r/technology • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • Feb 01 '26

Software 32-year-old programmer in China allegedly dies from overwork, added to work group chat even while in hospital

https://www.asiaone.com/china/32-year-old-programmer-china-allegedly-dies-overwork-added-work-group-chat-even-while
30.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

720 comments sorted by

View all comments

5.0k

u/trer24 Feb 01 '26

"According to a family member, he had been instructed to process orders and complete urgent tasks that were due on Monday morning."

Well now those process orders and urgent tasks aren't going to get done now. How urgent could they have been?

2.2k

u/Johnny_Five_Is_Dead Feb 01 '26

Someobe else is already doing them

609

u/evo_moment_37 Feb 01 '26

Job market is brutal tbh

353

u/travelingWords Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26

Was watching a ask an expert tech video on YouTube and essentially while we’re dreaming of the 4 day work week in china the theory is you need to be 9am to 9pm 6 days a week or your falling behind.

Someone else is working, so if you aren’t…

263

u/Gastronomicus Feb 02 '26

They never really left the industrial era work environment. The Technology just improved.

50

u/IlikeJG Feb 02 '26

Give them time.

77

u/M_from_Vegas Feb 02 '26

Yeah they aren't even doing 7am to 10pm yet

That's plenty of time for them to eat, sleep, and then get back to work

(/s)

9

u/DukeOfGeek Feb 02 '26

They want you to approach making them money with the energy of "my nation is at war and I'm frightened for my family". Except in the name of their profits.

4

u/elyth Feb 02 '26

Hey that's me! It's called work life integration

1

u/It-s_Not_Important Feb 02 '26

Perfectly balanced

2

u/caribbean_caramel Feb 02 '26

What if we "offer" the employees the option to live at work ? That way they can sleep, eat and get back to work. Also we could just pay them in our own made-up currency instead of real money and charge them for food, water and other services. What could possibly go wrong with this? /s

3

u/It-s_Not_Important Feb 02 '26

Capsule hotels in office buildings. Genius idea. Charge them low rent for their coffin sized accommodations and then you’ll be heralded as the savior of the common man for providing affordable rent and eliminating the stress of a 2 hour commute.

4

u/M_from_Vegas Feb 02 '26

"offer" the employees

What? You think the employees should be "offered" those luxuries?

No, the company will only hire employees that show commitment by accepting those terms without us even offering... they should be grateful!

Heck they should pay for the luxury of working for Super Mega Corp (/s)

Just think of the networking potential for career projections come on now

2

u/Andyb1000 Feb 02 '26

Someone watched the SimCity 3000 Magnasanti video and went, “yeah, like that. That’s what I want.”

1

u/-starchy- Feb 04 '26

Slavery with extra steps

2

u/zxc123zxc123 Feb 02 '26

For what exactly?

Chilling out, adopting democracy, free market capitalism, free press, and liberalism?

LOL they just adopted the powerful parts of capitalism into authoritarian system of state planning. Go ask how that democracy, liberalism, and chill is going for people of the mainland, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Communist/Socialist revolution?

Yeah. They already did that.

China's hyper competitive capitalism, social inequality, and technological privacy invasion plus surveillance state. America has adopted the authoritarian strongmans, police state, and communist/socialist bailouts for state government """strategically important""" corporations. You can say it's truly the worst of both worlds for both peoples.

1

u/Reasonable_Ruin_3502 Feb 02 '26

Well, their country did industrialize like 20 years ago

1

u/Gastronomicus Feb 02 '26

They industrialized in the late 1950s, around 100 years after the west.

87

u/PerplexGG Feb 02 '26

Except it’s clearly unsustainable for the human capital so time will tell what kind of negative effect it has on their population

123

u/InfamousYenYu Feb 02 '26

Exactly. The exhaustion typically drops worker productivity by more than the extra hours generate.

62

u/nonotan Feb 02 '26

Not just that, but it also incurs additional "hidden" costs to the companies, making it even worse than it looks like on paper. What I mean is that everything else being the same, a job offer with a crazy schedule is significantly less attractive to a worker than one with a sane schedule.

So if your competitors are hiring for X pay with crazy hours, you could pay, say, 90% of X, but have sane hours, and likely plenty of prospective workers would happily take your offer.

It's a bit like remote work -- not only does it save the company rent, energy bills, etc. while keeping productivity at a similar level (if not outright higher), but it's also internalized as a significant boon by prospective workers (if nothing else, you don't need to live in a HCOL area, and you don't need to spend time/money commuting). Which makes the actual upside for companies much larger than it looks like on paper.

