Re:Mental health impacts of a big tech job
by pessimizer on Saturday August 28, 2021 @08:28AM
(#28337515)
I've heard (and agree with) a similar argument about guns and mental illness. Taking away people's guns (or ability to buy guns) because of mental illness is a perverse disincentive for them to seek help.
It's a simple solution, but a bad one. The alternative is to overwhelm people with complete availability and encouragement of help, and while helping them, convince them that it's not in their best interest to own guns (ideally to agree to give up their right to own guns.) Actually effective change is expensive, so will not be done.
That being said, tracking tech suicides doesn't have to track the companies they work for in order to indicate if there's something wrong with the culture. Theoretically, identification of companies would certainly help to figure out what that wrong thing is, though the metric would immediately be gamed in the way you describe and exacerbate the situation.
It's a simple solution, but a bad one. The alternative is to overwhelm people with complete availability and encouragement of help, and while helping them, convince them that it's not in their best interest to own guns (ideally to agree to give up their right to own guns.) Actually effective change is expensive, so will not be done.
That being said, tracking tech suicides doesn't have to track the companies they work for in order to indicate if there's something wrong with the culture. Theoretically, identification of companies would certainly help to figure out what that wrong thing is, though the metric would immediately be gamed in the way you describe and exacerbate the situation.