My initial reaction reading this (I had t heard the news) was disbelief. How could someone so accomplished and influential be driven to such despair over what seems to be an interpersonal workplace conflict? But the more I think about it, the more I get it. Many of us pour our identities into our work. It becomes more than a job. It’s our purpose, our sense of self. When that’s destabilized or taken away, the fallout can be devastating.
It’s a sad reminder of how vulnerable those who care deeply about their work can be in the face of toxic or unjust environments. Passion and commitment, when met with indifference or hostility, can push anyone to a breaking point.
>over what seems to be an interpersonal workplace conflict
Well, it started with an interpersonal workplace conflict, but ended up with him being forced to retire from his professorship and the entrepreneurial mentoring program he saw as his mission.
We have zero data or evidence to differentiate between "He was pushed out for being right about the ethics complaint" and "he was pushed out because he was wrong about the ethics complaint and did not take that well"
People are jumping to conclusions about who the aggrieved party is because they have a vague connection to the guy who made HowStuffWorks and zero connection to the counterparty. Especially on HN, people would rather believe that "the system is rigged against the brilliant individual" rather than "the individual can often be the problem".
Just as often as upper management is corrupt, a single individual who had NO PRIOR EVIDENCE OF NEGATIVE INTERACTION WITH ANYONE goes absolutely apeshit and attempts to destroy your life.
My mother is a well respected teacher. After about 4 years of working in a new school, one of the other teachers in her department seemingly got "triggered" and went utterly insane. He started fabricating ethics complaints, lying to administrators, and even went so far as to retain a lawyer to sue the school district to have her removed for his completely made up allegations. I read the complaint and I cannot believe a lawyer was willing to be paid to participate. It was pages of insane rantings, like manifesto level, full of misspellings and mistakes and made up entirely of outright lies. The internal investigation was terrifying, because it starts as "He said/She said". Luckily he was crazy enough to fill his allegations with things that were demonstrably disprovable with documentation, but without that, the school absolutely would have just let my mother go instead of fight it.
There was no "cause", no change in department policy that favored my mother over him, no change in pecking order, nothing. He just one day decided to go to war with her. He completely lost his connection to reality. Yet to his students, he continued to teach normally, and nothing seemed off.
We have no facts. We have no evidence. We likely never will. We should reserve judgement.
> Especially on HN, people would rather believe that "the system is rigged against the brilliant individual" rather than "the individual can often be the problem".
Slightly off topic question, but is this Silicon-Randian projection really particularly widespread on HN by and large or only for specific subset of topics?
There are indications that the office space conflict was simply the last straw in a long line of interpersonal conflicts he had with other faculty.
For example, he frequently filed ethics complaints against other faculty after minor disagreements... putting their careers at risk over trivial matters.
He may have been well like by the internet but he was not well liked at the school, and the relative silence by faculty and students is pretty telling.
You do understand that the supposed genesis of this (in Mr. Brain's own words) was that he filed an ethics complaint about his boss because she decided to reassign some office space he wasn't using anymore?
In what world do you think that this sort of behavior is remotely acceptable? How would you feel if a co-worker filed a harassment claim against you (which could have serious career consequences for you) for moving their lunch bag in the office refrigerator? That's basically what he did. Being allowed to resign was letting him off easy; at most universities he could have been terminated for cause.
Again: Mr. Brain put a colleague's career in jeopardy over office space. Think about that really hard before you comment again.
> at most universities he could have been terminated for cause
Is that really true? In my country, there are employment laws to prevent the suffering of detriment post reporting of an incident, grievance, or violation, even if (especially if) the claim is found baseless.
It’s important for these regulations to exist because without them some people fear reporting true problems as they may lose their job, and the wrongdoers do more wrong in such a culture.
Processes should deal with baseless, frivolous, or even vexatious claims far in advance of any consideration of termination of employment.
But I’m clueless on US labor laws, apart from a general suspicion they’re relatively thin.
> he filed an ethics complaint about his boss because she decided to reassign some office space he wasn't using anymore?
