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Suicide of an Uber Engineer: Widow Blames Job Stress (sfchronicle.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Joseph Thomas thought he had it made when he landed a $170,000 job as a software engineer at Uber's San Francisco headquarters last year. [...] But his time at Uber turned into a personal tragedy, one that will compel the ride-hailing company to answer questions before a judge about its aggressive work culture. Always adept with computers, Joseph Thomas worked his way up the ladder at tech jobs in his native Atlanta, then at LinkedIn in Mountain View, where he was a senior site reliability engineer. He turned down an offer from Apple to go to Uber, because he felt he could grow more with the younger company and was excited about the chance to profit from stock options when it went public. But at Uber, Thomas struggled in a way he'd never experienced in over a decade in technology. He worked long hours. He told his father and his wife that he felt immense pressure and stress at work, and was scared he'd lose his job. [...] One day in late August, Zecole (the wife) came home from dropping their boys off at school. Joseph was sitting in his car in the garage. She got into the passenger seat to talk to him. Then she saw the blood. Joseph had shot himself. [...] Uber declined to comment on the legal dispute and said Thomas never complained to the company of extreme stress or racial discrimination.
It's a tragedy that this guy killed himself but I'm sure that working for a bunch of assholes was just a contributing factor the guy had clearly successfully moved jobs several times in the past and I'm sure it wouldn't have been difficult for him to do it again. That his widow is suing Uber over his suicide just smacks of jumping on the "Everyone Hates Uber" bandwagon
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I share your cynicism about the idea that the true cause was an "aggressive work culture" but the same time this was a human being. You, the person hiding behind the screen and the AC title. Don't be an a-hole. Joseph probably had depression, you have a-hole disease.
Also, although job culture could not really have been the root cause, it definitely could be a contributing factor. Someone prone to depression can easily enter a downward spiral when placed under immense stress, to a degree that they're too depressed to take the obvious actions to get out of the stressful environment. If this guy came from LinkedIn and turned down a job at Apple, he obviously had excellent prospects for getting another job, and that would have been the obvious response to excessive job stress. But depressed people don't think that clearly. A good manager and good co-workers should have recognized the situation and encouraged him to seek help.
Note that I'm assuming here that the wife is right, and that it really was a toxic work environment. It's also possible that the work environment is fine and that it was just severe clinical depression. Given the rest of what we hear about Uber, though, it wouldn't shock me to learn that the work environment contributed a great deal.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
How would a manager or co-worker know there was a problem?
I mean, granted it may be more of a contractor thing, but who makes friends at "work"? I mean, you go there to earn money and leave for the day, period.
It isn't usually in ones' best interest to discuss problems with co-workers or management lest you wish them to think something wrong with you and possibly lose your job, or choice assignments.
I pretty much always have clearly separated work from personal time. I have lots of friends outside work that I love to spend time with and will confide in them, etc...but the work place is NOT the place for such things.
I'm quite amiable at work, I'll listen and talk to people, but I try my best to never give off too much personal information and certainly not give out information on my emotions or personal problems I"m having. It could be used against you in so many ways at work.
Work is a competition for resources and money. And you have to always make sure you have the edge.
So, I would guess this guy likely didn't tell or give off signs at work that anything was wrong. And that's not a bad strategy.
Your personal support group should be your friends and family outside the work environment.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Coming from the New York metro area, I know how insane cost of living is compared to other parts of the country. Generally, New York, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago and of course California cost way more to live in than just about anywhere else. Part of it is taxes, part of it is because that's where all the high-salary jobs tend to gravitate to, but the reality is that a $170K salary in San Francisco is barely above middle class. Rent in SF proper is more expensive than anywhere outside Midtown Manhattan, and houses start in the million dollar range and go up from there. California has great weather, but I would never live there for that reason. I already pay a lot for a house in a suburb about 60 miles from the city -- I love living here but there would be no way I could justify paying more than double what I'm already paying to buy a house.
I think the fact that this person moved from Georgia to California without demanding a much higher salary is a huge contributor to his stress. Uber isn't exactly known as a warm and fuzzy employer either -- it sounds like a carbon copy of all the other frathouse startups from Bubbles 1.0 and 2.0. Anyone who's older and different in an environment like that is going to have a hard time fitting in. If you can't do 16-hour coding sessions while playing beer pong, you're an outsider, but will still be expected to perform the same way as everyone else. Older people who have worked a fair amount usually realize when they're being taken advantage of, but what if this guy just felt he couldn't leave? Having a potential lottery ticket in the form of stock options is a big reason lots of people stay in the crazy startup culture. With a family to support, and the feeling that he'd fail if he had to go back to Atlanta, no wonder he lost it.
