Man, there are a lot of diagnoses getting thrown around this thread. As a caregiver to someone with a serious illness, as well as someone who periodically suffers from many of the same mental and emotional issues raised here... How about refraining from doing that unless you are A) a mental health or otherwise trained medical professional; and B) someone who has actually seen and assessed the patient. I'm not calling out anyone in particular because let's face it, this is HN and we're probably all know-it-alls at one time or another, but this can have some particularly pronounced thoughts and effects on the posters who are getting the comments.
If you are dealing with any of these issues, my heart goes out to you. Please reach out to a counselor, or at the very least a counselor or therapist who specializes in the things you're dealing with. If you need help finding one, my email is in my profile, i'm glad to help.
I'm also recovering from a depression which lasted for quite a while. It absolutely sucks because you think you're worthless, nobody loves you, you can't get anything right and the best would be if you just wouldn't exist anymore.
And on top of that you isolate yourself. I know how hard it was to ask for help therefore I want to show you some things which helped me:
- Realize that your depression is lying to you. It doesn't tell the truth. It makes you believe that something is logical even if it isn't.
- Read 'Feeling Good' - terrible title, great book. It will probably work better than average on the average HN reader because it takes a 'rational' approach to depression (cognitive-behavioral therapy). It helps you to recognize destructive thought patterns and how to deal with them.
- Garbage in, garbage out. What works for computers also works for your body. Yeah, you're a geek but you can eat some vegs instead of the 500th pizza. Also working out (or other sports) are pretty great.
- Long term: Therapy which tries to work on the root cause and not just at symptoms.
Finally, here's a rather extensive list with lectures, books, exercises, etc. which help dealing with depression [1]. Back when I was fed up with feeling crap I created a spreadsheet with the 8 activities and tracked those every day.
Note: Every person seem to react to differently. I read about people who improved a lot by meditating - on the other hand, it didn't work for me.
So, try some things out and don't give up. You can beat that liar in your head.
I've been depressed for over ten years, I'm currently thirty years old.
I left my job in January due to depression, though I didn't tell anyone. I haven't worked a day since then and am just living off savings as they dwindle. I haven't spoken to any of my former co-workers who were my only contacts in the Bay Area since I moved from the East Coast to work at a startup. I've spent all day every day numbing myself with weed, porn, mindless internet browsing, etc. I don't even code, every time I open up Xcode or Android Studio I just end up doing nothing. And I honestly just don't want to do anything.
The last time I went out socially was in January of this year and even that was just with my then co-workers. And over the past ten and fifteen years it hasn't been any different. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been out socially over the past ten years that wasn't work related (and while employed the number of times I went out with co-workers also number in the single digits).
The isolation is what kills me. I haven't had sex in several years and haven't had any intimate relationships in my entire life (the sex were just one nighters and nothing more, and I've never had a "best friend", not even in high school or middle school). Unlike a lot of people with depression, I don't have friends, family (all on East Coast), or girlfriends (I've never had one). I don't even talk with people online, not through FB, not anonymously on web forums or instant messaging. In the past week the only people I've talked to is the cashier at the local supermarket, and that was just to say I wanted a bag and say "thanks see ya later". In fact this is the first time I've written about depression online, I've only told a few people (my mom and a doctor) that I even have it.
I've had a hard time dealing with it. I'm trying to get into meditation and what not. But I mostly fear the effect of this extreme isolation. There's a lot of evidence that it kills your brain (literally).
I'm reading a book called "The mindful way through Depression". I bought it over two years ago and only started reading it two months ago. I'm still only halfway through. The worst part of depression is that it saps my energy to do anything, even when I do read the book I'll read several pages and not remember a thing of what I read.
Sorry about the wall of text if anyone reads this, but it's 5:46 AM and I'm not doing anything else. I haven't gone to sleep yet...I'm just mindlessly browsing the web (I discovered a new TV show earlier today and am marathoning it right now). Either way I still hold some optimism for the future.
I have to submit to reality even though it makes me question a lot of things, but yes, you have to stop believing your own emotion and self when things become either too dark or too shiny.
About isolation, it's kinda tough, people may leave you alone after a while which reinforce the feeling of uselessness.
I just want to second "Feeling Good". I only read the first 30-50 pages, and that was enough to instantly and permanently decrease my depressive thoughts by about 85%. Your results, of course, may vary.
I guess I'll be the only person to comment on the actual Moz business struggles rather than the depression side of this post. Moz raised their money at a really tricky time because it was right before Google essentially bent over the SEO industry. When Rand mentions the Content tool that hasn't even started being developed, that was something that was supposed to take your Google Analytics keyword referrer data and match it to your content and your rankings and your links and your competitors and basically help you spot keywords and content you can easily rank better for.
The timeline seems to be matching up where they had this plan for this tool before any of the Google SSL stuff started, so as they started working on the design and UX of it, Google started rolling out the SSL stuff and it basically ruined their idea. Moz ended up adding tools to try and guess what keywords made up your "(not provided)" data but that's a far cry from what they were originally planning.
I'm basing this entirely on being heavily involved in the SEO industry around the times mentioned in Rand's article and having even run a successful SEO SaaS product (which is still going even though I've moved on to other projects). I just remember seeing screenshots of what they wanted to build and thinking "wow, if they can nail this, it will be great". I wanted to build a similar app. But when Google started hiding all organic keyword data in analytics, I distinctly remember saying "Well there goes Moz's whole new product".
Google really fucked the SEO world up with their (not provided) move. Think what you will about SEO but it's still a legitimate marketing channel and I really have never been able to understand why Google thinks it's ok to not share your organic keyword data but your paid keyword data is totally fine to share with site owners.
But not much anyone can do about that now I suppose.
Thanks for commenting on the actual business struggles - I found that missing here too.
I have watched Moz very closely for the last 3 years as well and was not super delighted by Moz Analytics, and this sheds some more light on it now. I do love their Moz Academy though, that was a big improvement.
On the content tool - why do you think they couldn't pull in Webmaster Tools keyword data instead of the GA keyword data? Not as accurate, but 75% of the way there. They could have also matched up rankings to content pages to still make a cool tool. I imagine they are 80% there on a bunch of features like this but just haven't finished them. Possibly related to the comment on Rand's high potential/low performance (although that take a team and that quote is quite deterministic).
"that was something that was supposed to take your Google Analytics keyword referrer data and match it to your content and your rankings and your links and your competitors and basically help you spot keywords and content you can easily rank better for."
That doesn't sound very clear to me exactly - how?
Google Analytics ALREADY did match your rankings to your content - it showed which search terms ppl entered when they landed on a specific page.
>> ...“layoffs” is a Pandora’s Box-type word at a startup. Don’t use it unless you’re really being transparent (and not just fearful and overly panicked as I was).
I made a similar mistake once as a manager and experienced this kind of thing more than once as an employee. Certain words like "layoffs" or "merger" are so loaded because employees know that you know more than they do. Even if you think you're being totally transparent, employees are correct to assume that you're holding some things back because you are. It's your job to understand the state and direction of the company and give your employees the information they need to do their jobs. Employees, especially the smart ones, are going to try to infer additional information from what you tell them even when you think you've told them everything they need to know. Leaders need to be aware that a certain amount of "Kremlinology" happens in every company.
He made things worse by being vague about the company's real situation and contradicting himself a couple sentences later when he said, "...we'll survive (though not with much headroom..." If he's talking about layoffs, who is this "we"? Everybody? Rand and Sarah? If you're going to be transparent, you also need to be specific and direct. A better approach might have been, "Sarah and I modeled out some worst-case scenarios last week and this stretches our break-even point an extra six months, which will constrain our growth."
> "the funny thing is, Marijuana doesn’t have any pain-killing properties. It just lessens tension, anxiety, and stress for some people."
Marijuana is an analgesic. But in this case the effects are stemming from the fact that's its an anti inflammatory, so that the fluid in your disc is no longer compressing the spinal nerves. And the fact that it reduces anxiety also reduces inflammation even further, since anxiety is probably largely what was causing the inflammation.
Speaking purely to the experiences of building a new software product, I've seen this exact story play out countless times. Everyone (except maybe the engineers themselves) seems to think that designing a software product is part of the "planning phase", and thus should happen before any time is "wasted" on development:
> "That product planning led to an immense series of wireframes and comps (visual designs of what the product would look like and how it would function) that numbered into the hundreds of screens..."
The biggest contributor to this I've seen is the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of small ways that a design (done in a vacuum, without simultaneous prototyping) will differ from established development patterns, frameworks, and other pre-packaged solutions that engineers use daily to avoid reinventing every wheel. And engineers respond with timelines that expect to be able to leverage those frameworks. Thus the dissonance begins.
One example: a design calls for a form to be broken across 4 pages. There may be great aesthetic rationale or even user testing to support this, but that means that in all likelyhood any framework (e.g. Rails/Flask/Play/etc, not to mention native apps) will have to have additional modification to support sessions, changes to validation, changes to the auth domain, persistence changes, etc. And it's not necessary for an MVP. And many times these differences are much more subtle and deeply entrenched, and would require rethinking much of the wireframes/designs to align with development patterns. /rant
I'm not sure what the answer is here, except maybe that this is one more point in favor of having a "technical founder" or in general a technical person with decision-making authority, to avoid going down a road without proofing out your ideas or timelines.
I love it when CEO's own up like this, it's probably one of the most appealing traits in a leader I personally can think of. As long as they don't become too insecure to actually lead, introspection and self-criticism are strengths, not weaknesses. Besides, being aware of these traits and their negative repercussions put you in a pretty good place, the ones who really suffer are the guys who repress and deny the down slopes, always happy and bubbly on the outside but in reality inches from a mental breakdown.
The last part about how stress causes physical health problems is very important, and very overlooked. Besides the muscle and nervous tension the OP mentioned, stress seriously reduces immunity which can manifest itself in a myriad of unexpected ways (whichever subsystem fails first), from infections to cysts and all kinds of nastiness.
