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I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teac

I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming your free time if you don't set boundaries, all have deadlines that lead to stress. >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP. I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years?

itronitron 3y ago
Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information (i.e. flu, back issues, mental wellness, etc...) . It would benefit a lot of people if they were taught basic laws related to employment while they are in school.
- nsguy 3y ago
  Different in every country.
- cheema33 3y ago
  > Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information. We had an employee that used this technique. Too often. When the company needed to lay off people to cut costs, their name got on the layoff list before anybody else's. Businesses are not charities. They need to make money. And if an employee is not pulling their weight, sooner or later they will be let go. Using the law to extend your stay can only go so far.
hayst4ck 3y ago
Doctor, lawyer, and athlete are "jock" professions, while software engineering is very much a "nerd" profession. These words represent status and general level of attractiveness and therefore access to attention and sex. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and professional athletes all experience social reward and/or social contexts to their work. Software engineering is interfacing with an unthinking, unfeeling machine for many hours a day. Furthermore, the whole point of the vast majority of software engineering is to sell loot boxes to kids to increase shareholder wealth for a pittance of the wealth created (or something not too different from that for at least 60% of companies). How many mainstream software companies are contributing to building a society that you yourself would like to live in? To put it bluntly, many bad parents abandoned their kids to the internet where they found solace. Software engineering is a natural extension of spending too much time using the internet and becoming curious how it works. Poor mental health is a function of unmet needs... not feeling attractive, not feeling like you are contributing to the world or society at large, not getting laid, not feeling loved, not feeling worthy of love. All of these represent unmet needs, and I think software engineers struggle with these things more than a significant number of other professions because they are frequently intrinsic to why people become software engineers in the first place, machines don't care how socially inept you are, patients, clients, and judges do.
- tiznow 3y ago
  It's weird, I've harped on a few of these points in conversations with others (usually when talking about "sexy careers", and why people don't hold coders in the same regard as doctors) but your words made me realize why I'm trying to become a developer. The dealing with the machine rather than people is something I'm willing to run with more than anything, right now. Not wholly a function of unmet needs, but addressing a specific change I'd like to make.
  - onion2k 3y ago
    The dealing with the machine rather than people is something I'm willing to run with more than anything, right now. Software engineering is an incredibly people-focused career. You will need to be able to work with other devs, stakeholders, support, users.. everyone really. Going into a tech career thinking that it's somewhere you can avoid people is never going to work out well.
yodsanklai 3y ago
> People take sick days all the time for mental health When you take a sick day, you're not supposed to say what's your issue.
- tenacious_tuna 3y ago
  I go back and forth on this; on the one hand, yes, I don't owe my team an explanation about why I'm taking STO. On the other, me making it clear that I'm taking a mental health day may encourage another engineer (possibly a more junior one) to do the same if need be: emphasizing that mental health is a facet of overall health.
- iamacyborg 3y ago
  The last 3 companies I’ve worked at over the last few years have all had “mental health days” in one form or another as a separate offering to sicks days. It’s very common, at least in the UK.
  - euroderf 3y ago
    Sounds enlightened. A lot of the comments here seem to use the term mental health days without irony quotes. A mental health day is not a psychological crisis. It is a plea for a timeout from the workaday grind.
    - iamacyborg 3y ago
      I didn’t put the quotes to indicate any irony, just that they’re explicitly different to your sick days and allotted differently. I was interviewing at a company recently and they called out that they offer 1 mental health day per month, in addition to other benefits.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        Curious - is it a "use it or lose it", or can an unused MH day be carried over to the next month ?
JohnMakin 3y ago
> Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years? Sorry but this is really naive. They won't come out and say it explicitly, because they can't, but many companies will just find a way to quietly replace you or hold you back in the organization if you are public about any mental issues.
sandworm101 3y ago
> >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” I'm in an environment (military) were we actively work to prevent this. I have lots of kids (18-20yo) with mental health issues that are not helped by being allowed to take time off so casually. Our mental health experts want to keep people working because having them sit at home drinking/gaming does nothing. I have seen kids actually react well to increased "stress" on the job. Think basic training stuff. They are worked hard, go home tired and then actually sleep. Sending them home not tired leads to drinking and late-night gaming sessions after which they do not sleep and come to work the next day like zombies. Our people know how to spot this and adapt their schedules specifically to break the cycle. It wouldn't work for everyone, but we do need to accept that we are each not necessarily our own best therapists. If given more time off, many of us will simply amplify negative behaviors. The better answer is not I "need a day off" but rather "I'm booked to see the counselor at 08:00 tomorrow".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nsguy 3y ago
