alt Hacker NewsI 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.
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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.
It absolutely sucks that this is happening to you and your country. All because of the deranged ruler of Russia. Please know that most of us here in the US support you even if it doesn't look like it based on the deranged rantings of our ruler and the actions of his oligarchs.
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.
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.