Drank for the first 25 years of my career. High-functioning alcoholic, I guess. You've definitely heard of the products I have a bunch of code in, and the companies I worked for. I don't know how I managed getting blasted every night and still write all that code. As things got worse I started working for smaller and smaller companies, and wound up essentially jobless and alone and drinking off of my savings in a Silly Valley townhouse full of liquor bottles.
The CEO of the startup I'd just blown-off a job at (showed up the first week, "worked at home" for another couple of weeks, then stopped showing up entirely) drove over and knocked on my door to find out what was going on. Drunk off my ass, I told him, and that I'd get some help. So I made That Call and got some help. Did about three weeks of inpatient care (Stanford recovery unit, and then a place in the Santa Cruz mountains), then moved into a halfway house and spent a lot of time in AA meetings [AA is controversial, I know]. Never spent another night in that townhouse, wound up selling it. That CEO hired me back as a consultant a few months after I got out of inpatient.
I've got 18 years sober now, much of which I've spent working on software at great companies on products you've almost certainly heard of and probably used. Married, with a teen-age son, and doing better financially than I ever would have imagined. Still going to AA meetings, though nowhere near as often as I probably should.
AA is controversial among a tiny minority of anti-religion internet blowhards. For the vast majority of reasonable folks, it really isn't. Glad to hear it has worked for you.
I just didn't want to derail things into another "AA is bad because it's religious" discussion. To paraphrase Heinlein: If solemnly rubbing blue mud in my belly button would have gotten me sober, I would have done that. If something like Rational Recovery had been an option, I would have gone. But AA is free and there are meetings everywhere, nearly all the time.
It is kind of dismaying to get out of nearly a month of expensive treatment and then be told, "Welp, pretty much all we've got for you at this point is for you to attend a crapload of AA meetings, good luck." But I figure that desperation is an important part of staying sober, at least until you've fleshed out some kind of support.
I worked with a guy once who was a recovering alcoholic. This was a big dumb corp, and he'd been a manager, but went through the companies cobol boot camp and was a cobol programmer when I knew him. Apparently it was a situation of he had a lot of tenure at the company and it was that or start over somewhere else. Yeah, odd.
Anyway, similar to you, he'd built a life, had two sons, a wife. Only things weren't that rosey for him. This guy had no filter, he'd sometimes offer up fucked up stories from his childhood at weird times. At one point he went back to drinking and was really unreliable at work, his wife kicked him out. Around that time I moved on. About 6 years later I heard he'd committed suicide.
This always haunted me. I've worked with a few people who've committed suicide. What I have to say to you is; you matter, to your wife and to your family, and to you co workers, although they don't know it. Good luck and please seek help if you ever need it again.
There is a big difference between foreign workers who are great and add value, and foreign workers who are brought over, are subsequently exploited, and who are also used to depress the income of the local workforce. Seen it happen.
Then there are the "Indian Mafias" in places like Microsoft, where over 50% of an organization is Indian because they got into a cultural hiring spiral. And the products from those groups are generally pretty awful, because everyone seems to want to be a manager or see how high the next re-org will take them, and not do good designs or write good code.
H1Bs shouldn't be used for job shops, and they shouldn't be used to bring in cheap labor, but that's largely what they're used for now.
A lot of really good Indian engineers are going to get hurt, and that will suck.
The Vive APIs are open. They're not connected to any Steam DRM (which I believe is optional -- and in any event, Valve doesn't nail developers down to exclusives; you're free to sell your games elsewhere, if you want).
My guess is that Facebook's big advantage boils down to the sheer number of bodies they have available to make a platform, while Valve consists of a small team and a bunch of developers. Valve's non-management culture makes long-term focus hard. Facebook can mandate focus through their heirarchy.
Also, the people at Facebook are not stupid; this is fixable if they take the right steps. They probably don't even have to do anything at all now; just ignore the issue and it will sink below the community's outrage threshold.
But if I was a company stuck with an exclusive on the Oculus, I'd be screaming at Facebook for a pile of cash right about now.
[I have the sense that the Oculus DRM change was decided by some PM-like person at Facebook with little experience in security, or PCs as a gaming platform, or the market in general. I'll bet there's an internal shitstorm at Facebook that's resulting in new orifices being drilled into certain persons. If they decide to double-down on the DRM or try shut down the software shim in question through legal posturing, then I will make popcorn].
15+ years sober here, mostly through some recovery programs and a lot of AA.
Neither the "disease" model (which has connotations of communicability) nor the AA "allergy" model (there's something wrong with my body) make total sense. Rather than try to fit other terms into a procrustean bed, I just call it addiction. Everyone is different, but there are a lot of commonalities.
Given the amount of denial that is present in most cases of addiction, trying to fit it into other categories can make more room for rationalization and avoidance. "I clearly don't have a disease, I never caught it from anyone," someone might say, or "It's not an allergy, I don't break out in hives." And delay treatment that much longer.
I'm a firm believer in getting whatever help works for you. If that's Rational Recovery, great. If that means an AA meeting every day, great. Just get help. Get it earlier than you think you need it. Tell your boss (s/he probably knows something is up anyway, just not what). Drop in on a meeting [yeah, AA, I know]. Tell a friend. Tell your doctor. Make a call and get into treatment. Do something, because until you do that, nothing is going to change.
16 years ago I was without a job and essentially unemployable, on the verge of being homeless, drinking 750ml+ of hard liquor a day, and this close to offing myself to end the misery. Today I'm married, doing really, really well financially, am bringing up a kid, and have a 6100+ karma score on my non-throwaway HN account. Life is good :-)
Congrats on the sobriety. 11 years myself here on my non-throwaway account (don't hire me, then, we'll both be better off).