Rand, if you're reading this, two things occur:
1 - you're far from the first person to go for big-bang software releases (though listening to your cto is probably a good idea)
2 - in _Fooled By Randomness_ by Taleb (I believe, I could be misremembering) he describes the incredible level of stress that monitoring his investments daily created. I seem to recall the author writing that he simply was unable to monitor them every day and instead had to only look at some periodic summaries. Perhaps this may help people who get to mentally exhausted looking at numbers daily? I mean, it's good to notice immediately if they crater, though that can be scripted. Beyond that, there's probably not much value looking at them 7 days a week that you don't get looking at them once every seven days. I use the same technique on the elliptical machine; time crawls if I look at the timer, so it's an exercise of will to go as long as possible before looking.
One last comment - this post from Rand reminds me of the following from Ben Horowitz:
"By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown."
So few people and places can allow for this level of vulnerability and authenticity. This post is going to help a lot of people.
I have even more respect for Rand and Moz. We can say Fail Fast, Fail this, fail that ... but this kind of writing is the true embrace of failure, learning, wisdom, humanity.
I respect Rand and give him a lot of credit for vocalizing his challenges. Depression is a challenge and it can be overcome.
I am not a doctor, but I can tell you that a lot of my peers are suffering from depression from business, marriage or just in general.
One thing I do know is that the world has changed a lot in the past decade. The price of everything just keeps going up and we are constantly bombarded by information. Humans are not built that way. There is no badge of honor for being under stress 24/7. It will catch up to you one way or the other.
Humans suffer from the fight or flight responses that we encounter during high stress situations. The challenge is to digest it and make decisions not based on fight or flight emotions.
The body produces cortisol when we are under duress and it is horrible for you. It screws up everything with your body and your mind. One way to counteract this is by working out, getting sunlight, eating the right foods and staying off caffeine. Try some black or green tea instead.
30 minutes of working out will combat cortisol production for about six hours. Even going for a walk helps a lot.
Most of the worlds brightest minds and most successful people suffer from depression and knowing that your ARE NOT ALONE is a huge step forward.
You can beat depression and your life will turn around!
Talking about it and seeking help is definitely a step in the right direction. Keep your chins up.
You mentioned staying off caffeine, but recommended teas that both (usually) contain caffeine. Not trying to be a jerk, but genuinely curious - is the caffeine from tea better for the body than the caffeine from coffee? Or did you mean decaffeinated types of tea?
This is an incredibly brave, and hopefully cathartic post by someone I greatly admire. I really hope he is able to find the support and peace he needs.
As a bit of an aside, I wonder how much of this has led to similar troubles for other founders:
When the Foundry investment closed, we redoubled our efforts to build Moz Analytics. We hired more aggressively (and briefly had a $12,000 referral bonus for engineers that ended up bringing in mostly wrong kinds of candidates along with creating some internal culture issues), and spent months planning the fine details of the product.
I've heard from friends & colleagues about the massive amount of pressure they've felt after closing an investment round. While fundraising is already an incredibly trying process, the next stage is sometimes even more difficult.
In contrast, other friends & colleagues who've opted for the bootstrapped route (either by choice or circumstance) haven't seemed to face a similar massive amount of pressure. Yes, they faced incredible stress too, but not to the level of those that have raised capital.
This is merely an anecdotal observation made in my peer group. I don't mean to imply that this is some kind of phenomenon. And clinical depression is something that can cut through any kind of circumstance.
I just can't help but notice the stark difference in stress level of founders who are growing organically & carefully vs founders who are in a mad recruiting rush and sometimes hire the wrong kind of people. I wonder how much of a relationship there is between having the right kind of people in your company vs the wrong kind of people, and the stress level of a founder. I would imagine a lot.
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.
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 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"
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.
Forgive my ignorance and bluntness, but reading the above, it sounds more like an anxiety disorder than like depression. Both are serious, but I'm not sure if it helps to confuse the two?
I've not experienced either seriously, but I know people who have. Depression seems to be more about things not mattering anymore, everything being pointless, the world seeming drab and just not fun anymore, rather than feeling that everything is going to go to shit. Anxiety, though, (and I'm speaking from experience here, having had some light anxiety attacks caused by too much regular caffeine usage) seems to be characterised by a feeling of impending doom, that everything is wrong, it can't be fixed, it's all hopeless, etc. But in my (mild) anxiety attacks, like Rand, I still cared about the outcome. I just felt like there were too many problems to solve, overwhelmed, ready to say "fuck this", give up the entire thing, and start again from scratch with something completely different.
PS: Otherwise, props for the very honest and open article. Running a business is a lot of responsibility and very stressful and it can be comforting to know you're not the only who seems surrounded by world-ending scenarios.
> Forgive my ignorance and bluntness, but reading the above, it sounds more like an anxiety disorder than like depression. Both are serious, but I'm not sure if it helps to confuse the two?
I disagree.
It could easily be case of chronic significant stress/anxiety that lead to depression. It happens a lot. Tons of reputable articles on it:
The reason why I say that it probably isn't just anxiety was this statement in particular from the story (and there are others):
> Depressed Rand is weird. Don’t get me wrong, regular Rand is weird, too. But depressed Rand magnifies the bad 10X and minimizes the good. He refuses to even acknowledge good news and, because he’s a pretty smart guy, he can usually argue for why that good news is actually just temporary and will turn to shit any minute. The weird part is, I think depressed Rand is actually a very authentic version of myself. When I felt depressed, I upheld TAGFEE – particularly the values of transparency and authenticity – as the reasons why I could and should be such a raging, all-consuming, negative naysayer.
