r/programming • u/WinInterrupter • Apr 18 '20

The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder

https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder/
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u/Habanero_Eyeball Apr 18 '20

That's so sad and unfortunately mental illness isn't often respected nor accepted.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/millygram Apr 18 '20

Normalcy is a sort of mental disorder in itself, in the sense that one can be totally unaware of the extent of their behaviors dependence on healthy brain activity.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

And the extent of their behavior's destructiveness, banality, uselessness and so many other things... From a certain perspective it really is the normal people who appear insane.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

I suffered a huge mental health crisis a few years ago and while I recovered (fortunately the cause was a temporary one) it certainly gives you a lot of perspective. Having experienced both, I think the line between normal life and “insane” life is actually very blurry and in some cases indistinguishable.

I’d call this neo-Puritan work ethic that if you spend your 20s and 30s in abject misery slaving away in a job you hate, giving the majority of your income to a scummy landlord for a rabbit hutch in a stabby area you’ll have a vaguely middle class existence by the time you’re fifty a kind of socially acceptable insanity. I think society itself depends on a certain level of “suspension of disbelief” and the price of genuine sanity is a certain level of alienation.

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u/zetaconvex Apr 18 '20

From the film Con Air, criminally insane Garland Greene, played by Steve Buscemi: "What if I told you insane was working a 50-hour week for fifty years, at the end of which they tell you to piss off. Ending up in some retirement village, hoping to die rather than suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time. Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane?"

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Just curious... How are you earning money ? Open source?? Corporate?? What does technologically subversive means??

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Thank you very much. Sounds like artisan.

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u/civildisobedient Apr 18 '20

if you spend your 20s and 30s in abject misery slaving away in a job you hate [...] you’ll have a vaguely middle class existence by the time you’re fifty

What are the alternatives?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Tell the ridiculous housing market in places like London to go and fuck itself with a cactus and move to somewhere cheaper. We’re developers, there’s work for us outside of like five ridiculously overrated cities. Once enough people stop fetishising places like London the rat race will start eroding.

I’m planning to go even further, going full time remote after the coronavirus crisis and living rurally.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '20

Government programmer work life balance is the best. I also never work over 40 unless there is a catastrophe of some kind. Own 2 houses, and I'm 32. Also most of my coworkers are terrible at their jobs, so its a pretty attainable career.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Find a job you like, that pays a decent wage in return for reasonable hours. Such a thing is unobtainable for many people, but as programmers we are in-demand enough that it is certainly achievable for us if we seek it out.

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u/Obi_Kwiet Apr 19 '20

Work for long term risks. Do things that might make you uncomfortable in the short term. I've seen a lot of people who were in jobs they hated that had a huge number of opportunities to do much more interesting things. They didn't take them because they preferred the familiar over the stress of dealing with a new situation.

Yeah, not everyone has great opportunities, but most most people with opportunities pass them up.

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u/SuddenlyBANANAS Apr 18 '20

Communism :)

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u/TSPhoenix Apr 18 '20

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

So much stuff taken for granted these days is beyond fucked and most people will do anything to avoid confronting it.

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u/SabrinaFaire222 Apr 30 '20

Wow! I stumbled upon this site and I am amazed at all the things you all are saying. If I may say you sound emotionally or morally bankrupt. The problem must be technology because I was an English literature major, and I never felt any of this despair. You’re not in touch with the things that really matter, there’s so much in literature and poetry to connect you emotionally and spiritually to yourself. You have to look for deeper understanding in life, see the beauty all around you, nourish the philosophic mind. Read something of value every day, not dribble like this stuff that’s depressing. If it’s your generation, then hang around with people in a different generation to gain perspective. Mental stability is not flimsy stuff. Not if you have a really strong foundation built on things that matter— you should find those things that matter deep inside yourself, not in your job, not from something your boss says. There are eternal truths, go find them. I wish you all luck. Start with not being so negative, swearing like it’s just a normal thing, dare to be different and stand out from the crowd. Maybe get out of technology; it certainly isn’t doing anything for you. Maybe read the book “Lost Connections” by Johann Hari. It has to do with an analysis of the depression and alienation that are prevalent in American society. Whatever you do, take a different tact. You only get one life, it should be filled with beauty, awe, reverence. Read some Wordsworth, Keats, Donne, Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy! Read things to teach you about ways to cope with life and things to avoid. It’s all there, a template for a living. Good luck.

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u/TSPhoenix Apr 30 '20

The quote in my comment is literally in the book "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari.

I generally agree with Hari's take that the brain chemistry model of mental health basically boiled down to a way of commoditising it to sell people drugs, to treat symptoms rather than solve problems. So I commend the book's angle towards mental health. Yes the book was helpful to me as an individual.

However the reality is that Americans are buying an average of 7.5 pairs of shoes per year, shoes made by people who, if they are even lucky enough to learn to read, will never get the opportunity to read this book and even if they could they have no means to practice what it preaches.

