A tragic incident in China has brought renewed attention to the issue of overwork in the tech industry, after a 32-year-old IT engineer died while working during the weekend and continued to receive work-related messages even after his death.
According iFeng China, a 32-year-old software engineer, surnamed Gao, was working from home on a Saturday morning when he began to feel unwell.
His wife, Ms Li shared that Gao had woken up early and said he felt dizzy, but insisted on sitting in the living room to do some work.
Later, he collapsed and lost control of his bladder.
NBD China reported that despite the alarming signs, he got up, changed clothes, and asked his wife to bring his laptop as they prepared to go to the hospital.
Collapsed again in the elevator
On the way to the car, Gao fainted again and had seizures while in the elevator.
His wife called for help and dragged him out before the paramedics arrived.
At 9.14 am, emergency services reached the scene and found Gao with no heartbeat or breathing.
He was rushed to Guangdong Second Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital.
Cause of death and medical background
Doctors confirmed that Gao died from sudden cardiac arrest caused by Adams-Stokes syndrome.
This came as a shock to the family, as a health report from June 2024 had shown a normal ECG result.
Despite emergency efforts, Gao was declared clinically dead later that day.
Work messages kept coming even after death
Ms Li revealed that Gao had recently been promoted to department manager and was constantly overloaded with tasks.
The week before his death, he never returned home earlier than 9.38 pm.
On the day he collapsed, his company records showed that he had logged into the office system, with four deadlines due.
While he was still being treated at the hospital, his phone vibrated with a new work group invite.
Shockingly, even eight hours after his death, a colleague sent him a message asking him to fix a bug.
Dream crushed by extreme workload
Gao, who came from a poor background in Henan, had worked hard from a young age, even collecting trash to fund his studies.
Sina Finance reported that he met his wife in university and later joined a company he had always admired.
His wife admitted she disliked his job because he had little time for her, but supported him because of his passion for coding.
In one of his diary entries at 16, he had written, “Destiny and hardships made me grow… it’s about working hard again and again.”
After his sudden death, Ms Li wrote emotional messages online, expressing her heartbreak.
She wrote, “Even now at 10 pm, I still wait for you to come home and say, ‘I’m back’. But you never do.”
In another post, she added, “If these past eight years were a dream, I wish I could stay asleep forever.”
Public anger over toxic overwork culture
The incident sparked outrage online, with netizens calling out the inhuman work culture and overwork in the tech industry.
One user wrote, “He’s gone and they’re still asking him to work. What kind of society is this?” Another commented, “Bringing a laptop to the hospital is the saddest image of today’s working class.”
Gao’s death is now being processed as a work-related injury.
READ ALSO:
