Genius and madness often appear to go together (e.g., Vincent van Gogh, etc.) and this is no exception. It seems like he was perhaps afflicted by something like bipolar disorder. It is all very sad indeed.
Sounds like he was rebelling hardcore against an overly restrictive, maybe typical (?), 1st generation immigrant parent background?
"“Ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life,” he wrote in the 2010 book..."
This is often what you hear from someone who has doesn't have much of a sense of higher calling, or doesn't quite know what to do with his capabilities other than go for satisfaction in the short term. And leaves you feeling empty and unsure of what your life should be when work evaporates as your sense of self?
Having come from a similar background, where the childhood abuse was real and looking back on my life I realize how much of my stress to succeed and achieve was really an attempt to appease/show up my parents. Addiction to work and "bad" habits was all a part of the response to that childhood abuse.
Like I wrote in one of my tweets [1], Gabor Mate's work has helped me to see and work towards reworking my relationship to stress.
It's unfortunate that Gabor Mate's work isn't part of our conversion around addiction, stress, crime and suicide.
Both "Scattered Minds" and "When the Body Says No" are great. I've found the content on Youtube from his talks very insightful as well. Particularly this series of videos in Scotland starting with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tef5_HK5Zlc.
Someone mentioned this here on HN and possibly setting the house on fire but was dismissed as unfounded. I actually realise that they knew something...
It is sad that Tony Hsieh didn’t get the help that he needed and instead tried to self medicate in order to get away from all that.
This recurrent story where extremely intelligent people are battling mental health issues and cannot speak out because the stigma behind this issue is too damaging is why we need to normalize the discourse around mental health if we want to avoid this type of tragedies. I’m not actively suffering (and am not as bright as Tony) but had some bouts of depression and hypomania in the past and know how afraid I was to let anyone official (eg. at work, school) know about my suffering because once out it always trails you like a cloud and will always deem you inferior to others. Luckily I was able to escape the black hole and have been good and calm for about 10 years and learned to never slip into that again. But there’s a remnant fear of a possibility of going back to it. Along with that there is the fear of falling begind, loosing job, becoming isolated and homelessness. This fear is clearly exacerbated in the US where one or a few slip-ups turns everything into an ever accelerating down-spiral. Tony had so much more to loose as his cliff was much higher than an ordinary person. He could have seeked professional help and he probably did but too late in the game. Had we not have this stigma around, he and others could get the help early on when much more could be done.
Self-medication with drugs works temporarily but its abuse is clearly a quick path to compelte madness and early death. I personally stay away from drugs except from an ocasional puff of weed, the once a decade or two experience with LSD and the weekend bottle of beer.
> This recurrent story where extremely intelligent people are battling mental health issues and cannot speak out because the stigma behind this issue is too damaging is why we need to normalize the discourse around mental health if we want to avoid this type of tragedies.
Where exactly is the "stigma" of mental health in tech nowadays? We're blasted day and night to the point where apparently every other person is "battling mental health issues".
Maybe there's a deeper issue here than "stigma" and seeing overpriced therapists.
HR is the conservative arm of execs. They're responsible for setting company policies that reduce the risk of employee disputes and increase the chance of employees staying productive. That's why they say "HR isn't your friend". They have an outsized impact in large, chaotic companies and as a result they end up shaping the culture. HR is the lackey serving the demands of the capitalist machine.
If you admit you are chronically ill in the workplace you admit you won't ever be as productive as other "healthy" (aka those who didn't admit they are ill) employees. During layoffs you'll be the first to go.
I mean, given the demands of modern society, I wouldn’t be surprised if every other person was honestly battling some kind of mental health issues at some point.
I mean hell, it’s tough enough being sentient and dealing with mortality, throw in social issues, politics, propaganda, conspiracies, lack of health care, lack of social safety nets, caring for dependents, dating, paying bills, social media, “Instagram culture,” and a god damn pandemic. It’s rough out there.
I agree. The good old days were terrible. No doubt many suffered through considerable mental anguish. Unfortunately, this knowledge does not usually help people currently living with depression or similar mental illness.
It’s like, “I can’t pay my mortgage and I don’t where my family will live, but Grandpa was a POW in Nam, so no worries!”
Modern society is the easiest society that has ever existed. And that's true nearly world-wide. People have never been better off or worked fewer hours at the median. In modern - affluent - society, it's that people have become soft, weak, fragile. The times are not harder, they're easier. People in affluent nations have never been more coddled and protected.
What demands are you talking about? Influencers pressuring people to have whiter smiles on Instagram or better abs on TikTok? Someone getting their feelings hurt on Facebook?
In the US things were dramatically worse for the bottom 1/2 as recently as the 1970s and earlier. Look up the poverty and hunger rates/issues in the US across the century from 1870-1970. It was barbaric compared to now. The same is true for violent crime, homelessness, and so on. The past 30-40 years have been amazing compared to the past and that holds true for the most of the world. In affluent nations you have a vast number of exceptionally spoiled people that have known very little suffering.
It's only easy if you consider living on welfare or being homeless as acceptable options.
>What demands are you talking about? Influencers pressuring people to have whiter smiles on Instagram or better abs on TikTok? Someone getting their feelings hurt on Facebook?
Getting a college degree is stressful and many people quit. Choosing the right one is also a challenge in it's own right. If you fail at this you will be in debt and lost an opportunity to join the workforce early. Current monetary policies are basically extremely pro business at the expense of workers (current first world economies are fundamentally flawed and 2008 just made it obvious). A lot of people have poor employment options through no fault of their own. They are simply declared unneeded because of how the economy is structured.
It's easier to survive but it's much harder to stay sane.
That it has gone from extremely shite to very shite is not something that can just be translated to "people have become soft, weak, fragile". Suffering looks different now. It's a lazy take to conclude that people must have become weak when the technological progress haven't produced the dignified and easy life of what previous generations hoped it would. Instead we just keep producing and consuming in an endless ever expanding circle, skipping the freedom of leisure for all part.
As others have said, people seem comfortable enough to talk about mental health in an abstract way, but less so about their particular needs.
You seem to have a particularly skeptical view though doubting stigma and casting doubt into therapy as well. Your comment is actually a perfect example of stigma.
I’ve struggled with anxiety before and saw a therapist for a while and benefited greatly from it. It was expensive, sure, but not over priced. Less hourly than I make.
I didn’t really talk about it much at work, but I am open about it now.
On top of that, there are less stigma towards certain aspects of mental health and more towards others. I believe anxiety, like I mentioned for myself, is becoming a more commonly discussed topic, but depression or bipolar, for example, still carry stigma that push people into facing these things alone.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment, but in this case it did appear that he was seeing a therapist so he was getting some professional help.
I think the help that may be missing is friends who are "lovingly firm" with him sooner. But it's easy to assume a billionaire is going to be fine and "tony is just being tony".
> I think the help that may be missing is friends who are "lovingly firm" with him sooner.
I've seen or read interviews with the people surrounding Howard Hughes and Whitney Houston who were very close to them.
When it comes to celebrities and billionaires, unless you're immediate family, your voice is often drowned out by people who are on the payroll or who stand to benefit.
Howard Hughes was involved in a number of airplane accidents, and that likely contributed to his Rx addiction. He had a business rep inside his inner circle for most of his adult life, but IIRC his caretakers and some other people got close enough to isolate Hughes later on.
In the case of Houston, one of her uncles said he recognized the symptoms of heroin addiction during a TV performance, tried to get in touch, but was prevented by other relatives from doing so.
Prince was an unusual case because he OD'ed from fentanyl in fake Vicodin pills:
I visited Zappos HQ with a university group in 2016. As part of the tour, we visited the executive area, where they all sat in cubicles/rows like anyone else's. They even pointed out Tony's desk, though he wasn't around at the time.
