Two in five tech workers are depressed, claims survey. Amazon workers top list

Just under two in five (39%) workers in tech firms are depressed, according to a new survey by Blind, an anonymous social network for professionals.

It found that Amazon had the highest number of depressed workers closely followed by Microsoft and Intel. Least depressed, according to the survey, were Apple workers and those working for Google and Cisco. 

Users on Blind talk anonymously about burnout, high-stress levels, insomnia, overworking and irregular work hours. These are all characteristics that have shown to increase a person’s chance of developing depression.

According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. It affects people individually and as a community and costs employers billions of dollars every year.

So Blind decided to survey our community of tech employees and see what percentage of employees in the tech industry identify themselves as being in the state of depression.

Its user base includes over 44,000 employees from Microsoft, 31,000 from Amazon, 12,000 from Google, 8,500 from Uber, 8,500 from Facebook, 7,000 from Apple, 5,500 from LinkedIn, and 4,500 from Salesforce, just to name a few.

It asked users to answer ‘True’ or ‘False’ to this statement: I believe I am depressed.  

Here’s what it found:

• 38.78% answered with ‘True’

• Amazon led the way with 43.4% of employees answering with ‘True’.

• Rounding out the top three were Microsoft (with 41.58%) and Intel (with 38.86%).

• Apple had the lowest percentage of employees answering true with 30.61%.

• The two other companies with the lowest percentage of employees answering true are Google (with 33.11%) and Cisco (with 34.69%).

   

More survey details:

The survey ran from Nov 20 through Nov 28, 2018, and was answered by 10,081 users of the Blind app. Users could only answer once.