
24 year old Ogilvy China employee dies from 'overwork' - jentulman
http://shanghaiist.com/2013/05/15/24_year_old_ogilvy_china_employee_dies_from_overwork.php
======
kayoone
Sudden cardiac arrest can, in theory, happen to anyone at anytime, its just
that its an extremely rare occurrence.

Most of those cases can be traced back to a previously unknown heart disease
though. In general, the probability of you dieing in an accident on your way
to/from work is alot higher.

The fact that i read about 3 cases of sudden cardiac arrest in very young and
seemingly healthy people on HN in a rather short period is a bit discomforting
though.

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patio11
For anyone who thinks death from overwork merits scare quotes: I really,
really can't recommend becoming a salaryman, but it would change your mind.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The article says 600,000 people a year die from "Work Exhaustion" (their
quotes not mine). That reminds me of the conditions that lead to the rise of
labor unions, although in looking at various sources it seems that China
already has unions of one form or another? Clearly not doing their job if that
is the case.

~~~
scarmig
Chinese unions are pretty close to what were called company unions back in the
day. Organized and controlled by the people sitting at the opposite side of
the table. In the case of China, government officials who benefit personally
when industrial interests in their domain are really profitable.

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akamaka
“Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and
disease. They do not die of hard work.”

-David Ogilvy (from _Confessions of an Advertising Man_ , 1963)

~~~
derleth
Nonsense. If you do more work than you take in calories, you will eventually
die of that work. If you work through injury, the injury will get worse and
may well kill you.

~~~
chc
> _If you do more work than you take in calories, you will eventually die of
> that work._

No, you'll die of starvation. If you're not taking in sufficient nutrients,
you'll die even if you do no work at all.

~~~
dubfan
Your body is doing work through basal metabolism even while sitting idle.
Starving to death and being overworked to death are basically the same thing.

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ig1
There's plenty of people (in every competitive industry from startups to
consulting) who work until 11pm everyday without having heart attacks,
presumably there were other factors at play here.

~~~
craigching
I didn't see it mentioned in the article, but it could be due to the type of
work he was doing. Until I know what sort of work he was doing, I'm not going
to judge or compare it to me working on software until 11pm every day.

~~~
ig1
He works for a creative PR agency, it's not as if he's going to be hauling
steel.

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denzil_correa
It seems over work a serious problem in China. 600,000 Chinese workers die
from overwork annually. That's quite huge.

[http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-
cnt.aspx?cid=110...](http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-
cnt.aspx?cid=1103&id=20121029000069)

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venus
This is so common in Japan they have a word for it. Which came in useful for
naming our group at a previous company: "Team Karoshi".

~~~
hawflakes
I think they use the same term in Chinese. It's "过劳死" which in pinyin is
"guo4lao2si3" (over work death)

~~~
venus
Ah, it's the same in Japanese - 過労死 (mandarin has the simplified characters).

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mellotron
Any statistics on US deaths like this? I couldn't seem to find anything
particularly useful.

I just mean to say that China is an enormous country, and statistically these
things are bound to happen. Does anyone else perceive this type of media
coverage as part of a greater strategy of propagandizing or is the
oversturation of news outlets just hungry for enything sensationalist to grab
eyeballs? Both?

~~~
objclxt
Sudden cardiac arrest is quite common amongst the population as a whole
(<http://www.sca-aware.org/about-sca>). What's rather uncommon is it to happen
at a young age, but it's not unknown. In the four years I was at college two
students suffered fatal arrests, both thought to be healthy with no prior
symptoms.

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lefstathiou
I am a bit surprised this happened. While working until 11PM every day is
mentally frustrating, I am curious as to the physical toll it actually takes
on your body. Said differently, is there a difference between being awake
until 11PM every night and being at the office? I've watched analysts and
associates in investment banking keep up this schedule for years at a time...

Now, if you told me he was getting in at 9 and leaving at 5 every day for 6
weeks, this would make sense and I can see how this would be problematic for
Ogilvy. With what we have in this article, I think he suffered from a heart
condition.

~~~
GFischer
I live in Uruguay, and the kind of medical checks most of the population has
are so superficial, most people who have a heart condition won't know about it
until it hits (I haven't had a good checkout in years either !! I should,
after reading this).

I know of a case here, the guy was one of 3 managers at a toxic company, the
other 2 guys quit, and he took on their burdens. He died of a heart attack, at
age 34. He thought he wasn't able to quit because of his children, but the
result was obviously worse for them.

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iamjason89
Kira! Where are you L. We need you now!

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maeon3
I think the key to solving the root of the problem here is understanding that
there is such a thing as: "Cooperative compliance disorder", which is the
other end of the spectrum of "Oppositional defiant disorder".

So the question becomes: How did this person get to believe that when the
desires of other men are of higher priority than your own physical health.

Like cell in your own hand, it did not object when the mind decide to send the
hand through the fire, he gave his life so that the whole might complete its
objective. Cooperative Compliance disorder.

~~~
potatolicious
We really don't need to pathologize everything. In a sufficiently perverse
environment, choosing to sacrifice your own well being for the good of someone
else can be a rational decision - it can be the _only_ rational decision.

When gatekeepers control access to wealth, stability, and a good life - and
the alternative to working for the gatekeepers is poverty and disease - you
basically will do anything the gatekeepers want, because the alternative is
nearly as good as death itself.

Without knowing more about this incident, it strikes me as a symptom of a
broken system, not a broken man.

~~~
maeon3
If Oppositional Defiant Disorder gets a spot in the mental illness book to be
medicated, than Excessive Cooperation to your own detriment should also be
medicated.

