I saw something similar on Twitter responding to 45yo software engineers making comments of depair in that HN thread about the increased suicide rate of middle-aged men.

For some reason I'm stuck in a real depressing, doomer algorithm / homepage on Twitter. But everyone on my homepage seems to have a take on the HNer comments along the lines of "see, this is why you don't make your job into your identity".

But that's such an antihuman response. The only reason you can put decades into a field to grind and build expertise is because you have an identity-level interest in a subject.

It's also not a good thing if the optimal way to live going forward is to have no passion for anything lest it changes so that we won't feel bad. I don't think that's possible unless you remove the human part of our brains or make life so horrible that we're happy just to survive another day.

> the increased suicide rate of middle-aged men

Source? There has not been a statistically-significant increase in middle-aged male suicide rates between 2023 and 2024 confirmed data [1]. (2025 breakouts aren’t out yet, but top-line data show decreases.)

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db572.htm

> For some reason I'm stuck in a real depressing, doomer algorithm / homepage on Twitter

At the risk of taking this off topic, the reason is Twitter. Don't go on Twitter and the doomer algorithm disappears from your life.