4 ms·
How many theranos employees died by suicide? There were up to 800 at peak, so one suicide might be within the normal base rate.
by lonelappde 7y ago
How many theranos employees died by suicide? There were up to 800 at peak, so one suicide might be within the normal base rate.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- headcanon 7y agoCase in point for OP. Possibly technically correct, misses point entirely.
- lisper 7y agoYou might want to do a little basic homework before you post a comment like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States from which we learn that: "The annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.42 per 100,000 individuals." Doing the math to figure out how plausible it is that "one suicide in 800 might be within the normal base rate" is left as an exercise.
- anchpop 7y agoFor anyone curious, the base rate of at least one person committing suicide based on these numbers is `1-((1-(13.42/100,000))^800) = 10%`. I suspect the suicide rate for engineers (who tend to be white, middle-upper class men) is somewhat different from the national average so take these numbers with a grain of salt
- gonational 7y agoYou’re right; upper middle class white males are the most vilified and attacked and hated class of people in the world for whatever reason; I wonder if this makes that demographic more prone to suicide.
- Izkata 7y agoMen are nearly 4x more likely to commit suicide than women, and "white" is 1.5-2x higher than other races [0], so while I'm not seeing combined stats it's pretty certain that that combination is higher than the general population. [0] https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
- gonational 7y agoI know; I wasn’t disagreeing. I was guessing the reason.
- vntok 7y agoYou quote the annual age-adjusted rate for regular people. What's the rate among startup employees? Surely in startups where the future is particularly highly uncertain, employees feel a lot more pressured than those in boring companies. Ceteris paribus, why would the suicide rate be the same as that of the regular folks? I think you would need to do a subtler analysis before commenting in the condescending way you did.
- lisper 7y agoYou misunderstand. I'm not taking a position on whether or not the OP's hypothesis was reasonable or not. All I'm saying is that before you take a position you ought to at least do some basic homework.
- rozab 7y agoConsidering Theranos operated for over 10 years and most of their employees were white men of a certain age, it seems entirely possible to me.
- lisper 7y agoA fair point. But did they have 800 employees for all of those 10 years? (I don't actually know the answer to that. I'm not taking a position on whether or not the OP's hypothesis is reasonable or not. I don't know. The only thing I'm saying is that before you take a position on a question like this you ought to at least do some basic homework.)
- Udik 7y agoYou might want to read again the numbers you just posted and change your tone to a less self assured one, because you're very obviously wrong. Theranos operated for more than ten years with hundreds of employees, so the numbers you posted confirm the gp's point.
- mistermann 7y agoMaybe it's just the way I look at the world, but I find it ~beautiful in a way when instances of the very phenomenon discussed in an article can be found within discussions on the article.
- lisper 7y ago> you're very obviously wrong About what? (And you might want to go back and re-read what I wrote before you answer that.)
- koheripbal 7y agoThe one suicide was the former chief engineer that was called in to be a witness in litigation directly related to the company's failure to produce the product and lies about it. ...so it's not some random data point.