I've read that anxiety and depression often present together, so much so that it's hard to tell which is the primary issue.
I personally suffer from anxiety without depression, so it seems easy for me to tell the difference. An anxiety attack for me is something that comes on very suddenly, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of impending doom. Usually it's a feeling that I'm about to lose control or drop dead right then and there. The thought that often goes through my head is, "oh no, something isn't right, this can't be right, I have to call an ambulance" or "I have to get out of here, now!". When the attack passes, it is followed by feeling extremely jittery, weak and anxious for hours or even days. During the attack, any number of physiological symptoms present, including pounding heart, feeling like I might pass out, wind, diarrhea, feeling weak, etc.
I did suffer from mild and occasional depression when younger. It seemed to be more of a feeling of disappointment with various things in life leading to an extended malaise, but with a chemical origin (brain chemistry). (I think of such episodes as "chemical depression" as opposed to "ordinary depression".)
But because anxiety and depression can often go together, it is not usually so easy to distinguish them.
I read that sunshine and aerobic exercise help with both depression and anxiety (in my case exercise helped more than normal since I used to be overweight; a contributor to my depression at the time).
Treating either depression or anxiety seems to require a multi-pronged approach. Most important in my experience seems to be teaching yourself (or be taught) how to shut down unproductive thought patterns as soon as they occur. They are habits which apparently exacerbate both issues (not necessarily immediately, but cumulatively).
For anxiety, ruthlessly removing sources of anxiety (especially initially) can be helpful in the long run. Being blunt with people and simply telling them what the issues are that are stressing you out, and how much of an impact that is having on you, can help. Bottling up those issues and being unassertive and endlessly constructing "what-if" scenarios before or after the fact, exacerbates the problem.
For anxiety, cut out caffeine and other stimulants. Avoid intense anaerobic stress (e.g. heavy weightlifting or aerobic exercise past the point of exhaustion), which stresses the nervous system. Also keeping the system running smoothly (e.g. modifying your diet for smooth digestive transit and controlling any allergies with standard hayfever antihistamines) seems to substantially lower overall stress levels.
And obviously there are pharmaceutical options if you consult people qualified to dispense them.
At some point you begin to realise you haven't had any real attacks in a while and that you are recovering. That relief in itself helps in the recovery process for anxiety (which I have heard can take months or even years in some individuals).
Slightly off-topic, but I wanted to expand on anxiety quick:
> Anxiety, though, (and I'm speaking from experience here, having had some light anxiety attacks caused by too much regular caffeine usage) seems to be characterised by a feeling of impending doom, that everything is wrong, it can't be fixed, it's all hopeless, etc.
I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder earlier this year, after some career-related stress gave me a panic attack. Your description, the feeling of impending doom, everything is wrong, etc. is spot on. For me, it feels like a broken fight-or-flight response. I feel like I have to physically do something right now, and if I don't then something very bad is going to happen.
After my first panic attack, I immediately scheduled an appointment with a doctor. I was prescribed Xanax to take whenever I feel anxious, and then I was given a recommendation to see a therapist.
The therapy has helped, but by far the biggest improvement has come from daily, rigorous exercise.
Two months ago I started running twice each day, along with walking to/from work and walking our dog. My anxiety has been almost completely eradicated, excluding a couple random 5-minute bouts every other week, whereas before it was an every day, all day thing. I'm also happy to say that I have not had to use the Xanax at all since I began exercising.
If you're feeling any of the symptoms of anxiety (feeling of impending doom, it's all hopeless, etc.) or depression, please, make an appointment and see a doctor. You can get help.
Anxiety and Depression often go together. There are neurophysiological reasons for this. I found that lack of quality sleep, energy drinks and prozac was a really bad combination.
Note: I'm not a physician and this is not medical advice. I have experienced more than a few medical misadventures along the way.
This suddenly feels way too familiar. Thanks for writing this - and I think I'm going to try going decaf for a couple of weeks and see whether or not my anxiety eases.
I read through this and the Can't Sleep/Loop post, which had me wiping my eyes. I feel I'm there, right now.
We're in the middle of raising money, while I also keep the engineering ship moving forward with product releases. We're about to run out of initial seed money, as we were supposed to have brought in the balance of the round and been on to Series A at this point. It's challenging, but I feel like I'm handling it.
Or so I thought. It turns out, I'm getting little sleep right now -- maybe 4-5 hours a night, on average. I've gained back so much weight and I abhor seeing myself in photos. I watch colleagues take absurd plans to investors and get way overfunded, more than they were ever asking to take on, while our little operation that's actually generating revenue (we will likely be break-even in 6 months) gets passed. I know it's not a rational reaction, but still the mental headwinds it creates really sap my soul.
It sucks when you're a (very) logical being, and something in your head no longer fits into place. I'm short with my kids at home, and I literally dread downtime. I find that cocktails go down easy, really easy.
Depression in technology is a very common condition. If you suffer from it, please know you ARE NOT ALONE. This talk is very honest, open and has some really helpful and practical advice.
Mental illness impacts more people than cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Unfortunately only 1/3 of people who have the illness get treatment due to cost, access, stigma, etc.