As for the disease model, and as a partial response to the comment sibling, it is my understanding that the disease model was cooked up specifically to address the "weak willed" label slapped on those that drink too much. If that's true, and I don't have a reliable source to back that up, it would fit well with AA's overall program. IOW, like other diseases, you don't have control over it (if you did, you'd quit), and it is not reflective of a base character flaw, etc.
I dunno, I don't get too hung up on it myself. As you said, get whatever help that fits your model of the world, but get help. I don't even buy into a lot of what AA touts, but simply sitting in a room with a bunch of other folks with similar struggles was a lot of what I needed. (Granted, for a lot of AA meetings "similar struggles" means "the court says I need this piece of paper signed".)
Good for you, random internet person, good for you.
Do you think the disease model implies more some kind of genetic/environmental slant, as opposed to a 'weak character'. I think what the disease model is putting forward is that something outside of your control led to your addiction rather than something you're supposedly meant to have control over, that is to say your decisions and will.
Thanks for posting this.
edit: And I just remembered, the clinical/medical label used is actually "illness", not disease...
Illness, they say, refers to the patient's experience of the disease. A person with a disease might not feel ill, and a person who experiences illness might not have a disease.
I did some LSD about 35 years ago. More than once.
For a few days afterward it utterly knackered my ability to write good code, or do anything that required concentrated, logical thinking. Also, I felt like crap (think "bad mental hangover" without the horrible side-effects caused by alcohol).
That said, it was a pretty interesting experience. I highly recommend it, just not habitually. Someone (Timothy Leary?) said that the best way to do LSD would be in a sunny English meadow with the Archbishop of Canterbury as your companion.
I know some people who take LSD habitually and I can't imagine how they do it. Personally I'm like you, it feels amazing and is a great way to relax, but I need about a day or two afterward to really let the whole experience settle in.
15 years sober here. Before that I drank like crazy while shipping a bunch of software that you've definitely heard of.
The only way this dumb monkey could quit was to quit altogether. Hey, if you can control your own drinking, that's great. But I know that I cannot.
Also, I'm an atheist in AA. It works for me.
The whole "God thing" of AA stopped me for quite a while. But the whole deity thing is optional, you just need a power greater than yourself and (ideally) a sponsor who can call you on your bullshit. I've heard the name "Jesus" a handful of times, and never from someone running a meeting.
15 years sober. So, I don't drink. Before that, hoo boy :-)
I was at a bar last night with co-workers, and as long as I have a diet coke or something in my hand I'm okay. Weekly AA meetings keep me on the level, too.
A old co-worker of mine who was more public about his sobriety used to crack the keg at beer busts, reciting the Serenity Prayer over it and telling jokes as he pour cups for everyone else. He had fun with it.
I drank very heavily for ~ 20 years, a high functioning alcoholic and software engineer. Most of you have heard of stuff I've worked on. My other HN account has a pretty high karma, this one is a throwaway.
I was maybe three months from being homeless, and after being out of work for nearly a year (nobody wanted to hire me, go figure. I thought I had things pretty well covered up...) I found a job with a small company writing simulation software. Two weeks into working for them I lost control and went on a binge and didn't show up for a week, and the CEO went by my condo and asked WTF. I told him. Went into detox later that day, did two weeks in-patient at The Camp in Scotts Valley, then did AA really solidly. It mostly stuck; my earlier visits to AA hadn't been absolutely desperate, and I figure I was pretty close to dying through suicide or something a lot more slow and miserable.
I don't work at that company any more, but it took the caring of a CEO who I barely even knew to really wake me up. I'm still sober 15 years later.
Just switching jobs won't help. Nor will making promises, or going to school, or switching majors, or exercising, or moving, or just about anything else that doesn't exactly target what alcoholism is all about. This sounds deadly serious, and it is, but in fact AA was a lot of fun and I made a number of fast friends. (Feel free to substitute the organization of your choice, but AA worked well for me and I don't have experience with another group).
I was a "high functioning" alcoholic; 35 years in the software business, and I've worked for companies I know you've heard of, and you've almost certainly used my products. 15 years ago I was drinking 750ml of liquor a day. Lost a few jobs, was living in filth, and was about to be homeless.
Long story made short, I got into detox and then AA, changed pretty much everything in my life that wasn't working and haven't had a drink since. First couple years were intense, and I still go to AA meetings every week. It's a maintenance thing. I know I can't drink again.
It can get better, but you can't do it yourself. If you're a heavy drinker, get medical help in the first few days because withdrawal can kill you. I think you'll find your employer amazingly helpful and supportive.
[I'm extremely skeptical of solutions that involve other substances. I guess if it works, it works, but I'm not going to get much out of talking to you about it.]
The CEO of the startup I'd just blown-off a job at (showed up the first week, "worked at home" for another couple of weeks, then stopped showing up entirely) drove over and knocked on my door to find out what was going on. Drunk off my ass, I told him, and that I'd get some help. So I made That Call and got some help. Did about three weeks of inpatient care (Stanford recovery unit, and then a place in the Santa Cruz mountains), then moved into a halfway house and spent a lot of time in AA meetings [AA is controversial, I know]. Never spent another night in that townhouse, wound up selling it. That CEO hired me back as a consultant a few months after I got out of inpatient.
I've got 18 years sober now, much of which I've spent working on software at great companies on products you've almost certainly heard of and probably used. Married, with a teen-age son, and doing better financially than I ever would have imagined. Still going to AA meetings, though nowhere near as often as I probably should.