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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.
"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.
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 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.
Sometimes being an a-hole is a sign of metal illness as well. I think we should all slow down and not be quick to judge.
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.
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 go home exhausted, work frequently out of town
The sane response would be to say, "wow, we really ought to stand together and do something to put an end to this" rather than this crab-bucket syndrome you're perpetuating.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Look, the name associated with a comment here is irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, "plague911" is just as anonymous and meaningless as "Anonymous Coward" is.
Somebody has died, and all you can think about is attacking people here because of the name associated with their comments?!
Here are the only names you should be thinking about right now: Joseph Thomas, Zecole Thomas, Ezekiel Thomas, and Joseph Thomas, Jr.
Please, show some compassion. Please. It's the least you could do.
Uber is a bunch of shysters that would gladly stab you in the back
Sadly, it would be easier to list the employers you couldn't say that about than the ones you could.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
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.
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.
You can cut the red-pill conservative bullshit thats been going around lately. Things like toughen up snowflake, not my problem etc work only when you are the third party not affected by the current situation. Guess what, its normal to be human and have some problems. Next time you encounter a loss in life, invite someone to poop over yourself and see how it feels!
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.........
*Said while not hiding as AC. ;)
If he was clinically depressed then it isn't Uber's fault at all.
Depression is an actual Medical condition driven by chemical imbalances in the brain. they might as well try to sue Uber for him contracting Kidney disease or something.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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
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!
You what? Nowhere does it say he had a bad family life (actually, the fact she got him to see a doctor indicates that she was doing all she could). So blaming his wife is flat out contrary to what the article indicates.
This is purely and simply a management issue. If the manager didn't catch severe depression from overwork coming up on one of his employees, they're no manager at all. It's a _huge_ part of management, ensuring that your staff are performing correctly (and that doesn't mean just 'hitting targets', that's easy, it means "they're performing as human beings, with resilience and sufficient endurance"). And yes, I do management as well as having done the working all the way up to it. Hell, I've run companies before, and keeping people with high morale as much as possible is what gets you through the tough times.
When you become depressed and anxious (the article indicates he was suffering from comorbid anxiety and depression), then looking for an alternative is _not_ an option. The brain convinces you that you're not capable, or that nobody would want you.. Or that he'd fail his family and it would all go wrong unless he kept the money coming in.. All sorts of things, so it makes you prone to trying to keep what stability is there... Though his history shows that he was clearly able to perform in well managed environments, and excel.
There is one obvious variable that changed, and that's his workplace. After working at Uber, he tanked, after excelling at previous similar roles. This points to management and environment causing undue anxiety leading to depression. This was not identified at Uber (him saying that "his boss didn't like him" was quite possibly true, and at least shows that there was a huge disconnect in his direct management).
Not sure what the internals of the company are generally like (though it sounds like there's vast rumbling of discontent, which indicates that it's not being run properly), but it definitely points to a failure of management, and management represent the company. It's going to legally be tough for them to wriggle out of.
Much though I dislike 'Ambulance Chasing', I don't think this is chasing ambulances. It's a failure and negligence on the part of the management chain, and possibly general management focus too. If there's no penalty to doing this, it'll continue.
Sounds like a hostile or at least dismal work environment to me. More lord of the flies than a workplace really.
"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.
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.
That is an excellent point. That actually makes me think even further... Why wouldn't his wife who should be the closest person to his life know about his depression? Or did she ever suggest him to find a new job if her husband made a lot of complaints about his work situation? Or did she actually pressure him to keep working in the place? How about his father whom the wife claimed that he was complaining about the job to? What was actually going on at home for him? There are too many unknown things that we should not jump into a conclusion. Though, I agreed with you that the work environment had at least some (if not huge) contributions to the tragedy...
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.
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
It's simple, the cars go away when you stop making payments. No more cars and [mostly] no more problems. Some people have 50K in credit card debt, it sucks and if you let it get to you it can ruin your relationships and affect your health. But it horrible debt is a solvable problem, I don't want people to get pushed to the point of suicide over it.
It's amazing how people can get themselves worked up over things that don't matter that much. Worst case is no Tesla and bad credit, but he can still feed his family. Of course stress, anxiety and depression aren't rational things.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
At first I was thinking that boss did it on the cheap by not laying of your coworker with a compensation package... then I realized that for the guy to loose his job could have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Well played.
This manager is really the kind that inspire loyalty, something that I feel is missing in a lot of places in the Silicon Valley unfortunately. As companies demand loyalty from their individual contributors, they often forget that it has to work both ways.