That's one of the reasons I'd never work at a startup -- there's zero work life balance, no stability and the "if we wanted you to have a family, we would have issued you one" culture. Seriously, I'm older and have seen how companies take advantage of employees -- I prefer to work hard enough to have an employer want to keep me, but not give my life over to them. That's for suckers!
If.. If only he hadn't been that depressed.. I've been there and very narrowly survived the experience. It cost me dear, in many ways.. If it'd been caught and handled internally with HR referrals, and occupational health evaluations, and company referral to counselling services, along with management supporting a valid workload. Lots of ifs, and none of it happened.. Which resulted in a guy topping himself..
This is a sad story, and I don't see any way that Uber can come out of it looking good, as management should have intercepted (that level of depression is extremely obvious, and any manager tasked with man management can see it and can at least find the right person to refer to. If they didn't, they're either incompetent, or negligent. Either way, Uber as a company put that manager in place to represent them, so they carry the can).
"He went from happy engineer to suicide in less than five months?"
If you don't have them already, have kids and get back to me. I'm very lucky that my wife has a great job as well, but I know lots of people with a family to support who are constantly worried. Even if you're not in debt up to your eyeballs (we're not,) it adds a lot of stress to your life. I have to live my life as if I'm going to lose my job at a moment's notice, because that's the world we live in now. Quadruple that stress if your spouse doesn't work, and add more on for each kid. It's not a sign of weakness; it's a sign of being a responsible person in my mind. Worrying about what happens to your family has to come first when you decide to go down that path. I feel bad for Mr. Thomas, because you have to be in a pretty dark place to feel like your life insurance policy is the best thing you can contribute.
I know it's an anachronism, but I do think things were better when people had more stable work and were able to stay with employers for a longer period of time. These days, it just seems like the cycles of boom and bust are increasing in frequency, and the amount of time it takes companies to cut employees or offshore just keeps getting shorter. I think I'm one of the only people who advocate for lifetime employment and no-layoff policies, but we had this only a few decades ago and life was much better. When people feel stable in their jobs they can relax, buy houses, buy cars, take vacations, etc. Now, we're more data-driven than ever and companies are using this to squeeze people harder.
I get the feeling you are young and still are surrounded by your friends from school. Once everyone pairs up, moves to jobs farther away and can't get together all the time like they used to, where do your friends come from? At a point in my life, not so long ago, most of my friends came into my life through work. Same age, same interests, same general goals.
Things have changed and not for the better.
Where i work now (same company but different culture now) to admit you are struggling with depression would get you in contact with HR and quietly laid off due to "right sizing". Problems are for others, not us. Which sounds a lot like what we are told about Uber.
Absolutely and well said. Vote this man up.
We had a coworker whom wasn't handling the stress of our job well (by nature it is a high stress job and we try to select people whom thrive in crisis management). This guy just wasn't doing well and spiraling some. We couldn't convince him to leave, we couldn't move him to another job, and the process to get rif of an employee is quite a long time. We were worried about him.
That's when I saw my current manager do one of the absolute best things that I've ever seen done in a company. He called his wife in for a private meeting. She said that he was seeing doctors, looking for meds, etc, etc. He said that she needed to tell him to leave this job. She said that she tried but he was really invested in succeeding at this. That's when he said "You are his wife. You put your foot down on this. He comes home and you tell, not ask him, but tell him that he's putting in his two weeks. You say that it's because you're scared for your marriage and his life and nothing is worth it; that you'd rather be homeless with him than without him." Then he got the employee's mother's phone number from her and gave her a call and a light pre-brief that he was concerned for this employee's health and that if called she should also encourage him to separate from the job.
He put in his notice the next day. A month later he took my boss out to dinner to thank him for saving his life. He had been contemplating suicide and actually had a plan that he was going to execute on within the next week or so. The ironic thing is that because my boss is such a good guy, that added to the anxiety of him not being able to perform -- he desperately wanted to work for me box. Just wasn't in the right role. That's what good management looks like.
If you ever come across someone suffering from clinical depression in real life, shut the fuck up. You are utterly and completely unqualified to deal with it. In fact, you are particularly harmful.