We're working on an app that uses technology to help bring clinically proven treatments to market at a price point that dramatically improve access. We are pairing this with product design that's common on the consumer web but uncommon in mental health apps to help with adherence and engagement with treatment.
I hope this isn't perceived as attempting to capitalize on a serious thread. We (the founders) have incredibly personal reasons for perusing this problem. Many in this thread are likely ideal early adopters for the product. The general awareness that this discussion is raising is a good opportunity to reach out and ask for help as helping us will ultimately help many others.
I think there's still risk of others reading a list like that and thinking "look how much they _do_", but it's definitely an improvement on the usual pattern of sharing only successes and good news.
I think the idea that after a business failure someone needs 'redemption' is harmful. Sometimes businesses fail and the person doesn't try to start another business, and that's okay.
Not an overnight fix. But with sustained effort, meditation changed my life. Eventually other things fell in place. Diet, exercise, relationships, mental health. Buddhist teachings really helped too.
[+] [-] karmajunkie|11 years ago|reply
If you are dealing with any of these issues, my heart goes out to you. Please reach out to a counselor, or at the very least a counselor or therapist who specializes in the things you're dealing with. If you need help finding one, my email is in my profile, i'm glad to help.
[+] [-] tst|11 years ago|reply
And on top of that you isolate yourself. I know how hard it was to ask for help therefore I want to show you some things which helped me:
- Realize that your depression is lying to you. It doesn't tell the truth. It makes you believe that something is logical even if it isn't.
- Read 'Feeling Good' - terrible title, great book. It will probably work better than average on the average HN reader because it takes a 'rational' approach to depression (cognitive-behavioral therapy). It helps you to recognize destructive thought patterns and how to deal with them.
- Garbage in, garbage out. What works for computers also works for your body. Yeah, you're a geek but you can eat some vegs instead of the 500th pizza. Also working out (or other sports) are pretty great.
- Long term: Therapy which tries to work on the root cause and not just at symptoms.
Finally, here's a rather extensive list with lectures, books, exercises, etc. which help dealing with depression [1]. Back when I was fed up with feeling crap I created a spreadsheet with the 8 activities and tracked those every day.
Note: Every person seem to react to differently. I read about people who improved a lot by meditating - on the other hand, it didn't work for me.
So, try some things out and don't give up. You can beat that liar in your head.
[0]: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...
[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/getting_over_it/comments/1nd14u/the_...
PS: If you have any questions feel free to ask - if you want to send me a private one write at <username> @ panictank.net
[+] [-] meh_master|11 years ago|reply
I left my job in January due to depression, though I didn't tell anyone. I haven't worked a day since then and am just living off savings as they dwindle. I haven't spoken to any of my former co-workers who were my only contacts in the Bay Area since I moved from the East Coast to work at a startup. I've spent all day every day numbing myself with weed, porn, mindless internet browsing, etc. I don't even code, every time I open up Xcode or Android Studio I just end up doing nothing. And I honestly just don't want to do anything.
The last time I went out socially was in January of this year and even that was just with my then co-workers. And over the past ten and fifteen years it hasn't been any different. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been out socially over the past ten years that wasn't work related (and while employed the number of times I went out with co-workers also number in the single digits).
The isolation is what kills me. I haven't had sex in several years and haven't had any intimate relationships in my entire life (the sex were just one nighters and nothing more, and I've never had a "best friend", not even in high school or middle school). Unlike a lot of people with depression, I don't have friends, family (all on East Coast), or girlfriends (I've never had one). I don't even talk with people online, not through FB, not anonymously on web forums or instant messaging. In the past week the only people I've talked to is the cashier at the local supermarket, and that was just to say I wanted a bag and say "thanks see ya later". In fact this is the first time I've written about depression online, I've only told a few people (my mom and a doctor) that I even have it.
I've had a hard time dealing with it. I'm trying to get into meditation and what not. But I mostly fear the effect of this extreme isolation. There's a lot of evidence that it kills your brain (literally).
I'm reading a book called "The mindful way through Depression". I bought it over two years ago and only started reading it two months ago. I'm still only halfway through. The worst part of depression is that it saps my energy to do anything, even when I do read the book I'll read several pages and not remember a thing of what I read.
Sorry about the wall of text if anyone reads this, but it's 5:46 AM and I'm not doing anything else. I haven't gone to sleep yet...I'm just mindlessly browsing the web (I discovered a new TV show earlier today and am marathoning it right now). Either way I still hold some optimism for the future.
[+] [-] agumonkey|11 years ago|reply
About isolation, it's kinda tough, people may leave you alone after a while which reinforce the feeling of uselessness.
[+] [-] berberous|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|11 years ago|reply
This can lead people down the wrong path and can be harmful rather than helpful.
[+] [-] dchuk|11 years ago|reply
The timeline seems to be matching up where they had this plan for this tool before any of the Google SSL stuff started, so as they started working on the design and UX of it, Google started rolling out the SSL stuff and it basically ruined their idea. Moz ended up adding tools to try and guess what keywords made up your "(not provided)" data but that's a far cry from what they were originally planning.
