# The Silicon Valley Suicides: article in The Atlantic **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 18, 2015, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890 "2015-11-18T15:10:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/21 "2015-11-18T20:02:54Z")
I guess I’m saying that I put so much pressure on myself that maybe I didn’t see the pressure that others were under. I didn’t understand at the time how a student could just voluntarily drop out of an honors track in a subject since it would have been devastating to me if I couldn’t be in all the honors courses. So I guess it seemed to me that most of the students I knew were not feeling the same kind of pressure I did. Certainly they seemed less concerned about grades and studying and getting into the right college. Now, as I said, the demographics have changed and if you have a whole school with students that competitive it must be horrible. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/22 "2015-11-18T20:16:15Z")
But, **Psychobunny** , you only hire people for a $13 hour no benefits job if if they have a college GPA of like 3.8 no? ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/23 "2015-11-18T20:38:03Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > I guess I’m saying that I put so much pressure on myself that maybe I didn’t see the pressure that others were under. I didn’t understand at the time how a student could just voluntarily drop out of an honors track in a subject since it would have been devastating to me if I couldn’t be in all the honors courses. So I guess it seemed to me that most of the students I knew were not feeling the same kind of pressure I did. Certainly they seemed less concerned about grades and studying and getting into the right college. Now, as I said, the demographics have changed and if you have a whole school with students that competitive it must be horrible. The absolute best thing that happened to me when I was at Gunn was that my father allowed me to drop out of AP Biology. I hated that class, and the pressure was intense. On day early in the semester, the teacher was berating a brilliant friend of mine for not knowing the answer to a question, and suddenly a lightbulb went off over my head: I don’t have to take this class. Almost immediately, I started to worry about how my parents would react. But when I summoned up the nerve to tell my father that I wanted to drop out, he told me that was fine, as long as I took another biology class. I think having that safety valve, and knowing that my parents would support me even if I couldn’t handle the highest levels of intensity, made it possible for me to make it through. I’m not sure if there would have been a different outcome if my father had responded differently (telling me that I had to take the AP class, or calling me a weakling for dropping it). I do know that several weeks after I transferred out, the teacher of that class made fun of me for taking “baby bio” and being more concerned with my needlework than with academics. It was a harsh environment, and my heart breaks for the students who can’t see a way out. ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/24 "2015-11-19T00:01:08Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > All this says is that they did not throw babies off a cliff. I never said they threw babies off of cliffs. I does support that they did throw people into the pit; they found lots of bones down there, just not baby bones. > [@](#): > > According to Pitsios, the bones studied to date came from the fifth and sixth centuries BC and come from 46 men, confirming the assertion from ancient sources that the Spartans threw **prisoners, traitors or criminals** into the pit. My bolding, no mention of weaklings. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/25 "2015-11-19T00:12:59Z")
> [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](#): > > My bolding, no mention of weaklings. True - perhaps my assertion in regards to that point is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/26 "2015-11-19T00:20:29Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > Did it really though? Depends heavily on what your definition of “worked” is. Sure, they survived for a while and were noted for some prowess in war (though they hardly conquered the world). But I’m pretty sure there weren’t any Spartans inventing computers, or the Internet, or smartphones. Yet all of those things happened in Silicon Valley. So obviously the latter must have the superior value system, if we’re going to get into silly reductionist arguments like that. My assertion is that the Silicon valley _is_ very similar to to a Spartan system (or at least the popular conception of a Spartan system). My points are a little nuanced, can be seemingly contradictory, and admittedly hard to understand (as is the quote I provided in one of my posts); but I’d rather just leave my points as they are instead of trying to deconstruct them or analyze them any more. If I was a better writer . . . ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/27 "2015-11-19T00:27:51Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > The Spartans had one simple effective focus. It worked. It did? I don’t think I’ve ever in my life encountered a Spartan\*. if it worked so well, where did they all go? - I don’t count those yahoos in East Lansing ( 😉 ) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/28 "2015-11-19T00:38:47Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > It did? I don’t think I’ve ever in my life encountered a Spartan\*. if it worked so well, where did they all go? > > - I don’t count those yahoos in East Lansing ( 😉 ) They lasted 400 years. They had a good run; I guess. I don’t know that much about Spartan life other than a few various things I have read in the past 20 years. Over the years there are many things that I have heard, and for the purposes of the point I am making the Spartans were considered to be unquestionably harsh. It appears though that there is considerable controversy concerning many details of Spartan life. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/29 "2015-11-19T01:00:34Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > They lasted 400 years. They had a good run; I guess. > > I don’t know that much about Spartan life other than a few various things I have read in the past 20 years. Over the years there are many things that I have heard, and for the purposes of the point I am making the Spartans were considered to be unquestionably harsh. > > It appears though that there is considerable controversy concerning many details of Spartan life. yes, but that only fosters rebellion. If you treat your kids like they’re never going to be good enough or trustworthy for you, eventually they’re going to give up trying to gain your approval. “If you’re never going to trust me, why should I work to gain your trust? What-evah, I do what I want!” Or, as a wise woman once said, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/30 "2015-11-19T12:01:01Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > yes, but that only fosters rebellion. If you treat your kids like they’re never going to be good enough or trustworthy for you, eventually they’re going to give up trying to gain your approval. “If you’re never going to trust me, why should I work to gain your trust? What-evah, I do what I want!” Threads go where they will, but as the OP I wish we’d drop the Spartan bit. This issue in Silicon Valley isn’t about kids who are smacked in the face and tossed back in the ring to fight or die. If that was the case, in this society, the kids would rebel and push back. Based on what I see in my area, this is more about parents who genuinely love their kids and want the best for them - and the kids see that, and want to do well in their parents’ eyes but feel they fall short. And the parents see a kid who wants to do well and is trying, so they blow it and miss how knotted-up the kid is. In some instances, a jerk parent will “write off” a kid they think will never apply themselves. That is terrible - but that kid is NOT the type of kid focused on in this article. It is the achievers that parents are trying to help achieve and end up setting unrealistic expectations. The parents are not “discarding” these kids - they are loading them up with too much. If you want to achieve - and these parents have, and want their kids to as well - you have to work hard. The parents are trying to impart that on their kids, but clearly missing signs. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/31 "2015-11-19T12:45:41Z")
> [@araminty](#): > > We have a friend who is a teacher at one of these schools. Every now and then something slips out in conversation which pulls me up short – the last case was when she was talking about the security officers at the Caltrain crossing. I had no idea the situation was so horrible. > > I couldn’t teach there. I hear you - it is hard for teachers to see that pressure. But, by the same token, teachers of Honors courses often are part of the culture of pushing. My son is taking a few honors courses, including Physics. He missed a day so we could go on a college tour. Unfortunately, 3 of his classes covered important stuff that day so he had to play catch up, checking in with teachers after class. Physics comes easy to him, so he went to that class last, a few days after the missed day. His teacher snarked at him “what, you care about Bio and College Calculus more than Physics?” and gave my son a brief overview of what was missed, but didn’t make time for all the questions my son had. I was suprised - you’d think the teacher would empathize given his course load and the reason for the absence, and the fact that he is a top student in the class. We have parent-teacher conferences in a couple weeks. We’ll talk. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/32 "2015-11-19T12:47:15Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > The Spartans had one simple effective focus. It worked. The simplicity and consistency of their value system is admirable to a certain degree. Simpletons value simplicity. While competition is necessary and should be encouraged so that the most qualified person is incentivized to do the best job possible, “survival of the fittest” isn’t exactly the best way to run any society. I mean unless you want to live in a society of Helots ruled by Silicon Valley and Wall Street billionaires. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/33 "2015-11-19T13:39:12Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > It did? I don’t think I’ve ever in my life encountered a Spartan\*. if it worked so well, where did they all go? > > - I don’t count those yahoos in East Lansing ( 😉 ) Pretty good football team. Being told that if you don’t practice hard you get thrown off the cliff is a good motivator. ---
**Author:** ![stillownedbysetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/41988e/32.png) [@stillownedbysetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stillownedbysetters)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/34 "2015-11-19T18:34:51Z")
I grew up in a university community and my classmates were highly intelligent children with highly intelligent parents. One family, in particular, had 5 children, 4 of who were bona fide geniuses, with the IQ scores to prove it. The second to the last child, a boy, was not. He was no slouch mentally, but came in just below the genius level. On the morning of his 15th birthday, his parents found him hanging from a cross beam in the garage. The note he left indicated that he simply couldn’t cope with the pressure of trying to succeed in his high-achievement family. What had put him over the edge was an upcoming “C” grade in math. I knew Fred well, from grade school and high school, and it was my first encounter with anyone taking their own life. We didn’t see the signs because we didn’t know the signs. I have since educated myself on them in hopes of never losing another friend. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/35 "2015-11-19T19:06:09Z")
> [@stillownedbysetters](#): > > On the morning of his 15th birthday, his parents found him hanging from a cross beam in the garage. The note he left indicated that he simply couldn’t cope with the pressure of trying to succeed in his high-achievement family. What had put him over the edge was an upcoming “C” grade in math. What a sad story. I often feel like schools do too much to help the advanced kids and not enough to build confidence in those who aren’t. The advanced kids are likely to do well even with no help–although more help may allow them to really excel. Schools focus on them because they generate higher test scores and the school district can publish how great they are to bring in more revenue. But for the kids who aren’t at that level, like your friend Fred, it must make them feel even worse. Academics aren’t for everybody, but that doesn’t mean those people are failures. There’s a lot of ways to be successful even if they don’t like school or get good grades. Society would be better served by encouraging those kids to be successful in whatever they are passionate about rather than identifying them as failures because they don’t get A’s in an arbitrary selection of subjects. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/36 "2015-11-19T20:48:41Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > I guess I’m saying that I put so much pressure on myself that maybe I didn’t see the pressure that others were under. I didn’t understand at the time how a student could just voluntarily drop out of an honors track in a subject since it would have been devastating to me if I couldn’t be in all the honors courses. So I guess it seemed to me that most of the students I knew were not feeling the same kind of pressure I did. Certainly they seemed less concerned about grades and studying and getting into the right college. Now, as I said, the demographics have changed and if you have a whole school with students that competitive it must be horrible. The part that struck me (and I went to a very academically competitive private school in Houston) was that the parents and students had left themselves no wiggle room whatsoever. It sounds almost as if the kids make a single B, then they don’t get into Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc… and then in their eyes, there’s no point in continuing at all. Getting into say… Cal Poly is apparently seen as having failed, which is absurd. That seems so counter to my experience- there were guys from my graduating class who went to just about any elite university you can name, but there wasn’t any institutional focus on having to get into a select set of schools or be considered a loser, and nobody’s parents who I am aware of was putting that kind of pressure on them. Everyone wanted to get into Stanford or Harvard, but that didn’t also mean that if we ended up at A&M or UT, that we’d feel like losers. U of Houston possibly, but in my case, it would have been because I’d have had to live at home, not because U of H was inherently inferior. I mean, we were competitive, but there were levels of success- shades of gray, if you will. This business in Silicon Valley sounds like it’s black or white. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/37 "2015-11-19T23:10:17Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I mean, we were competitive, but there were levels of success- shades of gray, if you will. This business in Silicon Valley sounds like it’s black or white. Yes, you have exactly captured the mentality that pervades the highest levels at the Palo Alto high schools. The snobbery about colleges is intense and very distorted. My fallback school was UC San Diego (currently ranked as the 9th best public university in the country), and I would have been considered an utter failure if I had gone there. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/38 "2015-11-19T23:46:03Z")
> [@bump](#): > > The part that struck me (and I went to a very academically competitive private school in Houston) was that the parents and students had left themselves no wiggle room whatsoever. It sounds almost as if the kids make a single B, then they don’t get into Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc… and then in their eyes, there’s no point in continuing at all. Getting into say… Cal Poly is apparently seen as having failed, which is absurd. > > That seems so counter to my experience- there were guys from my graduating class who went to just about any elite university you can name, but there wasn’t any institutional focus on having to get into a select set of schools or be considered a loser, and nobody’s parents who I am aware of was putting that kind of pressure on them. Everyone wanted to get into Stanford or Harvard, but that didn’t also mean that if we ended up at A&M or UT, that we’d feel like losers. U of Houston possibly, but in my case, it would have been because I’d have had to live at home, not because U of H was inherently inferior. > > I mean, we were competitive, but there were levels of success- shades of gray, if you will. This business in Silicon Valley sounds like it’s black or white. Well look at what they do in Silicon Valley.😉 If anything, I think Silicon Valley is more egalitarian (or at least more of a meritocracy). As long as you have mad computer skillz, you can get a job in tech. I feel like all this shit started in the 90s around the tech bubble. Before that, people just seemed to go to work. Ideally, you wanted to get a job in a big corporation and eventually work your way up the ladder to an executive job. Sure, going to a better school helped. And you had people going into law, finance and medicine doing well. But for the most part, there was nothing wrong with “just being middle class”. All of a sudden, in the 90s everyone wanted to work at a startup or become a trader or investment banker or venture capitalist. If you didn’t have a job that could pay seven figures before you turned 30, you were some kind of loser. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2015, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/39 "2015-11-20T00:00:38Z")
It definitely didn’t start in the '90’s. I graduated from Gunn in the '80’s, and there was certainly a lot of pressure on me and my peers, although as **psychobunny** said, it was only a certain segment of the school that felt that way, and not the whole school. But it definitely preceded the tech boom, and was largely attributable to the fact that many students were the children of Stanford faculty. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2015, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890/40 "2015-11-20T00:16:41Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > If anything, I think Silicon Valley is more egalitarian (or at least more of a meritocracy). As long as you have mad computer skillz, you can get a job in tech. In my simpleton way of thinking, therein lies the problem for me with the secular ideology/ethos portrayed in the Atlantic article. In my mind there is a difference between a “meritocracy” and what I would call meritocratic tyranny displayed in the nature of this system which requires that there will be significantly more failures than successes. What is being described in the article is not in any way shape or form egalitarian, it is elitist - and an elitism that is to some extent (if we are to believe the accuracy of the reporting) causes needless suffering at every level. And for what reason? In large part for the sake of vanity alone - these kids are not trying to achieve a goal such as trying to cure cancer, their focus is purely on goals that confer status and prestige. And that’s what really bothers my simpleton mind - the fact that many people want to live eat and breathe this way of life, accept fully these values but also want to say they are egalitarian, progressive etc. You can’t have both and personally I would respect more pretty much any ethos that is more consistent. In comparison to this particular mindset, even Ayn Rand almost looks respectable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-silicon-valley-suicides-article-in-the-atlantic/737890.md?page=3)