Confreaks
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2013–2020
27:33 · 34K views · Apr 30, 2013
Greg Baugues tells his story of living with bipolar II and ADHD as a developer at a Ruby conference. He urges openness about mental illness and explains how to get help and support colleagues.
Repeatedly recommended in mental health threads for its honest storytelling that resonates with developers.
9 comments from Hacker News
Here's a great talk by Greg Baugues in which he discusses his own mental illness (bipolar type II and ADHD) and notes that often there is a fine line between a symptom of depression/mental illness and a trait of a successful developer: this video
I recommend this talk about depression and software developers: this video There are newer versions of this talk, but I think this one has the most powerful storytelling.
I've watched the video by the author of this newsletter, and a lot of things did ring true for me. [1] I moved to the Bay Area all the way from Russia, as a student, with the intention of diving deep into this startup and developer world. Eight months later, however, I still have no clue at all what I'm doing. Don't have enough projects for a portfolio, don't have enough proper skills for a resume. Got overwhelmed with classes due to not paying enough attention in class, decided not to take any classes in summer - with the intention of working on some projects and maybe figuring my life out. Here we are what, three weeks later, and all I have is a static mockup page for the project and I haven't opened a code editor in a week. I still don't know if I actually have a problem or if I'm just lazy, however. On bad days I feel like it'd be really great if I could just get some magic pill that would make everything great and solve all my problems. On better days I almost feel like I can defeat all of this and just go marching forward. On days like that I can spend twelve hours staring into code and produce something, but then days, weeks, months will go on with nothing at all. [1] this video
I think it's worth looking into for sure. I ran across this when I was suffering from some depression and was trying to see how other devs deal with it. this video It's a talk about Bipolar Type II which doesn't have the same kind of full blown manic episodes as regular bipolar type I has. It has hypomanic episodes that are not often reported to the doctor because they seem like happiness or something good, or a sudden drive to do something productive. I've been getting looked at for it myself now and normal depression meds(SSRIs) can actually negatively effect it. It may be worth looking at OP!
I am so sorry you're going through this. Remember, you can always procrastinate ending it all, and do it later while you examine other options. There is a community at DevPressed[1] of developers who struggle with depression. I am a developer and gave a talk on my struggle with depression and the greater issue of Developers and Depression [2]. Email me if you'd like to chat - greg at baugues.com 1. [LINK] 2. this video