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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.
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.........
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.