What Happened to Lee

Terrifying.

As a software engineer, shit like this scares me. I've felt like I'm on a steady, slow, decline for the last ~4 years.

Is it just burnout? Do I need a new hobby?

I used to love programming... Spent 12 hours a day jamming on it. Now, I struggle to keep my mind on a line of code for more than 5 minutes.

At what point is it just burnout, or at what point is it something more? That's what's terrifying to me. I imagine that was a challenge for those close to Lee.

We just know so little about the human body. Our ability to easily query the state of the body, to assess which functional components are working, and which need help, is dismal.

I just hope that Lee, in whatever state he is in, isn't suffering.

How old are you? I'm about to hit 45 and have been on that path for about 2 years now. It started with sleep apnea but I've had that under control for 16 months now. I feel like I'm becoming too slow to be a proficient coder, and I lack the people skills to move to management. I'd pick a lower-stress career, but I've got alimony and need the income.

I've tried getting fit. I've tried improving my sleep. Vitamins, herbs, etc. The only things that work are tobacco(not nicotine, it just makes me sick) and armodafinil in small doses.

I'm here with you, I still love the idea of software, but I can't get myself to sit there and code even the most fun projects. I had a great idea for a project to start a business, I know people would need it, but I just can't get myself to do it. It's frustrating and makes me really depressed that I'm like this.

I think this is pretty natural. When it's fresh and you're learning a lot, programming is easy to keep fixated on. It's very instant-gratification early on. As you progress, the low hanging fruit dries up and goals have longer gratification cycles

After reading this I had to do a quick self-assessment.

For the last few years or so (I'm 33, also a software engineer) I've noticed a pretty big decline in my mental state. I can't focus. I immediately forget what I just looked at, read or did. I completely zone out when people talk to me. I am just not present in any situation. What is strange is that I can actually notice it, not in real-time however. It's been worrying me for the last few months so much so that I started meditating which I've never done before. My wife mentioned seeing a therapist because she thought maybe I was depressed so I scheduled an appointment but it's been rescheduled due to the virus.

I keep hearing about other programmers experiencing similar issues (yourself included) and I wonder if the nature of what we do somehow damages our brain in some capacity and we just don't know it yet. Obviously Lee's case is different but it's certainly scary. I hope he doesn't suffer as well.

I bet there are some aspects to this that lots of people could self-identify with.

I have a bad habit of remembering a past that never was. I think, man, the code used to just flow so easily, and now it requires effort. But I'm just remembering the highlights; if I try a little harder, I can start to remember other days when it wasn't so easy. I forget my missed deadlines and remember my last-minute saves. Revisiting old code now and again helps to shake the illusion loose.

Arranging life to spend a little bit less time on things that feel like work and making a little more time for things that excite you is a good medicine for this feeling and probably something everyone should do anyway.

Honestly that just sounds like a mix of ADHD and depression. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

I had this feeling for many years then finally put together 6 months of effort on an MVP that got zero traction. That great idea? Not so great in reality, I’d been kidding myself. So if it’s any consolation, great idea and great executions are really rare. The common advice is to build a landing page and get x number of signups for a beta before writing a line of code. Makes sense in retrospect.

This is very similar to my situation, although I'm a bit younger. I've tried therapy and she recommending getting back on ADHD medication and experimenting with that. Haven't gone ahead with it.

Also how is your sleep. 6hrs/day in your 20s is different than 6hrs/day in your 30s.

I don’t have the same issue with focus, etc. but I’m a couple years into my software career and have noticed a drastic shift in my cognitive abilities. Not negative per say, but it’s clear that being focused and working on a logic puzzle all day is changing how my brain is wired. You can imagine that our brain, after years of programming, starts to find shortcuts and such to make the tasks easier, but I find it’s coming at the expense of my ability to clearly communicate ideas and thoughts to others. I don’t like it, and I’m very curious if other people experience this.

I think the fact that you're reflecting on it means there's no actual degradation. Someone with Lee's disorder doesn't seem to be capable of self reflection at all.

To me it doesn't really sound like he's suffering, especially given the fact that he doesnt really have meltdowns and freakouts. It sounds more like he's just reverting to a state where his behaviors and consciousness coming from the cerebellum/brainstem, i.e. living much more instinctually and in the present, like all other beings in nature. Yes it creates a big disconnect between him and average human society, but at the same time it seems like he's also freed from a lot of the shackles that come with the human mind, free to live moment to moment.

Sounds like you're ready for your next career. If you're fortunate enough to lead a life and live somewhere that doesn't systemically lock you in, maybe think about starting over at something different.

I’d second this. Check you sleep. #hours. Get a sleep study, make sure you don’t have sleep apnea. Also review your diet and any substances you consume. In my case it was sleep apnea in my 40s that took me from “coding like a m’fing riot” to barely able to concentrate long enough to code a for loop. good luck.

