
What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies  - ohjeez
http://thebillfold.com/2013/12/what-happens-when-one-of-your-coworkers-dies/
======
steven2012
One of my coworkers, my mentor and someone who taught me what it meant to be a
good programmer, was murdered by his wife, who also murdered their two
children and then killed herself.

It took place over a holiday, and I noticed he hadn't shown up afterwards.
After a couple of days, I asked my boss if he was on vacation, and he said no,
so I emailed him. His body and his family were found the next day by his
neighbors. I actually saw his face on the evening news and my heart started
racing, because they made it seem as though he was the murderer, but as events
came out, he and his beautiful children were the victims.

It was really horrible because he was one of the star programmers at work and
responsible for a lot of the success in the company. Everyone loved him and he
deserved to be loved. It really hit our company hard, and we had things like
counselling meetings but all that did was fuel our anger.

Basically there's nothing you can do. You just have to deal with it and move
on. It's been 10+ years, but I'll never forget him though, he deserves at
least that.

~~~
jigneshg
Hi Steven,

Sorry to hear your horrible experience loosing good friend and after reading
your reply, i feel that the person like him did not deserve such death :(

Sometime it is very difficult for human to understand GOD and his punishment !

~~~
heed
> Sometime it is very difficult for human to understand GOD and his punishment
> !

What a rude, and offensive thing to say.

~~~
PavlovsCat
"God and his punishments" == "bad things that happen, life being unfair" etc.?

I read this as someone trying to give their condolences the best way they know
how, according to their beliefs, in a language that is not their native
tongue.

~~~
Udo
I reread what he wrote and I have to say on reflection you're probably right
and my first reaction was probably too harsh. However, there _is_ something
wrong with expressing sympathies for a person's death by saying something that
amounts to "yeah, that's because my imaginary FRIEND punished him". It implies
the dead person was killed by an all-knowing supernatural force as a response
to a transgression.

------
bane
I've had this happen a few times over the years. It's really tough.

In one case it was a very popular and looked-up-to engineer. Out for a jog one
day and an unknown heart defect dropped him dead before he hit the ground.
People were very broken up over it and donated food and all sorts of things to
his widow and kids. I think a small charity was set up in his name.

In another, nobody really knew the guy outside of his group. But he had had a
very bad cough for a few months that to be honest, had become kind of a
workplace annoyance and was blamed for everything from loss of productivity to
a rash of URIs that ran through the office for a few weeks. He didn't show up
one day and everybody assumed he had finally decided to take some time off and
attend his cough. The next day it was announced he had died. There was no
further information and nobody outside of his immediate group and management
really knew anything about him or how to reach out to his family. His desk was
filled the next week.

Finally, a guy I knew and my friends all used to work with, broke off to try
his hand in the restaurant business. Things didn't go well and mired in debt
and suffering from some mental illness issues took his wife and daughter
hostage and committed suicide (his wife and kid made it out with very minor
wounds). I think everybody was in such shock over such a mild mannered person
doing such a crazy thing that people wanted to get over it as quickly as
possible and pretend like we all didn't know him at all.

~~~
bsirkia
How did those deaths affect your workplace? Do people try to hang out and talk
more or do people generally just carry on normally?

~~~
bane
In the first case, everybody really took a day or two to come to terms that it
had happened. Work really ground to a halt. People showed up to work, but took
lots of time out of the office in coffee shops talking and processing the
event. We named a room after him and had some ceremonies, everybody showed up
to his funeral. It really took a few weeks for everything to get back to
normal.

In the other two people really just carried on pretty normally by the next day
or two.

In the last case, because of the way he went out, very violent and unpleasant,
I think there was definitely an effort on the part of people to just...forget
about him and pretend he had never existed. There was some occasional chatting
about the event and how unexpected it was. But it was really detached like an
event on the news involving a minor C-grade celebrity. But of course, we
hadn't worked with him in a couple years at that point so his impact in our
day-to-day was pretty minimal.

I think it really has to do with office popularity to be honest. If you're
buried up in a corner someplace and don't interact with anybody...it's easier
for people to get over it.

~~~
bsirkia
Right. What time of year was it in the first case? I would think it's easier
to get over if it's the summer or around Christmas when people are going home
for vacations.

