35-year-old Indian IT worker dies in Microsoft office, suspected of "work overload"

A 35-year-old Indian Microsoft engineer was found dead in a California office. The family believes that the cause of death was exhaustion at work.

Prateek Pandey entered the building on the evening of August 19, and his body was discovered by employees that night. The police arrived on the night of August 20 and stated that they “did not find any signs of any suspicious activity or behavior,” meaning it was not a violent death. The investigation is ongoing, but the case is not being treated as a criminal one.

The cause of death is still unknown, according to the Santa Clara County medical examiner. For its part, Microsoft is also conducting its own investigation and has not made any official statements. But the family has its own assumptions: Pandey often worked late for very long periods of time. They believe that the man died because of overwork. His relatives called on companies to pay more attention to employees who regularly appear at the office at night to avoid such tragedies.

The developer has been working at Microsoft since 2020, and before that he had experience at Walmart, Apple, and Illumina. His last product was Microsoft Fabric, which is used for data analysis and competes with Snowflake. Pandey reported to Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Cloud and Artificial Intelligence. Pandey came to the United States ten years ago to earn a master’s degree at San Jose State University. His body will be sent to India, where his parents and two sisters live.

Of course, we can’t say for sure, but it is possible that such overtime work could be due to the fear of losing their jobs amid ongoing mass layoffs. For example, recently Microsoft fires more than 6000 people in favor of AI, which was the largest decline since 2023. Although the reason for this behavior could be personal problems or depression. In any case, we do not recommend seeking support from ChatGPT. Recently, the psychosis around AI has only been escalating: Ex-Yahoo CEO kills himself and his mother, chatbot wrote a suicide note to a womanand the other man was admitted to a psychiatric hospital because he was advised to poison himself. But we repeat: it is not a fact that the case of the 35-year-old Indian engineer is related to mental problems or pressure due to the risk of losing his job. Although this possibility is quite real.

Source: The Times of India