I came away from that tour with two distinct impressions:
1 - Zappos had an amazing company culture; everyone seemed to get along and really enjoy their work.
2 - Tony Hsieh had a surprisingly large collection of half-empty liquor bottles at his desk.
Tony's death is certainly a tragedy for his family and the communities he helped build. I hope even during this pandemic we can all maintain those key relationships in life that keep us in check.
>>Tony Hsieh had a surprisingly large collection of half-empty liquor bottles at his desk.
Not just Tony.
My best friend used to work at Zappos. He used to brag to me that every employee/team gets their own mini-fridge, which is stocked with booze and liquor. He said that a common "bonding" experience for different teams in the company is to exchange different types of liquor. This was in early 2010s.
He said drinking on the job is common, but going overboard is discouraged (for obvious reasons). But even he admitted that Zappos clearly understood that in order to attract customer service people to the company (headquartered in Las Vegas), being able to drink on the job, i.e. during the day, would be a great recruitment tool.
I thought it was very cynical, although it obviously worked out well for them. Too bad about Tony though, I hear he was a great guy.
This was the case for most teams I worked on at Google too; I would have an afternoon beer and work from the couch near the mini-fridge at least once a week (I was in my early 20s, so this was less impairing than it probably would be now), and people would usually join me, though not everyone would drink.
That being said, a mini-fridge of booze _per-employee_ is pretty unusual.
That's not startup normal. Maybe having beer and liquor bottles in the kitchen or snack room or whatever but half empty bottles littering the CEO's desk and every employee or even every team having their own mini-fridge is odd.
I've worked at startups with a "drinking culture" and startups with a "board game culture" and I'll take the board game culture every time. Doesn't mean you can't let loose and drink, too - but drinking as the central activity quickly turns a business into a frat house. I do have some great memories celebrating milestones, new hires, etc with early stage coworkers :D
I’d add that casual alcohol use being normalized is not necessary or positive.
Alcohol use among high school seniors in the US is on the decline, so is use of any “illicit” drug. [1]
I’m no square, but this should be encouraged.
Young people already deal with stress of fitting in at a high-velocity workplace.
Modeling conspicuous substance consumption at work seems pretty backward to me.
Perhaps the most irresponsible illustration of this is Elon Musk who has made his substance use so overt I think it wrongly and perhaps dangerously couples using to entrepreneurial success.
hard to say. looking at me and my friends - we've got more time to socialize, plenty of friends, yet people drink less, and definitely use less tobacco(it's really unsexy to smoke cigarettes now, and vaping in public is just embarrassing), because we're more health focused. I have to admit I'm a regular user of psychedelics. drugs are decriminalized where I'm from. unless there will be long term consequences, i don't think it impacted me in any bad way, frankly the opposite, albeit "wasting" some time with friends.
> Perhaps the most irresponsible illustration of this is Elon Musk who has made his substance use so overt I think it wrongly and perhaps dangerously couples using to entrepreneurial success.
oh come off it, what substance abuse? he toked on a blunt on JRE once (clearly barely inhaled and even then, so what) and has a few bourbons with his brother on yearly retreats? please provide more info about this, because i've never, ever taken musk to be that sort of guy.
It becomes less and less cool as you age, because that is when you learn how many of cool adults you grew up with were hidden-to-you alcoholics or turned into full blown alcoholics. And as you age people speak more freely about negative things that happened all along you had no idea about as a kid and young one.
It becomes less and less cool as you age and realize you really gotta be careful not to go the same route.
A small startup where my friend worked (~200 employees) ended up locking up their liquor cabinet except for Friday afternoons. Sadly, one of the employees was alcoholic and was going there too often.
If you watched Valley of the Boom, the Netscape build team sections talk about the booze culture. This has persisted into SRE team culture. This is not new. I agree, no big deal.
Wait what are you kidding!? Drinking DURING the day was encouraged? So the famed company culture is to let everyone get drunk as long as they're all hitting targets? Recipe for disaster for anyone who stays a significant amount of time. It seems cool when you're young then after 10 years people start getting serious problems like alcoholic neuropathy. Very sad situation all round.
Some people do enjoy the taste, or the warming feel you get. I will sometimes have a small glass of whiskey in the evening just for that sensation, not to feel any intoxication.
No. Intoxication is generally considered to be mental impairment or a change of mental state, like mood, inhibition, etc. The warming feeling you get from alcohol is due to alcohol dilating blood vessels, moving more warm blood to your extremities and skin. It is a real physical reaction, not a mental perception. So while you might also be intoxicated, the warm feeling is not intoxication per se.
Well, no. It is a drug and drugs do different things to different systems at different levels. You can't just assert that a drug must be doing B because it is doing A at the exact same dosage.
I've worked a few times in Germany for onboarding new teams for a company I worked at previously. It's pretty normal to have some lunches with a beer, beer is a very cultural thing for Germans and having a beer during a lunch out with the team is completely normal, no one is impaired, no one is drinking 2-3 liters of beer in one sitting. Even here in Sweden where alcohol drinking is much more frowned upon I've had lunches (usually on Fridays) with my teams where we would have a beer or two.
There are very different degrees of what and how much to drink, it can be a socially responsible and enjoyable activity, it's relaxing to let go from the whole super-professional office culture and have a beer and cheers with colleagues.
I live in Germany and I don't drink beer at lunch. I never worked anywhere where people did. People drink beer for a buzz. I also have a beer at work on a Friday if I'm in the office but no work is getting done after it. I especially disagree that it is relaxing to have a beer at lunch and then go back to work and unless you are planning on doing nothing for the rest of the day.
This comment belies a misunderstanding of how alcohol affects the body - that it merely creates a gradient from "not impaired" to "impaired".
Clearly there is more to alcohol than just impairment. Alcohol is both a stimulant and a sedative. It's widely recognized as a social lubricant. All of these properties, in moderation, can be beneficial to many kinds of work.
Studies have shown that light drinking has a positive effect on work performance, especially in creative areas. I had no idea that this was frowned upon and I'm from Texas, but that's probably just because I've lived my entire life in tech. Lots of startups provide copious access to booze and some even have full bars onsite. IIRC, oil executives drank liquor back in the day as well.
The situation with Tsieh is really sad and probably not a result of him being an alcoholic or drinking at work or anything else. Depression rates have tripled during the pandemic, and deaths are way up from overdose caused by people coping with isolation.
IMO holocracy can work, just not in a capitalist corporate environment. Money is power and people don't forget that because management throw buzzwords around.
At AWS we had (still have?) Tatonka nights, where you go to a fast-food place (was it the Wingdome in Seattle?) and you race to eat 25 fried chicken wings.
Um, downvotes? Are you saying that that link is not to the full contents of the article? Or are you saying that you think it is bad to give people access to data? Or are you saying that one should not circumvent the paywall of the WSJ because it is stealing?
Thanks for the link. For the downvoters, note that HN allows posts to paywalled articles only if they have a workaround, and users usually post workarounds in the comment thread.
I keep getting that too. Turning my phone landscape makes it full viewable again.
But I also find that I get taken to a blank screen after solving captcha and need to submit the link I’m trying to archive and won’t get the captcha again.
Maybe archive.is is forwarding us the captcha that is being requesting by the site to-be-archived and can’t do it as a seamless workflow?
She sounds like someone that actually cared about him.
It’s terrible that someone who seemed like a genuinely kind person ended up surrounded by sycophants taking advantage of his wealth and encouraging his drug issues.
"I am going to be blunt," she wrote in the letter, obtained by Forbes. "I need to tell you that I don’t think you are well and in your right mind. I think you are taking too many drugs that cause you to disassociate.
“Jewel reportedly told Hsieh in the note that "people you are surrounding yourself with are either ignorant or willing to be complicit in you killing yourself.
“When you look around and realize that every single person around you is on your payroll, then you are in trouble," Jewel wrote, according to Forbes.
