A suicide victim who gave up too easily

[Gadfly]

A smart and professionally talented man killed himself, the other day. Apparently, he was laid off from his last job as a financial analyst. In his suicide note, he wrote that he couldn’t bear the thought of living in poverty.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... icide.html

Based on his LinkedIn profile, he obviously was well-educated, had expertise in several fields, worked many years, and was still relatively young.

But for all his intelligence and skills, he still thought he was screwed, and he gave up all hope. You would think he had at least one skill that could earn him a half-decent living, perhaps in a cheaper area of the country, or abroad. Maybe I’m missing something.

[Gadfly]

His suicide note:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bky0yrn3d3sp ... Letter.pdf

[Cornfed]

Maybe he had to pay vaginamony to some ex-bitch on the grounds of imputed income. If these upper-middle-class people are going to off themselves at the first sign of adversity, it shows why they are so politically correct. They must live in constant fear of any misspoken word that would have a vauge chance of leading to the diminishment of what GovCorp is handing them.

[Gadfly]

I think he had a gf, that's it. No wife or kids. It's just odd that someone who seemed like a highly-skilled professional would despair of ever earning a decent living. Maybe it was just a failure of nerve.

[Zambales]

Well-educated? I beg to differ.

Sounds like the guy was a vacuous, entitled, self-absorbed p***y, who had lived on easy street all his life and couldn't stand the heat when the shit hit the fan - something your average person has to deal with multiple times throughout their lives.

The comment about poverty is laughable especially since he still had an income from running a consulting firm. Has he never visited a Third World country?

Any normal person in a similar situation would brush themselves down and not wallow in self-pity taking their own life needlessly in the process.

[Kradmelder]

A wife and kids you would never off yourself as no insurance would pay out. Just a weak sister who never had a Sgt major make him know what real suffering is and to man up, stand up face up to the what you are faced with. Also he is a wanker with no mates to hive him a prod. He looks like a bit of a weak sister and nerdy. like wtf. 48 and no kids despite being successful. Some heifer would had wanted him to get her bred if he were any kind of man. Even if just to be a provider for the kids after she farks him over.

[Zambales]

Just a weak sister who never had a Sgt major make him know what real suffering is and to man up, stand up face up to the what you are faced with.

You don't necessarily need one of those to put hairs on your chest.

48 and no kids despite being successful.

To be fair, that can be a wise decision especially nowadays!

[Eric]

A wife and kids you would never off yourself as no insurance would pay out. Just a weak sister who never had a Sgt major make him know what real suffering is and to man up, stand up face up to the what you are faced with. Also he is a wanker with no mates to hive him a prod. He looks like a bit of a weak sister and nerdy. like wtf. 48 and no kids despite being successful. Some heifer would had wanted him to get her bred if he were any kind of man. Even if just to be a provider for the kids after she farks him over.

You sure have a way with words Kradmelder. Just saying, I agree with your points though. He had enough balls to kill himself, let's give him a break.

[desembarazarse]

The comment about poverty is laughable especially since he still had an income from running a consulting firm.

How much income? It's possible to have an income and still be in poverty.

[Adama]

I think if a person commits suicide, they already hated their lives. It is just that whatever event took place was either the excuse or the trigger.

This man was probably never going to be poor. Maybe he deceived himself into believing that he'd never earn a middle class income again. Even then, we know his family wasn't going to let him live on the street. He even had a girlfriend.

[desembarazarse]

Even then, we know his family wasn't going to let him live on the street.

He wrote, "I am fortunate that I have no living parents to disappoint" in his suicide note. Do we know if he had brothers or sisters? Maybe you were thinking that uncles, aunts, or cousins might have helped him?

The guy was age 48 with a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Sustainable Development. I think I can understand how he might have had difficulty in the job market. In his own words, he was "overqualified for meaningless work, underexperienced for skilled work, without resources to be a deployer of capital, too old to market myself based on potential, and with too few resources and time to retool."

[Zambales]

The comment about poverty is laughable especially since he still had an income from running a consulting firm.

How much income? It's possible to have an income and still be in poverty.

The word 'poverty' gets banded about far too freely. Notice the difference?

[Kradmelder]

The comment about poverty is laughable especially since he still had an income from running a consulting firm.

How much income? It's possible to have an income and still be in poverty.

The word 'poverty' gets banded about far too freely. Notice the difference?

Ja. One of them worked to make himself a success and offed himself because he didnt succeed. The others will never try to be a success and expect the world to look after them with hand outs and should off themselves and their whole tribe.

[publicduende]

I totally "get" the guy, like I got most of the "inexplicable" suicides of young and apparently confident and successful people in the City over the past years.

The world of finance is one big fat sewage tank bucket of greed, fake, naivety to outright cruelty, and more greed.

Most of those who live and work in it face the triple whammy:

1) pretend that what they do or peddle is actually to the wider benefit of the markets or society,
2) pretend that they are happy with the silver lining, the reward of a higher-than-average compensation that fuels a higher-than-average lifestyle,
3) pretend that the outcome of what they do or peddle that is being smashed in their face every day - rising inequality, disintegration of large areas of our socio-economic fabric, and irreversible loss of confidence in policymakers and authorities - are not their fault, they are the product of "model errors", "macro-economic shocks" and Trump/Russia/China/Iran/Syria.

The right word is cognitive dissonance. Few men have the thick skin to bear this triple whammy every morning they wake up for more than a few years. Working on the IT side, I was blessed to be little more than a backstage carpenter and yet I couldn't bear the Theatre of the Absurd for more than 8 years.

I looked at the CV of this particular guy on LinkedIn. Academic assignments in the financial world are some of the most frustrating one could ever face: they require significant knowledge of the subject matter, flexibility to align (bend?) to whatever economic or operational dogma needs be taught, no job security/continuity, and yet they pay peanuts compared to a real job in the industry. This guy had probably been dreaming of being a quantitative analyst since he entered Columbia.

He finally landed a job as a Quant Analyst, albeit for a small fish, a minor real estate re-insurer. Not bad, but light years away from the "real shit" of investment banks and multi-billion hedge funds. He must have desperately wanted to feel that yes, "he made it", but he was still making a fraction of what quantitative people with a PhD in AI or atmospheric physics make in Wall Street. Like all of us, he needed solace and reassurance but he still had too much to benchmark himself against. That was probably the tension that had him already at 99% of tipping point.

And then he lost that job. Maybe he had a large mortgage to pay, a few more Joneses to impress other than himself. Maybe he felt he could climb up another couple of rungs before the gap with the rest of the ladder became unreachable. He just did not know how he could pull that, in the middle of the best-concealed, worst economic depression in modern history.

Even in his last letter, he kept the same veneer of normalcy and politeness. He sounds like an analyst communicating his audience about one of the companies in the portfolio being about to close, or an that investment is "regrettably, under-performing against expectations, due to unmitigated, systematic factors".

Had he penned a few f**k offs, had he insulted all the people he was forced to respect, all the things he had to teach with his mouth while secretly vomiting them with his brain. Had he been himself for once in his life since he got high on dope in his college years, he would have destroyed a few items of furniture and perhaps spat the blob out of his system. Maybe he would have started a small organic lemonade business, he would have vaccinated a few kids in Africa or maybe banged a few 20 years olds over here in Pinas.

The shame is not in the hopelessly self-reassured, dramatically dissonant, life he had led. The shame is that he was one simple Moment of Truth away from "making it".

Rest in peace, Mr. Chadwick. One too many to believe that giving up a rigged game equates to losing it.

[Cornfed]

You know, maybe he accurately assessed what was going to happen and did the right thing. Seriously, what life worth living from his point of view could he expect?