~~~
bane
That's a good question, it was...10, 11 years ago? I think it was spring or
early summer. Looking back, I think the endless ceremonies, reminiscing, room
naming...his office was a shrine for a couple months and nobody emptied it of
his personal affects until his widow came and asked...I think it extended out
the difficult feelings longer than it would have if everybody had been driven
back to work or gone on vacations or something.

~~~
liotier
Someone in my company died of illness - someone quite young so it was a
surprise and a shock to all around him. It has been more than a year and his
computers are still on his desk...

~~~
morganherlocker
My first day on the job I erased the whiteboard in my office. When a couple
people walked in and saw what I was erasing (a short inspirational phrase on
the corner of the board), everyone had a look of horror on their face.

It turned out that a close friend of the company had been in the office and
written that phrase on the board. He died the next day. That was 2 years
before I erased it, and everyone had been keeping it as the last thing to
remember him by.

~~~
willt79
No one knew to write "No Erase" next to the comment? Oops, their bad.

------
jboggan
This has happened in my experience before, and it is one of the strongest
reasons for good source control that is infrequently considered. It was a
tragedy when a very wonderful and dear researcher in our group died suddenly,
especially to his three children and wife that he left behind. It was also a
great loss as well that we could never recover some key bits of source code
from his computer, and that a very promising cancer drug trial was derailed
because we couldn't articulate why the compounds were chosen for study in the
first place.

He died of a heart attack at age 42 after pulling three 90+ hour weeks. It
completely changed my attitude towards work. May he rest in peace.

~~~
MartinCron
Just yesterday I was nearly run over by a taxi (in Seattle, what?) running a
red light. As I realized he wasn't stopping I thought to myself, "at least all
my code is checked in and pushed".

True story.

~~~
AznHisoka
God, I hate taxis.. always beeping at you when you take 1 second to cross the
street or make a turn (if you're riding in front of it)

~~~
cema
We are all just 1 second away from a tragedy.

When I was learning how to drive a car my instructor told me: see the light
turned green, hold on, wait for an idiot, then wait for a taxi cab, then go
slowly.

~~~
gknoy
Similarly, my mother always told me to drive as if the oncoming person who
appears to be stopping is NOT, and that people with turn signals on are liars
or forgetful, and will continue straight, when evaluating safety of turning
right.

Sometimes it feels like I drive like the stereotypical granny, but this has
saved my bacon several times in the past two decades.

~~~
krisgenre
Everyone drives like that in India :)

~~~
zacinbusiness
I saw an episode of Top Gear (UK) where they went to India and the driving
situation looked terrifying. I still want to go sometime :-)

------
Spooky23
My uncle worked for a financial services firm in the 80s. A consultant was in
a computer room working on something very early in the morning and had a heart
attack.

Someone discovered the guy, called 911, and went about their business. Due to
some combination of bureaucratic bungling and security nonsense, the ambulance
folks didn't know someone had died, and were either turned away from the
building or taken to the wrong location in the building.

Long story short, the body wasn't removed until early evening. People thought
he was taking a nap. I always found that so sad. The poor guy probably had a
family and people who gave a shit about him, but the people around him
couldn't be bothered to treat him with respect.

~~~
kayoone
wow thats cruel, the guy could maybe have lived if the ambulance would have
been there quickly, a heart attack doesn't necessarily kill you when you react
fast enough.

------
infectoid
Happened to me once early in my career.

I was working as tech support at a manufacturing plant. As I'd be walking
around a lot fixing things I got to know everyone fairly well.

Manuel was the production manager. A nice guy, always seemed relaxed but
always got shit done. He had been working there for about six months.

One morning I get in and hear the news from the somewhat insensitive IT
manager, can't even remember how he said it, just remember not liking him at
all after that.

About an hour earlier Manuel had been waiting at a round-a-bout. A semi
carrying a load of fuel comes down from an off ramp approaching the round-a-
bout and the breaks begin to fail. The truck driver attempts to veer but then
the trailer starts to skid and pivot.

It crashed to the ground in front of Manuel's car and everything explodes.