Indeed and thus life is hard whether your poor or rich, especially for those who suddenly get mega wealthly or fame. They seem to cant handle it very well from Michael Jackson to Whitney Houston to Tony to many others.
A lot of us I imagine wanted to be in Tony's position, yet would you still want to be him with how it all went down? His mega-wealth and fame of wealth seem to be his un-doing.
> A lot of us I imagine wanted to be in Tony's position, yet would you still want to be him with how it all went down?
Yes. A lot of people who don't have this type of success like to discredit the lives of those that do in order to protect their self-image. On average, wealth and status increase your quality of life.
I do think there's a lesson to be learned here about the problems that come with wealth and status. To dismiss the net benefits of wealth and status is the wrong lesson.
On a flagged and down-voted into oblivion comment, no less. A small taste of what sharing hard truths here at HN is often becoming like. I hope we can rise above this and allow discussion, even topics we don't think we need to hear.
On a flagged and down-voted into oblivion comment. A small taste of what sharing hard truths here at HN is often like.
There's also the twin concepts of tact and good taste.
If someone wants to dig into a dead person's dark side, go ahead. But not immediately after his death. There's nothing wrong with a little restraint. It's not like knowing bad things about him two weeks later changes anything at all.
"Sharing hard truths" without credible backup should be flagged when it's personal information like that. Gossip and tawdry accusations don't have a place in a community devoted to responsible discourse, especially because lies spread faster than the truth. Having the same conversation now rather than right in the heat of things is fine.
What do you mean by credible? How does anyone on here present proof of credibility about knowledge of a particular event or issue? The comment in question was from someone who created a throwaway “exzappos” username and claimed to have worked closely with Hsieh and understood the problems that have now come to light.
It’s impossible for anyone on here to prove their identity or that they aren’t lying about knowledge about something. In that situation anyone can say an anonymous person on the internet is not credible.
Seems like the more appropriate response is to take a comment like that with a grain of salt, but downvoting it to the point of being flagged and deleted made no sense to me either.
Many people are not anonymous on here. (that said I would have found posting that in bad taste even from someone that could be placed 100% as probably being in the know)
An anonymous person on the internet is not credible.
That's fine when the things anonymous people are posting here can be verified elsewhere, or are philosophical arguments that can be evaluated on their own merits, for example. It's not fine when it's personal accusations and gossip that can't be verified, but which people take to be true just because it seems exciting.
I didn’t say it was. I challenge the need to censor comments from some random anonymous poster vs taking the comment with a grain of salt but leaving it up.
This pretty much mirrors the national debate we’re having about social media and censorship. I’m not in the group where I think something that can’t be definitively verified should be banned from a website. People should be skeptical, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to read something.
You can read flagged comments, you just need to opt-in to do so. HN gives you that escape hatch if you don't want others saying that something isn't appropriate for HN get in the way of seeing it.
Ok, but not really my point. I’m voicing my surprise that a forum that is primarily members of the tech community would find it appropriate or necessary to aggressively censor comments that aren’t off topic or outright personal attacks or obvious trolling.
I don’t think comments from random individuals that aren’t publishers or people of interest, say a politician, should be censored just because others believe they are saying something that can’t be verified, in bad taste, speculative, or not backed by evidence. Take comments like that with a grain of salt. Don’t upvote it. Let people decide for themselves how much weight to put into a comment like that. To flag it so it can’t be read is to make that decision for others.
> Having the same conversation now rather than right in the heat of things is fine.
Why? I don't think people should arbitrarily decide when other people should have the conversation. What if some people think it's never the right time? Should we never talk about it?
How about this, people should be allowed to have conversations about anything at the time of their choosing? Do we really need a moral police to tell us when we can communicate with each other? Nobody should force you to participate in a conversation and certainly you shouldn't prevent others from participating in a conversation.
Go ahead and have conversations. Posting gossip and rumor on a public site isn't that, and should wait for credible sourcing so that it can be distinguished as true.
Agreed, much of the Internet is in this same state of affairs. Moderation, what a few group of people think isn't "nice" becomes the dialogue and topic of discussion vs what is.
I would love it if dang could weigh in on this tough issue. There were a number of people being downvoted asking questions about how this could have happened, and now to see that someone posted the true answer and it was flagged and hidden, that I think reflects poorly on HN and warrants an explanation.
I'll never forget at my first friend's funeral when his mother said during the eulogy "My son was a drug addict." It was so heartbreaking but so important to speak the truth and be open about it in order to pay respect to him and call out for action so that more mom's don't have to make that speech.
She did not bury the truth and "wait out of respect", she confronted it head on. If she can do that and do it in a positive way then I think an Internet forum could do it too. The truth is it seems if it weren't for a few of Tony's friends sharing the whole story, the truth may have been buried and many more may have gone down that path.
This person clearly stated they weren't speculating, and any long time HN user could tell that they were likely credible and not a troll account. At least that's my take, that's why it would be good to hear from dang why this was buried.
Hindsight is 20-20, but looking back it seems clear they were credible and correct, which is why I just wonder if dang could explain why they were flagged. Were moderators involved? Was any attempt made to verify? Or was it just lost in a sea of comments flagged daily (I don't know, not sure how the backend works here).
Flagging is a user action, not something mods do, and I don't see why mods should have overridden that here. It's obviously always possible that strong claims that are impossible to confirm quickly turn out to be true, that doesn't mean we should let them always stand as if they are true in such circumstances.
EDIT: and usual hint, the most reliable way to get an answer from dang is emailing him.
Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things. It was flagkilled for a while and then we unkilled it but left [flagged] on. It also got a lot of upvotes, so the signals were actually mixed.
I don't have any special insight, but FWIW: situations like this are inevitably messy. People want different things (e.g. the social standard about not speaking ill of the dead vs. curiosity to know the truth or share inside information) and they do different things (e.g. use of throwaway accounts to share sensitive true information vs. to post rumors or lies). How all that adds up is impossible to be certain about, and people will strongly disagree. It's intrinsically conflictual and I don't think we can impose simple rules on it. For example: HN is a watercooler site and it's natural for people to wonder what really happened and want to talk about it; and at the same time, that sort of internet thread can run amok and do harm surprisingly quickly.
In my experience, that sort of throwaway account (but there are many sorts—let's not overgeneralize) is usually reporting something true, though perhaps biased. But "usually" is still far from certain. If we'd known that it was likely false we'd have left the comment flagkilled, but in this case it felt likely true, so I unkilled it, but left [flagged] on as a marker of community discontent. To anyone who objects "who the hell are you to make calls about 'feels', 'likely', 'true' or 'false'", I can only completely agree.
p.s. Here's what I replied to a user who emailed about it a few days ago:
"I've unkilled the comment but left it [flagged]. I think that's the right balance.
Posts like that are usually authentic, in my experience. Not to say that people don't make shit up on the internet—they certainly do—but one can usually 'smell' the difference somehow.
Of course the fact that it's true doesn't make it an appropriate comment, but I think [flagged] is enough of a marker to indicate that, and to let people decide for themselves.
Thanks, really helpful the hear how you handle these sorts of situations. I don’t have any good ideas on how to handle it better, and maybe the original commenter could have provided some more corroborating info to preempt the flags. Given your information seems like it would be unreasonable on the mods to handle this one any differently.
> In my experience, that sort of throwaway account (but there are many sorts—let's not overgeneralize) is usually reporting something true, though perhaps biased.
I suppose the key word is "fairly". The higher that number goes, the more incentive there is for impostors, and that brings the number back down—so fairly accurate is about as accurate as they can get.
