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Tech Lead from YouTube just published this about the FB employee suicide last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbEQriZEfoI

Posting because, if allegations are true, it only reinforces my belief that our white collar workplaces have become highly mentally taxing and employees need judgement-free resources provided by employers to deal with them.



The majority of large employers provide Employee Assistance Programs where employees (and family members) can talk to a judgment-free therapist for at least a few sessions. Those therapists are trained in suicide risk, and will report to the authorities if a patient seems likely to attempt suicide soon.


... at the risk of the action being career-ending (or career progress ending).


No that's not a risk. EAPs are run by outside providers. Patient privacy rules prevent them from discussing anything with employers.


I've seen firsthand cases where EAP providers "leaked" details back to the employer.



No.

I took short term disability leave to deal with severe mental health issues. My career didn't end, in fact, I got a promotion very shortly after returning to work. I didn't even lose my security clearance and I fully disclosed my hospitalization/disability leave. My clearance is required to do my job.


Wow, is this a defense contractor? Are they hiring?


I would take all of that with a heaping cup of salt:

* All of this guy's info is from the Blind app, which is basically a step above the bathroom wall when it comes to information.

* He himself was fired from Facebook, so it's not like he's unbiased.

I know nothing about the situation, but I do know that for most companies it is a difficult balance between respecting privacy for the deceased and performing an investigation if it was indicated that something in the workplace was a factor.


>our white collar workplaces have become highly mentally taxing and employees need judgement-free resources provided by employers to deal with them

Seeing what people in other countries go through, willingly, sacrificing for their families and persevering in relative poverty, I can't help but feel that sentiments like these come off as weak and entitled. If anything it shows that life in the first world is too comfortable, which understandably makes it hard to appreciate how easy we have it, even in the "roughest" of tech jobs.


A white collar job can become a mental torture chamber if you are surrounded by bad people. There is an abundance of exploitation, bullying, futility, and lack of fulfillment in current tech culture and very little support structure.

Mental welfare is very different from survival.


All of that plus bodily degradation can be true of blue collar jobs. Singling out white collar work comes across as out of touch and spoiled.


The response was specifically to somebody who is unsure why white collar workers can have a severe mental health crisis and that it is orthogonal to survival or financial well being or "being hard". Do you really think anyone on this site would claim blue collar workers don't confront suicide?




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