Hi, I’m Greg.
I am a developer at Table XI in Chicago. I have Type II Bipolar and ADHD. For years I was crippled by intermittent depression and general inability to get shit done. Thanks to meds, a therapist, my wife, and Table XI not firing me when they should have, I’ve been stable for the last four years, and have climbed out of the hole that I thought I’d be stuck in forever.
Back in September, we hired a developer named Caleb Cornman. He was brilliant, humble, and a great teacher. In November, he passed away from an unintentional drug overdose the day after he missed what would have been his first appointment with a psychiatrist.
A few weeks after that, I started speaking publicly about my story, in an attempt to eliminate the stigma of mental illness within the developer community. This forum is a response to the overwhelming number of conversations and emails that have followed those presentations.
Anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, bipolar, schizophrenia… these are far more prevalent in the developer community than you would believe, but we don’t talk about it because of the shame. This forum is a place to share our stories, and help our friends.
The tech community has an incredible gift for solving problems once they are made apparent. The stigma of mental illness is killing our friends. Let’s fix that.