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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.
File this under who gives a crap. I make a fraction of that money. I go home exhausted, work frequently out of town. Work long hours for no extra money. With this guys credentials he couldn't get another job? Give me a break.
"He turned down an offer from Apple to go to Uber"
If he had a job offer from Apple and choose to go work at Uber it also means he was good at what he does and he could have dropped his new job and find a better one, at Apple or some other place.
There should be no surprise that the workplace culture of a company run by a thoroughly bad egg like Travis Kalanick would be similarly malodorous.
Some Bay Area tech companies are real meat grinders. I've definitely been so stressed out and overworked that it affected me emotionally. But that's a long way from suicide. I can't imagine what Uber could do to an employee that is different than some of the worst companies I've worked at. I suspect that some people are more sensitive to on the job pressure, or other psychological conditions may be at play here. And I would have hoped someone in that situation seek counseling or quit their jobs before getting to the point of suicide.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I am really sadded to learn of this. I don't know how a father of 2 young kids could do this. My condolences to his family.
intelligence and wisdom, fortune and fullfillment, something and something you get the idea
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...
Look , were all scared we'd lose our job. That's the nature of [most] work these days.
What I have learned in the west is that people do not really "enjoy life." They live to work. Laws surrounding how family matters are handled do not necessarily favor the male. These could all have had a hand in this.
I must say I am sorry for the family's loss. I also think we in the west need to take life easier a bit. It's not all about money. We should also understand that elsewhere in the world, there are folks who seem to be happier with much less than what we have here.
I know this, for I am well travelled. To conclude, let's not start blaming the employer right away. There's definitely much more to this than this piece says.
Uber declined to comment on the legal dispute and said Thomas never complained to the company of extreme stress or racial discrimination.
Why do I get the feeling that he complained about being "really stressed" but technically not "extreme stress"? Oh yeah, it's because Uber is a bunch of shysters that would gladly stab you in the back and sell your children into slavery if they knew they could get away with it.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"Joseph Thomas had worked slightly less than five months at Uber when he killed himself. "
He went from happy engineer to suicide in less than five months?
For people reading this, my suggestion is to make an effort to simply be kind and/or friendly to people you work with or interact with. Maybe it will help someone who really needs it.
If something is so bad that you can't be kind or friendly, find another job or make whatever other change you need to make.
More than likely, a bigger contributor to stress was probably a nagging, overspending wife.
If it's either lose my job or die, I will chose lose my job every time. I have way too many job titles on my resume because I refused to let companies use fear of firing as a method to make me overwork myself. I once worked 60 days straight because the architect burned through the first 4 months doing a "2 week" UI rewrite. Then I heard the him and owner laughed about it because they knew I would do whatever it took to get the project back on track. I walked out that day.
Dude's scared he'll lose his job and won't be able to provide for his family. Clocks out and leaves wife grasping at the straw of maybe being able to get Uber to settle and avoid poverty.
"A company's culture reflects the people at the top"
It could very well be the case here, and considering the stereotypical negative bashing other employees have reported only reinforces that.
Let's just pile on Uber and blame them for all kinds of things. They seem to be the designated whipping boy for all things bad in the tech industry now, so why not? I think that it is now fashionable to beat on Uber for all it's perceived sins. I'm not saying Uber is a great place, it obviously has earned some of this, but at this point, we are beyond what seems reasonable to me.
Where I feel for this guy's widow, Uber is ultimately NOT responsible for his death, he is. I know this is hard to admit and as she goes though the stages of grief she is obviously hurting and lashing out at Uber as she goes though this process. I hope she can find peace with this issue eventually and see that her husband's death is only one person's fault. That person is not her or Uber, but hm. In the mean time, I'm very sorry she is going though this.
For anybody out there thinking of following in this guy's footsteps. Consider this: The pain you leave behind for your loved ones is real and the question of "why" will forever cloud their lives in an unfair way. Please get help, tell somebody and work it out somehow, for them, killing yourself is not an answer, it doesn't make the problem go away.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"Laws surrounding how family matters are handled do not necessarily favor the male."