I'm basing this entirely on being heavily involved in the SEO industry around the times mentioned in Rand's article and having even run a successful SEO SaaS product (which is still going even though I've moved on to other projects). I just remember seeing screenshots of what they wanted to build and thinking "wow, if they can nail this, it will be great". I wanted to build a similar app. But when Google started hiding all organic keyword data in analytics, I distinctly remember saying "Well there goes Moz's whole new product".
Google really fucked the SEO world up with their (not provided) move. Think what you will about SEO but it's still a legitimate marketing channel and I really have never been able to understand why Google thinks it's ok to not share your organic keyword data but your paid keyword data is totally fine to share with site owners.
But not much anyone can do about that now I suppose.
[+] [-] josephjrobison|11 years ago|reply
I have watched Moz very closely for the last 3 years as well and was not super delighted by Moz Analytics, and this sheds some more light on it now. I do love their Moz Academy though, that was a big improvement.
On the content tool - why do you think they couldn't pull in Webmaster Tools keyword data instead of the GA keyword data? Not as accurate, but 75% of the way there. They could have also matched up rankings to content pages to still make a cool tool. I imagine they are 80% there on a bunch of features like this but just haven't finished them. Possibly related to the comment on Rand's high potential/low performance (although that take a team and that quote is quite deterministic).
[+] [-] AznHisoka|11 years ago|reply
That doesn't sound very clear to me exactly - how?
Google Analytics ALREADY did match your rankings to your content - it showed which search terms ppl entered when they landed on a specific page.
[+] [-] graeme|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtbigwoo|11 years ago|reply
I made a similar mistake once as a manager and experienced this kind of thing more than once as an employee. Certain words like "layoffs" or "merger" are so loaded because employees know that you know more than they do. Even if you think you're being totally transparent, employees are correct to assume that you're holding some things back because you are. It's your job to understand the state and direction of the company and give your employees the information they need to do their jobs. Employees, especially the smart ones, are going to try to infer additional information from what you tell them even when you think you've told them everything they need to know. Leaders need to be aware that a certain amount of "Kremlinology" happens in every company.
He made things worse by being vague about the company's real situation and contradicting himself a couple sentences later when he said, "...we'll survive (though not with much headroom..." If he's talking about layoffs, who is this "we"? Everybody? Rand and Sarah? If you're going to be transparent, you also need to be specific and direct. A better approach might have been, "Sarah and I modeled out some worst-case scenarios last week and this stretches our break-even point an extra six months, which will constrain our growth."
[+] [-] Alex3917|11 years ago|reply
Marijuana is an analgesic. But in this case the effects are stemming from the fact that's its an anti inflammatory, so that the fluid in your disc is no longer compressing the spinal nerves. And the fact that it reduces anxiety also reduces inflammation even further, since anxiety is probably largely what was causing the inflammation.
[+] [-] astockwell|11 years ago|reply
> "That product planning led to an immense series of wireframes and comps (visual designs of what the product would look like and how it would function) that numbered into the hundreds of screens..."
The biggest contributor to this I've seen is the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of small ways that a design (done in a vacuum, without simultaneous prototyping) will differ from established development patterns, frameworks, and other pre-packaged solutions that engineers use daily to avoid reinventing every wheel. And engineers respond with timelines that expect to be able to leverage those frameworks. Thus the dissonance begins.
One example: a design calls for a form to be broken across 4 pages. There may be great aesthetic rationale or even user testing to support this, but that means that in all likelyhood any framework (e.g. Rails/Flask/Play/etc, not to mention native apps) will have to have additional modification to support sessions, changes to validation, changes to the auth domain, persistence changes, etc. And it's not necessary for an MVP. And many times these differences are much more subtle and deeply entrenched, and would require rethinking much of the wireframes/designs to align with development patterns. /rant
I'm not sure what the answer is here, except maybe that this is one more point in favor of having a "technical founder" or in general a technical person with decision-making authority, to avoid going down a road without proofing out your ideas or timelines.
[+] [-] johnyzee|11 years ago|reply
The last part about how stress causes physical health problems is very important, and very overlooked. Besides the muscle and nervous tension the OP mentioned, stress seriously reduces immunity which can manifest itself in a myriad of unexpected ways (whichever subsystem fails first), from infections to cysts and all kinds of nastiness.
[+] [-] x0x0|11 years ago|reply
Rand, if you're reading this, two things occur: 1 - you're far from the first person to go for big-bang software releases (though listening to your cto is probably a good idea)
2 - in _Fooled By Randomness_ by Taleb (I believe, I could be misremembering) he describes the incredible level of stress that monitoring his investments daily created. I seem to recall the author writing that he simply was unable to monitor them every day and instead had to only look at some periodic summaries. Perhaps this may help people who get to mentally exhausted looking at numbers daily? I mean, it's good to notice immediately if they crater, though that can be scripted. Beyond that, there's probably not much value looking at them 7 days a week that you don't get looking at them once every seven days. I use the same technique on the elliptical machine; time crawls if I look at the timer, so it's an exercise of will to go as long as possible before looking.
Hope he's in a better place now.
[+] [-] gadders|11 years ago|reply
"By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown."
http://www.bhorowitz.com/what_s_the_most_difficult_ceo_skill...
