Pratik Pandey, a 35-year-old software engineer who worked for Microsoft in Silicon Valley, died while working a night shift at the company’s Silicon Valley campus. His family said he had been working late hours and the grueling schedule was what took his life.
Pratik Pandey, a 35-year-old software engineer who worked for Microsoft in Silicon Valley, died while working a night shift at the company’s Silicon Valley campus. His family said he had been working late hours and the grueling schedule was what took his life.
According to NDTV, Pandey checked in on the evening of August 19, and at around 2 a.m. the next day, police found him dead on the company’s campus. Investigators found no signs of violence, and the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner’s Office is still determining the exact cause of death. Microsoft has not made any official statements, but an internal investigation is underway within the company.
Pratik Pandey worked on Microsoft Fabric, a data analytics product that competes with Snowflake. He was part of the Cloud & AI division, led by Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie. Before joining Microsoft in 2020, he had experience at Walmart and Apple. He graduated from San Jose State University, where he majored in computer science.
His colleagues and friends remember Pandey as a cheerful person who loved football and was always supportive of those around him. A farewell ceremony has already taken place in the United States, and the community and family are working to transport the body to India, where his parents live.
Silicon Valley has long been associated not only with high salaries, but also with excessive pressure and chronic burnout among engineers. The desire of companies to speed up the development of global products often forces employees to work without rest, which leads to health problems. The tragedy with Pandey was another reminder that the price of innovation in the technology industry can be too high.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how a 76-year-old man from New Jersey died while rushing to meet a woman he had been chatting with on Facebook Messenger. It later emerged that the woman was a generative AI chatbot created by Meta.
