Comment by impostor313131
5 days ago
I am 36 and I have been thinking about suicide a tiny bit lately. But I will share my perspective with you, hopefully to draw a picture how different circumstances can be. I live in Ukraine and my optionality in life collapsed the day the war started. I had a good life, good income and traveled a lot. I used to dream of a career in big tech and life in different countries just to give it a taste. Now I am not able to leave the country because I am a male of conscription age. My city is being attacked by drones daily, and ballistic rockets a few times a month. Witnessing your country getting wrecked with rockets and drones is hell of an experience. Businesses, electricity plants, infrastructure, gas stations becoming rubble. There is also little hope in a resolution of this soon. I have to work on a job which provides a reservation from military service if I don’t want to fight, otherwise I will be picked up on the street to join the military.
I have it so much better than a lot of my countrymen, but holy shit does this suck and it is not getting better anytime soon. The hopelessness gets you.
Software engineering is one of my last remaining pillars of life remaining more or less intact. At least I get to write some code and make computers do things.
Life is a strange thing.
18. same ass of a country (to outsiders, have a look at all the countless debacles concerning corruption to understand why "ass"), except that I have 7 mostly worry-free years left to live and the market for juniors (and thus, me) is closed. if I get drafted, I'm waiting out for an opportunity to shoot my head.
honestly, having a decently paying blue-collar job made me think whether tech is worth it at all, given that I'll lose all the extra benefits (from canteen to proper bomb shelter to gym to commute) and cut my already tight paycheck by 20-25%. for what? for "tech"? where I have to be able to wake up at 3AM when the client's LLM took down their prod, commute to a vulnerable office in Kyiv (and pay for expensive AND equally vulnerable housing there), live under a threat of getting fired because I was "not AI enough" or whatever management wants, or because I don't have gigabit Wi-Fi in the shelter? fuck it, I'll rather be a night-shift loader and idk, learn embedded at home.
the world devolving into proompting has ruined tech for me. prolly I'll get a Cat. C driver's license and spend little what I have remaining of life on the road. if I get lucky, I may eventually reach CE and Euro 95 certs, and that in turn gives me some sort of safety against mobilization.
if the war ends before I become 25, I'll likely end up a stereotypical himbo truck driver. I'm tired of having to perform the smartness.
You have my sympathy. I can't offer you any advice, but I was just thinking earlier about how awful I feel for younger people working in this industry, and that didn't even include being Ukrainian.
Thank you, and one in the above comment, for sharing this. I feel comments like these need to be seen more frequently by people not in your situation. Hard claim I can even imagine what it feels like.
> if I get drafted, I'm waiting out for an opportunity to shoot my head
Huh?
> surrender to the other side (Russia I believe?) and spend 1-2 years [...] citizenship proceedings [...]
I almost read it as an insult, but I'll assume that you either forgot or didn't know one peculiar fact: Russian army almost never keeps their POWs alive, and even if it does, it absolutely never lets them out of the army into Russia - only back into Ukraine, through the battlefield.
this would be a valid option if I was a Russian who does not want to fight Ukraine, sure. Ukraine is ± alright with Russian POWs, partly because we have Europe watching over our shoulders. the reasoning behind your idea is sound, assuming that both sides wage an honest and Geneva-accurate war, except that Russia prefers to utilize the Genevan convention as a piece of toilet paper.
so, your idea effectively becomes suicidal, but you also get a great deal of suffering. why not cut the suffering while I can?
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I hope more than anything Ukrainians will stay strong and persevere. Perhaps not even for themselves or their country, but just to witness the enemy collapse when it all ends. The mere fact that you are Ukrainian and live in Ukraine invokes a certain level of respect.
> Perhaps not even for themselves or their country, but just to witness the enemy collapse when it all ends.
I hope more than anything that Ukraine (and Russia, and Israel, and Palestine, and all the war-torn regions of the world) can one day be free of this ghoulish mindset, that world leaders will choose life instead of worshipping death
You're probably was lucky to be born in war-free region, so it is easy to label things as ghoulish from a position of morally concerned outsider. You was never forced to leave your homeland and become a refugee, you was not separated from your loved ones by the border of warring countries, your friends and loved ones were not killed or imprisoned by invading nazi army. And it's a good thing for yourself, but you are not in a suitable position to judge Ukrainians or Syrians or other peoples who have been through it.