[+] [-] raheemm|11 years ago|reply
I have even more respect for Rand and Moz. We can say Fail Fast, Fail this, fail that ... but this kind of writing is the true embrace of failure, learning, wisdom, humanity.
[+] [-] bocalogic|11 years ago|reply
I am not a doctor, but I can tell you that a lot of my peers are suffering from depression from business, marriage or just in general.
One thing I do know is that the world has changed a lot in the past decade. The price of everything just keeps going up and we are constantly bombarded by information. Humans are not built that way. There is no badge of honor for being under stress 24/7. It will catch up to you one way or the other.
Humans suffer from the fight or flight responses that we encounter during high stress situations. The challenge is to digest it and make decisions not based on fight or flight emotions.
The body produces cortisol when we are under duress and it is horrible for you. It screws up everything with your body and your mind. One way to counteract this is by working out, getting sunlight, eating the right foods and staying off caffeine. Try some black or green tea instead.
30 minutes of working out will combat cortisol production for about six hours. Even going for a walk helps a lot.
Most of the worlds brightest minds and most successful people suffer from depression and knowing that your ARE NOT ALONE is a huge step forward.
You can beat depression and your life will turn around!
Talking about it and seeking help is definitely a step in the right direction. Keep your chins up.
[+] [-] dceddia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeleeorg|11 years ago|reply
As a bit of an aside, I wonder how much of this has led to similar troubles for other founders:
When the Foundry investment closed, we redoubled our efforts to build Moz Analytics. We hired more aggressively (and briefly had a $12,000 referral bonus for engineers that ended up bringing in mostly wrong kinds of candidates along with creating some internal culture issues), and spent months planning the fine details of the product.
I've heard from friends & colleagues about the massive amount of pressure they've felt after closing an investment round. While fundraising is already an incredibly trying process, the next stage is sometimes even more difficult.
In contrast, other friends & colleagues who've opted for the bootstrapped route (either by choice or circumstance) haven't seemed to face a similar massive amount of pressure. Yes, they faced incredible stress too, but not to the level of those that have raised capital.
This is merely an anecdotal observation made in my peer group. I don't mean to imply that this is some kind of phenomenon. And clinical depression is something that can cut through any kind of circumstance.
I just can't help but notice the stark difference in stress level of founders who are growing organically & carefully vs founders who are in a mad recruiting rush and sometimes hire the wrong kind of people. I wonder how much of a relationship there is between having the right kind of people in your company vs the wrong kind of people, and the stress level of a founder. I would imagine a lot.
[+] [-] gadders|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] DanBC|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] AznHisoka|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnanek2|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gregpilling|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swombat|11 years ago|reply
I've not experienced either seriously, but I know people who have. Depression seems to be more about things not mattering anymore, everything being pointless, the world seeming drab and just not fun anymore, rather than feeling that everything is going to go to shit. Anxiety, though, (and I'm speaking from experience here, having had some light anxiety attacks caused by too much regular caffeine usage) seems to be characterised by a feeling of impending doom, that everything is wrong, it can't be fixed, it's all hopeless, etc. But in my (mild) anxiety attacks, like Rand, I still cared about the outcome. I just felt like there were too many problems to solve, overwhelmed, ready to say "fuck this", give up the entire thing, and start again from scratch with something completely different.
PS: Otherwise, props for the very honest and open article. Running a business is a lot of responsibility and very stressful and it can be comforting to know you're not the only who seems surrounded by world-ending scenarios.
[+] [-] bhouston|11 years ago|reply
I disagree.
It could easily be case of chronic significant stress/anxiety that lead to depression. It happens a lot. Tons of reputable articles on it:
http://www.webmd.com/depression/features/stress-depression
The reason why I say that it probably isn't just anxiety was this statement in particular from the story (and there are others):
> Depressed Rand is weird. Don’t get me wrong, regular Rand is weird, too. But depressed Rand magnifies the bad 10X and minimizes the good. He refuses to even acknowledge good news and, because he’s a pretty smart guy, he can usually argue for why that good news is actually just temporary and will turn to shit any minute. The weird part is, I think depressed Rand is actually a very authentic version of myself. When I felt depressed, I upheld TAGFEE – particularly the values of transparency and authenticity – as the reasons why I could and should be such a raging, all-consuming, negative naysayer.
[+] [-] wbhart|11 years ago|reply
I personally suffer from anxiety without depression, so it seems easy for me to tell the difference. An anxiety attack for me is something that comes on very suddenly, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of impending doom. Usually it's a feeling that I'm about to lose control or drop dead right then and there. The thought that often goes through my head is, "oh no, something isn't right, this can't be right, I have to call an ambulance" or "I have to get out of here, now!". When the attack passes, it is followed by feeling extremely jittery, weak and anxious for hours or even days. During the attack, any number of physiological symptoms present, including pounding heart, feeling like I might pass out, wind, diarrhea, feeling weak, etc.
I did suffer from mild and occasional depression when younger. It seemed to be more of a feeling of disappointment with various things in life leading to an extended malaise, but with a chemical origin (brain chemistry). (I think of such episodes as "chemical depression" as opposed to "ordinary depression".)
But because anxiety and depression can often go together, it is not usually so easy to distinguish them.
