8 ms·

Systemic abuse in the software industry is ruining lives… and taking them.

34 points by musha68k 11y ago

cushychicken 11y ago
Reading the precursor essay, "Living in the Age of Software Fuckery" begs a pretty big question: if the author has such a clear picture of the structural flaws inherent in software development organizations, why isn't he out there starting his own firm and hiring all of these mistreated, misunderstood developers and making a killing off of all of their limitless creativity?
- wcummings 11y ago
  Probably because he has other things going on, why is this a "big question"? He's not obligated to do anything.
- solipsism 11y ago
  Elsewhere you said, A good start is to call out misogyny when you see it. Why does that go for dealing with misogeny but not the issues the author is concerned with?
- JanneVee 11y ago
  "Living in the Age of Software Fuckery" isn't about capturing value of others. He isn't peddling a work place or fix, and it makes it a honest post. It is a verbalization of what some developers including me feel are wrong. Bryan isn't right in every word but it gives some solace to me that I'm not alone.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >Why isn't he out there starting his own firm Probably because access to capital, connections, luck and the ability to sell are more critical than good ideas. You don't think that Uber could have been you if you'd 'just written a ride sharing app' in 2008 do you? :)
  - mojuba 11y ago
    It has become almost given that if you are not a (co)founder of a startup yet then something is wrong with you.
pmarreck 11y ago
While these were all tragic, they are hardly representative. Do you know how when you ride a bicycle and look off to one side, you tend to steer towards that side, involuntarily? Stop being obsessed with oppression, depression and suicide. Not to downplay them, but you have free will (oh, debatable, sure, but it's better for happiness to just believe you do) and can act, and can steer your consciousness towards more positive points on the horizon.
- majewsky 11y ago
  > Stop being obsessed with [...] depression. So you're one of the persons who would suggest to clinically depressed people to "just smile again" as if that would magically solve all their problems and mental disorders? The point is that even if such people are a minority, we should treat them with the appropriate discretion and be sensitive to their psychological needs.
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    >So you're one of the persons who would suggest to clinically depressed people to "just smile again" as if that would magically solve all their problems and mental disorders? It sounds more like "things aren't panning out the way they were supposed to" in his head and now he's mad about it and he's trying to find ways to make it a systemic issue rather than one of his own goals/achievements/motivation.
  - FLUX-YOU 11y ago
    >The point is that even if such people are a minority, we should treat them with the appropriate discretion and be sensitive to their psychological needs. Which should not involve radically changing the "commercial software shop" because some individuals do not do well in that environment (or worse, blaming it systemic abuse) as the article says. The only role that businesses should be doing here is keeping the issues confidential and allowing them to get the help that they need.
  - pmarreck 11y ago
    > who would suggest to clinically depressed people to "just smile again" as if that would magically solve all their problems and mental disorders? No. I'm not saying that at all, and tried to point that out. But something like 75% of this article is focusing squarely on unhappiness. That's all I'm saying. If all you do is write about unhappiness and end up suiciding, is it really that surprising? Your body is what you consume physically; your mind is what you consume media-wise. If all you do is read Sylvia Plath poetry all day, and then write poetry inspired by Sylvia Plath, then you may in fact end up just like she did. What tipped me off is that he even said he wanted to suicide dozens of times. Which on the one hand, is kind of "TMI" for an article like this, and on the other hand... so why are you reading about other suicides? That is what I'm saying. That, and most of the people cited already had diagnosable mental difficulties, which means he is openly confusing the apparent proximal cause between "oppressed IT person" and "is emotionally-challenged already" One night not too long ago, I couldn't sleep, and for whatever reason I decided to watch 9/11 videos on YouTube. Guess what happened? I fell asleep and had nightmares, and for the next day(s) I was depressed as hell. I surely didn't function as well as I could and, dare I say it, I am sure I brought less goodness into the world as a result. All because I focused on watching 9/11 videos and listening to final phone calls and watching people fall to their deaths from great heights, one night. It's worldview distortion, basically. Yes, bad things happen and sometimes, bosses are jerks. Yes, some people have emotional difficulties (some of which should be treated clinically). Yes, IT careers seem to draw in a bumper-crop of sensitive folks (it's the curse of high intelligence, really). From this, you cannot draw the conclusion that there is a systematic problem going on. Disclaimer: I'm diagnosed ADD, AND sleep apnea, and (sometimes) take meds for it (on bad days when I really need to function), so I'm not the kind of person who wouldn't understand that some things just need treatment.
