8 ms·

Mental Illness and Startups

166 points by fractalcat 15y ago

rbarooah 15y ago
Works great until the startup is successful enough to hire an executive who things that office hours are a more importamt measure of productivity than peer respect or checkins. It's easier if you're a founder.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  The moment an executive thinks that, it's no longer a startup, pretty much by definition.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    I've seen it happen twice - once just after a series A, and once after a company made it incrementally to good profitability. Both had headcounts in the 20-30 range, and still considered themselves to be startups.
- iki23 15y ago
  Yep, I saw similar trend pushed from top to a new development dept. in major bank during its first years growth. That said, I kept succesfully ignoring it and forcing my rule: I do my work well and I decide how and when - while reflecting the needs of team and project of course. It worked, mostly thanks to most local heads open mind. Yet, it's needed to push this contra-culture actively, things got much worse there for others since I left.
mikecane 15y ago
Trust me on this, most fiction writers can relate to that post 100%. Musicians too, I think.
- vimes656 15y ago
  I wonder how frequent is depression among programmers. That's not something people like to blog about.
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    Programmers especially, since they tend to live in a world of logic and rational thinking, which tends to lead to the notion that depression can be controlled by modifying certain behaviors or thought patterns -- the same way that any other function (or generic system of functions) can be controlled by modifying their parameters.
  - mikecane 15y ago
    I don't think anyone likes to admit it. It took Kay Redfield Jamison's book, Touched with Fire, to reveal the extent of it with writers and other artists. Granted, those are the ones who became well-known. We'll never know of the ones who didn't survive their torment.
JasonMoyMN79 15y ago
If you are depressed, why don't you just go out and do something really awesome? You have nothing to lose, right? So why not do something adventurous? Sell all your shit, move to Europe or South America, and go start a revolution.
- iskander 15y ago
  I can't speak generally, but when I'm depressed none of the stuff you listed has any appeal. Even much simpler easier things, like sex or sunlight are covered in a terrible veil. The world looks drab and unfriendly. My sensory perception gets altered, everything looks and feels different. It's hard to think, it's hard to talk with people--- the social scripts are all broken and the baseline feeling of my reality is warped into something ugly. When I'm depressed there is nothing "really awesome", it just doesn't exist. On the other hand, I've found the whole condition can be fluid/mutable and have felt these sorts of low states much less often since I started meditating and paying attention to my internal state.
  - MartinCron 15y ago
    Indeed, that's one of the ways that you diagnose depression. If the things that once made you feel really awesome (sex, motorcycling, coding, gaming, cooking, whatever) no longer hold any appeal for you, that means you're very likely not merely "feeling down" but actually clinically depressed.
    - Dove 15y ago
      The symptom is anhedonia -- the inability to experience pleasure. You can eat a delicious meal, play outside in the sunshine with little kids, have great sex, and through it all feel nothing. It's like when a finger is numb -- you touch things with it thinking, "How odd, I ought to be feeling something." But you don't. It's not just feeling down. It's your brain's ability to feel pleasure being physically broken.
      - Rondrak 15y ago
_tef 15y ago
"you don't have to be mad to work here but ...." i've found smaller companies are much more tolerant & flexible with nutters (like me). there seems to be more focus on results than politics. in larger places I've felt more pressure not to rock the boat, and produce the illusion of work, rather than actually delivering things on time. it doesn't seem to matter if you actually do anything as long as you look like you're not doing /nothing/. and I don't mean a startup. even startups can grow into kafkaesque nightmares because it's the only way they've ever thought to run a company. really, you have to be in a small, autonomous group if you want to get away with not being that normal. the moral is: being a startup in and of itself is no guarantee of tolerance for off kilter people, the people and culture within the company are important. there is a correlation between small companies/startups and tolerance, but it isn't causation.
- Rondrak 15y ago
  I've worked for Microsoft for over a year now, and they've been exceptionally supportive of my peculiarities. I've suffered massively from depression and sleep disorders, and everyone's pretty willing to reschedule meetings, allow for an altered work schedule, or just let me work from home when it gets bad. As long as I deliver what I'm supposed to, when I'm supposed to, they're very reasonable.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - _tef 15y ago
    it's nice to see a larger company not being so terrible :-)
  - rhizome 15y ago
    Though I was in a "channel" (as they call(ed) it) that was perhaps less attuned to freaks, I had the opposite experience at EA.
MartinCron 15y ago
While I don't disagree with this statement: There are people who think that depression means 'feeling low', and that if you try hard enough, you can 'snap out of it'. These people are idiots. It's not a matter of being strong enough or dedicated enough. For me, like most people with depressive illnesses, there will be times when I just plain can't. In my worst states I can barely remember what a for loop does, let alone code one. Accept that there will be times when you can't work, and make the most of the times when you can. There is an approach called "behavioral activation" that my psychiatrist taught me. Basically, instead of saying "I'll do it when I feel better", you say "I'll do it so I'll feel better". Doing things I didn't feel like doing, that felt almost impossibly difficult (like putting on real clothes and going outside) was probably the most effective tool I've ever had with dealing with depression.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Coping mechanisms like that one definitely help -- especially if they get put to use early on in a depressive cycle. A high level of self-awareness, acknowledgement of depression (or other mental illness), certain hobbies, "sunshine therapy", all help to mitigate depression and other mental illnesses. Still, though, there are severe forms of depression that can become invulnerable to all the self-help approaches.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - MartinCron 15y ago