I've run and moderated a forum for 15+ years (not dissimilar position to your role here) and think I've developed a pretty good instinct for picking the truth from fiction in anonymous posts of that sort. I was very confident that it was close enough to the truth. That said, I don't think the average reader can "smell" the difference in the same way; they haven't approached a forum daily with a moderator's eye. I'm always amazed when people mistake a troll for someone genuine or the reverse, when it's been obvious to me.
> Hindsight is 20-20, but looking back it seems clear they were credible and correct,
As far as I can tell, they were correct but not credible: they did not provide sources in the comment, and it was basically left to be evaluated in a vacuum.
(For context: I did not down vote or flag that comment.)
"If she can do that and do it in a positive way then I think an Internet forum could do it too. "
You just compared an Internet forum to a grieving mother.
Not the right comparison by a longshot.
Allowing a publication run by professional journalists ( they follow a code of ethics) to share news is slightly better than internet forum participants to share their opinions on such a sensitive topic.
I think you have an overly favorable opinion of “journalists” (while I think WSJ is full of good ones, most publications are not).
But that being said, I agree there are lots of bad ways to handle this sort of thing on public forums (see numerous Reddit failures). But there’s gotta be something better and more positive than to bury the truth.
They were not sharing opinions they were sharing the facts.
But the truth wasn’t buried. Within a week of his passing, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal had in-depth, investigative reports into his death with on-the-record comments from those close to him. Hell, within three days of his death, the tabloid the Daily Mail (which isn’t what I would call reputable, but is significantly more reputable than a burner comment account on HN) had the 911 tape and the reports that he was drinking and abusing drugs (nitrous being mentioned) in the months leading up to his death.
And I guarantee you way more people were alerted to the truth in those well-researched and deeply reported articles than ever would have learned from a throwaway account on HN.
If the family had actively tried to halt publication of the articles or if there hadn’t been reporting into the cause of death, I would agree with you. But that isn’t what happened. Moreover, the reporting that did come out, even from the tabloid, added a lot more context and insight into the situation than what the burner account did. And even better, plenty of people were willing to put their name to their words (though you had people who were quoted anonymously too, which isn’t uncommon).
I got downvoted for calling that commenter and his comment gross - and I’ll probably get downvoted for this comment too — but the fact that unsubstantiated gossip happened to be true (which I personally didn’t so much doubt to begin with as much as it was I didn’t trust it without substantiation; my objection was how that information was shared) doesn’t change the other fact that the way it was presented was in poor form.
I’m in complete favor of being open and honest about the fact that people who we admire and respect or hold up as successful can struggle with addiction or mental illness. I think it is incredibly important to lessen the stigma around these areas.
But it is incredibly different for a mother to bravely and honestly declare that her son was an addict at his funeral then it is for a burner account to say “bro blew himself up while he was high on nitrous” (that’s a paraphrase, the original comment wasn’t as blasé but it certainly wasn’t full of either details or compassion). People are going to gossip and speculate on Internet forums, I get it. I’ve also definitely participated in it. But I don’t think it is too much to ask that as a community, HN be held to a higher standard of spreading anonymous gossip, than a place like Twitter or Reddit.
Part of the problem is that "the truth" is generally not as simple and one dimensional as people would like it to be.
I was called "lazy" for much of my life. Then I was diagnosed with a genetic disorder and people finally understood I wasn't lazy. I just didn't have the energy other people had.
Everyone knows addiction is extremely hard to quit, yet being an addict remains stigmatizing and the addict is routinely treated in a blamey way for their failure to quit.
Specific outcomes also tend to have a circumstancial component. When a family has a "badly behaving" teenager, they typically blame the teen. But family therapists typically see a misbehaving minor as the presenting problem and wonder what is going on in the social fabric of the individual that is creating this outcome.
None of us entirely has control over our own lives and our own actions. We have some input, but we always have constraints on us.
Explanations that fall inside the Overton Window will be latched onto quickly. This can boil down to victim blaming rather than trying to understand with some compassion how and why things went wrong.
All true, but sometimes bad things are indeed one's fault, or at least under one's control, and the first step towards remedy is taking responsibility.
"Some of the speculation in this thread [1], originally flagged as hearsay, seems to be confirmed by this article, namely his use of nitrous oxide."
Sorry to be daft ... in the prior HN discussion, which you linked to, people spoke of "nitrous ... and a candle obsession" ... candles are mentioned several times ...
Is that a euphemism ? Or is there some connection in nitrous usage ?
Or is it, simply, he really liked burning literal candles ?
Per the article, candles were relevant to his fire fixation. He also had a fixation on figuring out what his body could live without. Including food and oxygen. Nitrous oxide was one of the ways he would deprive himself of oxygen.
Yeah, I got downvoted to hell after asking a simple question of how this happened and if anyone had a source [0]. Really reflects pretty badly on that whole thread. Lots of fawning over Hsieh and anger at people who were asking questions, or revealing what really happened under throwaway accounts.
RIP. It's really sad. Mental health problems are often dismissed or not caught in time.
I read his book "Delivering Happiness" after I heard about his death and before reading this article about mental health problems. As I read it I saw some interesting stories and ideas about the businesses that he built but I also read stories which put way too much focus (imho) on various nights and parties which don't really relate to entrepreneurship or business. The first thing that popped into my mind is depression, drugs and alcohol overuse.
> put way too much focus (imho) on various nights and parties which don't really relate to entrepreneurship or business.
“Work hard, party hard” is an extremely common aspect of startup culture. I personally suspect that startups tend to draw in risk takers, which explains the prevalence of over-drinking in many (but not all) startups.
How is drinking risk taking? I was in groups that where drinking was super normalized and never ever perceived it to be dangerous. Plus, anxious fearful people do drink too, it makes them feel better.
I mean, I avoided drinking near to some specific individuals (I am woman), but I perceived those individuals to be unsafe. Drinking itself did not constituted risk taking for me.
Drinking is normalized in my entire country, but its still pretty obvious you're literally poisoning yourself with alcohol. That much I understood even as a teen.
Well, drinking is normalized in my entire country and dont refer to it as "literally poisoning yourself".
I mean, some of abstinents who are strongly against alcohol sometimes do. As an attempt to make others stop drinking. And given that the drinking is normalized, they are small minority. I mean, they are small minority of abstinent too. Most abstinents are kind of content when no one is trying to force them to drink.
My claim is that in culture where drinking is normalized, people dont perceive drinking risky. Consequently, drinking as activity is not all that much biased toward "risk takers".
It does not really matter how much risk it "objectively" puts you through. It attracts risk takers only if people consider it risky.
would you say that a significant fraction of people in any culture agree that there are many activities for which drinking and then doing that activity would be considered risky?
Even in cultures where regular drinking is normalized, it’s typical understood that there’s a difference between having drinks and binge drinking. “Work hard, party hard” heavily implies the latter, as it’s indicating that the person doing it will party more than is socially normal, and is proud of that.
Also, I’m an American, and I’m largely commenting on both American culture and American startup culture; both of which I’ve participated in. My observations about this are relevant for Zappos, a startup based out of Las Vegas, but might not be relevant for say EPAM in Minsk.
Over-drinking is risk taking, OP explicitly mentioned that, not just "drinking".
It's risk taking because over-drinking is by definition going over your limits with alcohol and I assume we all know the behaviours that this can bring with.
> The first thing that popped into my mind is depression, drugs and alcohol overuse.
Same. A shadow story that eclipses the text.
"Delivering Happiness" is explicitly about delivering happiness. The subtext or implicit story is about someone who could not find happiness for himself. It's worth re-reading in the context of his passing. RIP.
I mentioned this below in the other thread about it.
Sounds like he was rebelling hardcore against an overly restrictive, maybe typical (?), 1st generation immigrant parent background?
"Ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life,” he wrote in the 2010 book..."
This is often what you hear from someone who has doesn't have much of a sense of higher calling, or doesn't quite know what to do with his capabilities other than go for satisfaction in the short term. And leaves you feeling empty and unsure of what your life should be when work evaporates as your sense of self?