Yes and no. Most startups have the opportunities for growth, stock options that could become valuable, etc., though you always have a decent chance of not getting anything from them other than more work. But there's definitely a point beyond which that extra work qualifies as worker abuse. This is why we need stronger laws on employee work hours.
Don't get me wrong; I'm okay with people hiring "exempt employees" with the understanding that their work hours will vary throughout the year, depending on what is happening. Where that scheme goes off the rails is when that turns into an expectation that you'll work 50+ hours every week—something that is fundamentally unsafe from a psychological perspective, causing serious harm to workers when done over a prolonged period. And from what I've read, Uber is one of "those companies".
Make no mistake, that culture is entirely the fault of Uber's management. Young people tend to think they're invincible, so without managers telling them to do otherwise, they will work themselves into the ground—sometimes literally. They think that by working ridiculous hours, they'll get ahead of their coworkers, and when enough people do that, others start to believe that long hours are required; thus, a work culture forms around that expectation.
What those young people don't realize is that those longer hours invariably lead to bad decision-making and lower quality output. Statistically, for every hour above about thirty hours, productivity falls off, and by about 50 hours or so, productivity actually goes negative; for every hour worked beyond that limit, you end up doing more than an hour of extra work to fix the additional screw-ups caused by the hour of extra work. For this reason, it is crucial for every tech business to have competent managers who strongly encourage employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Managers who do not do this—managers who prioritize short-term gains over worker health—invariably lead to worker burnout, long-term low productivity, and yes, suicides.
Unfortunately, between Uber and video game companies, it is pretty clear that self-regulation by industry isn't working, and that government needs to step in. Exempt shouldn't mean "we own your life". It should mean "40 hours average", i.e. the same as non-exempt workers, but allowing for seasonal variation. It should be illegal for exempt workers to spend more than an average of 40 hours per week spread across a one-year period. Huge fines are quite literally the only thing that companies like Uber will understand.
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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.
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.
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.
I've read a lot of comments dissing managers for not being more... "managerial", I suppose. Reading this story, this manager was obviously top-notch, perceptive, and concerned about the health of his staff. (I hope he was good at the task-related responsibilities, too, and paid a LOT for his skillset. People like that are rare.)
I don't want to sound like a crusty old fart, but... until you've been there, there's a lot you don't understand. Of course, everything I'm about to say applies to people who actually give a shit, as I endeavored to. The frat-boy types (see also: Wall St.) don't give a shit, never will, and you're on your own. That said:
How do you get to be a manager? At places like IBM, you're chosen carefully, put through a lot of training, and monitored closely. At startups, SV, Wall St.- frat boy crap- you're the person who can keep headaches away from your boss. That's about it. At a startup about 17 years ago, I was cast into a managerial role over 8 people with no preparation whatsoever. I read a lot of books because I wanted to make an honest go of it, but it wasn't really enough. Training? Hah. Sure, I cared, but I didn't have the skillset, and I was too busy trying to get things done to be as attentive as I should have been.
Fortunately, I didn't lose anyone, and I like to think that I was good enough that I got some things done and remain on good terms with most of my staff long after my/our departure.
I'll leave you with the following thoughts:
1. The best thing you can do for a manager is police the BS. This doesn't mean compromise yourself, rather, try to work through your issues before invoking the system.
2. Managers aren't gods. I once made one of my staff (VERY highly rated and regarded) listen in on a call I placed to the CEO where I got in his face about why the employee's raise hadn't been approved. The CEO blew me off (unsurprisingly, it was that kind of place) but remember: it's a lot easier to get computers to bend to your will than other people with their own agenda.
3. I will never manage again. I'll PM from time to time, but I don't need the MITM crap. Line managers are woefully underpaid. Unfortunately, the salaries don't really start to change until you're the step above line, and then you're surrounded by asskissers that present their own set of problems.
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.
Oh man, I'm sad for you after that comment. I understand work/life separation and all that, and I can also be painfully introverted, but if you form no meaningful relationships someplace you spend half of your waking life, I hope you'll reevaluate your priorities. It's not like you have to go to each other's family events or be besties or anything, but if you don't have someone at work who you trust enough to really know how each other is doing, might I humbly suggest you're missing out and there are better workplaces to invest your time.
I work with people I consider friends/get along with/work with.
Some, I'd confide in if needed.
Others, I KNOW they are the worst possible choice for that.
Everyone I know at work is classified in some way in my head. there's the guy you can't joke about animals with, the lady who gossips about everything, the lady who will throw you under the bus at a moments notice. these are just some examples.
Knowing this, you modulate your behavior around them.
The under the bus lady has a huge amount of knowledge about gardening. I ask her for tips. I know that's what shes good for. But not for opening up, certainly not.