codyb 11y ago
This article more seemed to suggest that extremely intelligent people are more likely to get into trouble than any apparent root cause to me. In Schwartz and Turing's case, while the law was misguided, it compounded their stressors and took their lives. In the one fellows case he apparently broke into someone's house wasted and was arrested. And there was the guy announcing his suicide on twitter (that might be the same guy, can't remember), a serious call for help. I'm not so sure this article made me think it's endemic to the software industry. Large numbers of people commit suicide in the United States and abroad every year. Maybe it's the cultural stressors of bills, and grades, and social exclusion, and yada yada yada onward and onward for as long as you'd like that contributes to the high rates of suicide in high stress environments. And then this weird tangential aside about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and how they'd be equally disastrous convinced me this was an emotional plea for something (the vague sentiment that we should treat eachother like humans regardless of seniority when humans don't particularly have a great track record on that front and while... positive is just as kooky if not much more so than anything Bernie Sanders has said) not particularly well grounded in reality and with no proposed solutions besides a call for empathy. If you want people to stop commiting suicide you need to take away their major stressors which compound their depressive states. Correct the law so that gays are free to be themselves. Pay people living wages so their bank accounts have at least a small buffer. Make sure health care and education are affordable and accessible. So in a way his potential future vote for Bernie based on Bernie's empathy was the wrong path to the right choice. It's not just in this individual instance that Bernie feels empathetic towards man, but in almost all instances of Bernie's recorded public profile. Whether it comes to the oppression of African Americans and gays, or to the inability to pay bills or access health care of education of the lower and middle class Americans he represents, Bernie has consistently been on the empathetic side of the equation. But it's his policy proposals which make Bernie the right man for the job, not his empathy which shaped them.
- solipsism 11y ago
  To paraphrase Nietzsche, to live is to experience stressors. The changes you're talking about might (might!) lower the number of stressors in people's lives and thus have an overall positive impact on mental health, but a better path toward that goal, in my opinion, is to encourage people to seek the help necessary to deal with stressors. Edit: you did mention making mental healthcare accessible, but it wasn't the brunt of your message.
erik_landerholm 11y ago
Yes being a startup founder is stressful. Before joining YC I ran through my 401k, my cofounder almost lost his house and we had two little kids each at the time. To join YC we left our wives and kids in Portland and moved into an office next to drug dealers (YC only gave 5k per founder at that time), etc, etc. Not everyone can handle stress like that...I'm not sure I could ever do that again. You have to know what you can handle and what you can't. I'm sure there are abuses of engineers in the valley, but it's not indentured servitude. This article makes it sound like these people were slaves with no options...that's categorically untrue except maybe in Aaron schwart's and Turing's cases. Also, how many software engineers in the valley or other places are happy with their jobs? I bet it's a higher percentage than say work at McDonald's....
- Smudge 11y ago
  There's a survivorship bias in what you describe. How many others in your position, who perhaps thought they knew what they could handle, did end up losing their houses, and/or racked up years and years of debt on a gamble that didn't end up paying off? It's something we don't really talk about in this industry, but I suspect it happens more often than the success stories.
  - erik_landerholm 11y ago
    If I had known what I was going to go through I'm not sure I would of done it, but it's also my personality to never give up. I always keep looking for a way through, around or out of problems. So, I always feel like I'll be OK. I might not get the optimal solution, but i can deal with most situations. Now....what happened to Aaron and Turing...to me that's different. Our startup wasn't really successful. We didn't return money to our investors. We were 'bought' by another company, but that was just a talent acquisition. Since then we have been successful at the new company...again...because of nothing more than we will stick to what we believe is right longer than others. I'm able to withstand a lot of resistance and I only take a few people's opinions seriously. So other people not liking me or not wanting to be apart of what we are trying to do has little effect on me. Not everyone is like that. If you aren't this startup/running companies is not something you should indulge in...the stresses will break you down. It's really important to have a people you work with that you can rely on and commiserate with. Without that it could get to anyone, save a true psychopath. Paul has given reasons for why he didn't want to invest in single cofounders, but I'm not sure he ever articulated it that way. For me having a partner made this experience bearable. It wasn't what I would call fun though.
mrottenkolber 11y ago