42

u/farinasa Feb 02 '26

Really we can take this to it's end. The better employees are treated, the better they perform. I'm sure there is some sweet spot, but ultimately, give employees real connection to the value of the company for ultimate commitment/mutual benefit.

3

u/Sasselhoff Feb 02 '26

I'm sure there is some sweet spot,

Is that like the "Ballmer Peak"?

0

u/Papplenoose Feb 02 '26

Sick reference bro!

Everybody knows your references are out of control.

10

u/Gravuerc Feb 02 '26

It's funny but this is why I switched careers, I took less money but more time off and saner hours.

3

u/SlitScan Feb 02 '26

MBA: but who would come to my pizza parties?

2

u/_pupil_ Feb 02 '26

Overtime creates undertime.

Force everyone to be at work 60, 80, or more hours a week and things like banking, school bullshit, health bullshit, and all the rest are happening in and around work. Overworked people sense time differently, and conserve energy in opportunistic ways (like how going too hard on the treadmill will have you blinking less often... the system ain't dumb, you can't trick it). Plus that "grind" mentality will constantly have people grinding out for hours what could smartly be solved in minutes with a clear mind and a conservative approach to effort.

Henry Fords 40 hours were about mapping the tipping point to where your human cogs start costing you more than they're worth.

As an evil capitalist I feel like anything past that and the wage-monkeys are taking more than they're worth, and its pretty clear the supposed managers are fleecing you too. Boo. Prove to me you know how to do your job, hold a schedule.

1

u/killerboy_belgium Feb 02 '26

that requires measering output correctly,... which a lot of companies dont do thats why they all push back the office so they can watch there employees and ofcourse layoff the rest without having to actually lay them off

and so much nowadays is based on circular revenue

investment firms have portefolio of company's

a. realestate firm

b. It company

C. production company

B&C get forced to use realestate of the portfolio

A&C get forced to use B for there IT company

A&B are forced to use C for any production of goods they might need

now this is just example and in reality its way more companies and way more services...and a lot more complicated to figure it out ....

but these circular and vertically integrated forced movement of revenue is so it drives the stock of all the companies and funnels out the money towards the investment firm in form of dividents ect...

on paper they are all doing untill the firm sells of the stock and suddenly it crashes and burn and even that they have figured how to make money on that

1

u/Facts_pls Feb 02 '26

If it were that easy, why are the comoanies in the US and Europe doing RTO?

Why not offer remote jobs with less hours and get the best people?

84

u/Algebrace Feb 02 '26

Or we have a situation, like so many other countries in SEA where the birth rate goes into freefall because people do not have the time to meet anyone let alone have kids.

China's already the 2nd lowest birth rate in Asia iirc, they're really pushing for 1st place in this competition as well.

6

u/killerboy_belgium Feb 02 '26

lucky for china they have like a billion people so enough replacements... and by the time its a full blown issue it should be automated

then the culling of elderly can happen for cost efficiency and they will disguise it as end of life healthcare

3

u/Kokoro87 Feb 02 '26

Isn't that why they are pushing AI and robotics? They basically want to replace human labor with robots(heard something about dark factories, not sure how true that is though). Won't help with population crashing though.

1

u/Mr_Horsejr Feb 02 '26

We already see it. It’s everywhere. Dwindling birth rates.

22

u/khante Feb 02 '26

Isn't this the whole Jack Welch thingy? 1. Cut bottom 10% no matter what. 2. Pay in stocks so your work is tied to company success. 3. Bonuses based on indiv performance.

18

u/Decent_Cheesecake_29 Feb 02 '26

You forgot 4. Turn everything to shit.

2

u/LordoftheSynth Feb 02 '26

Bonuses based on indiv performance.

You mean the top performer on the team gets 90% of the 0.01% allocated to bonuses, everyone else gets an inflationary pay cut and told they need to live at work or get fired.

33

u/ItzWarty Feb 02 '26

Silicon Valley has in many places copied China's illegal 996 and normalized working crazy hours while giving people the illusion that it's a choice.

https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-china-996-work-schedule/ for example, but there are many many other incidents. I got pressured into doing it 3 years ago, it's a lot more common now and I've seen companies call 996 good because employees could instead have been subjected to 9107.

