I admire what Moz has done and it was an interesting read.
My comment is more of a meta one about HN. Are we really that interested in these stories of depression? We seem to get at least one a week. I realise it's an issue that may affect people here, but I'm not sure if we need the volume we are seeing now.
I sure as heck want to see more of these as opposed to "We got acquired and will be living the good life!" or "Heck yeah, we growth hacked to 10,000,000 customers using a vague strategy you probably can't apply to your startup"
We see so many because of the prevalence of mental ill health in society.
These stories are obviously applicable to start ups - what would you do if a co-founder or key employee asked to reduce hours while they were getting medical treatment for mental ill health? What would you do if they were detained against their will under mental health laws?
The other reason they get such prominence is that treatment for mental illness is still variable. Cognitive behaviour therapy and medication (for depression) is about as good as you can get yet it still seems weirdly difficult to get that as a package.
Finally: these stories point to gaps in the market that startups could fill. Online delivery of therapy has some evidence base, so if you can deliver it better or cheaper there's money to be made. Or perhaps providing evidencd based information to clinicians ("patient has diagnosis X; what should their care look like?") or hundreds of other ideas.
I would say that the stories here are over-represented compared to my friends/family/acquaintances.
Also for "what would you do if a co-founder or key employee asked to reduce hours while they were getting medical treatment for mental ill health?" You could subsitute cancer/paternity leave/military service in that sentence and it would be just as relevant to a start-up. The issue is the reduction in hours, not the cause.
Well, the stories are submitted by users and voted up by users. Logically, if you think about it, depressed people probably spend more time on social news sites than people who are not, since people who are not are more likely to spend more time working. So depression stories probably have an audience more engaged with the site.
The staff do tend to ban or cripple votes of things like NSA stories and whatnot when they want to interfere, but you are talking to the wrong people for an admin hack.
A friend of the family had that. She is an entirely sensible, respectable mother and worker, but when she is in a manic phase... It must be hard to find yourself doing things so out of your usual character.
My comment is more of a meta one about HN. Are we really that interested in these stories of depression? We seem to get at least one a week. I realise it's an issue that may affect people here, but I'm not sure if we need the volume we are seeing now.