I find the notion that humans can be more or less inhumane troubling. Its really just arbitrary segregation whose only use I can imagine is to dehumanize persons. Same goes for calling people sociopaths etc. Everybody does what they think is best, for them and for the world. Somebody in politics is way stupider than you and thus ruins the world... that's an opinion, and an understandable one too. But is it productive? That being said I absolutely agree with the sentiment of the article. Humans haven't yet figured out how to live together in cooperation instead of violence, and changing this is the most important goal we have. We must actively protest injustice, and create spaces were we can live in self determination. Join your local anarchist movement, make up your own mind, learn and work together with others so we can someday create a social fabric that is open and peaceful.
- njharman 11y ago
  > find the notion that humans can be more or less inhumane troubling You aren't going to "fix" human nature. At least not without eugenics and execution of those who don't think "right". Saying we should be humane and cooperate with each other doesn't cut it. It's as much a pipe dream as anarchism. Although I agree with that philosophy it's never gonna work with humans. High number of sociopaths, prison experiments, the us vs attitude that permeates must all human social constructs, preponderance of human history is the proof. Humans are just too shitty to have nice things.
  - mrottenkolber 11y ago
    What do you mean by fix? I am talking about improving the situation. History has proven this is very well possible. Women can vote now. Slaves in America became rare. There is a notion of human and international rights, which is quite new. Witches aren't burnt, gay sex doesn't get you killed. Do you think that the status-quo is as good as we can do? I don't thin so.
SeanDav 11y ago
While I applaud any effort to create a better work and living environment, I am not sure that the article is that accurate in one of its premises that the software industry has a high or even higher suicide rate then any other industry, for example: http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-with-highest-suicide-rates/ http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-w... Absolutely, we should be doing all we can to address depression and unhealthy stress and to attempt to eliminate all contributory factors. So in general terms I support this article but it is perhaps a bit sensationalist.
quickben 11y ago
It's a solvable problem with a very subjective solution. For me. After working at stock exchanges and whatnot; I decided that every day I'd walk through that door at 9am with three fucks in my register and walk out at 5 with three of them still there. Burnouts aren't worth it. Salary difference of x% is dealth by switching jobs if needed. We are in demand. Get at least normal rest every day out of it. Or you'll hate what you love and live to do.
fsloth 11y ago
I emphatize with depression on a deep level. The population of software developers is so large that just picking a few known cases of depression makes for an argument of unknown statistical strength. One thing is known - software development is hard, potentially stressfull with recurring pathologies that really don't have any known remedies except 'dedicated craftmanship'. On the other hand, a few of the examples pinpointed to a cruel and unkind society as the root cause of depressive issues - system issued chemical horrors in the case of Alan Turing and zealous politically ambitious ptosecutor in the case of Schwartz. The issue is then not that the software shop cannot function always as the surrogate family but that systems should not treat individuals cruelly. Which is an admirable dream - but goes really weirdly with antagonizing with liberal politics. Anarchism would not lead to a kinder society with the human species as it is.
njharman 11y ago
Just like I don't believe violent video games create homocidal sociopaths. I don't think software industry creates depressives. We are born that way. I would be depressive no matter what I worked in. Probably even if I was trust fund baby and didn't have a care in the world. Which, of course, never is true. My depression makes my life stressful, makes it lonely, makes it "hard" to live. Depression is the source, the root cause, the disease. Not a symptom. [to be clear the word depression is broadly used. You can be depressed (and I imagine everyone has been at one point or another and this is caused by external factors, say death of love ones) without suffering depression. Big D Depression is like a phobia, in that it is irrational. One is depressed for NO reason. None. Not a hidden one, or misunderstood, etc. (I mean no external reason, it's physically probably brain chemistry). And there may be other kinds of Big D depression. But this is the one I'm an expert on. And the problem is with me, not you/inustry/society. Although, you can help with symptoms such as not firing me after spending a week in bed not answering phone. Also, using Turing as evidence of author's point about Software Industry is disingenuous.
willholloway 11y ago
If you are feeling this sad, look up a ketamine clinic near you and get some infusions going. I haven't myself, but I have heard amazing turnaround stories. If you are this depressed, your brain has atrophied, your dendrites look like deciduous trees in winter. After you get infused, and ketamine activates the mTOR pathway and you feel a sense of joy again, you will be really grateful you didn't kill yourself.