This is so incredibly saddening. Some people seem to truly be too kind and empathetic to cope with this modern world. I'll be forever wondering why he didn't make an extreme decision to do something such as literally disappearing into rural nowhere Asia/Europe or somewhere and attempt to live the simplest of lifestyles for some time. I want to think something of that nature may have helped reset things a bit, but what do I know. Life is so incredibly grueling for those that wish to help others so much as he seemed to want to in our now completely globalized and arguably scarily downtrending world.
As an aside: I hadn't bought anything off Zappos for years, and checked it out when the news hit and surprised that it still basically looks the same as I remember it maybe 10+ years ago. Certainly looks and feels like an eCommerce website from the late 2000s/early 2010s.
I'm curious if this was an intentional choice or a sign the website has been on cruise control since the acquisition. It certainly makes me wonder what Hsieh was doing as CEO as late as this summer either way, which is to say while he was certainly a pioneer in the 2000s I'm not sure what about Zappos in the 10+ years post-acquisition feels cutting edge.
Audible maintainted their pre-Amazon aquisiton site for quite some time as well. Their mobile app still has the same look and feel. Maybe this is a reflection of being aquired by Amazon?
You buy shoes through amazon.com now (with fulfillment by Zappos). That's where all the development has gone. I get the feeling zappos.com is a dead end.
Yeah that makes sense, but then my question is why did Hsieh stay as CEO for that long in what was basically a dead end company within Amazon? It doesn’t seem like that is something someone like Hsieh would ever want to do, and yet he stayed there for a decade post acquisition.
Based on the accounts that are now coming out, the guy had been living in a fantasy world for some time.
He was probably happy to stay at Zappos as long as it made him feel good. He didn't actually need to be good at business anymore because Amazon was running the show. After leaving, he decamped to Park City and paid former colleagues to join him there, to continue the party, because that is what Zappos leadership had become by that point: a party free from the daily duties and concerns of running a company that needed to succeed in the market in order to survive.
It actually sounds like the perfect position for him. He had an impressive-sounding title of CEO of Zappos without ever actually having to do much; it was a sinecure that let him focus most of his energy on the stuff he cared more about towards the end of his life, like his Vegas project, partying, and drugs.
I got a notice from Zappos some years ago about a security breach they suffered where customer information was exposed. In compensation, they offered a discount on next purchase. This offer of course had a relatively short time limit, not the same as a gift certficate or store credit. I never remember reading about this security breach publicly. Maybe I just missed it.
Oh crap, I had no idea he'd died - I met him once when he was on his happiness tour, really interesting, genuinely nice, and driven guy. He took the idea of selling shoes and somehow morphed it into spreading happiness including touring it to markets that Zapos didn't operate in (like NZ where I met him), which obviously had limited direct benefit to his company. Only really visionary people would be able to pull off something like that and connect those dots.
I also met someone who grew up with him, he said that Tony was always looking at everything with an entrepreneurial eye. Anything and everything would be a business, even bringing in a grill to sell burgers to his class mates at lunch.
> After a therapist recommended a “digital detox” this spring,
Yeah, uhhh, I’m sure a lot of us here could benefit from a digital detox, but unless the plan also includes “go to australia”, this doesn’t seem like the right year for this advice.
"Digital Detox" isn't a clearly defined term, but usually does not mean no internet use long-term. And e.g. limiting access to social media or 24/7 news is not necessarily a bad idea in the year of "doomscrolling".
take away: it’s easy to be happy with lots of money, but harder to not blow your life on drugs, and bad choices, no matter how “nice of a person” you appear to be on the outside.
I knew someone that spent some time on Necker Island. She said that there were plenty of drugs and told me a certain celebrity was taking way too much cocaine.
I am a recovering nitrous oxide addict who once set himself on fire, so I understand the terrible predicament he found himself in. Many people do nitrous recreationally as a party drug, but there's a reason they call it 'hippie crack.' Some become obsessed with it
That's not how I understand it. You may be referring to some other use I am not aware of. I'm not a car guy.
"A nitrous oxide engine is an internal combustion engine in which oxygen for burning the fuel comes from the decomposition of nitrous oxide, N2O, rather than air. The system increases the engine's power output by allowing fuel to be burned at a higher-than-normal rate, because of the higher partial pressure of oxygen injected with the fuel mixture."
Supercharged usually refers to an engine with a supercharger, which is a crankshaft driven pump used to force more air into the engine. It is similar to a turbocharger, except a turbo is driven by exhaust gas.
N2O is typically used with a normally aspirated gasoline engine. It's just another way to get more oxygen into the combustion chamber.
This same effect can be accomplished by spraying cold water into the air inlet, and this is used in some high end cars and jet engines. It also cools hot points in the engine, letting you push the compression higher without causing premature detonation.
Does mean you have to refill a water tank too, but it also lets you get more power without producing any more NOx, which are bad for both the environment and people.
It is a nice complement, as compressed air from a turbo or super charger is very hot. The nitrous cools it down. People also use a water or alcohol spray for a similar reason.
I used to crack a bunch of cartridges into a large plastic bag such as an outdoor trash bag. I didn't realize N2O was an accelerant so I was smoking. The tip of the cig fell on the bag and it went up in a flash. Fortunately it burned quickly and only singed me.
The dangers of nitrous are hypoxia, B vitamin depletion, nerve damage, dissociative effects and extreme compulsion to use. I was in treatment with a dentist's wife, who really screwed herself in a bad way with all of these effects and could hardly walk because of nerve damage to her feet.
I forgot to mention, it's a rich man's drug, another way it's similar to cocaine. I probably spent $150,000 on cases of whippets (25 boxes x 24 whippets to a box.) My first reaction to Tony Hsieh and nitrous was "He had too much money for his own good." I ran out of money before I could kill myself with it.
Headshop owners who sell nitrous to obviously addicted people are generally not good citizens. I'd guess they make most of their profit from addicts like me. I only got cut off once after a 2wk/$10k run when I was almost too sick and incoherent to make a purchase. Every other store gladly kept selling to me when I was in that condition.
It’s (comparatively) very cheap in bulk tank form.
But that’s much harder to come by for most people.
The small whippets cartridges... you’re paying for the steel, getting a gas in there and markups. If they filled it with room air, it would cost the same.
I could have looked for tanks to save money, but I surely would have died that way. I could control intake with cartridges because the limiting factor was that you had to keep cracking them. A case of 600 whippets one after another would last about 5 hours, so 2 a minute. I've heard too many stories of people dying with tanks.
Forgive me ... I am completely naive regarding this subject but find these descriptions both fascinating and confusing...
Do I understand: if you're on a whippet bender you have to do a thing every 30 seconds ?
It seems like that would interrupt and greatly diminish whatever pleasurable effects the substance was giving you ... in fact, it sounds somewhat stressful ...
Cracking whippets is like popping bubble wrap. It's a pleasant repetitive motion that becomes part of automatic muscle memory after a while. It becomes a meditation, like praying the rosary.
Thanks. I've made a remarkable recovery with a lot of help. I'm sharing this because the subject came up with Tony Hsieh and I know he and I weren't the only ones abusing nitrous. My email is in my profile if anyone out there thinks they have a problem with it and would like to talk about it. I'm raising awareness of the dangers here. It's seductive when you read that philosopher William James had epiphanies with it and want to have them yourself (I'm pretty sure he abused it to.) It took ahold of me pretty quickly. This has been difficult for me today because I'm triggered by thinking about it. I can taste it and feel it. But maybe I warned somebody off from it.
At the point I bottomed out ended up in a homeless shelter. My willful and stubborn way wasn't working, so I made a conscious decision to start doing what people told me to do. I surrendered, if you will. Family and psychology pros got me into a long term treatment program. Fortunately, I had two family members who hadn't given up on me.