This feels right. Even when he could express himself in a way I could understand, he never expressed himself as frustrated or suffering. The disease at some level seems to rob its victims from the ability to suffer. It’s hard to comprehend.

I'm 33 also.

I'm starting to form a theory that it could be dopamine depletion. [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791340/

I'm curious. Before his disease got bad, when he was still working but maybe starting to show some of the first signs...

Did he ever express any concern? Or was it entirely other people who noticed his decline, but he was oblivious?

Welcome to maturing. Most people I've talked to have noticed things.

The positive part is that experience counts for something.

Anecdotal, but having the same in early 30s. Was diagnosed with ADHD, low-dose long-form Adderall has basically reversed my symptoms, which from my understanding involves dopamine or dopamine receptors. Sleeping better and exercise are both also good boosts.

I'm a 43 year old software engineer. I definitely do not have the ability to focus on coding (and mathematics) the way I did 20 years ago. It's difficult to describe why exactly, but it's sort of like my ability to reason formally is more prone to breaks in concentration and lapses. I can still do what needs to be done but it takes longer and I have less patience, especially for bit-twiddling.

At the same time, I think I'm a better programmer than I ever was. The programming abstractions I design are better for years of work with different systems. Also, not being able to fit everything in my head as easily helps me write code that is more modular with simpler pieces.

So I feel like I've lost the ability to do the trickiest stuff, but that is a small part of coding and I'll take the skills in overall design any day.

Check your blood sugar and blood pressure. That is what got me, for a long time I had a lot of brain fog and just was operating at around 50% which was enough to get me by but once those issues were resolved I feel fine now.

Yoga/Breathing?

I've always felt I have to be extra careful about explaining/communicating, as the direct translation of my thought process doesn't deliver. I don't mind it much; I feel it's just a quirk I have to be aware of.

On the other hand, after a long and tiring coding session just talking normal stuff gets cumbersome but that, I figure, is just tiredness and passes soon enough.

He did not ever express concern. The weird thing about the disease is it’s not like Alzheimer’s where you realize you’re forgetting things. Instead it seems you lose the ability to realize. I think by the time he’d be concerned he had lost the ability to be concerned, if that makes any sense.

Lots of people around him did. However, I don’t think any of us thought it was a disease. We just thought he was becoming a jerk or “couldn’t scale” as Cloudflare became a bigger organization. I was angry at him when he left. Felt like he’d abandoned this project we’d started together.

I feel incredibly sad and guilty I didn’t even question whether he could be sick until when I heard his diagnosis about 6 months after he’d left the company.

I was walking down a street in London when you called me to tell me about the diagnosis. I stopped on a street corner (corner of Adeline Place and Bedford Avenue) and talked to you.

Everything I'd seen Lee do and especially some of the last meetings I had with him at work that were so difficult and I kept wondering why he seemed like such a jerk, all that suddenly made horrifying sense.

I felt so awful for my own reaction to him. And guilty.

Hmm, I've experienced the same thing. My hunch is that this is related to spending long periods of time in front of a computer, with internet addiction gradually making my ability to focus worse and worse. I honestly think I was better at reading difficult material when I was a teenager.

I think you just have to retrain your brain to focus in other ways - exercise is shown to improve learning and brain function. There's definitely a relationship between physical health and mental health, and I'm guessing that physical health is an area that a lot of us software devs are neglecting.

Can you elaborate on the theory?

I tried reading the article but can't make too much sense of it.

While obviously neurodegerative disorders manifest somewhat differently for everyone, I have some anecdotal evidence pointing the opposite direction. I've known people starting to undergo dementia (as a general term, may have been Parkinson's, etc.) that were aware of their decline. I think the most common example of that was the feeling among them that "I used to be able to do this..."

I'm by no means qualified to make any actual statements about this case, but I don't think that the ability to reflect on degradation is perfectly coupled with a lack of it.

Blood pressure has been tested, and is normal (120/70).

I'd be surprised if I had a blood sugar problem. No family history of Type-1 diabetes. I'm thin/muscular. Workout regularly (lift+run).

I suppose it's possible, but I would be surprised. Human body is a weird thing.

They studied motivation & effort in rats, essentially asking the question:

"What makes you work hard for a big (but delayed) reward, when you could just take the easy (but smaller) reward?"

I think of my current state as, always seeking the easy reward. I utterly lack the motivation, energy, and focus, to pursue prolonged difficult tasks (like good programming takes).

When you think about it, we (humans) face this question every day. Why do you get up, and work on hard problems, when you could just sit and watch YouTube? There's got to be something motivating you to sit down, and do the work.

What they found in the study is that if they blocked D1 and D2 receptors, the rats stopped working for the big reward. They would just sit there, and take the small reward. Or, they'd do nothing at all. They became lazy, unmotivated, blobs.