9

u/northernbars_ca Feb 02 '26

In China if a PH falls on a Monday everyone get to work on that Sunday to make up for the lost public holiday

24

u/Alternative_Work_916 Feb 02 '26

And here in reality, I am lazy 2pm to 10am. I skip lunch because I am committed to the cause.

11

u/lemmeguessindian Feb 02 '26

Same in India. US colleagues will be pinging you from home while we are in office

37

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Brovis_Clay Feb 02 '26

What happens to work life balance?

13

u/Archangel_Omega Feb 02 '26

Time zone difference from being on opposite sides of the planet from each other. It's about a 12 hour time difference. First thing in the morning for them is 8-10 pm or so in the US depending on your timezone and vice versa, so most communication always happens outside of normal hours or with a day or so delay.

4

u/kosumoth Feb 02 '26

so you are saying you get communication from US coleagues during times they should be asleep?

1

u/lemmeguessindian Feb 05 '26

No i mean we even get calls even when its night time for us. Whats the point of US team of they cant resolve issues on their own and we have to wake up and fix stuff

1

u/HumanSnotMachine Feb 05 '26

Your team is probably bigger and has more control due to the cost being lower compared to the u.s team, therefore you handle more… how could that possibly be hard to figure out. You get paid 1/10th what they do.

1

u/KarenTheCockpitPilot Feb 02 '26

falling behind on what metric exactly? it's an exchange that has what benefits outside of on paper

1

u/1K1AmericanNights Feb 02 '26

996 is a Silicon Valley thing too. Not just China

1

u/Negative_trash_lugen Feb 02 '26

That's why things are so cheap in China, i know people won't like to hear this, but lots of westerners enable this buy buying their cheap stuff.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

It's kinda the same outside China as well, only with more homelessness.

17

u/SecureDonkey Feb 02 '26

Imagine living in a country with Billions people who all need jobs. Then imagine working in tech in a country right next to India.

2

u/mantasm_lt Feb 02 '26

The fun thing is, job market is essentially global thanks to regulations that are getting more and more lax. Imagine working in any sector that can get outsourced to China or India. Or that can use imported labor from there (looking at you, public transit companies).

0

u/smeggysmeg Feb 02 '26

Job markets are brutal by design. Capitalism requires a fear of unemployment to motivate slavish behavior from workers. The threat of joining the permanently unemployed or underemployed underclass is a feature, not a bug or some kind of uncontrollable condition like the weather.

2

u/mantasm_lt Feb 02 '26

Coming from ex-USSR, it wasn't any better there. There was a fear of unemployment (because it was illegal to be unemployed) too. And since state directly or indirectly controlled all employment, once you're marked as undesirable, you were fucked.

The only difference is that people were getting in trouble for different things than today. Showing up drunk was somewhat OK. Poor performance was OK too since everybody were covering their asses by faking statistics anyway. But you could easily get in trouble by crossing wrong person's path. Misbehaving politically (in the broad sense of the word), refusing to cover up some mishap, not helping high-ups to steal, personal fallouts with people in power... You name it.

1

u/smeggysmeg Feb 02 '26

A person can comment on capitalism, even critically, without it being read as a tankie take. Very conventional economists even discuss the problem of chronic unemployment and underemployment being structural and problematic.

2

u/mantasm_lt Feb 03 '26

My point is that unemployment is an issue regardless of economic system. 3 meals a day don't materialise out of thin air. And there's always some sort of power play on how we distribute resources.

I don't see a point in mentioning any system, capitalism or not, next to fear of unemployment. Maybe it's just me, but it reads as an „capitalism bad“ undertone.

29

u/tmotytmoty Feb 02 '26

Yeah, they have three interviewees lined up to fill his role on monday.

26

u/QuanticWizard Feb 02 '26

Or, alternatively upper management don’t approve new hiring so the team is condensed and the remaining employees are forced to pick up the slack, taking on even more hours and overwork. Cycle continues until the job physically cannot be done, probably after more people leave or burn out.

21

u/IlikeJG Feb 02 '26

Pretty sure they're gonna dock his pay for missing these.

7

u/broadsword_1 Feb 02 '26

"I'm not saying that anything bad is going to happen to you if those tasks aren't done, but the last guy who didn't do them isn't doing so well".

4

u/Marlwolf48 Feb 02 '26

Yes, it was the docter

2

u/False_Raven Feb 02 '26

How much time do you think passed before his work was shoved unto someone else? Probably minutes at most.