Where do you see that in[0]? In July, they wanted to take the EEP[1] (a program he ran for many years and was passionate about) meeting room for a new faculty member, and then somehow in September they decided to cancel the EEP program once he started complaining. He kept complaining until they ended up firing him (forced resignation) in October.[2]
[2]"“You have three options: 1) Retirement, 2) Discontinuation, or 3) Separation. By
continuing to argue I will take the path of "Discontinuation." "Discontinuation" means we
will not renew your contract. By the end of business on Wednesday I will notify the
university and the I&E team that the end of the semester is your last day. Everything ends
at the end of the semester. To retire and to avoid "Discontinuation" you must send me
your letter of resignation before the end of business Wednesday. If you prolong your
argument I will make the "Separation" effective Wednesday, your email will be cut off, your
office will be inaccessible, you will not finish the courses this semester. Everything ends
Wednesday. To avoid an immediate separation you must not engage in the argument. If
we agree to an amicable separation and you begin to argue later it will trigger an
immediate separation.”"
> After 14 years of outstanding leadership as head of our Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Dan Stancil will be stepping down from his position.
I’ve seen other very small bureaucracies who attract people who are great at politicking but are basically essentially evil and use the position for sadism every chance they get.
Wow, this is particularly disconcerting after seeing their No Retaliation clause in that thread. If they aren't willing to deal with ethics complaints in a non-prejudicial manner, then they shouldn't have such a policy.
somehow in September they decided to cancel the EEP program once he started complaining
The EEP program was not cancelled...Brain was simply removed from the program.
It is borderline gaslighting for him to claim that the EEP program was cancelled simply because he was no longer a part of it.
If he had filed an unmerited ethical complaint like this at a UC school like Cal or UCLA, he'd have been terminated for cause without the option of retiring gracefully (this actually happened to a professor at Berkeley while I was there).
Notably: it's been over a week since his death and none of his colleagues are defending him. There's no drama on campus from students despite the supposed injustice. The only people keeping this alive are a handful of people who liked his website. And that's because...there's more to the story than just the one-sided version of it people are parroting on the internet.
"Hey Brain, we want to use this space for <Thing>"
His response is to insist that they do not "need" the space, that "need" is a LIE, and that LIE requires an ethics inquiry!
What the shit? He then does the exact same thing for the email about them not recommending students for his program. "ABET says we aren't good enough, and your program is part of that, so we are going to go in a different direction" and again his reaction is insane!
"“Marshall - my colleague, my confidant, my advisor, my friend - you are over the line." He calls this retaliation!
Imagine going to your boss's boss, and nitpicking every single word of their communication to you, and then when he says "Hey uh you're a little out of your lane here" doubling down!
Now imagine believing it is unethical for your boss's boss to tell you that you are out of line! Imagine keeping your job after being such an unmitigated ass to an entire department and insisting you cannot possibly be wrong like human communication is some sort of logic system!
Sure is funny how much context has been removed from that email too!
Marshall Brain killed himself because he couldn't deal with perfectly valid college/educator administrative interaction! Poor guy must have lost his marbles.
Guess I need to pay more attention to the humanoid robots around me, and less attention to the fact that hotels offer less housekeeping services, restaurants offer smaller menus and less wait service, plumbers and electricians and other tradespeople have longer lead times…things that tend to happen when demand for work is increasing faster than supply of labor to perform the work.
What I was referring to though is that the Boston Dynamics dogs and Sony spaceman efforts of a decade ago have iterated faster than thought when those predictions were made:
That reading of the article is so poor it looks like you are trying to spin it intentionally.
The quote without your interpretation does not have any 'enormous ego' vibes.
One clear alternative interpretation is that he was being railroaded via office politics, wasn't equipped to deal with the hit to his image a firing would have, and didn't feel he had the energy to deal with it. No 'enormous ego' required.
Edit: were you involved in this? Your tone and interpretation made it seem so, and your username 'hulitu'... are you Dr. Li?
> It becomes more than a job. It’s our purpose, our sense of self.
Also, consider Brain made a quarter of 1 Billion dollars with the sale of his company. The man didn't have to work, it was his choice to work. I think this contributes even more to the feeling that work is your identity.
Incorrect. The company burned through venture capital for three years, then laid off 50% of workers and was sold in 2002 to vulture capital for ~$1MM with no cash trading hands, only a promissory note [1] to the previous underwater investors. No liquidity to founders.
The 2002 purchaser, Convex Group, scaled the company, took the company public via reverse IPO and sold it five years later to Discovery TV for $250MM. Seven years later, Discovery took a 82% loss, selling the company for $45MM.
Oh interesting! The original article linked in the post really skips over all of those details and makes it seem like he sold the company for 250 million
By all accounts he did die suddenly.
Whether it was suicide is for a coroner to determine.