The documentary of Steve-O's (from Jackass fame) descent into madness via nitrous oxide and other drugs was terrifying. The way he would convulse and then have conversations with his Mom and talk to the voices in his head? The whole thing left me speechless.
I think one "advantage" could be that it's an invisible drug. People don't know that you're doing it, unless of course you have neurological or organ damage, but even then it could be explained away.
You start getting incoherent after heavy use, even when not currently using. People who know you notice. Jewel said she left an event early because she was upset to see Tony was acting that way. It takes 4-6 days to recover from a heavy run, including getting feeling back in your nerve endings. Taking B vitamins help.
It's the saddest article I have read in a while. Tony Hsieh was an amazing human being. The manner of his passing from the world does not take away from the good he did while alive.
Maybe sharing the circumstances of his death will also do some good if it encourages others with friends or loved ones who have mental illness to do something before it is too late.
One of my friends has been spiraling out of control for the past few months. I have tried and tried to help them. I'm going to keep trying.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 249 ms ] thread"“Ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life,” he wrote in the 2010 book..."
This is often what you hear from someone who has doesn't have much of a sense of higher calling, or doesn't quite know what to do with his capabilities other than go for satisfaction in the short term. And leaves you feeling empty and unsure of what your life should be when work evaporates as your sense of self?
Having come from a similar background, where the childhood abuse was real and looking back on my life I realize how much of my stress to succeed and achieve was really an attempt to appease/show up my parents. Addiction to work and "bad" habits was all a part of the response to that childhood abuse.
Like I wrote in one of my tweets [1], Gabor Mate's work has helped me to see and work towards reworking my relationship to stress.
It's unfortunate that Gabor Mate's work isn't part of our conversion around addiction, stress, crime and suicide.
[1] https://twitter.com/ksqio/status/1334978112703131651
It is sad that Tony Hsieh didn’t get the help that he needed and instead tried to self medicate in order to get away from all that. This recurrent story where extremely intelligent people are battling mental health issues and cannot speak out because the stigma behind this issue is too damaging is why we need to normalize the discourse around mental health if we want to avoid this type of tragedies. I’m not actively suffering (and am not as bright as Tony) but had some bouts of depression and hypomania in the past and know how afraid I was to let anyone official (eg. at work, school) know about my suffering because once out it always trails you like a cloud and will always deem you inferior to others. Luckily I was able to escape the black hole and have been good and calm for about 10 years and learned to never slip into that again. But there’s a remnant fear of a possibility of going back to it. Along with that there is the fear of falling begind, loosing job, becoming isolated and homelessness. This fear is clearly exacerbated in the US where one or a few slip-ups turns everything into an ever accelerating down-spiral. Tony had so much more to loose as his cliff was much higher than an ordinary person. He could have seeked professional help and he probably did but too late in the game. Had we not have this stigma around, he and others could get the help early on when much more could be done.
Self-medication with drugs works temporarily but its abuse is clearly a quick path to compelte madness and early death. I personally stay away from drugs except from an ocasional puff of weed, the once a decade or two experience with LSD and the weekend bottle of beer.
Rest in peace Tony, you will be missed
Where exactly is the "stigma" of mental health in tech nowadays? We're blasted day and night to the point where apparently every other person is "battling mental health issues".
Maybe there's a deeper issue here than "stigma" and seeing overpriced therapists.
Are you blind? It's EVERYWHERE. ALL THE TIME.
HR is often a great example of how fucked it all is. (Good humane HR is rare)
I mean hell, it’s tough enough being sentient and dealing with mortality, throw in social issues, politics, propaganda, conspiracies, lack of health care, lack of social safety nets, caring for dependents, dating, paying bills, social media, “Instagram culture,” and a god damn pandemic. It’s rough out there.
It’s like, “I can’t pay my mortgage and I don’t where my family will live, but Grandpa was a POW in Nam, so no worries!”
Modern society is the easiest society that has ever existed. And that's true nearly world-wide. People have never been better off or worked fewer hours at the median. In modern - affluent - society, it's that people have become soft, weak, fragile. The times are not harder, they're easier. People in affluent nations have never been more coddled and protected.
What demands are you talking about? Influencers pressuring people to have whiter smiles on Instagram or better abs on TikTok? Someone getting their feelings hurt on Facebook?
In the US things were dramatically worse for the bottom 1/2 as recently as the 1970s and earlier. Look up the poverty and hunger rates/issues in the US across the century from 1870-1970. It was barbaric compared to now. The same is true for violent crime, homelessness, and so on. The past 30-40 years have been amazing compared to the past and that holds true for the most of the world. In affluent nations you have a vast number of exceptionally spoiled people that have known very little suffering.
>What demands are you talking about? Influencers pressuring people to have whiter smiles on Instagram or better abs on TikTok? Someone getting their feelings hurt on Facebook?
Getting a college degree is stressful and many people quit. Choosing the right one is also a challenge in it's own right. If you fail at this you will be in debt and lost an opportunity to join the workforce early. Current monetary policies are basically extremely pro business at the expense of workers (current first world economies are fundamentally flawed and 2008 just made it obvious). A lot of people have poor employment options through no fault of their own. They are simply declared unneeded because of how the economy is structured.
It's easier to survive but it's much harder to stay sane.
This isn't a mental health crisis. Westerners are just babies.
I tend to agree that the issue isn’t discourse, but that Discourse alone won’t fix the problem.
You seem to have a particularly skeptical view though doubting stigma and casting doubt into therapy as well. Your comment is actually a perfect example of stigma.
I’ve struggled with anxiety before and saw a therapist for a while and benefited greatly from it. It was expensive, sure, but not over priced. Less hourly than I make.
I didn’t really talk about it much at work, but I am open about it now.
On top of that, there are less stigma towards certain aspects of mental health and more towards others. I believe anxiety, like I mentioned for myself, is becoming a more commonly discussed topic, but depression or bipolar, for example, still carry stigma that push people into facing these things alone.
I think the help that may be missing is friends who are "lovingly firm" with him sooner. But it's easy to assume a billionaire is going to be fine and "tony is just being tony".
I've seen or read interviews with the people surrounding Howard Hughes and Whitney Houston who were very close to them.
When it comes to celebrities and billionaires, unless you're immediate family, your voice is often drowned out by people who are on the payroll or who stand to benefit.
Howard Hughes was involved in a number of airplane accidents, and that likely contributed to his Rx addiction. He had a business rep inside his inner circle for most of his adult life, but IIRC his caretakers and some other people got close enough to isolate Hughes later on.
In the case of Houston, one of her uncles said he recognized the symptoms of heroin addiction during a TV performance, tried to get in touch, but was prevented by other relatives from doing so.
Prince was an unusual case because he OD'ed from fentanyl in fake Vicodin pills:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/no-criminal-charges-pri...
I came away from that tour with two distinct impressions: 1 - Zappos had an amazing company culture; everyone seemed to get along and really enjoy their work. 2 - Tony Hsieh had a surprisingly large collection of half-empty liquor bottles at his desk.
Tony's death is certainly a tragedy for his family and the communities he helped build. I hope even during this pandemic we can all maintain those key relationships in life that keep us in check.
Not just Tony.
My best friend used to work at Zappos. He used to brag to me that every employee/team gets their own mini-fridge, which is stocked with booze and liquor. He said that a common "bonding" experience for different teams in the company is to exchange different types of liquor. This was in early 2010s.
He said drinking on the job is common, but going overboard is discouraged (for obvious reasons). But even he admitted that Zappos clearly understood that in order to attract customer service people to the company (headquartered in Las Vegas), being able to drink on the job, i.e. during the day, would be a great recruitment tool.
I thought it was very cynical, although it obviously worked out well for them. Too bad about Tony though, I hear he was a great guy.