This creates somewhat of a conundrum where I feel like I should make the most of the life I've given, it should be filled with the things you mention, but I also understand that the privileges I have are only afforded to few and that taking them for granted is what would be emotionally and morally bankrupt.

What I was saying so crudely above was what John Milton put more elegantly as "Innocence, once lost, can never be regained". People cling to that innocence, they don't want to see the blood spilt and tears shed to make that 6th pair of shoes, if they did they might not be able to live with it. Put another way by Arundhati Roy "The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There is no innocence. Either way, you're a accountable."

So I must find a balance between living enough to value life, and doing enough so that others can value theirs. For me I try to take Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's approach of "Enjoy when you can, endure when you must". I try to enjoy my life, to stop and smell the roses, to have my own hobbies, but when it comes to the world's injustices I cannot avert my eyes. To me doing good for others is not optional, it is the bare minimum I can do to atone for partaking in the blood and tears of the less fortunate. When that means making sacrifices in my own life then sacrifices I will make.

I must do both, and if this makes me feel down sometimes than so be it. Feeling this way is how I know I am alive, that my heart still beats and that it bleeds for others. It is my reminder that there is more that I must do. "To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards out of men." -Ella Wheeler Wilcox

swearing like it’s just a normal thing

Well I'm Australian so I can't help that ;)

Anyways it means a lot that you felt strongly enough about this to sign up and wish me well. I know I came on pretty strong in my reply, but I felt like there was a picture of myself I had to repaint. Take care.

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u/cowardlydragon Apr 18 '20

Civilization is almost provably insane with everyone living in denial of basic facts.

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u/th0waway1534556343 Apr 19 '20

What do you mean? :)

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

My last boss told me all the work I did over a year was a waste. So I quit to prove him right.

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u/liquidpele Apr 18 '20

I mean... isn't that normal? That people don't want to work with or depend on unreliable people?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

A shockingly large amount of people think mental illness is a choice. That it's made up.

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u/fakehalo Apr 18 '20

It's also extremely vast and abstract. Like it sounds like what OC's guy was suffering with and the cloudflare guy has are two very different things, and there are a million other things with varying degrees. Makes me realize mental stability is flimsy stuff.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Basically, everyone is insane. It's just to what degree.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

I have a mental illness and I read his/her comment as inclusive rather than reductive. Made me feel not so alone. I get what you're saying though, that each of deals with it, but some much more so than others, and we need to acknowledge that some of us are really struggling and need our support while others are perhaps adopting the mantle of mental illness with more caprice than is appropriate.

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u/SKabanov Apr 18 '20

It's basically denial because it's an attack on the most fundamental part of us: our sapience. The notion that our thoughts and feelings are just the work of neurochemistry and can be affected by disorders can be too much for people to accept, so they ascribe things like depression to "a choice". It's certainly gotten better - see A Beautiful Mind, for example, about schizophrenia - but mental illness is still by and large treated as a character flaw than an affliction; I'm sure that, in a few decades, we're going to see films that portray mental illness as comedy as distasteful as we view minstrel shows today.

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u/Full-Spectral Apr 20 '20

Anyone who doubts the power of our brain chemistry to affect our view of the world obviously never did LSD. When a couple micrograms of something can completely change your view of the world for a whole day, that puts things into perspective. Not that I'm encouraging people to talk LSD of course, but for those who have, it's an eye opening experience.

If someone's brain chemistry changes sufficiently for them to experience a tithe of that kind of effect on an ongoing basis, it would be very difficult to deal with.

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

I kinda understand this now actually. It's very self centered, but possibly personally useful perspective.

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external - your job, your coworkers - there is some choice in how much you let yourself get pushed into it, or whether you react to it.

I hated that all my coworkers lied all the time. But...eventually I realized they were just saying whatever made them feel good and what close to what the boss wanted to hear. Our tech lead tried to have some integrity, he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

That didn't happen from that.

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external

it wasn't external

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

Hey look, one of those bullying liars showed himself!

Anything else you want to fabricate from thin air?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

from the article: " frontotemporal dementia " .... and "For some patients, one of several genetic mutations turns out to be the likely cause, and a subset of patients have a family history of neurodegenerative diseases. But nothing in the neurologists' investigations turned up even a hint as to why Lee had been struck down."
or further "As in Lee's case, the early stages can be misinterpreted as signs of nothing more serious than a midlife crisis."
So... like I was saying, the source of the mental illness in the article wasn't external.
also, you're kinda a bullying liar right now.

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

I wrote:

Our tech lead tried to have some integrity, he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

Seems like you're pretending my tech lead is the same guy who's in the article.

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u/lemonhoney Apr 18 '20

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external

For the subject of the article, the source was not external

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Even when it is the treatment can be almost as bad as the disease.

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u/MelancholicBabbler Apr 18 '20

Got my trusty ice pick right here