34 points by musha68k 11y ago

Reading the precursor essay, "Living in the Age of Software Fuckery" begs a pretty big question: if the author has such a clear picture of the structural flaws inherent in software development organizations, why isn't he out there starting his own firm and hiring all of these mistreated, misunderstood developers and making a killing off of all of their limitless creativity?

wcummings 11y ago
Probably because he has other things going on, why is this a "big question"? He's not obligated to do anything.
solipsism 11y ago
Elsewhere you said, A good start is to call out misogyny when you see it. Why does that go for dealing with misogeny but not the issues the author is concerned with?
JanneVee 11y ago
"Living in the Age of Software Fuckery" isn't about capturing value of others. He isn't peddling a work place or fix, and it makes it a honest post. It is a verbalization of what some developers including me feel are wrong. Bryan isn't right in every word but it gives some solace to me that I'm not alone.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>Why isn't he out there starting his own firm Probably because access to capital, connections, luck and the ability to sell are more critical than good ideas. You don't think that Uber could have been you if you'd 'just written a ride sharing app' in 2008 do you? :)
- mojuba 11y ago
  It has become almost given that if you are not a (co)founder of a startup yet then something is wrong with you.

pmarreck 11y ago

While these were all tragic, they are hardly representative. Do you know how when you ride a bicycle and look off to one side, you tend to steer towards that side, involuntarily? Stop being obsessed with oppression, depression and suicide. Not to downplay them, but you have free will (oh, debatable, sure, but it's better for happiness to just believe you do) and can act, and can steer your consciousness towards more positive points on the horizon.

majewsky 11y ago
> Stop being obsessed with [...] depression. So you're one of the persons who would suggest to clinically depressed people to "just smile again" as if that would magically solve all their problems and mental disorders? The point is that even if such people are a minority, we should treat them with the appropriate discretion and be sensitive to their psychological needs.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  >So you're one of the persons who would suggest to clinically depressed people to "just smile again" as if that would magically solve all their problems and mental disorders? It sounds more like "things aren't panning out the way they were supposed to" in his head and now he's mad about it and he's trying to find ways to make it a systemic issue rather than one of his own goals/achievements/motivation.
- FLUX-YOU 11y ago
  >The point is that even if such people are a minority, we should treat them with the appropriate discretion and be sensitive to their psychological needs. Which should not involve radically changing the "commercial software shop" because some individuals do not do well in that environment (or worse, blaming it systemic abuse) as the article says. The only role that businesses should be doing here is keeping the issues confidential and allowing them to get the help that they need.
- pmarreck 11y ago
  > who would suggest to clinically depressed people to "just smile again" as if that would magically solve all their problems and mental disorders? No. I'm not saying that at all, and tried to point that out. But something like 75% of this article is focusing squarely on unhappiness. That's all I'm saying. If all you do is write about unhappiness and end up suiciding, is it really that surprising? Your body is what you consume physically; your mind is what you consume media-wise. If all you do is read Sylvia Plath poetry all day, and then write poetry inspired by Sylvia Plath, then you may in fact end up just like she did. What tipped me off is that he even said he wanted to suicide dozens of times. Which on the one hand, is kind of "TMI" for an article like this, and on the other hand... so why are you reading about other suicides? That is what I'm saying. That, and most of the people cited already had diagnosable mental difficulties, which means he is openly confusing the apparent proximal cause between "oppressed IT person" and "is emotionally-challenged already" One night not too long ago, I couldn't sleep, and for whatever reason I decided to watch 9/11 videos on YouTube. Guess what happened? I fell asleep and had nightmares, and for the next day(s) I was depressed as hell. I surely didn't function as well as I could and, dare I say it, I am sure I brought less goodness into the world as a result. All because I focused on watching 9/11 videos and listening to final phone calls and watching people fall to their deaths from great heights, one night. It's worldview distortion, basically. Yes, bad things happen and sometimes, bosses are jerks. Yes, some people have emotional difficulties (some of which should be treated clinically). Yes, IT careers seem to draw in a bumper-crop of sensitive folks (it's the curse of high intelligence, really). From this, you cannot draw the conclusion that there is a systematic problem going on. Disclaimer: I'm diagnosed ADD, AND sleep apnea, and (sometimes) take meds for it (on bad days when I really need to function), so I'm not the kind of person who wouldn't understand that some things just need treatment.