  You go home from the military during basic training? Curious what country that is... Having served I agree that a military environment where your day is full and you're basically told what to do all the time, and you're maybe working extremely hard, can override some "bad thoughts". That said, it's not unheard of for soldiers to commit suicide, harm themselves or others, and generally suffer from stress related to the military environment. I agree that simply taking a day off is not a fix and if you are worried about getting stuff done at work it might even make things worse. That said, being in a workplace where it's considered ok to take a day off if you need to, maybe go hiking or something, is probably something that alleviates stress from the employees.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    >> Think basic training stuff. Basic training is a nothing thing in the military. It does not represent what military life is like. It is just a temporary proving ground for new employees. That said, many units still do unit PT in the afternoons specifically so that people head home reasonably tired. Remember too that in the military, especially for young single people, "home" is wherever you rack out.
bblcla 3y ago
Honestly, I didn't realize until I was 2 or 3 years into my job that I was 'allowed' to take a sick day if I was going to spend it all miserable or even crying (I had a coworker who was a bully). Nobody ever actually came out and so, but I realize now that it was pretty common.
BurningFrog 3y ago
I can't remember any of my 10+ SWE jobs where anyone even asked what sickness my sick day was for. Certainly not for a single day!
- david-gpu 3y ago
  At my first job you had to justify every sick day. Looking back, I can't believe that was legal. This was the UK twenty years ago.
ericmcer 3y ago
If anything Engineers would get the least pushback to taking a mental health day of those careers. Our skillset becomes so uniquely tied to the company we work at that replacing a veteran engineer would take more than a year minimum. The differences between operations at two hospitals is probably minuscule compared to two tech companies. It also feels like managers have received training in "burnout" so the few times I have uttered those words usually leads to some temporary white glove treatment.
- SJC_Hacker 3y ago
  > Our skillset becomes so uniquely tied to the company we work at that replacing a veteran engineer would take more than a year minimum. The differences between operations at two hospitals is probably minuscule compared to two tech companies. Companies/managers have gotten alot smarter about this. The strategy is to hire enough and be managed to a degree such that the operation of any single system is never left leave to any single engineer. So if your company is smart, yes you are replaceable.
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    There's strategy and there's reality though. They got other people to "operate" the thing, but "operate as well" is sometimes a pipe dream, which erodes the meaning of "replaceable".
    - XorNot 3y ago
      I mean keep in mind, stupid companies also exist (I'd argue they're the norm actually - you can have a company with nothing but smart people, but it's a Chinese room - the company itself can be an idiot). That's the problem with stupidity in general: it doesn't know it's stupid. It's a corollary of "the market can remain irrational longer then you can remain solvent".
  - godelski 3y ago
    Replaceable doesn't mean without friction or decrease of quality.
Zenzero 3y ago
As someone who crossed over from medicine, I can attest that software engineers have it very very good. Appreciate what you have. I accept everyone's personal experiences with bad management, unreasonable timelines, and uninspiring projects, but those things are everywhere. Now add in patients and their families having the worst days of their lives in your presence day after day, high-pressure decision making, not getting even the chance to sit or go to the bathroom for nearly a whole shift. To top it off, if you have an "off day", that can earn you a lengthy investigation +/- a court case. While it may sound insensitive, software engineering is nowhere near as complex or stressful as many (but not all) medical roles. It is both mentally and physically less taxing.
- riehwvfbk 3y ago
  And at the end of the day this is exactly the attitude that prevents people from asking for a day off. It's wrong in medicine and it's wrong here. The attitude we should have is: yes, Mr. Successful Boss Man, you are a better human than me: you are more disciplined, don't have a problem with anxiety while dealing with a lot more stress, make more money and even look better. But these facts do absolutely nothing to change that I am crumbling and need a break. If you are so good at dealing with stress - write the software (or stitch up that patient) yourself, surely it would be easy for you, the superhuman? But we won't do that. Instead we'll pretend we are 10x engineers or genius doctors until we either mess ourselves up, or make a big enough mistake. The realization needed to wake up is: the people pushing us to work harder need us. They actually couldn't have their successful business empire or their big fancy hospital without our work.
  - rexpop 3y ago
    > It's wrong in medicine and it's wrong here. This can be said so many times over regarding so many unproductive comparisons. Two wrongs, I've heard all my life, don't make a right. Nevertheless, people insist on dismissing wrongs that aren't, as it were, up to snuff. Well, we as a society can both walk and chew bubblegum. If the OP isn't in here begging us for scarce resources, then he's wrong to interrupt our exchange of lived experiences. I think stressors in the medical industry should be talked about. That seems important. And when they are, I won't be in the comments whining about software on-call.
JohnFen 3y ago
> >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” > This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP. Indeed. Taking time off for mental health reasons is no less legitimate than taking time off for physical health reasons. I've never actually told any bosses that I'm taking a "mental health day" or anything, though. I just take a sick day, because that's what it is.