I believe women suffer from this mental illness a lot more than men. The fact
that one end of the spectrum gets to be a mental illness and the other end of
the spectrum is just someone choosing to be a doormat illustrates a big
problem. Either they are both mental illnesses, or they are both just ways of
going about things.

Humans who always cooperate or always defy to the detriment of their own life
means that the module in their brain which decides when to comply, and when to
resist, is a malfunction to be corrected by available means.

~~~
Centigonal
This is not my opinion on the point you and Potatolicious are debating, but
rather my opinion on the way you replied.

You present an idea (that it might benefit people for society to consider
excessive cooperation a treatable mental illness). You posit the parent
article as evidence for this idea.

Potatolicious replies, expressing his doubts. He presents an idea (that the
system the man was working in caused his death, not an innate psychological
condition). If valid, his idea eliminates the evidence for your idea, making
it less credible and no longer relevant to the article.

What I see as a rational response to this is to either point out a flaw in
Potatolicious's idea (if one exists) or to introduce information that would
make it so that Potatolicious's idea doesn't invalidate yours.

Instead, you restate your initial point (albeit in greater detail), and
introduce a kind of argument from continuum ("if people who are excessively
oppositional are medicated, why shouldn't the other end be as well?"), which,
although not invalid, doesn't do anything to refute Potatolicious's point
about the relevance of your argument to the parent article. Furthermore, you
introduce a new opinion, which is not related to your previous points or
supported by evidence, and only serves to polarize people.

I'm trying to explain this in the hope that we as a community can move toward
more directed and effective debates. I hope that helped.

~~~
maeon3
I'm playing a cat and mouse with ideas a few layers deeper than your logic
structures are outlining. (perhaps getting lost in the weeds and losing the
main point as a result).

Potatolicious is right, that the system is partially responsible for his
death. And if most of the responsibility ends up on the evil system, then it
could be said his excessive compliance should be praised and admired. That
compliance isn't an illness at all. He was just eaten by a larger critter than
he, and used as fuel for ulterior motives.

But his claim does not invalidate mine because suppose this evil corporation
is 100% guilty, and they used all the Jedi mind tricks to brainwash him into
working himself to death for their own gain. He complied when he should have
defied. They were offering him money, the lack of which may be as bad as death
to the victim, but ultimately the source of the error was when an instruction
which results in destruction was followed by the unit.

If the unit had said: "I would rather be unemployed than deal with this
terrible situation", he may be alive now. He's removed from the gene pool
anyway, so evolution agrees with me, whatever that subunit did, it is to be
destroyed.

I'm suggesting we destroy the faulty subunits in his mind during school, by
labeling "Cooperative compliance disorder" as a real thing that can remove you
from the gene pool.

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michaelochurch
When things like this happen, names, pictures, and home addresses of
responsible managers should be posted on the Internet so that the good fight
can start.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
That is really not OK. People who publish such information and call for
vigilante justice should be found and prosecuted to the maximum extent of the
law.

Even if we knew with 100% certainty that the boss played a role in this guy’s
death (which we don’t), then it would be up to the DA and the court, not the
angry mob with pitchforks or the cowardly script kids on 4chan.

~~~
michaelochurch
Vigilante justice is terrible but I don't see anything else doing the job; it
may be a last resort but I think our globalist-corporatist society is At That
Point. The people with connections and resources own the politicians (all over
the world) who make the laws. Besides, even if one country does everything
right, the parasites in charge of the world can just move their money around.

I've been saying since the late '90s that health insurance executives should
be publicly exposed when they murder people, and I still feel that way. If the
courts were actually cracking down on those fuckers, then I'd say that
vigilante justice is unwarranted; but how many health-insurance murderers
_are_ in prison? The fuckers kill 45,000 per year (a 9/11 every 24 days) and I
don't know of _one_ who has gone to prison.

Why do we tear the shit out of two Middle Eastern nations (one of which had
nothing to do with it) over 3,000 dead but allow health insurers to kill half
a million over that same decade and not even give them personal civil
liability?

~~~
FD3SA
All societies tend toward Feudalism given enough time. The rent seekers
control everything, and the masses surrender their liberty in exchange for
security. History has demonstrated this countless times, which is why the Bill
of Rights enshrined the right of the public to form militias to protect their
own rights (the original 2nd Amendment).

Unfortunately, over two centuries the rent seekers have won again, so a reboot
is required. How to initiate and sustain a successful reboot is the tricky
part.

I sense from your writings that you are increasingly frustrated with the
current state of affairs. I just want to emphasize that you aren't the only
one, and if you were to formalize your dissent into an actionable movement,
many would support you. The time may have come for the Technocrat to take his
place on the world stage...

~~~
xradionut
It's not a technical problem. It's a moral/ethical problem where most the long
term solutions that would work are very dark in the short term.

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Torn
Why is this in hacker news?

~~~
prawn
Because a user found it suitable enough to submit and a few others agreed with
that submission enough to upvote it.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Since this site has stricter guidelines than Reddit, that's not actually an
answer.

~~~
prawn
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what Reddit has to do with this.

HN is about what hackers find interesting. A fair number of us have endorsed
this particular topic and resulting discussion, enough to suggest that people
find it interesting for one reason or another.

~~~
davidw
Does one need to be a hacker to sign up for this site?

As a thought experiment, do you think it would be that difficult to get, say,
15 or 20 people who love professional bike racing to sign up, and coordinate
voting up an article about Bradley Wiggins' difficulties at the Giro d'Italia,
which some of us hackers find to be very interesting reading?