I drive past where it happened every time I go to visit my folks. It's been at
least 15 years. Someone is still putting flowers there.

~~~
throwaway1460

      > Someone is still putting flowers there.
    

Some day soon, leave a flower yourself with a note — just what you said here,
‘nice guy, got shit done’. Let them know that _someone else remembers_ him.

~~~
infectoid
Been thinking about this all day at work. I drive by but I never stop.

I'll be heading to the folks place for Christmas next week. I think I'll drop
off some flowers on the way.

------
howlround
I walked into work one day, and in my email was a remembrance note about a
coworker who had just died. I did not know him, but in the email there was a
picture of him fly fishing, and then another picture of him standing by his
wife. He was an overweight, balding man in a Wal-mart jacket. Something about
his "everyday, average guy" look scared me. I never knew him and if it weren't
for the email, I'd never have known of him.

I grew angry, and could not figure out why. Was I sucked back into this
reality that we all die when I had been working hard to deny it? Was it that
someone could die, and some stranger like me had no interest or comprehension
of his accomplishment? Was it that I only judged people by their
accomplishment, when hypocritically, I had none of my own? Why did I suddenly
hate this man, who I never knew existed, and only knew because of his death?

He was a father. He surely comforted his children on the first day of school.
He went shopping for them on their birthdays. He had loved ones who grieved
for him. Loved ones who had no talent to describe how great he was to them,
but only knew he was great to them.

I still don't understand the oddness of my reaction, or why it still haunts
me. We are all born in a blur of a gigantic population, and he was simply
deleted from my inbox as my company insisted I delete my emails when it
approached 150 mgb capacity.

I kept him new and unread as long as I could.

------
edgesrazor
I had something like this happen at a small software company I worked about 15
years ago. Our owner had written a specialized program for his wife to sell on
the side, but under the company's name. One weekend, after a very big fight,
she ended up committing suicide after he'd left the house. The next week, they
had me going through her email to get a list of customers she had been working
with. I can't begin to tell you the amount of discomfort you feel going
through a recently deceased person's email - especially when it was mixed with
personal messages. I got in, found all the work related messages, forwarded
them to my manager and got out - I couldn't bear to be in there any longer
than I had to. No one at the company was very close with her, but it was still
a complete shock.

~~~
chime
I have to do that when my client's employees quit or are let go. Even though I
know they are alive and healthy, I still often wonder if I will ever see them
again in my life. So many people have come and gone over the years that I
can't even remember. When I disable their account and archive their emails and
documents, it feels like I am saying good bye to them for ever. Groupon's bots
will soon find out that user 'jsmith@example.com' is no longer here.

My archives will be slightly larger but nightly backups of active users
documents will get a bit quicker. I used to have lunch with you user
'rjackson' but now that you got fired for doing something pretty bad, we will
most likely never talk again.

And with that one command, a person leaves my life forever.

------
aaron695
I'm assuming this story is a Facebook generation thing.

Not sure if it's a disassociation of the difference between/loss of real
friendships and acquaintances or perhaps the constant need to get attention
which people are starting to use the death of others to get (amongst other
things)

I can't tell if this story is true or not, it's certainly well written and of
literary value.

But it is not normal to light candles, create movies and put people who have
passed away's photos up in the workplace.

Those true friends in the workplace will go to the funeral, this sort of
darkness in getting off on people who we barley knew who have died, kinda
scares me the most in this story.

~~~
theorique
_But it is not normal to light candles, create movies and put people who have
passed away 's photos up in the workplace._

Not normal for whom? It seems like a respectful thing to do.

------
busterarm
Things get a bit more strange when you don't meet the people you work with. I
work somewhere with a large staff that's entirely remote. In the five years
that I've been working here, we've had three deaths (so that's about 1 in
400). One was a very grotesque suicide by somebody who was very unhappy and
everyone they interacted with knew it. The other two were strokes. The whole
company gets an email when this happens but little more than that. I don't
even think we offer grief counseling.

I'm very senior here and know that I worked with the people but don't remember
any of their names by now. Very few people do, in fact. Only one person I know
remembers the name of the guy who killed himself.