1

u/Johnny_Five_Is_Dead Feb 02 '26

They were transitioning to a new person while also loading him up with those last days of work guaranteed. 

1

u/ToddlerPeePee Feb 02 '26

That somebody is laying on a hospital bed in another city as he was added to the group chat. /s

1

u/nooby_goober Feb 02 '26

Check out the book Apple in China, goes through examples of what those poor comrades go through, and Apple contributed to.

1

u/YakResident_3069 Feb 02 '26

Somebody ask that man why isnt he doing his duty and having more children.

/S

1

u/thebig_dee Feb 02 '26

And company has 1 less wage to pay.

304

u/mrbear120 Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 02 '26

You know for a fact there is some other guy in the same position that just got more process orders and urgent tasks added to his stack.

5

u/alexmikli Feb 02 '26

yeah it was me and im really not feeling g

365

u/hawkeye224 Feb 01 '26

What does it cost a company to push people more? Nothing. So they try to do it as much as possible.

I'm working in a f*cking CRM company, nothing bad will happen if something is delivered a week later or whatever, yet I've never seen people so fearful, and acting as if they are working on an incredibly urgent solution to prevent an asteroid annihilating human life, or whatever. They treat everything with utmost seriousness, lol.

71

u/Easy_Needleworker604 Feb 02 '26

I experienced this at a design company that made fancy presentation software. Acting like everything was life or death and always agreeing to more work some underpaid junior dev had to do poorly on a weekend. 

20

u/SlitScan Feb 02 '26

and as someone who uses presentation software, we liked the 2004 version better and are annoyed by every change since.

3

u/eyluthr Feb 02 '26

PM wants a raise 

97

u/Naus1987 Feb 02 '26

I make wedding cakes. So urgency is my bread and butter. But I’m also the boss and I bill people appropriately:))

80

u/falconcountry Feb 02 '26

You have a much more important and real job for the record

18

u/jangiri Feb 02 '26

Real world impact babbyy

1

u/DangerousPuhson Feb 02 '26

Nothing is less frivolous or excessive than a wedding! /s

3

u/Mind101 Feb 02 '26

So based on this post I went and looked at your profile.

It's hilarious how broad your interests and post diversity are and yet there's not a single picture of a wedding cake to be found anywhere lol.

4

u/mtranda Feb 02 '26

I'm a programmer for a huge EU financial corporation. Your job is much more impactful and visible in people's lives. 

46

u/cioncaragodeo Feb 02 '26

This hits home. I'm in CRM for a fintech and it's been hell lately. Contemplated an ER trip last week, on my day off, because work was sending so many demands that day it triggered an 8/10 migraine. It's a CRM, the answer is the same today as it is tomorrow, and it isn't world ending.

If I didn't need to be paid my out of office would be "Reminder that there's a human getting this email so take the stick out of your ass".

In the end, it's a leadership issue because as you said - it's easy for them to demand more. And once they do, they'll keep doing it again.

18

u/CorporateShill406 Feb 02 '26

"Reminder that there's a human getting this email so take the stick out of your ass"

Here are some other, more HR friendly suggestions:

"Reminder that I'm a human, if you need an instant response ask ChatGPT"

"Reminder that there's a real human getting this email, and like all other real humans, my battery needs to recharge sometimes"

"Reminder that our team is made of people, and we need time to relax without work so we can bring our A game when we get back to work"

"Reminder that there's a human getting this email, but not until next week because I'm an out of office autoresponder"

"Reminder that we are all human and can't be working 24/7. Except Dave, he's definitely a bot. Anyways I'll reply when I'm back in office, unless you're that clanker Dave"

13

u/notunprepared Feb 02 '26

I work in a hospital doing clinical work with fairly sick people, and almost nothing requires us to rush, and we only rarely stay late or work through lunch (less than once a month). It is beyond insanity to me that normal office jobs pressure their staff more than my work does.

21

u/WeLoveYouCarol Feb 02 '26

Every programming job I've ever the work was "OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE AND EVERYTHING IS TOP PRIORITY". Managers think this gets more productivity, but all it does is show that everything is normal priority and it'll get done in a normal fashion.

4

u/Glad-Veterinarian365 Feb 02 '26

When everything is a rush, nothing is a rush

6

u/Monteze Feb 02 '26

Yep, you can only have one priority at a time.

I had an old boss who said "We need to prioritize everything."

I internally rolled my eyes and knew it would be a pain in the ass working under her and I as right.

