried the quality of my work would suffer, can I take today off?" I doubt I would say no. Depression sucks, anxiety sucks, having both can be personally and professionally catastrophic.

taurath 11y ago
Most of the time its not extreme enough to take a full day off. It just means you run at 50%, or 30% capacity. But you can't really speak up about not having that capacity, and if you take the day off it comes out of your vacation. At the end of the week though, the work is done because you buckle down. This is why open offices and daily standups and constant micromanagement are terrifying to me - everyone is VERY happy with my work output and I'm considered an A player, but if you watched me on an hour by hour basis you'd have a much different opinion of me.
- trafficjam30125 11y ago
  Open-plan is actually sold to employers for its discriminatory "benefit". Mostly it's about age, not disability. People like you and me aren't even on their map. We may be a highly productive (in the long term, though short-term volatility is embarrassing) ~4% of the population but "they" don't care either way about us. They do want to keep "the olds" out, though. Once people have kids, they struggle with open-plan offices. That's because the biologically rooted need to protect someone makes it impossible for you to keep the "you can trust anyone" attitude of college kids and programmers in halfway-house environments. Open-plan forces you to trust randoms with visibility into how you are working, and that's something that's intolerable for anyone who's ever had a disability, anyone with a less-than-privileged upbringing, and anyone who's ever had a child (among other sets of people).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- whitegrape 11y ago

dang 11y ago

There was a not-bad post yesterday about talking about feelings at work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070056. I don't know that I'd want to have a formal check-in process, but I look forward to the day when the barriers between emotional and professional expression aren't so rigid. It seems obvious that we're headed that way. Imagine that you actually could "call out to work because [you're] feeling extra anxious one day". What else would be different?

13of40 11y ago
You totally can, and it's even legally protected: "Hi all - Woke up this morning not feeling too well, so I'm going to stay home today. Thanks, Mike." I had a therapist tell me a few years back that I should call in sick every once in a while and go do whatever I want for the day, guilt free. Best advice I ever got. Doctor's orders.
- alatkins 11y ago
  Here in Australia we have the semi-serious phrase "taking a mental health day" which is exactly what you describe :)
- dang 11y ago
  I assumed that what taurath meant is not that he or she couldn't stay home, but that they couldn't be truthful about why. Your solution finesses that with ambiguity, which is fine if needed, but what if people really could just say what they feel?
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    "Not feeling well" is honest though broad. People shouldn't feel bad about telling their boss that. Bosses should feel bad for prying for details. The only point of that would be to judge whether the specific problem is a "real problem". The typical policy these days is to transfer the employee to some sort of disability after certain patterns of absence (X days in a row, Y days over period Z). I feel that is a good compromise. It's also very good for small teams since it's a predictable insurance payment, not a risky hire.

qjighap 11y ago

I find the stigma might be something to embrace in a non-emergency. While employers should absolutely keep an open-door and a supportive policy to these kind of issues, your friends and co-workers are not your psychiatrist or other mental health professional. Telling a depressed person that they should go home and relax with a stiff drink seems like a unreasonable thing to say, it has only become so (relatively) recently. I will also mention that some people have boundary issues due to various conditions and a employer/employee relationship can not support a healthy recovery. Similar to how some psychiatrists don't take their patients out socially. I mention all this as I hope that it makes it your choice to not share and not a onus to stay perfect all the time.

girvo 11y ago

> People don't talk about having anxiety or depression in the office, or mood changes Thats one of the many things I love about where I work currently: we can, and do, all the way up to the top. It makes life a lot easier when I've been able to be open and honest about why things are they way the are at a certain point in time.

calibraxis 11y ago

And it's not just depression — also aggression. Being aggressive spreads mental illness to others fast.

humanrebar 11y ago
What does that mean?
- progressive_dad 11y ago
  I take it to mean, "don't marginalize, punish, and otherwise manage like an asshole. It will ruin your team faster than layoffs."