There is one name that I remember though. We had a guy who had a very
debilitating stroke and tried to come back to work. After about a month of
some incredibly strange behavior from him, he was let go. He just never came
back the same after his stroke.

Sitting down all day is really bad for your health. So is not having regular
interaction with other people. When working remote it's really important to
have some regular group activity that you do.

------
zero_intp
A good friend and co-worker died recently, worked together for 10 years. Hard
worker, lived in Cali and flew out every quarter. We shared being assholes who
get shit done by working hard, long, and speaking truth to power.

He died by driving fast, impatiently, killing his wife and unborn child. We
shared a love of fast cars and recklessness.

His death has helped me re-evaluate. Selling (trying) my fast car, going part
time to travel. Working hard for a company and dieing suddenly seems so
ultimately unfulfilled.

~~~
72deluxe
That sounds a good idea about re-evaluating your life. I was working at a
place where many did unpaid overtime and you could see the strain it was
having on them and their families. Company's typically do not thank you for
extra work.

Buy a VW Bug - "all show and no go" but you will enjoy tootling from A to B
with a noisy engine in what is essentially a glorified basic go-kart.

~~~
zero_intp
I am tying to get rid of a heavily modified gti. My love for the Volkswagen is
great. But I don't need another car presently.

------
spacecowboy
When I first started working as a manager for a group of folks, my own manager
insisted that if one day someone in my group didn't show up for work and there
wasn't a phone call or email or a note, he said to always try to get in touch
with the individual to see if everything was ok. My manager was so insistent
on following this practice so I asked him why he felt so strongly about this.
He said he had an experience in which he had one of his folks not show up for
work - no phone call, no email, no note so he tried to reach the individual by
phone. After no response given multiple attempts to reach him, by late
afternoon, my boss decided to drive out to the individual's house. When he got
to his house, he found the gentleman passed out in front of his house.
Thankfully, this story ended up with a happy ending.

------
Shivetya
We are going through this where I work currently, a co-worker, a good friend,
passed away on the 13th. We'd been joking the day before about what food item
he was going to bring in the next week though we all knew what it would be.

While he had been sick for a few years, at times appearing in colors no human
should ever appear in, he had been improving steadily and was in very high
spirits. To say it caught us off guard is one thing, it caught his doctors and
family off guard as well.

It is very odd to have lost two friends who just happened to be coworkers
since I started at my current company almost sixteen years ago. I lost my
former manager six years ago and this friend who recently died was on the same
team.

As a group, those closest never ventured into terrible. Oh we hit the gutter
for humor but only in how it relates to our other loss years before.
Jokes/comments along the lines of "God probably needed help keeping so and so
in line" or "Great, now they are going to team up and take over the place".

Mourning will really hit Saturday at the funeral, its possible that terrible
is reached the days after that but only directed at those who don't come who
should have come. You know the type, there people you work with who really
don't care about anyone else but they sure make a show of it when someone
higher up is around. Got them, should be interesting if suspicions are right.

Forgetting, well that won't be all the quick. We still bring up the name of
the first to pass from time to time, some people have an over sized impact on
organizations when they are alive and when viewed with the rose colored
glasses of the past. Yet shouldn't we always only remember the good days?

------
kabdib
When we were doing the Apple Newton, Ko Isono (who was working on the tablet
sensor code) committed suicide. Our manager got us into a common area, then
told us the news. We were pretty shocked.

Many of us went to the funeral in the east bay. I remember it was very cold
and rainy, and that I didn't mind.

We put Ko's name in the "About Newton" page. Nobody in management objected to
that.

~~~
judk
I wonder if we'd have fewer suicides if we publicly acknowledged the
contributions of people before they died.