That being said, a mini-fridge of booze _per-employee_ is pretty unusual.
That's not startup normal. Maybe having beer and liquor bottles in the kitchen or snack room or whatever but half empty bottles littering the CEO's desk and every employee or even every team having their own mini-fridge is odd.
I've worked at startups with a "drinking culture" and startups with a "board game culture" and I'll take the board game culture every time. Doesn't mean you can't let loose and drink, too - but drinking as the central activity quickly turns a business into a frat house. I do have some great memories celebrating milestones, new hires, etc with early stage coworkers :D
Alcohol use among high school seniors in the US is on the decline, so is use of any “illicit” drug. [1]
I’m no square, but this should be encouraged.
Young people already deal with stress of fitting in at a high-velocity workplace.
Modeling conspicuous substance consumption at work seems pretty backward to me.
Perhaps the most irresponsible illustration of this is Elon Musk who has made his substance use so overt I think it wrongly and perhaps dangerously couples using to entrepreneurial success.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/26/the-concern...
Sounds wholesome, but is probably just the symptom of people going out and socializing less, resulting in increased isolation and loneliness.
oh come off it, what substance abuse? he toked on a blunt on JRE once (clearly barely inhaled and even then, so what) and has a few bourbons with his brother on yearly retreats? please provide more info about this, because i've never, ever taken musk to be that sort of guy.
It becomes less and less cool as you age and realize you really gotta be careful not to go the same route.
There are very different degrees of what and how much to drink, it can be a socially responsible and enjoyable activity, it's relaxing to let go from the whole super-professional office culture and have a beer and cheers with colleagues.
The world isn't black-and-white.
Clearly there is more to alcohol than just impairment. Alcohol is both a stimulant and a sedative. It's widely recognized as a social lubricant. All of these properties, in moderation, can be beneficial to many kinds of work.
https://xkcd.com/323/
The situation with Tsieh is really sad and probably not a result of him being an alcoholic or drinking at work or anything else. Depression rates have tripled during the pandemic, and deaths are way up from overdose caused by people coping with isolation.
[1] https://pando.com/2016/01/19/delivering-hopelessness-38-zapp...
See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
> it's ok [...] to help other users do so.
In which category does an archive.is link fall more, complaint or help?
But I also find that I get taken to a blank screen after solving captcha and need to submit the link I’m trying to archive and won’t get the captcha again.
Maybe archive.is is forwarding us the captcha that is being requesting by the site to-be-archived and can’t do it as a seamless workflow?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235843
She's pretty credible.
It’s terrible that someone who seemed like a genuinely kind person ended up surrounded by sycophants taking advantage of his wealth and encouraging his drug issues.
"I am going to be blunt," she wrote in the letter, obtained by Forbes. "I need to tell you that I don’t think you are well and in your right mind. I think you are taking too many drugs that cause you to disassociate.
“Jewel reportedly told Hsieh in the note that "people you are surrounding yourself with are either ignorant or willing to be complicit in you killing yourself.
“When you look around and realize that every single person around you is on your payroll, then you are in trouble," Jewel wrote, according to Forbes.
“You are in trouble, Tony.”
She was right.
A lot of us I imagine wanted to be in Tony's position, yet would you still want to be him with how it all went down? His mega-wealth and fame of wealth seem to be his un-doing.
Yes. A lot of people who don't have this type of success like to discredit the lives of those that do in order to protect their self-image. On average, wealth and status increase your quality of life.
I do think there's a lesson to be learned here about the problems that come with wealth and status. To dismiss the net benefits of wealth and status is the wrong lesson.
https://youtu.be/GxqeOwVl0IQ
I was captivated when she described hearing Tony describe his vision for Holocracy, I finally understood what he was aiming for.
There's also the twin concepts of tact and good taste.
If someone wants to dig into a dead person's dark side, go ahead. But not immediately after his death. There's nothing wrong with a little restraint. It's not like knowing bad things about him two weeks later changes anything at all.
There is nothing wrong with a little truth or facts either...the guy is dead, he won't be offended.
Even if it is true, I’m sure they’d appreciate an opportunity to mourn in peace.
It’s impossible for anyone on here to prove their identity or that they aren’t lying about knowledge about something. In that situation anyone can say an anonymous person on the internet is not credible.
Seems like the more appropriate response is to take a comment like that with a grain of salt, but downvoting it to the point of being flagged and deleted made no sense to me either.
It’s the difference between taking a comment with a grain of salt and saying “no one can read this because we can’t prove it.”
That's fine when the things anonymous people are posting here can be verified elsewhere, or are philosophical arguments that can be evaluated on their own merits, for example. It's not fine when it's personal accusations and gossip that can't be verified, but which people take to be true just because it seems exciting.
This pretty much mirrors the national debate we’re having about social media and censorship. I’m not in the group where I think something that can’t be definitively verified should be banned from a website. People should be skeptical, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to read something.
I don’t think comments from random individuals that aren’t publishers or people of interest, say a politician, should be censored just because others believe they are saying something that can’t be verified, in bad taste, speculative, or not backed by evidence. Take comments like that with a grain of salt. Don’t upvote it. Let people decide for themselves how much weight to put into a comment like that. To flag it so it can’t be read is to make that decision for others.
Why? I don't think people should arbitrarily decide when other people should have the conversation. What if some people think it's never the right time? Should we never talk about it?
How about this, people should be allowed to have conversations about anything at the time of their choosing? Do we really need a moral police to tell us when we can communicate with each other? Nobody should force you to participate in a conversation and certainly you shouldn't prevent others from participating in a conversation.
Depressing all around.
I'll never forget at my first friend's funeral when his mother said during the eulogy "My son was a drug addict." It was so heartbreaking but so important to speak the truth and be open about it in order to pay respect to him and call out for action so that more mom's don't have to make that speech.
She did not bury the truth and "wait out of respect", she confronted it head on. If she can do that and do it in a positive way then I think an Internet forum could do it too. The truth is it seems if it weren't for a few of Tony's friends sharing the whole story, the truth may have been buried and many more may have gone down that path.
EDIT: and usual hint, the most reliable way to get an answer from dang is emailing him.
I don't have any special insight, but FWIW: situations like this are inevitably messy. People want different things (e.g. the social standard about not speaking ill of the dead vs. curiosity to know the truth or share inside information) and they do different things (e.g. use of throwaway accounts to share sensitive true information vs. to post rumors or lies). How all that adds up is impossible to be certain about, and people will strongly disagree. It's intrinsically conflictual and I don't think we can impose simple rules on it. For example: HN is a watercooler site and it's natural for people to wonder what really happened and want to talk about it; and at the same time, that sort of internet thread can run amok and do harm surprisingly quickly.
In my experience, that sort of throwaway account (but there are many sorts—let's not overgeneralize) is usually reporting something true, though perhaps biased. But "usually" is still far from certain. If we'd known that it was likely false we'd have left the comment flagkilled, but in this case it felt likely true, so I unkilled it, but left [flagged] on as a marker of community discontent. To anyone who objects "who the hell are you to make calls about 'feels', 'likely', 'true' or 'false'", I can only completely agree.
p.s. Here's what I replied to a user who emailed about it a few days ago:
"I've unkilled the comment but left it [flagged]. I think that's the right balance.
Posts like that are usually authentic, in my experience. Not to say that people don't make shit up on the internet—they certainly do—but one can usually 'smell' the difference somehow.
Of course the fact that it's true doesn't make it an appropriate comment, but I think [flagged] is enough of a marker to indicate that, and to let people decide for themselves.
It's a tragic story in any case."
If you look at the academic research on rumors, most rumors are apparently fairly accurate. That's why they spread so quickly. E.g.: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009102609001900...
As far as I can tell, they were correct but not credible: they did not provide sources in the comment, and it was basically left to be evaluated in a vacuum.
