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Comment by sonnyblarney | Hacker News Reader

It's plain wrong to claim that some angry manager 'caused' someone to kill themselves.

Also, it's questionable if there was in fact a 'rash of suicides':

France has a rate of suicide of 12.9 / 100K / year. [1]

France Telecom has 95 000 employees In France alone. [2]

Here's the title of the Telegraph article: "Why have 24 France Telecom workers killed themselves in the past 19 months?" [3]

Well, it would be expected that about 20.5 FT employees will commit suicide every 19 months or so, sadly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_S.A.

[3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechno...

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As another commenter has mentioned; it is unlikely a sample of FTEs is going to reflect the general population for suicides so that isn't a very powerful argument.

But that isn't what jumps out at me - to me the real issue is that if management pressure is so bad it is provoking suicides then there will be lots of evidence for it. Presumably the reason people are talking about it in newspaper articles is because they have seen evidence and are asking questions.

The stats you have quoted suggest the number of suicides is already above average. That, combined with evidence of a problem, is very likely what has triggered the conversation at all.

I've seen some angry workers, but generally all they want is more pay or to work with better conditions going forward. I'm not sure how many of them would bother trying to get managers imprisoned without good cause. I'd guess it would be about as rare as management policies being bad enough to cause suicides. The media might have wiped out a whole heap of nuance - so it isn't worth getting worked up over the case - but if lawsuits are flying then it is more likely than not that something went very visibly wrong.

" it is unlikely a sample of FTEs is going to reflect the general population for suicides so that isn't a very powerful argument."

Actually, the data frames the argument quite well, moreover, there's nary any way one is going to get better sampling.

" if management pressure is so bad it is provoking suicides then there will be lots of evidence for it"

It's incredulous to suggest that 'management is provoking suicides'. It is completely absurd.

When, in modern history do you suggest that this has ever happened? Ever?

Wouldn't people quit their jobs? Or get different jobs before resorting to 'death'?

We could all easily demonstrated working conditions elsewhere in the Western world where conditions are 'just as bad' - ergo, the logic of 'they were provoked into suicide' makes no sense whatsoever.

And FYI my data demonstrated that the number of suicides is well within normalized range. An variation of 20% in one year is going to be normal.

That's a common explanation, however it's necessary to refine the statistics, because FT employees may not match the general population.

Would be fairly easy: compare suicides in FT across years, and with another telecom company going through similar changes.

I would expect that this should be rather easy to confirm (or disprove) by breaking down the suicides across the age/profession/social status.

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