- waynesonfire 3y ago
  I agree and maybe I even take it further. I don't see any need to give a reason or justification. OOO or on vacation is all I say. I'm not a child or asking for permission.
deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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makk 3y ago
> I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a ... lawyer ... is. I am. I worked alongside lawyers for almost a decade, providing them with non-engineering professional services. I also have a couple decades of experience in software engineering and startups. The pressure in software engineering is something entirely different, and far worse, than what I experienced in the legal environment. By and large lawyers are lawyers, not managers. Yes, there's a hierarchy of junior associate to senior-most partner but it's lawyers all the way up and down the chain. You don't have lawyers working under managers. And there's something about this that makes the pressures different. Pressures are there, hours are long, spouses are unhappy because the lawyers are always at work or distracted at home... but I never had anxiety attacks or mental health issues working in the legal environment whereas in the software and startup environments I did. In legal, everyone knows the drill and you do the drill. And your superiors have done the drill. In software, you often don't know drill. You just grind, often to satisfy someone who hasn't done the grind themselves. A company I once worked for – a successful public company – has constant openings for senior software engineers for this very reason.
- notShabu 3y ago
  I think the reason it it wears away at your value structure. You have to "sell" your mind (thus polluting your non-work day thinking) to a system that feels "wrong" For lawyers, it's a clear meritocracy based on how much you can bleed. For doctors, a kind of "virtue" in the work that cancels out some of the stress/BS. For software, it can be like temporarily joining the popular circus that's in town (similar to a lot of meme crypto companies)
dylnuge 3y ago
> I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder I don't think it really matters what jobs are "harder". Nothing in the article is making the claim this is unique (or for that matter universal). The author's experience was in engineering management, and that's what they're writing about. It's relevant to our industry insofar as it's reflective of an experience in the industry. I'm personally a bit cautious around claims of what is harder or easier because they tend to be pointless comparisons mostly used to dismiss valid criticism with whataboutism. > I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. I have definitely worked at organizations with a tech-bro startup culture where working non-stop (and drinking heavily) were idolized and anyone talking about mental health would have likely gotten a "man up"-esque speech (regardless of their gender, though shockingly these companies are mostly men). I have also worked at places where mental health was nominally respected but, like anything else, substantially more leeway was given to people perceived as high performers. I'm glad you haven't had to encounter anything like that, but I wouldn't even call it uncommon, nonetheless exceptional.
godelski 3y ago
> I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. Who claimed it was? Why does that even matter? Whether you stepped in shit or are knee deep in shit, you're still in shit. Instead of having competitions about who is covered in more shit, why don't we help clean each other off? Stop comparing, we're not in a situation we need to triage. You are allowed to be sympathetic or empathetic to others, even if on average they have it better off than you. We're all humans. We benefit by coming together.
anshumankmr 3y ago
>I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. >Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years? Where do you work?
primenum 3y ago
> >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” > This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP. > I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. > Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years? I'd say this is a cultural thing. For example, I have never heard of anyone taking a mental health day off. You just take vacation time and hope you come back normal. Technically, you can take a sick day and the employer doesn't need a reason but if you work in an office environment, especially a small one, everyone knows everything. People know when you're sick and wonder if you're okay. They care and they ask.
iamflimflam1 3y ago
We used to call these “duvet days”. Sometimes you just don’t want to get out of bed. If you’re not feeling well (mentally or physically) take the day off and get better.
partdavid 3y ago
I've had some bad patches but I don't think they were unique to my profession. Sometimes it was my boss. The tech landscape in the late '90s at Internet hyper-growth companies, when I started, is way different than it is now--I, like you, would be pretty surprised by any company taking an explicit stance against "mental health". But I'm also different now--I've had enough experience to be both in a different place in my career and to know what is or isn't a good fit for me in terms of work style. My experience, your experience, Vadim's experience--interesting as anecdotes but none of it tells us anything about the "profession" without numbers. So my intuition is that Vadim overstates the case as a whole, but it's still interesting as an anecdote because what I think he's feeling is pretty common and it's interesting enough to read what worked for him and what advice he has for someone who feels like that. I do think that in reality it's rare for an engineering leader to take "mental health" days off but all of my engineering leaders have taken plenty of time off and encouraged others to do the same. I haven't worked at a death march cadence in probably almost a decade (and I quit that job pretty quickly when it started). I don't think your experience is homogeneously true, I think people are pretty reticent to take time off (it's why "unlimited PTO" even works in practice) and it's probably worth it to continue asking why.