~~~
warmwaffles
We would have to know they are suicidal ahead of time. By that point if I knew
they were suicidal, I would definitely talk to that person a lot more and
invite them to events with my friends.

~~~
dmckeon
Or, we could talk to people, invite them to events, and acknowledge their
contributions. Just a thought.

------
jakejake
This happened to me last year. A young guy with a wife and two kids hit his
head getting out of a cab and died a few days later from sudden complications.
He was the life of the party type of guy, kinda like the Kramer of the group.
Really well liked. I had a voicemail from him on my phone that I hadn't
listened to yet.

It really does make you think for a while that you shouldn't take any day for
granted. But, just like in the article, after a few months we all just settle
back into our routines.

------
pgrote
Great writing.

I worked with a business analyst once who dropped off his laptop for me to
take a look at on a Friday afternoon. Odd, because we did regularly scheduled
maintenance and he brought his external monitor in.

On Monday morning his mother called to report he had killed himself.

It was so abrupt and took the group by surprise. I do remember thinking that
it would change everything. Life went on, though.

~~~
theorique
What happened to the laptop?

~~~
aaronem
I doubt I will ever see a comment thread which more perfectly typifies HN.

------
kfcm
I've been through this four times. Three died at home; one at work. These were
all at small companies, so we all knew each other--many for decades, and over
different jobs.

The last two passed away about eleven and twelve years ago.

One may think it's haunting to still see e-mails from them in my archives. But
the really haunting thing is listening to them speak in the voice mails our
phone system e-mailed back then. Voices from beyond.

~~~
flatline
I got a Facebook notification about a friend's birthday the other day, who
passed on from brain cancer over two years ago. It is an eerie feeling, for a
brief moment it's like she was still alive and well just everyone else on
Facebook, and her death was just a bad dream.

~~~
mutagen
I get spam PMs from my deceased cousin from a minor social networking site she
joined. Her account has been compromised. I contacted support to provide
obituaries and such, I hope they disabled the account. While I don't mind so
much, getting these kinds of messages would be horrible for her father.

------
walkon
I don't think this article is just about how people react to a coworker dying.
It's an observation that regular presence of someone, particularly in the
workplace, doesn't automatically lead the relationship past an acquaintance
level. Obligatory social routine and superficial small talk might make us feel
comfortable with each other, but beyond that, there might be nothing deeper
there. Some of us our surrounded by familiar faces and conversations each day,
while entirely disconnected and alone.

~~~
dnqthao
it reminds me of the Narrator in Fight Club, after he got bruised eyes, nobody
cared to ask him about that.

------
stirno
Well written and it hits close to home for me.

Honestly, I've had a fear of being 'Colin' for years.. that if I were to be
gone one day, all people I come in contact with, besides family and friends,
would remember are the inconsequential things about me. Its an ego thing I'm
sure -- that I feel I should be remembered.

I make an effort to have _some_ real impact on as many people as I can.
Something they would remember. I have no idea if I've been successful. All
anyone really wants is to do something meaningful.

I hope that Colin had a great group of people outside work that could
memorialize him properly.

------
scrrr
Two friends died when I was a student. A guy from the company I was working at
died on the Air France flight from Brazil. They were all very young. It's
entirely possible this happens to other people I know, or to me.

FWIW, I think it's good and healthy to think about death, perhaps even to
think about it often. There used to be a time when people put skulls on their
desks to be reminded.

~~~
PavlovsCat
"By meditating on death, we can experience the shock of being alive." \--
Stephen Batchelor

------
seanhandley
Wow.

I mourn for Colin. And I mourn for the dry wind, devoid of intimacy, that
blows out across the open plan stage of our working lives.

------
officemonkey
When this happens to people in their 20s, it's notable.

Sadly, as I approach 50, it happens in my workplace, in my private life, and
in my family pretty much every other year.

~~~
RougeFemme
A few of the folks that I know who are approaching 50 have started checking
the obits in the paper frequently, so that they won't have an awkward
encounter when they run into an acquaintance at the store, on the street, etc.
and ask "How's so-and-so/our mutual acquaintance/your spouse?"

~~~
judk
Obits in the paper?

Startup idea here, folks. Monitor my mail contacts etc and notify me when
someone dies.

~~~
shiftpgdn
That's morbid, nobody would sign up for that.

~~~
angersock
"It's like Nagios, for the people you love!"

Even better: for the people you hate.

------
RougeFemme
At one company where I worked, I resented the fact that the executive
assistant to the CEO made more than I; after all, she was non-technical and
"simply a secretary". Then she had a heart attack at her desk and died
instantly. I felt guilty for my thoughts and resolved to find out exactly what
her job entailed.

About 2 years later, her replacement was struck by an aneurysm at her desk and
died several weeks later. I had been interacting her a lot for work-related
projects and had had learned how stressful, difficult and important that job
was and did not begrudge her her salary at all.