codyb 11y ago

This article more seemed to suggest that extremely intelligent people are more likely to get into trouble than any apparent root cause to me. In Schwartz and Turing's case, while the law was misguided, it compounded their stressors and took their lives. In the one fellows case he apparently broke into someone's house wasted and was arrested. And there was the guy announcing his suicide on twitter (that might be the same guy, can't remember), a serious call for help. I'm not so sure this article made me think it's endemic to the software industry. Large numbers of people commit suicide in the United States and abroad every year. Maybe it's the cultural stressors of bills, and grades, and social exclusion, and yada yada yada onward and onward for as long as you'd like that contributes to the high rates of suicide in high stress environments. And then this weird tangential aside about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and how they'd be equally disastrous convinced me this was an emotional plea for something (the vague sentiment that we should treat eachother like humans regardless of seniority when humans don't particularly have a great track record on that front and while... positive is just as kooky if not much more so than anything Bernie Sanders has said) not particularly well grounded in reality and with no proposed solutions besides a call for empathy. If you want people to stop commiting suicide you need to take away their major stressors which compound their depressive states. Correct the law so that gays are free to be themselves. Pay people living wages so their bank accounts have at least a small buffer. Make sure health care and education are affordable and accessible. So in a way his potential future vote for Bernie based on Bernie's empathy was the wrong path to the right choice. It's not just in this individual instance that Bernie feels empathetic towards man, but in almost all instances of Bernie's recorded public profile. Whether it comes to the oppression of African Americans and gays, or to the inability to pay bills or access health care of education of the lower and middle class Americans he represents, Bernie has consistently been on the empathetic side of the equation. But it's his policy proposals which make Bernie the right man for the job, not his empathy which shaped them.

solipsism 11y ago
To paraphrase Nietzsche, to live is to experience stressors. The changes you're talking about might (might!) lower the number of stressors in people's lives and thus have an overall positive impact on mental health, but a better path toward that goal, in my opinion, is to encourage people to seek the help necessary to deal with stressors. Edit: you did mention making mental healthcare accessible, but it wasn't the brunt of your message.

erik_landerholm 11y ago

Yes being a startup founder is stressful. Before joining YC I ran through my 401k, my cofounder almost lost his house and we had two little kids each at the time. To join YC we left our wives and kids in Portland and moved into an office next to drug dealers (YC only gave 5k per founder at that time), etc, etc. Not everyone can handle stress like that...I'm not sure I could ever do that again. You have to know what you can handle and what you can't. I'm sure there are abuses of engineers in the valley, but it's not indentured servitude. This article makes it sound like these people were slaves with no options...that's categorically untrue except maybe in Aaron schwart's and Turing's cases. Also, how many software engineers in the valley or other places are happy with their jobs? I bet it's a higher percentage than say work at McDonald's....

Smudge 11y ago
There's a survivorship bias in what you describe. How many others in your position, who perhaps thought they knew what they could handle, did end up losing their houses, and/or racked up years and years of debt on a gamble that didn't end up paying off? It's something we don't really talk about in this industry, but I suspect it happens more often than the success stories.
- erik_landerholm 11y ago
  If I had known what I was going to go through I'm not sure I would of done it, but it's also my personality to never give up. I always keep looking for a way through, around or out of problems. So, I always feel like I'll be OK. I might not get the optimal solution, but i can deal with most situations. Now....what happened to Aaron and Turing...to me that's different. Our startup wasn't really successful. We didn't return money to our investors. We were 'bought' by another company, but that was just a talent acquisition. Since then we have been successful at the new company...again...because of nothing more than we will stick to what we believe is right longer than others. I'm able to withstand a lot of resistance and I only take a few people's opinions seriously. So other people not liking me or not wanting to be apart of what we are trying to do has little effect on me. Not everyone is like that. If you aren't this startup/running companies is not something you should indulge in...the stresses will break you down. It's really important to have a people you work with that you can rely on and commiserate with. Without that it could get to anyone, save a true psychopath. Paul has given reasons for why he didn't want to invest in single cofounders, but I'm not sure he ever articulated it that way. For me having a partner made this experience bearable. It wasn't what I would call fun though.