itronitron 3y ago

Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information (i.e. flu, back issues, mental wellness, etc...) . It would benefit a lot of people if they were taught basic laws related to employment while they are in school.

nsguy 3y ago
Different in every country.
cheema33 3y ago
> Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information. We had an employee that used this technique. Too often. When the company needed to lay off people to cut costs, their name got on the layoff list before anybody else's. Businesses are not charities. They need to make money. And if an employee is not pulling their weight, sooner or later they will be let go. Using the law to extend your stay can only go so far.

hayst4ck 3y ago

Doctor, lawyer, and athlete are "jock" professions, while software engineering is very much a "nerd" profession. These words represent status and general level of attractiveness and therefore access to attention and sex. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and professional athletes all experience social reward and/or social contexts to their work. Software engineering is interfacing with an unthinking, unfeeling machine for many hours a day. Furthermore, the whole point of the vast majority of software engineering is to sell loot boxes to kids to increase shareholder wealth for a pittance of the wealth created (or something not too different from that for at least 60% of companies). How many mainstream software companies are contributing to building a society that you yourself would like to live in? To put it bluntly, many bad parents abandoned their kids to the internet where they found solace. Software engineering is a natural extension of spending too much time using the internet and becoming curious how it works. Poor mental health is a function of unmet needs... not feeling attractive, not feeling like you are contributing to the world or society at large, not getting laid, not feeling loved, not feeling worthy of love. All of these represent unmet needs, and I think software engineers struggle with these things more than a significant number of other professions because they are frequently intrinsic to why people become software engineers in the first place, machines don't care how socially inept you are, patients, clients, and judges do.

