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What Happened to Lee

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1298 points jgrahamc | 4 comments | 15 Apr 20 14:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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rubicon33 ◴[15 Apr 20 20:42 UTC] No.22882787[source]▶
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.

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warent ◴[16 Apr 20 03:04 UTC] No.22885622[source]▶
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.

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1. eastdakota ◴[16 Apr 20 04:41 UTC] No.22886134[source]▶
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.
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2. rubicon33 ◴[16 Apr 20 04:54 UTC] No.22886198[source]▶
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?

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3. eastdakota ◴[16 Apr 20 14:01 UTC] No.22889441[source]▶
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.

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4. jgrahamc ◴[16 Apr 20 14:22 UTC] No.22889641{3}[source]▶
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.