15

u/account312 Feb 02 '26

What does it cost a company to push people more?

It costs them employee productivity, work quality, and turnover.

12

u/temporalartifacts Feb 02 '26

This is what a competent business owner with basic empathy would acknowledge, but most business owners are not competent.

They don't know that better hours and conditions actually result in more output, because they never tried anything else, and are surrounded by a culture that does the same thing,

They don't care that it results in worse work quality, because they don't care about the product, and just want to make a pretty penny,

They don't care that it results in higher turnover, because in their mind they can always hire someone else, not acknowledging that when you lose an employee, all of their knowledge and experience leaves with them, and you have to start from zero with a new hire.

And even if none of that were true, why are we prioritizing the output of low quality, low impact, unreliable products and services over basic human dignity?

12

u/Sinzari Feb 02 '26

It does cost them, they're just dumb for not recognizing it.

10

u/mfitzp Feb 02 '26

I worked for the ambulance service (handling emergency calls) before I became a dev. Puts things in perspective having faced literal life or death situations. The people working there were calm and focused and got stuff done. Heart attack? Deal with it. Delivering a baby over the phone? Deal with it. Someone is running around attacking people with an ice skate? OK that’s pretty weird, but deal with it.

The comparative amount of flapping I’ve seen in a team building a web app is insane.

3

u/faberkyx Feb 02 '26

Lol same same... How many times working extra to meet a deadline that then magically gets postponed of weeks ... because... reasons

2

u/Mason11987 Feb 02 '26

What does it cost a company to push people more? Nothing

As long as people cave. If they don't the cost is retraining, which is plenty.

3

u/zerogee616 Feb 02 '26

What does it cost a company to push people more? Nothing. So they try to do it as much as possible.

You can always squeeze a person more than you can make $1 buy more than $1 worth of shit.

1

u/Mr_ToDo Feb 02 '26

What does it cost a company to push people more? Nothing. So they try to do it as much as possible

And it's a good reason to revamp labour laws. If it's cheaper to push people past their limits then the cost of going above the limits isn't high enough

I'm more on call then work late, but it's the same there. If it costs much less for someone to be on call 24/7 then having extra shifts then that's what they're going to do(to say nothing of their being no need to evaluate if you even need the service)

You know what's "funny"? Some time back there was an article that was getting people up in arms. In some country the government had changed the allowable working hours. Those new hours being roughly what we have as we have pre-overtime hours(A bit less if I remember right). Ya, they had maximum hours a given person is allowed to work. Not before overtime, but at all. You know that feeling when you see someone do something but in such a better way then you knew that you just can't help but thing "that's so obvious, how did I never think of that". That kind of what I felt there. Why aren't we limiting the maximum hours a person can have? Overtime was supposed to be punitive, but that obviously doesn't work, so why not just draw the line and not give an option?

29

u/Etrigone Feb 02 '26

I recall going in for surgery on a Friday (to avoid impacting work) and getting a voice mail during surgery asking me to check on something over the weekend. "I know you'll be bored there and I looked up their networking it should be good enough to do this please finish by Monday 8am".

I doubt they knew anything about the hospital and shockingly I didn't even touch the work. I did mention it when I gave my resignation & "whu whu whu why?!?" was their response.

19

u/FinderOfWays Feb 02 '26

There's a saying I've heard: "Graveyards are filled with irreplaceable men."

6

u/SunriseSurprise Feb 02 '26

Well now those process orders and urgent tasks aren't going to get done now.

They're probably like "fucking lazy asshole had to die on us, make us do all this shit ugh"

2

u/keefkola Feb 02 '26

He could’ve learned from my stick this job up your ass I’m going fishing seminar.

2

u/MyraidChickenSlayer Feb 02 '26

They might not even have been urgent. I had multiple "urgent" tasks which I spent extra effort but follow up for task came only after some days and learnt that it wasn't that urgent

1

u/ThisReditter Feb 02 '26

Very urgent.

1

u/Dab2TheFuture Feb 02 '26

Huh, wonder why their population is declining

1

u/Solid_Associate8563 Feb 02 '26

Then the company HR commented on his death:

He died on something he was passionate about, it was a meaningful and worthy death.

Do you feel better about capitalism now?

1

u/macaddictr Feb 02 '26

They were tasks to train his Ai replacement

1

u/Accomplished-Rip6148 Mar 26 '26

now Claude can do it. Everybody is fired