tiznow 3y ago
It's weird, I've harped on a few of these points in conversations with others (usually when talking about "sexy careers", and why people don't hold coders in the same regard as doctors) but your words made me realize why I'm trying to become a developer. The dealing with the machine rather than people is something I'm willing to run with more than anything, right now. Not wholly a function of unmet needs, but addressing a specific change I'd like to make.
- onion2k 3y ago
  The dealing with the machine rather than people is something I'm willing to run with more than anything, right now. Software engineering is an incredibly people-focused career. You will need to be able to work with other devs, stakeholders, support, users.. everyone really. Going into a tech career thinking that it's somewhere you can avoid people is never going to work out well.

yodsanklai 3y ago

> People take sick days all the time for mental health When you take a sick day, you're not supposed to say what's your issue.

tenacious_tuna 3y ago
I go back and forth on this; on the one hand, yes, I don't owe my team an explanation about why I'm taking STO. On the other, me making it clear that I'm taking a mental health day may encourage another engineer (possibly a more junior one) to do the same if need be: emphasizing that mental health is a facet of overall health.
iamacyborg 3y ago
The last 3 companies I’ve worked at over the last few years have all had “mental health days” in one form or another as a separate offering to sicks days. It’s very common, at least in the UK.
- euroderf 3y ago
  Sounds enlightened. A lot of the comments here seem to use the term mental health days without irony quotes. A mental health day is not a psychological crisis. It is a plea for a timeout from the workaday grind.
  - iamacyborg 3y ago
    I didn’t put the quotes to indicate any irony, just that they’re explicitly different to your sick days and allotted differently. I was interviewing at a company recently and they called out that they offer 1 mental health day per month, in addition to other benefits.
    - euroderf 3y ago
      Curious - is it a "use it or lose it", or can an unused MH day be carried over to the next month ?

JohnMakin 3y ago

> Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years? Sorry but this is really naive. They won't come out and say it explicitly, because they can't, but many companies will just find a way to quietly replace you or hold you back in the organization if you are public about any mental issues.

sandworm101 3y ago

> >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” I'm in an environment (military) were we actively work to prevent this. I have lots of kids (18-20yo) with mental health issues that are not helped by being allowed to take time off so casually. Our mental health experts want to keep people working because having them sit at home drinking/gaming does nothing. I have seen kids actually react well to increased "stress" on the job. Think basic training stuff. They are worked hard, go home tired and then actually sleep. Sending them home not tired leads to drinking and late-night gaming sessions after which they do not sleep and come to work the next day like zombies. Our people know how to spot this and adapt their schedules specifically to break the cycle. It wouldn't work for everyone, but we do need to accept that we are each not necessarily our own best therapists. If given more time off, many of us will simply amplify negative behaviors. The better answer is not I "need a day off" but rather "I'm booked to see the counselor at 08:00 tomorrow".

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nsguy 3y ago
You go home from the military during basic training? Curious what country that is... Having served I agree that a military environment where your day is full and you're basically told what to do all the time, and you're maybe working extremely hard, can override some "bad thoughts". That said, it's not unheard of for soldiers to commit suicide, harm themselves or others, and generally suffer from stress related to the military environment. I agree that simply taking a day off is not a fix and if you are worried about getting stuff done at work it might even make things worse. That said, being in a workplace where it's considered ok to take a day off if you need to, maybe go hiking or something, is probably something that alleviates stress from the employees.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  >> Think basic training stuff. Basic training is a nothing thing in the military. It does not represent what military life is like. It is just a temporary proving ground for new employees. That said, many units still do unit PT in the afternoons specifically so that people head home reasonably tired. Remember too that in the military, especially for young single people, "home" is wherever you rack out.

bblcla 3y ago

Honestly, I didn't realize until I was 2 or 3 years into my job that I was 'allowed' to take a sick day if I was going to spend it all miserable or even crying (I had a coworker who was a bully). Nobody ever actually came out and so, but I realize now that it was pretty common.