    Absolutely, I pointed out a type of cognitive behavioral therapy (behavioral activation) because it's easy advice that may help people. The science is pretty clear that a combination of medication and professionally-guided CBT has the most effective rates for treating depression, and that some specific treatments specifically don't work at all for some people.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
idoh 15y ago
Speaking as someone who has a family member with mental illness: if you have such an illness then please seek professional help right away. If you suspect that someone you care about might have a mental illness then you should urge them to seek professional help right away. Sometimes it is all manageable or heals on its own, but sometimes the illness progresses and the results are tragic, so it needs to be viewed seriously.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Unfortunately, professional help isn't free, and there are quite a few people who can't afford it right now. ...alcohol's a cheap medication, anyway.
  - Alex3917 15y ago
    Alcohol makes mental illnesses vastly worse. (As, apparently, do most psychiatric drugs in the long run.)
    - thaumaturgy 15y ago
      I know that. I was referring to the popularity of alcohol among those with mental illnesses, not its efficacy.
    - tokenadult 15y ago
      As, apparently, do most psychiatric drugs in the long run. I have to disagree with this statement and ask you to provide better sources than just the result of some Google search. The evidence gathered with citations to peer-reviewed literature in one of the definitive medical textbooks on the issue, http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Recurrent-Depression/dp/0195135792/ http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Rec... strongly suggests that lithium for bipolar mood disorders has long term benefit. (That's based both on the decades of human use of lithium in some countries and on the basis of animal studies followed up by necropsies of brain tissue.) Apparently we are all in agreement that "self-medication" with alcohol is a very bad idea. But prescribed medication under supervision by a medical doctor can be a very good idea indeed. After edit: Thanks for the mention of the interesting book in your reply. I read some of the reviews, and found this useful interview http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/27/interview_whitaker_anatomy_of_an_epidemic http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/27/interview_whit... with the author, who has a balanced point of view: "Q: So do you think psychiatric drugs should be used at all? A: I think they should be used in a selective, cautious manner. . . . I think we should look at programs that are getting very good results. This is what I love about Keropudas Hospital’s program in Finland. They have 20 years of great results treating newly psychotic patients. They see if patients can get better without the use of meds, and if they can’t, then they try them. It’s a best-use model, not a no-use or anti-med model." After one more edit, an interesting review of the book mentioned in the reply to first version of this post: http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2011/01/anatomy-of-epidemic-carlat-take-part-2.html http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2011/01/anatomy-of-epid...
chuhnk 15y ago
Without disclosing personal details I would like to say this post spoke to me as it very much fits with what I've been through. Dropping out, the highs, the lows. I'm now 26, have worked at a startup for just over 4 years and we just sold to google. I found the freedom of a startup to be exactly what I needed.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
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deleted 15y ago
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raisenBran 15y ago
I would have to agree with much of what the author says. There are many reasons to be an entrepreneur and to work for a startup. One of them is doing what you want when you want as long as you can make a living out of it. A 9-5 job is to routine for me. Doing basically the same thing day in and day out. I need to get up and be active, and I want to do it when I want to. I feel like I contribute to society with a 9-5 job, but I don't feel like I make change in society; however, I feel like I make positive change in entrepreneurialism. Even though I am only 19, this doesn't matter in a startup as long as you get things done.
BasDirks 15y ago
I was once depressed. Now I have life by the balls. How? (this is purely anecdotal and should not be taken as advice). Take Meds. It's no solution, but it's the beginning of a solution. Quit school. Go to the Italian country-side and *become a man*, Italian style (it involved a lot of wine and pasta). Work Mike Rowe-style jobs (like learning how to build an entire house in France). Refuse to do any more stupid shit (for others) in your life. Stop feeling guilty about anything. (Doesn't mean you lose your conscience). Do what you love, do what you love, do what you love.
- technotony 15y ago
  How do you figure out what you love?
  - Joakal 15y ago
    With a relaxed attitude, you can see what things are fun to do. Do you like fixing tractors? Making tractors? Here's a video of Open Source Backhoe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPgr_LV1dxY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPgr_LV1dxY
  - BasDirks 15y ago
    On a remote olive farm in Italy my hosts needed help with their website. Armed with win95, notepad and a 56k modem, I hacked up their dreamweaver-generated html and css. I can't offer you more than the cliché "everyone has to find out for themselves".
jayliew 15y ago
Motivation to do X often comes after you start doing X. Purposeful / meaningful activity is a great way to combat depression. Just my opinion, I'm not a subject matter expert.
navs 15y ago
As a student and an amateur developer working for a magazine startup, my schedule is chaotic and busy. Doesn't help that I go through days and sometimes weeks of just laying in bed and watching babylon 5 DVDs. Sometimes the only thing that can snap me out of it is an impending deadline. I'll then end up stressed as I try to complete my workload. Needless to say, my burndown charts are skewed. I feel the chaos of a startup doesn't help things. I long for a structured 9 to 5 job in an office. Being alone at home just exacerbates things and having a bed behind me just makes me want to crawl under the covers and sleep. I tried going to various cafes to work but there's no free wifi (which I suppose I wouldn't use anyway) and the prices are ridiculous. Libraries are great when they aren't packed and when the homeless aren't using it for shelter. I have to admit I do have a sudden burst of energy when I stumble across an interesting github repo.