I read that sunshine and aerobic exercise help with both depression and anxiety (in my case exercise helped more than normal since I used to be overweight; a contributor to my depression at the time).
Treating either depression or anxiety seems to require a multi-pronged approach. Most important in my experience seems to be teaching yourself (or be taught) how to shut down unproductive thought patterns as soon as they occur. They are habits which apparently exacerbate both issues (not necessarily immediately, but cumulatively).
For anxiety, ruthlessly removing sources of anxiety (especially initially) can be helpful in the long run. Being blunt with people and simply telling them what the issues are that are stressing you out, and how much of an impact that is having on you, can help. Bottling up those issues and being unassertive and endlessly constructing "what-if" scenarios before or after the fact, exacerbates the problem.
For anxiety, cut out caffeine and other stimulants. Avoid intense anaerobic stress (e.g. heavy weightlifting or aerobic exercise past the point of exhaustion), which stresses the nervous system. Also keeping the system running smoothly (e.g. modifying your diet for smooth digestive transit and controlling any allergies with standard hayfever antihistamines) seems to substantially lower overall stress levels.
And obviously there are pharmaceutical options if you consult people qualified to dispense them.
At some point you begin to realise you haven't had any real attacks in a while and that you are recovering. That relief in itself helps in the recovery process for anxiety (which I have heard can take months or even years in some individuals).
[+] [-] Rakathos|11 years ago|reply
> Anxiety, though, (and I'm speaking from experience here, having had some light anxiety attacks caused by too much regular caffeine usage) seems to be characterised by a feeling of impending doom, that everything is wrong, it can't be fixed, it's all hopeless, etc.
I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder earlier this year, after some career-related stress gave me a panic attack. Your description, the feeling of impending doom, everything is wrong, etc. is spot on. For me, it feels like a broken fight-or-flight response. I feel like I have to physically do something right now, and if I don't then something very bad is going to happen.
After my first panic attack, I immediately scheduled an appointment with a doctor. I was prescribed Xanax to take whenever I feel anxious, and then I was given a recommendation to see a therapist.
The therapy has helped, but by far the biggest improvement has come from daily, rigorous exercise.
Two months ago I started running twice each day, along with walking to/from work and walking our dog. My anxiety has been almost completely eradicated, excluding a couple random 5-minute bouts every other week, whereas before it was an every day, all day thing. I'm also happy to say that I have not had to use the Xanax at all since I began exercising.
If you're feeling any of the symptoms of anxiety (feeling of impending doom, it's all hopeless, etc.) or depression, please, make an appointment and see a doctor. You can get help.
[+] [-] pdpi|11 years ago|reply
http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/patient-health-questionnaire...
http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/generalised-anxiety-disorder...
[+] [-] ufo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neurotech1|11 years ago|reply
Note: I'm not a physician and this is not medical advice. I have experienced more than a few medical misadventures along the way.
[+] [-] zentiggr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbinv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marklittlewood|11 years ago|reply
Please don't try to imagine what goes on in someone else's mind.
[+] [-] jroseattle|11 years ago|reply
We're in the middle of raising money, while I also keep the engineering ship moving forward with product releases. We're about to run out of initial seed money, as we were supposed to have brought in the balance of the round and been on to Series A at this point. It's challenging, but I feel like I'm handling it.
Or so I thought. It turns out, I'm getting little sleep right now -- maybe 4-5 hours a night, on average. I've gained back so much weight and I abhor seeing myself in photos. I watch colleagues take absurd plans to investors and get way overfunded, more than they were ever asking to take on, while our little operation that's actually generating revenue (we will likely be break-even in 6 months) gets passed. I know it's not a rational reaction, but still the mental headwinds it creates really sap my soul.
It sucks when you're a (very) logical being, and something in your head no longer fits into place. I'm short with my kids at home, and I literally dread downtime. I find that cocktails go down easy, really easy.
It's a loop, alright.
[+] [-] danielweber|11 years ago|reply
It's still good to get these stories.
[+] [-] ghostly_s|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marklittlewood|11 years ago|reply
http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/11/developers-entrepreneu...
[+] [-] karl24|11 years ago|reply
We're working on an app that uses technology to help bring clinically proven treatments to market at a price point that dramatically improve access. We are pairing this with product design that's common on the consumer web but uncommon in mental health apps to help with adherence and engagement with treatment.
I hope this isn't perceived as attempting to capitalize on a serious thread. We (the founders) have incredibly personal reasons for perusing this problem. Many in this thread are likely ideal early adopters for the product. The general awareness that this discussion is raising is a good opportunity to reach out and ask for help as helping us will ultimately help many others.
Two ways to help:
(1) 7 question survey, < 1 min to complete: http://bit.ly/1plE2Rg
(2) contact us directly via [email protected] if you'd like to provide insight via a more in-depth interview.
[+] [-] ryanobjc|11 years ago|reply
It's also good to talk about failures, both partial and more complete.
And redemption.
The road to victory is long, and I would put my back against Rand because I know this struggle has made him better.
[+] [-] jarek|11 years ago|reply
I think there's still risk of others reading a list like that and thinking "look how much they _do_", but it's definitely an improvement on the usual pattern of sharing only successes and good news.
[+] [-] taybin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austengary|11 years ago|reply
I started here. http://headspace.com