mrottenkolber 11y ago

I find the notion that humans can be more or less inhumane troubling. Its really just arbitrary segregation whose only use I can imagine is to dehumanize persons. Same goes for calling people sociopaths etc. Everybody does what they think is best, for them and for the world. Somebody in politics is way stupider than you and thus ruins the world... that's an opinion, and an understandable one too. But is it productive? That being said I absolutely agree with the sentiment of the article. Humans haven't yet figured out how to live together in cooperation instead of violence, and changing this is the most important goal we have. We must actively protest injustice, and create spaces were we can live in self determination. Join your local anarchist movement, make up your own mind, learn and work together with others so we can someday create a social fabric that is open and peaceful.

njharman 11y ago
> find the notion that humans can be more or less inhumane troubling You aren't going to "fix" human nature. At least not without eugenics and execution of those who don't think "right". Saying we should be humane and cooperate with each other doesn't cut it. It's as much a pipe dream as anarchism. Although I agree with that philosophy it's never gonna work with humans. High number of sociopaths, prison experiments, the us vs attitude that permeates must all human social constructs, preponderance of human history is the proof. Humans are just too shitty to have nice things.
- mrottenkolber 11y ago
  What do you mean by fix? I am talking about improving the situation. History has proven this is very well possible. Women can vote now. Slaves in America became rare. There is a notion of human and international rights, which is quite new. Witches aren't burnt, gay sex doesn't get you killed. Do you think that the status-quo is as good as we can do? I don't thin so.

SeanDav 11y ago

While I applaud any effort to create a better work and living environment, I am not sure that the article is that accurate in one of its premises that the software industry has a high or even higher suicide rate then any other industry, for example: http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-with-highest-suicide-rates/ http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-w... Absolutely, we should be doing all we can to address depression and unhealthy stress and to attempt to eliminate all contributory factors. So in general terms I support this article but it is perhaps a bit sensationalist.

quickben 11y ago

It's a solvable problem with a very subjective solution. For me. After working at stock exchanges and whatnot; I decided that every day I'd walk through that door at 9am with three fucks in my register and walk out at 5 with three of them still there. Burnouts aren't worth it. Salary difference of x% is dealth by switching jobs if needed. We are in demand. Get at least normal rest every day out of it. Or you'll hate what you love and live to do.

fsloth 11y ago

I emphatize with depression on a deep level. The population of software developers is so large that just picking a few known cases of depression makes for an argument of unknown statistical strength. One thing is known - software development is hard, potentially stressfull with recurring pathologies that really don't have any known remedies except 'dedicated craftmanship'. On the other hand, a few of the examples pinpointed to a cruel and unkind society as the root cause of depressive issues - system issued chemical horrors in the case of Alan Turing and zealous politically ambitious ptosecutor in the case of Schwartz. The issue is then not that the software shop cannot function always as the surrogate family but that systems should not treat individuals cruelly. Which is an admirable dream - but goes really weirdly with antagonizing with liberal politics. Anarchism would not lead to a kinder society with the human species as it is.

njharman 11y ago

Just like I don't believe violent video games create homocidal sociopaths. I don't think software industry creates depressives. We are born that way. I would be depressive no matter what I worked in. Probably even if I was trust fund baby and didn't have a care in the world. Which, of course, never is true. My depression makes my life stressful, makes it lonely, makes it "hard" to live. Depression is the source, the root cause, the disease. Not a symptom. [to be clear the word depression is broadly used. You can be depressed (and I imagine everyone has been at one point or another and this is caused by external factors, say death of love ones) without suffering depression. Big D Depression is like a phobia, in that it is irrational. One is depressed for NO reason. None. Not a hidden one, or misunderstood, etc. (I mean no external reason, it's physically probably brain chemistry). And there may be other kinds of Big D depression. But this is the one I'm an expert on. And the problem is with me, not you/inustry/society. Although, you can help with symptoms such as not firing me after spending a week in bed not answering phone. Also, using Turing as evidence of author's point about Software Industry is disingenuous.

willholloway 11y ago

If you are feeling this sad, look up a ketamine clinic near you and get some infusions going. I haven't myself, but I have heard amazing turnaround stories. If you are this depressed, your brain has atrophied, your dendrites look like deciduous trees in winter. After you get infused, and ketamine activates the mTOR pathway and you feel a sense of joy again, you will be really grateful you didn't kill yourself.