166 points by fractalcat 15y ago

Works great until the startup is successful enough to hire an executive who things that office hours are a more importamt measure of productivity than peer respect or checkins. It's easier if you're a founder.

MartinCron 15y ago
The moment an executive thinks that, it's no longer a startup, pretty much by definition.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  I've seen it happen twice - once just after a series A, and once after a company made it incrementally to good profitability. Both had headcounts in the 20-30 range, and still considered themselves to be startups.
iki23 15y ago
Yep, I saw similar trend pushed from top to a new development dept. in major bank during its first years growth. That said, I kept succesfully ignoring it and forcing my rule: I do my work well and I decide how and when - while reflecting the needs of team and project of course. It worked, mostly thanks to most local heads open mind. Yet, it's needed to push this contra-culture actively, things got much worse there for others since I left.

mikecane 15y ago

Trust me on this, most fiction writers can relate to that post 100%. Musicians too, I think.

vimes656 15y ago
I wonder how frequent is depression among programmers. That's not something people like to blog about.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Programmers especially, since they tend to live in a world of logic and rational thinking, which tends to lead to the notion that depression can be controlled by modifying certain behaviors or thought patterns -- the same way that any other function (or generic system of functions) can be controlled by modifying their parameters.
- mikecane 15y ago
  I don't think anyone likes to admit it. It took Kay Redfield Jamison's book, Touched with Fire, to reveal the extent of it with writers and other artists. Granted, those are the ones who became well-known. We'll never know of the ones who didn't survive their torment.