(For context: I did not down vote or flag that comment.)
You just compared an Internet forum to a grieving mother.
Not the right comparison by a longshot.
Allowing a publication run by professional journalists ( they follow a code of ethics) to share news is slightly better than internet forum participants to share their opinions on such a sensitive topic.
But that being said, I agree there are lots of bad ways to handle this sort of thing on public forums (see numerous Reddit failures). But there’s gotta be something better and more positive than to bury the truth.
They were not sharing opinions they were sharing the facts.
And I guarantee you way more people were alerted to the truth in those well-researched and deeply reported articles than ever would have learned from a throwaway account on HN.
If the family had actively tried to halt publication of the articles or if there hadn’t been reporting into the cause of death, I would agree with you. But that isn’t what happened. Moreover, the reporting that did come out, even from the tabloid, added a lot more context and insight into the situation than what the burner account did. And even better, plenty of people were willing to put their name to their words (though you had people who were quoted anonymously too, which isn’t uncommon).
I got downvoted for calling that commenter and his comment gross - and I’ll probably get downvoted for this comment too — but the fact that unsubstantiated gossip happened to be true (which I personally didn’t so much doubt to begin with as much as it was I didn’t trust it without substantiation; my objection was how that information was shared) doesn’t change the other fact that the way it was presented was in poor form.
I’m in complete favor of being open and honest about the fact that people who we admire and respect or hold up as successful can struggle with addiction or mental illness. I think it is incredibly important to lessen the stigma around these areas.
But it is incredibly different for a mother to bravely and honestly declare that her son was an addict at his funeral then it is for a burner account to say “bro blew himself up while he was high on nitrous” (that’s a paraphrase, the original comment wasn’t as blasé but it certainly wasn’t full of either details or compassion). People are going to gossip and speculate on Internet forums, I get it. I’ve also definitely participated in it. But I don’t think it is too much to ask that as a community, HN be held to a higher standard of spreading anonymous gossip, than a place like Twitter or Reddit.
I was called "lazy" for much of my life. Then I was diagnosed with a genetic disorder and people finally understood I wasn't lazy. I just didn't have the energy other people had.
Everyone knows addiction is extremely hard to quit, yet being an addict remains stigmatizing and the addict is routinely treated in a blamey way for their failure to quit.
Specific outcomes also tend to have a circumstancial component. When a family has a "badly behaving" teenager, they typically blame the teen. But family therapists typically see a misbehaving minor as the presenting problem and wonder what is going on in the social fabric of the individual that is creating this outcome.
None of us entirely has control over our own lives and our own actions. We have some input, but we always have constraints on us.
Explanations that fall inside the Overton Window will be latched onto quickly. This can boil down to victim blaming rather than trying to understand with some compassion how and why things went wrong.
I'm all for personal responsibility, but that really has nothing to do with my point at all.
Sorry to be daft ... in the prior HN discussion, which you linked to, people spoke of "nitrous ... and a candle obsession" ... candles are mentioned several times ...
Is that a euphemism ? Or is there some connection in nitrous usage ?
Or is it, simply, he really liked burning literal candles ?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235890
I read his book "Delivering Happiness" after I heard about his death and before reading this article about mental health problems. As I read it I saw some interesting stories and ideas about the businesses that he built but I also read stories which put way too much focus (imho) on various nights and parties which don't really relate to entrepreneurship or business. The first thing that popped into my mind is depression, drugs and alcohol overuse.
To some extend, but startup events generally combine exactly those things (without the drugs, depending on where it is).
“Work hard, party hard” is an extremely common aspect of startup culture. I personally suspect that startups tend to draw in risk takers, which explains the prevalence of over-drinking in many (but not all) startups.
I mean, I avoided drinking near to some specific individuals (I am woman), but I perceived those individuals to be unsafe. Drinking itself did not constituted risk taking for me.
I mean, some of abstinents who are strongly against alcohol sometimes do. As an attempt to make others stop drinking. And given that the drinking is normalized, they are small minority. I mean, they are small minority of abstinent too. Most abstinents are kind of content when no one is trying to force them to drink.
Drinking is normal in your culture —> drinking is not risky in your culture ?
This is patently false; drinking carries risks in any context, perhaps even moreso in environments which fail to recognize its potential for harm
It does not really matter how much risk it "objectively" puts you through. It attracts risk takers only if people consider it risky.
Also, I’m an American, and I’m largely commenting on both American culture and American startup culture; both of which I’ve participated in. My observations about this are relevant for Zappos, a startup based out of Las Vegas, but might not be relevant for say EPAM in Minsk.
It's risk taking because over-drinking is by definition going over your limits with alcohol and I assume we all know the behaviours that this can bring with.
Same. A shadow story that eclipses the text.
"Delivering Happiness" is explicitly about delivering happiness. The subtext or implicit story is about someone who could not find happiness for himself. It's worth re-reading in the context of his passing. RIP.
Sounds like he was rebelling hardcore against an overly restrictive, maybe typical (?), 1st generation immigrant parent background?
"Ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life,” he wrote in the 2010 book..."
This is often what you hear from someone who has doesn't have much of a sense of higher calling, or doesn't quite know what to do with his capabilities other than go for satisfaction in the short term. And leaves you feeling empty and unsure of what your life should be when work evaporates as your sense of self?
I'm curious if this was an intentional choice or a sign the website has been on cruise control since the acquisition. It certainly makes me wonder what Hsieh was doing as CEO as late as this summer either way, which is to say while he was certainly a pioneer in the 2000s I'm not sure what about Zappos in the 10+ years post-acquisition feels cutting edge.
He was probably happy to stay at Zappos as long as it made him feel good. He didn't actually need to be good at business anymore because Amazon was running the show. After leaving, he decamped to Park City and paid former colleagues to join him there, to continue the party, because that is what Zappos leadership had become by that point: a party free from the daily duties and concerns of running a company that needed to succeed in the market in order to survive.
I also met someone who grew up with him, he said that Tony was always looking at everything with an entrepreneurial eye. Anything and everything would be a business, even bringing in a grill to sell burgers to his class mates at lunch.
Big loss of a visionary.
Yeah, uhhh, I’m sure a lot of us here could benefit from a digital detox, but unless the plan also includes “go to australia”, this doesn’t seem like the right year for this advice.
If you were online you could order anything you want.
We never found it.
"A nitrous oxide engine is an internal combustion engine in which oxygen for burning the fuel comes from the decomposition of nitrous oxide, N2O, rather than air. The system increases the engine's power output by allowing fuel to be burned at a higher-than-normal rate, because of the higher partial pressure of oxygen injected with the fuel mixture."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide_engine
N2O is typically used with a normally aspirated gasoline engine. It's just another way to get more oxygen into the combustion chamber.
https://www.racingjunk.com/news/drag-race-101-its-a-gas/
Does mean you have to refill a water tank too, but it also lets you get more power without producing any more NOx, which are bad for both the environment and people.
https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/07/06/inside-the-nitrous-m...
But that’s much harder to come by for most people.
The small whippets cartridges... you’re paying for the steel, getting a gas in there and markups. If they filled it with room air, it would cost the same.
Do I understand: if you're on a whippet bender you have to do a thing every 30 seconds ?
It seems like that would interrupt and greatly diminish whatever pleasurable effects the substance was giving you ... in fact, it sounds somewhat stressful ...
This has probably saved a lot of lives, tbh. It's hard to suffocate yourself if doing so requires motor skills.
The idea is that the patient can self-administer, but if they over do it, they get too messed up to operate the thing until it wears off again.
Glad you're still with us.
Steve-O Demise & Rise [MTV Special]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ulzP2XUOg
While that was in a clinical setting, it can be quick if you’re already at risk.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
One of my friends has been spiraling out of control for the past few months. I have tried and tried to help them. I'm going to keep trying.