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This consistent oversimplification and allergy to reading actual history and being an informed citizen is what ensures these types of wars will continue
Yeah wishing to see people who tried to torture and kill you dead is ghoulish.
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How can you group Ukraine and Palestine in with Russia and Israel?
Russia and Israel are the countries causing the regions to be war torn. They are mass murdering invaders, no better than Nazi Germany.
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No. It was Russias inability to accept sovereignty of Ukraine. How is that hard to comprehend?
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Let me just try to understand your position here: Ukrainians are warmongers?
What does that make the Russians?
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It is my one sincere wish in life that the suffering of Ukrainians is not for naught and that the people of Europe support you until victory.
But Europe isn’t really supporting Ukraine, they’re just providing enough supplies to keep them in the fight. No state seems willing to provide enough assistance to allow for Ukrainian victory, because of the costs and risks associated with that aid. Even countries at little risk of reprisal from Russia are reluctant to do much at all.
As such, all of us doing nothing more than “voicing support” on the internet and some far-away rally, should offer our empathy, and not presume to tell them how much we’re “helping”.
> But Europe isn’t really supporting Ukraine, they’re just providing enough supplies to keep them in the fight
What is your definition of "supporting", if "providing support" doesn't count?
Ukraine recieves 80B EUR in aid each year from various international partners. There is plenty of support.
You can learn more from a German, independent, non-profit research institute (Kiel) here: https://www.kielinstitut.de/research/topics/war-against-ukra...
Europe is divided by propaganda and the situation is quite volatile at the moment. Some European countries do support Ukraine more than others..
A lot of European countries (especially those closest to Russia) are doing a fuckton relative to their economies.
The US is the despicable laggard, even when accounting for our distance from the action.
(And especially when accounting for the fact we promised them our protection of their sovereignty)
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>No state seems willing to provide enough assistance to allow for Ukrainian victory
Because Putin will never back down, by definition a Ukrainian "victory" would require the fall of Russia. Which would likely require a world war.
Ukraine is provided with tech, weapons intelligence, and all kinds of equipment. You are spewing nonsense.
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You seem to think that if Ukraine gives up all will be good. That Russia will play nice, try not to subjugate Ukraine fully Belarus style.
As long as Ukraine wants to be free they don't have much choice since Russia is what it is.
How would you end the suffering? That is such a naive take, when there is no such option on the table.
If Ukraine lose - russians will not only he able to bomb civilians from the distance, but will literally be able to go to their homes.
The suffering will multiply but you will most likely not hear about it, so you will be in peace with yourself.
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Yeah and also the UK should have just let Nazi Germany take over. And France should not have resisted as much, that caused too much suffering. And basically anyone who opposed the holocaust. Sure, six million Jews died, but by defeating the people who did it, even more people died. Better to just let them do it.
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I'm extremely sorry to hear about your life and honestly I don't want to be someone who is provides faux comfort saying everything will be alright. However, I am trying to imagine myself in your shoes and if it ever came to a point where I thought it my life is better off taken out, I would be willing to explore my absolute last options, no matter how miniscule the probability may be. Maybe some variant of high-risk emmigration? Maybe there's a waterway or a boat route or underground passage or forest or something.If I was anyway planning to take my life away without giving these extremely low probability options a chance, might as well go down with a fight. Probably this is naive, but that's only because I have personally never been in such a situation ever to even be able to provide a decent enough advice. I am completely baffled and very sorry you are going through this. You're not the first one to share this experience and probably won't be the last and at times like this it irritates me the feminist organizations all over the world have been dead silent on this matter. Equality only when it benefits them, I guess. I wish you good luck and hopefully get to meet you in person to learn of your amazing story of survival.
Good luck!
Necessity is the mother of invention and I can only imagine the volume of necessity that your environment demands. If fighting is not an option, can you use your skills to make some lemonade out of a giant bowl of lemons?
Hang in there. This, too, shall pass.
Life is strange. And circumstance even stranger.
I guess a die is rolled somewhere in the universe and we are born—who knew where, who knew when.
And there are many who are even less fortunate than ourselves.