JasonMoyMN79 15y ago

If you are depressed, why don't you just go out and do something really awesome? You have nothing to lose, right? So why not do something adventurous? Sell all your shit, move to Europe or South America, and go start a revolution.

iskander 15y ago
I can't speak generally, but when I'm depressed none of the stuff you listed has any appeal. Even much simpler easier things, like sex or sunlight are covered in a terrible veil. The world looks drab and unfriendly. My sensory perception gets altered, everything looks and feels different. It's hard to think, it's hard to talk with people--- the social scripts are all broken and the baseline feeling of my reality is warped into something ugly. When I'm depressed there is nothing "really awesome", it just doesn't exist. On the other hand, I've found the whole condition can be fluid/mutable and have felt these sorts of low states much less often since I started meditating and paying attention to my internal state.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  Indeed, that's one of the ways that you diagnose depression. If the things that once made you feel really awesome (sex, motorcycling, coding, gaming, cooking, whatever) no longer hold any appeal for you, that means you're very likely not merely "feeling down" but actually clinically depressed.
  - Dove 15y ago
    The symptom is anhedonia -- the inability to experience pleasure. You can eat a delicious meal, play outside in the sunshine with little kids, have great sex, and through it all feel nothing. It's like when a finger is numb -- you touch things with it thinking, "How odd, I ought to be feeling something." But you don't. It's not just feeling down. It's your brain's ability to feel pleasure being physically broken.
    - Rondrak 15y ago

_tef 15y ago

"you don't have to be mad to work here but ...." i've found smaller companies are much more tolerant & flexible with nutters (like me). there seems to be more focus on results than politics. in larger places I've felt more pressure not to rock the boat, and produce the illusion of work, rather than actually delivering things on time. it doesn't seem to matter if you actually do anything as long as you look like you're not doing /nothing/. and I don't mean a startup. even startups can grow into kafkaesque nightmares because it's the only way they've ever thought to run a company. really, you have to be in a small, autonomous group if you want to get away with not being that normal. the moral is: being a startup in and of itself is no guarantee of tolerance for off kilter people, the people and culture within the company are important. there is a correlation between small companies/startups and tolerance, but it isn't causation.

Rondrak 15y ago
I've worked for Microsoft for over a year now, and they've been exceptionally supportive of my peculiarities. I've suffered massively from depression and sleep disorders, and everyone's pretty willing to reschedule meetings, allow for an altered work schedule, or just let me work from home when it gets bad. As long as I deliver what I'm supposed to, when I'm supposed to, they're very reasonable.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- _tef 15y ago
  it's nice to see a larger company not being so terrible :-)
- rhizome 15y ago
  Though I was in a "channel" (as they call(ed) it) that was perhaps less attuned to freaks, I had the opposite experience at EA.

MartinCron 15y ago

While I don't disagree with this statement: There are people who think that depression means 'feeling low', and that if you try hard enough, you can 'snap out of it'. These people are idiots. It's not a matter of being strong enough or dedicated enough. For me, like most people with depressive illnesses, there will be times when I just plain can't. In my worst states I can barely remember what a for loop does, let alone code one. Accept that there will be times when you can't work, and make the most of the times when you can. There is an approach called "behavioral activation" that my psychiatrist taught me. Basically, instead of saying "I'll do it when I feel better", you say "I'll do it so I'll feel better". Doing things I didn't feel like doing, that felt almost impossibly difficult (like putting on real clothes and going outside) was probably the most effective tool I've ever had with dealing with depression.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
Coping mechanisms like that one definitely help -- especially if they get put to use early on in a depressive cycle. A high level of self-awareness, acknowledgement of depression (or other mental illness), certain hobbies, "sunshine therapy", all help to mitigate depression and other mental illnesses. Still, though, there are severe forms of depression that can become invulnerable to all the self-help approaches.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- MartinCron 15y ago
  Absolutely, I pointed out a type of cognitive behavioral therapy (behavioral activation) because it's easy advice that may help people. The science is pretty clear that a combination of medication and professionally-guided CBT has the most effective rates for treating depression, and that some specific treatments specifically don't work at all for some people.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

