4 ms·

if you start measuring suicides it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool, possibly increasing suicides overall by trying

if you start measuring suicides it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool, possibly increasing suicides overall by trying to avoid being painted as the cause (I tend to think the most ironic outcome is the most likely)

acituan 5y ago
> it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool I’m not saying this is the best metric but they would find that sort of treatment to be highly ineffective. Lifetime prevalence of depression and the depression at any given time are different things; it would be like trying to weed out all future cases of flu based on symptoms at hire time. Either way it wouldn’t make a dent on flu caused by the work environment itself.
burnished 5y ago
How would they do that? Hiring seems like such a ritualized practice anyway, I'm not sure how you'd even determine something like that.
throw48738 5y ago
Yeah or the companies get sued like French telecom company Orange because of proper news coverage and labor laws.
pessimizer 5y ago
I've heard (and agree with) a similar argument about guns and mental illness. Taking away people's guns (or ability to buy guns) because of mental illness is a perverse disincentive for them to seek help. It's a simple solution, but a bad one. The alternative is to overwhelm people with complete availability and encouragement of help, and while helping them, convince them that it's not in their best interest to own guns (ideally to agree to give up their right to own guns.) Actually effective change is expensive, so will not be done. That being said, tracking tech suicides doesn't have to track the companies they work for in order to indicate if there's something wrong with the culture. Theoretically, identification of companies would certainly help to figure out what that wrong thing is, though the metric would immediately be gamed in the way you describe and exacerbate the situation.

acituan 5y ago

> it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool I’m not saying this is the best metric but they would find that sort of treatment to be highly ineffective. Lifetime prevalence of depression and the depression at any given time are different things; it would be like trying to weed out all future cases of flu based on symptoms at hire time. Either way it wouldn’t make a dent on flu caused by the work environment itself.

burnished 5y ago

How would they do that? Hiring seems like such a ritualized practice anyway, I'm not sure how you'd even determine something like that.

throw48738 5y ago

Yeah or the companies get sued like French telecom company Orange because of proper news coverage and labor laws.

pessimizer 5y ago

I've heard (and agree with) a similar argument about guns and mental illness. Taking away people's guns (or ability to buy guns) because of mental illness is a perverse disincentive for them to seek help. It's a simple solution, but a bad one. The alternative is to overwhelm people with complete availability and encouragement of help, and while helping them, convince them that it's not in their best interest to own guns (ideally to agree to give up their right to own guns.) Actually effective change is expensive, so will not be done. That being said, tracking tech suicides doesn't have to track the companies they work for in order to indicate if there's something wrong with the culture. Theoretically, identification of companies would certainly help to figure out what that wrong thing is, though the metric would immediately be gamed in the way you describe and exacerbate the situation.