Is there any evidence whatsoever that this was an issue here? Because if not you're wanking.
If he was so stressed out that he committed suicide, it means he wasn't a good match for the job. But he must have been quite a bit above average to even make it that far and he could easily have found a well-paying job elsewhere.
It seems likely, given the nature of Uber, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco, that diversity goals may have played a role in his hire. We know from academic environments (where this is easier to study) that this kind of mismatch harms its intended beneficiaries. Success at technical jobs is, after all, not just a question of privilege and knowing the right people.
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!
Given that other developed nations have strong regulations protecting employee rights and work/life balance, and have higher worker productivity than the US you might want to ask yourselves " What are we Americans doing wrong ?"
I can believe that some company cultures are so toxic that they drive to suicide for some.
The other comments are proof that there is a problem. Blaming the person instead or mocking that person.
But it sounds like he bit off more than he could chew. There is zero evidence that he was good enough to take the job he took. There does seem to be at least some circumstantial evidence he couldn't deliver what they expected from the position.
I have a hard time believing someone would blow his head off with a gun in a car, and let his family live with the trauma of having found his bloodied body like this, before resorting to, oh I don't know, looking for a job elsewhere? I think there's more to this, and it could even be a murder.
I am one of those people that was considered a computer prodigy myself. A lot of us when we are younger we believe we can change the world. We believe the world values technology, science and advancing human civilization. And then we come into contact with the real world that really doesn't care about those things. It primarily cares only about profits and in a lot of cases doesn't even care about morals and ethics. What you find is that your one and only true natural talent doesn't have near the value in this "advanced" society as you thought it did and your entire sense of self identity rests upon that very idea.
You have two choices when you arrive at this crossroads. You accept what you've come to understand reality to be or you don't. If you don't and you continue to try to reject reality and insert your own, it's quite possible you could end up where this unfortunate soul did. If you accept it, you realize that your skills and money and all that stuff are really a means to an end. And it really is a means to attain freedom so that you can do what you want, in whatever way you want and not have to compromise with this apathetic system we have.
I think the saddest part of it all is this is another young, idealistic person who came into the workforce, torch burning bright full of life and passion and he was snuffed out. He was looked at as a resource. The thing that the corporate types full of apathy and devoid of compassion don't realize is that when you put that flame out, it's typically out for good. In the case of Joseph Thomas, it's really out for good and that's a terrible tragedy.
We'll make great pets
People who commit suicide do it either for rational reasons or for irrational ones. An example of a rational reason is that you are dying anyway, and you want to spare others a lot of trouble or have zero quality of life. An irrational reason is that you think you will feel better if you die, or that you don't deserve to live, or a little voice told you to.
IMHO most people commit suicide as a result of mental illness, usually clinical depression or bipolar disorder.
As for what happened to this guy, we really don't know. Most likely the stress he was under let an underlying mental disorder take over.
As for his history, we don't know why he was hired at various places. There is a lot of pressure to "diversify the workplace" in technology, so it's entirely possible the he was repeatedly hired despite lacking the competence of others in the same position, including getting an offer from Apple. Working under those conditions can be incredibly stressful, even if no one points out you're not up to the task.
Maybe at Uber, his bosses and coworkers threw this in his face, instead of pretending something else. That would be pretty hard to take. But this happens to lots of people, even if they are not black, and most of them do not commit suicide.
Silicon Valley prides itself on rewarding hard workers who limit their abilities to cope with their feelings... and on throwing them under the proverbial (or literal) bus.
The best part? Because they hire so many people who are dissociated from their feelings and emotions, the world around does not impact them as much as it impacts us, humans not isolated in the cocoon of Silicon Valley.
Truly a tragedy. Truly employer's partial blame. It was a match made in heaven -- or hell, depending if you drink their koolaid (heaven) or have a real heart (hell).