I think that's the reason for the seemingly obtuse language.
Edit - The article does mention a death certificate confirming suicide, so you're right - the wording is a bit odd.
There is a correlation between media reporting on suicides and suicides in the area, likely due copycats of people on the precipice. Obviously we also cannot stop reporting on the topic totally, so this is the balance, also why you find suicide helplines alongside such articles.
> The week before Thanksgiving, Marshall Brain sent a final email to his colleagues at North Carolina State University. "I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university," wrote the founder of HowStuffWorks.com and director of NC State's Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Hours later, campus police found that Brain had died by suicide.
Imagine it came with dozens of downvotes on every social platform. Certainly all current events channels on YouTube avoid it religiously. I assume they have reason.
As the GameGrumps team (very progressive people) mockingly stated: "It's so easy to solve the problem when we can't talk about it"
It is usually taken as a given that TikTok will just not surface your content if you say suicide, but I'm not active on tiktok and have no source.
Like all these absurd restrictions on content, it is not driven by liberals, or policy, or law. It is entirely driven by the fact that Coke does not want to pay for the ad space next a video talking about a difficult subject.
> Marshall was a cornerstone of entrepreneurship at NC State, and a very key person who dedicated himself and was a real entrepreneur, and really dedicated himself to the students ... he, through and through, down to the bone, had the love and desire to help students ... Brian was born in Santa Monica, California, and was heavily influenced as a child by his father's work designing components for NASA's lunar lander and his later development of Atlanta's MARTA system.
> “A lot of people I would tell about my business, and they said, ‘Oh, it’s a cool idea,’” said Kevin Barry, who founded the startup FilterEasy as an NC State undergraduate. “But Marshall is one of the people who would dive in and ask you every question and every problem and help you work towards solutions.”
Friendly reminder: It's understandable and an obvious reaction to dive into "how" and "why" after reading this article. However, an accomplished educator and a human being with family and friends has died - whatever the reasons may be. Let's all keep that in mind before speculating or posting something carelessly which may be hard for those left behind to read.
I'll remember Marshall for the "How Stuff Works" books. Thank you for devoting your live to education.
Aside from the main topic but related to the books, wtf happened to howstuffworks.com? "Pisces and Taurus Compatibility in Relationships: What You Need to Know" Did he sell off this domain before his death or what is going on?
I used to love HowStuffWorks in 1998 as a teenager. This was the true power of the Internet. Not scrolling through cat memes, nor making billions on commerce. Just access to a wealth of good information produced by good passionate people. May he rest in peace.
not even a call to celebrate Marshall's achievements
They can't even pretend to feel bad (not that it makes it any better)?
It is depressing that good, sensitive, ethical people are deeply affected by the shitty things they see while those who actually do those shitty things just carry on...
An old professor of mine at Cambridge became the head of the department. She noticed three tenured professors were recieving a disproportionate amount of funding relative to their low output.
When she tried to curb this, she received severe pressure both inside and outside the university to back down. A bad press piece was written about her from a respected news source. Cars would appear and wait outside her house at night.
The pressure must have been immense, and I'm glad she didn't end up like Marshall.
Sometimes all you can do is walk away from a career you've built. Whoever's toe you've stepped on, it's bigger than you.
51 comments
[ 101 ms ] story [ 1200 ms ] threadIt’s a sad reminder of how vulnerable those who care deeply about their work can be in the face of toxic or unjust environments. Passion and commitment, when met with indifference or hostility, can push anyone to a breaking point.
Well, it started with an interpersonal workplace conflict, but ended up with him being forced to retire from his professorship and the entrepreneurial mentoring program he saw as his mission.
People are jumping to conclusions about who the aggrieved party is because they have a vague connection to the guy who made HowStuffWorks and zero connection to the counterparty. Especially on HN, people would rather believe that "the system is rigged against the brilliant individual" rather than "the individual can often be the problem".
Just as often as upper management is corrupt, a single individual who had NO PRIOR EVIDENCE OF NEGATIVE INTERACTION WITH ANYONE goes absolutely apeshit and attempts to destroy your life.