BurningFrog 3y ago

I can't remember any of my 10+ SWE jobs where anyone even asked what sickness my sick day was for. Certainly not for a single day!

david-gpu 3y ago
At my first job you had to justify every sick day. Looking back, I can't believe that was legal. This was the UK twenty years ago.

ericmcer 3y ago

If anything Engineers would get the least pushback to taking a mental health day of those careers. Our skillset becomes so uniquely tied to the company we work at that replacing a veteran engineer would take more than a year minimum. The differences between operations at two hospitals is probably minuscule compared to two tech companies. It also feels like managers have received training in "burnout" so the few times I have uttered those words usually leads to some temporary white glove treatment.

SJC_Hacker 3y ago
> Our skillset becomes so uniquely tied to the company we work at that replacing a veteran engineer would take more than a year minimum. The differences between operations at two hospitals is probably minuscule compared to two tech companies. Companies/managers have gotten alot smarter about this. The strategy is to hire enough and be managed to a degree such that the operation of any single system is never left leave to any single engineer. So if your company is smart, yes you are replaceable.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  There's strategy and there's reality though. They got other people to "operate" the thing, but "operate as well" is sometimes a pipe dream, which erodes the meaning of "replaceable".
  - XorNot 3y ago
    I mean keep in mind, stupid companies also exist (I'd argue they're the norm actually - you can have a company with nothing but smart people, but it's a Chinese room - the company itself can be an idiot). That's the problem with stupidity in general: it doesn't know it's stupid. It's a corollary of "the market can remain irrational longer then you can remain solvent".
- godelski 3y ago
  Replaceable doesn't mean without friction or decrease of quality.

Zenzero 3y ago

As someone who crossed over from medicine, I can attest that software engineers have it very very good. Appreciate what you have. I accept everyone's personal experiences with bad management, unreasonable timelines, and uninspiring projects, but those things are everywhere. Now add in patients and their families having the worst days of their lives in your presence day after day, high-pressure decision making, not getting even the chance to sit or go to the bathroom for nearly a whole shift. To top it off, if you have an "off day", that can earn you a lengthy investigation +/- a court case. While it may sound insensitive, software engineering is nowhere near as complex or stressful as many (but not all) medical roles. It is both mentally and physically less taxing.

riehwvfbk 3y ago
And at the end of the day this is exactly the attitude that prevents people from asking for a day off. It's wrong in medicine and it's wrong here. The attitude we should have is: yes, Mr. Successful Boss Man, you are a better human than me: you are more disciplined, don't have a problem with anxiety while dealing with a lot more stress, make more money and even look better. But these facts do absolutely nothing to change that I am crumbling and need a break. If you are so good at dealing with stress - write the software (or stitch up that patient) yourself, surely it would be easy for you, the superhuman? But we won't do that. Instead we'll pretend we are 10x engineers or genius doctors until we either mess ourselves up, or make a big enough mistake. The realization needed to wake up is: the people pushing us to work harder need us. They actually couldn't have their successful business empire or their big fancy hospital without our work.
- rexpop 3y ago
  > It's wrong in medicine and it's wrong here. This can be said so many times over regarding so many unproductive comparisons. Two wrongs, I've heard all my life, don't make a right. Nevertheless, people insist on dismissing wrongs that aren't, as it were, up to snuff. Well, we as a society can both walk and chew bubblegum. If the OP isn't in here begging us for scarce resources, then he's wrong to interrupt our exchange of lived experiences. I think stressors in the medical industry should be talked about. That seems important. And when they are, I won't be in the comments whining about software on-call.

JohnFen 3y ago

> >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” > This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP. Indeed. Taking time off for mental health reasons is no less legitimate than taking time off for physical health reasons. I've never actually told any bosses that I'm taking a "mental health day" or anything, though. I just take a sick day, because that's what it is.

waynesonfire 3y ago
I agree and maybe I even take it further. I don't see any need to give a reason or justification. OOO or on vacation is all I say. I'm not a child or asking for permission.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