If they supplemented with D-Amphetamine they were able to reverse the effect. Thereby demonstrating, that it's actually the failure to activate D1 and D2 receptors that causes rats to give up on hard work. DOPAMINE is responsible for activating these receptors, and it's these receptors that give you the "OOMF" to get up, and get shit done.

Historically dopamine is seen as the "reward" but that's not really the case. Dopamine is the fuel. It's the catalyst. It's the "mental energy" that gets you off your ass.

So my theory is that, in myself, something is either blocking D1 and D2 receptors... or I've "used up" my dopamine reserves in the brain my continually slamming them with YouTube, gaming, and general computer use. My brain now looks for this high everywhere. Reading a book stands no chance, as it doesn't release anywhere near the dopamine of clicking through YouTube or playing video games.

My baseline is fucked, essentially. So, I am going to begin the hard work of reseting this baseline... No YouTube, no Games. Will report back in a few months.

That seems to make sense and seems to be happening to a lot of us. I think the dopamine-being-reward hypothesis has been proven to be an oversimplification[1]:

"Dopamine was originally thought of as critical in the pleasure" systems of the brain. It was thought that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment and pleasure, thereby motivating you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs. But then research began to show that dopamine is also critical in causing seeking behavior. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information."

I've also noticed that if I try listening to music and my brain is being very picky with my playlist, then I know that the day will probably be filled with apathy and anhedonia.[2]

How much do you think the instant gratification society that we're living in plays a role in this behavior? The internet has made food, sex, goods, etc so easy to get, which may cause issues with dopamine management that our ancestors didn't have.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-wise/201802/th...

https://www.wired.com/2011/07/sapolsky-on-dopamine-not-about...

[2]https://www.pnas.org/content/116/9/3793

Sometimes the internet is so small. I’ve had a bad time lately with my attention span, some depression, etc. I looked around and found the same theory. This has legs since I game a lot, sit at a pc a lot, and browse the web constantly.

In an effort (prayer) to help fix it, I am selling my iPhone 11 Pro for a SE. I am selling my PC and iPad for a small laptop. I am also purchase 2-3 books that look interesting and plan to try reading those.

My goal is to slow down my brains access to dopamine for a time and see where that leaves me.

Just a theory!

> How much do you think the instant gratification society that we're living in plays a role in this behavior?

Yea, my theory is that for some people (like myself), the instant-gratification society has been terrible for mental health. I have effectively retrained my brain to be stimulated by only exciting + novel things. Things that illicit huge dopamine releases due to their nature being inherently novel/new.

Take YouTube as an example. Pull down on the page, and it's like a slot machine. Page loads a whole new grid of fresh - potentially click worthy - videos!

The eyes/brain scan the page looking for a hit. BINGO you see a video that catches your interest. Click. Ahh, satisfying transition instantly to the video. Boring? Click back at the home page, and start the slot machine again. Rinse, repeat.

That cycle of chance (load the grid) --> seek (search the grid visually) --> instant reward (click the video) is what's so dangerous. Takes almost no mental, or physical effort, to carry out this cycle.

IMO, it's exploiting a very primitive system:

chance (randomness) --> stimulates effort --> get reward.

You will naturally tend toward systems that minimize effort, and maximize reward. Everything else will feel like a giant burden, or will lack a stimulating effect entirely.

You can see this same cycle in things like Facebook, Instagram, Google News, or any video game. Minimal effort required, to capture your attention (effectively blasting dopamine).

I like the way you think. You should write a blog!

I'm the same. Often incapable of grasping a solution which I know is just within reach. With some problems I can "feel" my brain just blocking, I can't visualise complex data structures. I'll spend days staring at a problem until I give up and ask a colleague who quickly points out the obviously solution. Pretty embarrassing.

I have similar problems. Some of it might be because of underlying issues we'll probably never learn about it, but some of it is also social media and information overload.

There's so much shit bombarding us every day, all engineered to provide a dopamine fix and I 100% believe it's affecting our brains.

This. I agree with.

I have to force myself to only check my phone at certain times, and ensure that I don't use it too often. Ever since I have enabled night mode on my iPhone I find myself less distracted and getting better sleep. I also put apps like instagram, snapchat inside folders on a different page so they are always out of my sight.

I'm in the same boat. Sometime in late spring 2018 my productivity plummeted. Same did my activity on StackOverflow.

However I think what's a huge contributing factor is gaining experience. With every structure we come up with, every function and/or abstraction we also build a mental picture of all the possible dependencies it comes with. We see the bigger picture. And we see the same (potential) paths of failure again and again and again…

I found that another favorite activity of mine didn't suffer: Designing electronics. I can still (productively) spend hours on tinkering with SPICE simulations, soldering in-situ projects, and so on.

And recently I also discovered that it's not programming itself that has become harder for me. It is programming in domains I am extremely familiar with that I'm less productive in. If it's in an area I'm not familiar with, things are much easier, because I don't see the big picture yet.

That sounds like something to worry about the appropriate amount. Mostly by going to a doctor and getting a physical.