Whatever I'm about to say may sound hollow, given that I've not been in your shoes.
At my previous (well known tech) company, we had a number of older Romanians who grew up in the Communist era. I became close with one of them. And the stories he told me were just harrowing. They were not at war, but the government simply couldn't provide for the people (other than giving them a good education). The struggle for basic necessities in the 80's became real. He had a wife and a newborn, and the wife was sick, and they couldn't afford any furniture. There was real concern the baby would die because the mother couldn't get even basic rest (no mattress, no bed, sleeping on concrete floor, etc).
The stuff he had to do to ensure she got a bed was crazy.
And then later there were food shortages, etc. Dodging bullets, etc.
But they all somehow persevered and focused on surviving. And then got out of the country as soon as the borders opened up. Eventually, because of their skills, they got great jobs. Very senior and well respected in the company.
But of course, they know people who did lose hope and ultimately committed suicide.
Living in the US, I've encountered lots of former refugees from war zones. People like yourself with skills did well here. For sure they struggled, but eventually they all "made it".
If you have skills, I hope you can last long enough to get there too.
Did you consider voluteering with the Ukraine Army to be a drone pilot? There are many jobs that are far from the zero line, so very little risk of death/injury. Also, from everything that I read, most people cherish the friendships they build during time of war. There are few things that bring together men fighting a common enemy.
Can you suggest some things foreigners could do to help the situation in Ukraine?
You can actually make donations for various causes including sending batches of drones for the Ukrainian on the frontline. Look up Jake Broe for example, he does organize such campaigns.
There’s also https://savelife.in.ua/en/
Can you avoid conscription by volunteering your SW engineering talents for the defense sector? That was an option in many 20th-century wars but I don't know if it's relevant these days.
As an American, I'd like to say I'm as horrified by our faithless leadership as you are frightened by the circumstances you're facing, but that just sounds pointlessly shallow. All of Western civilization has a stake in keeping Putin at bay, but only your country is being forced to confront that fact right now. We should feel grateful to Ukraine, and in fact many of us do.
Suffice it to say we aren't all aligned with Musk and Trump, and many of us fervently wish we could do more to help in a meaningful capacity. Trouble is, about a third of our eligible voters have decided to put a single party decisively in charge of all of our branches of government, and the way our system is structured, that leaves the rest of us more or less powerless. That will hopefully change soon, but we'll see. Try to stay strong, and we will try as well.
You can, but as usual the opportunities are limited as military don’t need that much full stack engineers.
On the other hand senior embedded/mechanical/electronics/AI engineers are of the very high demand.
What is a senior AI engineer? Genuinely interested.
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Go and fight back against the people invading your country.
I have non-Ukrainian family members who flew thousands of km over to fight for you right now; you should be 'ahead of them in line' for the cause.
When the war is over you can build things with software; it won't be as fulfilling.
This is one of the densest comments here yet.
It's the only sane comment because nobody else seems to face the 'Elephant in the Room', obviously that the situation is existential for everyone, the nation is under assault and that his contemporaries are fighting an invader.
It's distasteful for people to wallow in the lost hope of their own self-serving concerns and complain about their personal 'career trifles' when their community is facing violence and annihilation.
Acting in the service of others, standing up for one's own dignity is the most deeply fulfilling and transformative actions one could ever take.
Many of my own family members volunteered to help Europe - literally across generations - then and even now.
The best thing that person can do is stop wallowing in self pity and take action, for others and also themselves.
There are a thousand ways for someone to engaging in helping.
Jeezus christ.
Lost for words fella, lost for words.
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Easy to say when drones & ballistic missiles aren't dropping left and right whereabouts you live...
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And what about Russia occupying a fifth of Georgia? Is Georgia a Jewish controlled country too? I feel like the easier explanation is Russia being the largest country on the planet with a ton of asian minorities because they've done this scorched earth conquest bullshit for centuries
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You are spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.
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If you're going to kill yourself anyway, why not just acquiesce? (To Russia.) This question may be stupid depending on the reader but I'm asking sincerely.
Not OP, but i've seen footage from that war, and sometimes you can't decide how to go out. I've seen someone grasping for air like 30 minutes, while their face is half blown out. A death is a mercy on them.