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makk 3y ago

> I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a ... lawyer ... is. I am. I worked alongside lawyers for almost a decade, providing them with non-engineering professional services. I also have a couple decades of experience in software engineering and startups. The pressure in software engineering is something entirely different, and far worse, than what I experienced in the legal environment. By and large lawyers are lawyers, not managers. Yes, there's a hierarchy of junior associate to senior-most partner but it's lawyers all the way up and down the chain. You don't have lawyers working under managers. And there's something about this that makes the pressures different. Pressures are there, hours are long, spouses are unhappy because the lawyers are always at work or distracted at home... but I never had anxiety attacks or mental health issues working in the legal environment whereas in the software and startup environments I did. In legal, everyone knows the drill and you do the drill. And your superiors have done the drill. In software, you often don't know drill. You just grind, often to satisfy someone who hasn't done the grind themselves. A company I once worked for – a successful public company – has constant openings for senior software engineers for this very reason.

notShabu 3y ago
I think the reason it it wears away at your value structure. You have to "sell" your mind (thus polluting your non-work day thinking) to a system that feels "wrong" For lawyers, it's a clear meritocracy based on how much you can bleed. For doctors, a kind of "virtue" in the work that cancels out some of the stress/BS. For software, it can be like temporarily joining the popular circus that's in town (similar to a lot of meme crypto companies)

dylnuge 3y ago

> I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder I don't think it really matters what jobs are "harder". Nothing in the article is making the claim this is unique (or for that matter universal). The author's experience was in engineering management, and that's what they're writing about. It's relevant to our industry insofar as it's reflective of an experience in the industry. I'm personally a bit cautious around claims of what is harder or easier because they tend to be pointless comparisons mostly used to dismiss valid criticism with whataboutism. > I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. I have definitely worked at organizations with a tech-bro startup culture where working non-stop (and drinking heavily) were idolized and anyone talking about mental health would have likely gotten a "man up"-esque speech (regardless of their gender, though shockingly these companies are mostly men). I have also worked at places where mental health was nominally respected but, like anything else, substantially more leeway was given to people perceived as high performers. I'm glad you haven't had to encounter anything like that, but I wouldn't even call it uncommon, nonetheless exceptional.

godelski 3y ago

> I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. Who claimed it was? Why does that even matter? Whether you stepped in shit or are knee deep in shit, you're still in shit. Instead of having competitions about who is covered in more shit, why don't we help clean each other off? Stop comparing, we're not in a situation we need to triage. You are allowed to be sympathetic or empathetic to others, even if on average they have it better off than you. We're all humans. We benefit by coming together.

anshumankmr 3y ago

>I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. >Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years? Where do you work?

primenum 3y ago

> >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” > This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP. > I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. > Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years? I'd say this is a cultural thing. For example, I have never heard of anyone taking a mental health day off. You just take vacation time and hope you come back normal. Technically, you can take a sick day and the employer doesn't need a reason but if you work in an office environment, especially a small one, everyone knows everything. People know when you're sick and wonder if you're okay. They care and they ask.

iamflimflam1 3y ago

We used to call these “duvet days”. Sometimes you just don’t want to get out of bed. If you’re not feeling well (mentally or physically) take the day off and get better.

partdavid 3y ago

I've had some bad patches but I don't think they were unique to my profession. Sometimes it was my boss. The tech landscape in the late '90s at Internet hyper-growth companies, when I started, is way different than it is now--I, like you, would be pretty surprised by any company taking an explicit stance against "mental health". But I'm also different now--I've had enough experience to be both in a different place in my career and to know what is or isn't a good fit for me in terms of work style. My experience, your experience, Vadim's experience--interesting as anecdotes but none of it tells us anything about the "profession" without numbers. So my intuition is that Vadim overstates the case as a whole, but it's still interesting as an anecdote because what I think he's feeling is pretty common and it's interesting enough to read what worked for him and what advice he has for someone who feels like that. I do think that in reality it's rare for an engineering leader to take "mental health" days off but all of my engineering leaders have taken plenty of time off and encouraged others to do the same. I haven't worked at a death march cadence in probably almost a decade (and I quit that job pretty quickly when it started). I don't think your experience is homogeneously true, I think people are pretty reticent to take time off (it's why "unlimited PTO" even works in practice) and it's probably worth it to continue asking why.