idoh 15y ago

Speaking as someone who has a family member with mental illness: if you have such an illness then please seek professional help right away. If you suspect that someone you care about might have a mental illness then you should urge them to seek professional help right away. Sometimes it is all manageable or heals on its own, but sometimes the illness progresses and the results are tragic, so it needs to be viewed seriously.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
Unfortunately, professional help isn't free, and there are quite a few people who can't afford it right now. ...alcohol's a cheap medication, anyway.
- Alex3917 15y ago
  Alcohol makes mental illnesses vastly worse. (As, apparently, do most psychiatric drugs in the long run.)
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    I know that. I was referring to the popularity of alcohol among those with mental illnesses, not its efficacy.
  - tokenadult 15y ago
    As, apparently, do most psychiatric drugs in the long run. I have to disagree with this statement and ask you to provide better sources than just the result of some Google search. The evidence gathered with citations to peer-reviewed literature in one of the definitive medical textbooks on the issue, http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Recurrent-Depression/dp/0195135792/ http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Rec... strongly suggests that lithium for bipolar mood disorders has long term benefit. (That's based both on the decades of human use of lithium in some countries and on the basis of animal studies followed up by necropsies of brain tissue.) Apparently we are all in agreement that "self-medication" with alcohol is a very bad idea. But prescribed medication under supervision by a medical doctor can be a very good idea indeed. After edit: Thanks for the mention of the interesting book in your reply. I read some of the reviews, and found this useful interview http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/27/interview_whitaker_anatomy_of_an_epidemic http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/27/interview_whit... with the author, who has a balanced point of view: "Q: So do you think psychiatric drugs should be used at all? A: I think they should be used in a selective, cautious manner. . . . I think we should look at programs that are getting very good results. This is what I love about Keropudas Hospital’s program in Finland. They have 20 years of great results treating newly psychotic patients. They see if patients can get better without the use of meds, and if they can’t, then they try them. It’s a best-use model, not a no-use or anti-med model." After one more edit, an interesting review of the book mentioned in the reply to first version of this post: http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2011/01/anatomy-of-epidemic-carlat-take-part-2.html http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2011/01/anatomy-of-epid...

chuhnk 15y ago

Without disclosing personal details I would like to say this post spoke to me as it very much fits with what I've been through. Dropping out, the highs, the lows. I'm now 26, have worked at a startup for just over 4 years and we just sold to google. I found the freedom of a startup to be exactly what I needed.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

raisenBran 15y ago

I would have to agree with much of what the author says. There are many reasons to be an entrepreneur and to work for a startup. One of them is doing what you want when you want as long as you can make a living out of it. A 9-5 job is to routine for me. Doing basically the same thing day in and day out. I need to get up and be active, and I want to do it when I want to. I feel like I contribute to society with a 9-5 job, but I don't feel like I make change in society; however, I feel like I make positive change in entrepreneurialism. Even though I am only 19, this doesn't matter in a startup as long as you get things done.

BasDirks 15y ago

I was once depressed. Now I have life by the balls. How? (this is purely anecdotal and should not be taken as advice). Take Meds. It's no solution, but it's the beginning of a solution. Quit school. Go to the Italian country-side and *become a man*, Italian style (it involved a lot of wine and pasta). Work Mike Rowe-style jobs (like learning how to build an entire house in France). Refuse to do any more stupid shit (for others) in your life. Stop feeling guilty about anything. (Doesn't mean you lose your conscience). Do what you love, do what you love, do what you love.

technotony 15y ago
How do you figure out what you love?
- Joakal 15y ago
  With a relaxed attitude, you can see what things are fun to do. Do you like fixing tractors? Making tractors? Here's a video of Open Source Backhoe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPgr_LV1dxY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPgr_LV1dxY
- BasDirks 15y ago
  On a remote olive farm in Italy my hosts needed help with their website. Armed with win95, notepad and a 56k modem, I hacked up their dreamweaver-generated html and css. I can't offer you more than the cliché "everyone has to find out for themselves".

jayliew 15y ago

Motivation to do X often comes after you start doing X. Purposeful / meaningful activity is a great way to combat depression. Just my opinion, I'm not a subject matter expert.

navs 15y ago

As a student and an amateur developer working for a magazine startup, my schedule is chaotic and busy. Doesn't help that I go through days and sometimes weeks of just laying in bed and watching babylon 5 DVDs. Sometimes the only thing that can snap me out of it is an impending deadline. I'll then end up stressed as I try to complete my workload. Needless to say, my burndown charts are skewed. I feel the chaos of a startup doesn't help things. I long for a structured 9 to 5 job in an office. Being alone at home just exacerbates things and having a bed behind me just makes me want to crawl under the covers and sleep. I tried going to various cafes to work but there's no free wifi (which I suppose I wouldn't use anyway) and the prices are ridiculous. Libraries are great when they aren't packed and when the homeless aren't using it for shelter. I have to admit I do have a sudden burst of energy when I stumble across an interesting github repo.