“We think it was stress and harassment induced by his job, between him being one of the few African Americans there, working around the clock and the culture of Uber,” Richardson said. “And he couldn’t talk about it to anyone because of nondisclosure agreements.” The working around the clock culture, the constant hard-driving mode of "power-ons" (board, chip, software bringups) with questionable parts, software and hardware it was an extreme stress inducer for me. In the end, instead of me killing myself - too strong for that, I lashed out at some employee that harassed me / gave me shit along the lines of "This doesn't look bad on me if you don't do it, it looks bad on you" for a task that I was completely fresh to, as a one person representative of a site with 10+ other issues on my plate. I was under NDA's too - in fact most employees at any company are under an NDA in at least some form (so that part should be irrelevant), but the problem is that your work context can only be talked about with co-workers and employees - and even that's limited because leaking your feelings and thoughts to people in your network reflects badly on you, even if management is the problem. I never did use the health help line, I should have, but it was too late - and I was out the door pretty soon when I started seeing all my opportunities dwindle when I tried to move to different teams.
As a white midwesterner working in CA, I can sympathize with the idea that CA tech companies have toxic cultural problems. I can only imagine what it's like to be a black dude.
CA runs on passive aggresive behavior. It can be psychologically damaging to someone who grows up and has worked with real people their whole life.
Stress disrupts rational thinking. People under extreme stress do not think rationally. That is why using threats against employees is dumb. They will look like they are working hard but it is usually unproductive work.
Rest in peace :(
Why is racial discrimination mentioned in TFS? Just because he was black? That is seriously fucked up.
$170K in San Fran? Are you fucking kidding me? I might feel like killing myself too if I forced my family to move to a godawful shithole like California, SF no less, to work a 70 hour/week job for the equivalent of working at Starbucks in middle America. I might feel like I'd let my family down, too if I had utterly failed to research my income earning ability before taking a job and moving 3000 miles.
QED
It's an anti-social company that's a horrible place to work. Everybody knows that by now.
What nobody can know for sure is why an individual takes his life, or what circumstances would have to be different.
Take Google, which in several recent lists is the best company in America to work for. Google has just shy of 60,000 employees. Given the US suicide rate of 46/100,000, if Google were largely reflective of that you'd expect 28 suicides/year among Google employees. Of course (a) not all Google employees are Americans and (b) Google employees are economically better off than most people in their societies, so you'd expect there to be a lower rate of suicide. But it's safe to assume a dozen Google employees a year take their lives.
And if you look at them as individuals, you'd inevitably suspect work stress was involved, and if you'd look you'd probably find it -- because it's a chicken-or-egg thing. Suicide is a catastrophic loss of coping ability; when you head that way you will find trouble everywhere you turn.
When something like this happens to an individual, everyone feels the need to know why -- even strangers. But that's the one thing you can never know for certain. Now if suicide rates were high for Uber, then statistically you could determine to what degree you should be certain that Uber is a killing its employees with a bad work environment (or perhaps selecting at-risk employees).
I think its inevitable and understandable that this man's family blames Uber. And it's very likely that this will be yet another PR debacle for the company. But the skeptic in me says we just can't know whether Uber has any responsibility for the result.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
haha $170k in San Fran is pretty much equal to being broke living paycheck to paycheck
greed kills, news at 11
This story is a Rorshach test of the readership.
All we really know is the guy killed himself (assuming the story is accurate).
No American company can make you do that to yourself. That's on him. Depression? OBVIOUSLY. But in no legal or moral way can you pin this on his employer.
Uber has turned the potential golden goose of transportation business models into Goose Liver Pâté by taking an overly aggressive and paranoid market stance and pushing its engineers past the breaking point. Lyft is looking much better by comparison. Having worked for companies who demanded 80 hour weeks and working through vacation time, I've come to conclude life is more valuable than that.
The widow's clearly a gold digger who shot her husband in head and put him the car. After the life insurance policy pays out, Uber will too! Now let's all wring our hands and feel sorry for her while trashing Uber.
If you don't like your job or feel intense pressure at work that you can't take it. Fucking quit! He apparently had the skills to turn around and probably get an offer by the end of the week! Millennials....