My mother is a well respected teacher. After about 4 years of working in a new school, one of the other teachers in her department seemingly got "triggered" and went utterly insane. He started fabricating ethics complaints, lying to administrators, and even went so far as to retain a lawyer to sue the school district to have her removed for his completely made up allegations. I read the complaint and I cannot believe a lawyer was willing to be paid to participate. It was pages of insane rantings, like manifesto level, full of misspellings and mistakes and made up entirely of outright lies. The internal investigation was terrifying, because it starts as "He said/She said". Luckily he was crazy enough to fill his allegations with things that were demonstrably disprovable with documentation, but without that, the school absolutely would have just let my mother go instead of fight it.
There was no "cause", no change in department policy that favored my mother over him, no change in pecking order, nothing. He just one day decided to go to war with her. He completely lost his connection to reality. Yet to his students, he continued to teach normally, and nothing seemed off.
We have no facts. We have no evidence. We likely never will. We should reserve judgement.
Slightly off topic question, but is this Silicon-Randian projection really particularly widespread on HN by and large or only for specific subset of topics?
For example, he frequently filed ethics complaints against other faculty after minor disagreements... putting their careers at risk over trivial matters.
He may have been well like by the internet but he was not well liked at the school, and the relative silence by faculty and students is pretty telling.
In what world do you think that this sort of behavior is remotely acceptable? How would you feel if a co-worker filed a harassment claim against you (which could have serious career consequences for you) for moving their lunch bag in the office refrigerator? That's basically what he did. Being allowed to resign was letting him off easy; at most universities he could have been terminated for cause.
Again: Mr. Brain put a colleague's career in jeopardy over office space. Think about that really hard before you comment again.
Is that really true? In my country, there are employment laws to prevent the suffering of detriment post reporting of an incident, grievance, or violation, even if (especially if) the claim is found baseless.
It’s important for these regulations to exist because without them some people fear reporting true problems as they may lose their job, and the wrongdoers do more wrong in such a culture.
Processes should deal with baseless, frivolous, or even vexatious claims far in advance of any consideration of termination of employment.
But I’m clueless on US labor laws, apart from a general suspicion they’re relatively thin.
Where do you see that in[0]? In July, they wanted to take the EEP[1] (a program he ran for many years and was passionate about) meeting room for a new faculty member, and then somehow in September they decided to cancel the EEP program once he started complaining. He kept complaining until they ended up firing him (forced resignation) in October.[2]
[0]https://sites.google.com/view/marshallbrain/marshalls-last-e...?
[1]https://entrepreneurship.ncsu.edu/engineering-entrepreneurs-...
[2]"“You have three options: 1) Retirement, 2) Discontinuation, or 3) Separation. By continuing to argue I will take the path of "Discontinuation." "Discontinuation" means we will not renew your contract. By the end of business on Wednesday I will notify the university and the I&E team that the end of the semester is your last day. Everything ends at the end of the semester. To retire and to avoid "Discontinuation" you must send me your letter of resignation before the end of business Wednesday. If you prolong your argument I will make the "Separation" effective Wednesday, your email will be cut off, your office will be inaccessible, you will not finish the courses this semester. Everything ends Wednesday. To avoid an immediate separation you must not engage in the argument. If we agree to an amicable separation and you begin to argue later it will trigger an immediate separation.”"
Do we know why the NCSU 14-year respected department head of ECE was replaced in 2023 by the person who later "exploded in fury" at Brain? https://ece.ncsu.edu/2023/department-head-dan-stancil-to-ste...
> After 14 years of outstanding leadership as head of our Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Dan Stancil will be stepping down from his position.
The EEP program was not cancelled...Brain was simply removed from the program.
It is borderline gaslighting for him to claim that the EEP program was cancelled simply because he was no longer a part of it.
If he had filed an unmerited ethical complaint like this at a UC school like Cal or UCLA, he'd have been terminated for cause without the option of retiring gracefully (this actually happened to a professor at Berkeley while I was there).
Notably: it's been over a week since his death and none of his colleagues are defending him. There's no drama on campus from students despite the supposed injustice. The only people keeping this alive are a handful of people who liked his website. And that's because...there's more to the story than just the one-sided version of it people are parroting on the internet.
"Hey Brain, we want to use this space for <Thing>"
His response is to insist that they do not "need" the space, that "need" is a LIE, and that LIE requires an ethics inquiry!
What the shit? He then does the exact same thing for the email about them not recommending students for his program. "ABET says we aren't good enough, and your program is part of that, so we are going to go in a different direction" and again his reaction is insane!
"“Marshall - my colleague, my confidant, my advisor, my friend - you are over the line." He calls this retaliation!
Imagine going to your boss's boss, and nitpicking every single word of their communication to you, and then when he says "Hey uh you're a little out of your lane here" doubling down!
Now imagine believing it is unethical for your boss's boss to tell you that you are out of line! Imagine keeping your job after being such an unmitigated ass to an entire department and insisting you cannot possibly be wrong like human communication is some sort of logic system!
Sure is funny how much context has been removed from that email too!
Marshall Brain killed himself because he couldn't deal with perfectly valid college/educator administrative interaction! Poor guy must have lost his marbles.
https://cybernews.com/ai-news/watney-robots-fold-your-laundr...
Step zero is purpose built robots, since the human form isn't necessary for most repetitive tasks:
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-robotics-...
What I was referring to though is that the Boston Dynamics dogs and Sony spaceman efforts of a decade ago have iterated faster than thought when those predictions were made:
https://cybernews.com/science/humanoid-robot-dance/
But here's an example where it's coming together, and this was the specific robot I had in mind when I said "they're here":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3J250fr_V4
The quote without your interpretation does not have any 'enormous ego' vibes.
One clear alternative interpretation is that he was being railroaded via office politics, wasn't equipped to deal with the hit to his image a firing would have, and didn't feel he had the energy to deal with it. No 'enormous ego' required.
Edit: were you involved in this? Your tone and interpretation made it seem so, and your username 'hulitu'... are you Dr. Li?
https://www.csc.ncsu.edu/people/hli83
Also, consider Brain made a quarter of 1 Billion dollars with the sale of his company. The man didn't have to work, it was his choice to work. I think this contributes even more to the feeling that work is your identity.
Incorrect. The company burned through venture capital for three years, then laid off 50% of workers and was sold in 2002 to vulture capital for ~$1MM with no cash trading hands, only a promissory note [1] to the previous underwater investors. No liquidity to founders.
The 2002 purchaser, Convex Group, scaled the company, took the company public via reverse IPO and sold it five years later to Discovery TV for $250MM. Seven years later, Discovery took a 82% loss, selling the company for $45MM.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240717220914/https://genesis-c...
1: https://theweek.com/culture-life/workism-new-religion
I don't understand what would make them use another word like that? Is "suicide" bad for SEO or something?
https://www.presscouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/S...
> The week before Thanksgiving, Marshall Brain sent a final email to his colleagues at North Carolina State University. "I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university," wrote the founder of HowStuffWorks.com and director of NC State's Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Hours later, campus police found that Brain had died by suicide.
The headline is admittedly a bit weird.
Youtube for example will outright demonetize your video if you mention suicide. That's their official policy as stated https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802245?hl=en&ref_... . It's stupid as fuck.
As the GameGrumps team (very progressive people) mockingly stated: "It's so easy to solve the problem when we can't talk about it"
It is usually taken as a given that TikTok will just not surface your content if you say suicide, but I'm not active on tiktok and have no source.
Like all these absurd restrictions on content, it is not driven by liberals, or policy, or law. It is entirely driven by the fact that Coke does not want to pay for the ad space next a video talking about a difficult subject.
It's the free market baby.
> Marshall was a cornerstone of entrepreneurship at NC State, and a very key person who dedicated himself and was a real entrepreneur, and really dedicated himself to the students ... he, through and through, down to the bone, had the love and desire to help students ... Brian was born in Santa Monica, California, and was heavily influenced as a child by his father's work designing components for NASA's lunar lander and his later development of Atlanta's MARTA system.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article296186159....
> “A lot of people I would tell about my business, and they said, ‘Oh, it’s a cool idea,’” said Kevin Barry, who founded the startup FilterEasy as an NC State undergraduate. “But Marshall is one of the people who would dive in and ask you every question and every problem and help you work towards solutions.”
Obituary: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/cary-nc/marshall-...
150 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42251656
I'll remember Marshall for the "How Stuff Works" books. Thank you for devoting your live to education.
They can't even pretend to feel bad (not that it makes it any better)?
It is depressing that good, sensitive, ethical people are deeply affected by the shitty things they see while those who actually do those shitty things just carry on...
When she tried to curb this, she received severe pressure both inside and outside the university to back down. A bad press piece was written about her from a respected news source. Cars would appear and wait outside her house at night.
The pressure must have been immense, and I'm glad she didn't end up like Marshall.
Sometimes all you can do is walk away from a career you've built. Whoever's toe you've stepped on, it's bigger than you.