~~~
jvagner
i don't mean this crassly: that CEO probably needs more than one assistant,
from the sounds of it.

~~~
aaronem
More than one at a time, at the very least.

------
brc
One of my close relatives passed away this year. She was the partner in a
professional services firm, and well like by her staff. The entire company had
a day off on the day of her funeral, and many of them were distressed by it.
It was not a shock as she had been ill for quite some time, but it does entail
an adjustment.

This is going to become more of a common occurence as the baby boom generation
start moving towards an era of high mortality and are in senior positions.
There are actually companies around which can help with transitioning through
a period like this, including grief counselling for staff, strategies, etc. I
worked with someone on a project once who worked for one of these firms. Up
until that point, I had never even considered that they would exist.

~~~
twistedpair
This will be even more common than you intimate since many of these boomers
can't afford to retire. Work until they drop.

------
xmjw
I've had this twice. Once to a car accident on the motorway in 2002. Once to a
bizarre form of leukaemia such that (from our perspective) the guy had back
pain on Thursday, and died over the Easter weekend by Tuesday in 2009.

Still think of them both from time to time. Some of my now-ex colleagues still
comment on the anniversary of their passing on Facebook. I don't think I could
honestly remember the dates if they didn't... Their names always stick with me
though.

------
Refefer
Reminds me a little too much of the regrets of the dying[1]. Ingrained deep
within our mammalian brains is the instinctual desire for community and
personal intimacy. We'd do well to remember ourselves and what makes us happy
before we're reflecting from our own death bed.

[1] [http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-
Dying.html](http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html)

~~~
grecy
A while back I found a website (or article?) that interviewed elderly people
who where essentially on their deathbeds. What do you regret, what would you
do differently, etc. etc.

Without fail, every single person said they wish they went to work less, and
spent more time with their loved ones.

I personally, am not good at learning lessons from other people, usually I
have to learn "the hard way". I hope I can learn this one from others.

~~~
lmm
> Without fail, every single person said they wish they went to work less, and
> spent more time with their loved ones.

I always wonder how much truth there is to that though? I mean, if you
actually loved your job and preferred working to spending time with your
family, wouldn't you still feel obliged to give that answer?

~~~
notdonspaulding
I don't think so. Someone saying this on their deathbed is not necessarily
opining about how much they loved work vs. family _in the moment_. They're
assigning a long-term absolute value on the amount of time they spent with
each.

Say you spend 80 hours a week at a job you absolutely love, and 20 hours a
week with a family you kind-of-get-along-with. At the end of your life, it
might be that you decide "time spent at work" no matter how much you enjoyed
it in the moment is just less fulfilling than "time spent at home" even when
the day-to-day of home life is not as immediately gratifying.

~~~
lmm
Well put it this way: if you say you wish you'd spent more time with your
family that's not going to upset anyone. If you say you wish you'd spent less
time with them and more time doing something else, that's not very nice.

------
mTemp
I worked with someone who joined our development team as a junior. He was a
bit aloof, and slightly arrogant. I moved on soon after he started, he IMed me
for the contact details of a contractor we worked with, and that was the last
I heard from him. I was not surprised to hear, a few months later, that the
guy had been fired, because of his attitude.

Fast forward another few years, and I was Googling (or was it Facebook
searching?) ex-colleagues who I'd lost touch with. My search led to news
articles that referred to his death. He was killed in a bizarre road-rage
incident, where he was clearly the aggressor.

His family had created a memorial page on Facebook, but hadn't reported him
deceased. I reported his FB profile as deceased, it was memorialized and I
moved on.

I spoke to the ex-coworker about what happened (the same one who told me about
him being fired a few years earlier), and he pointed out how kind the eulogies
were- not really describing the arrogant prick we worked with.

------
dzink
A classmate fell to his death from his apartment's terrace in a skyscraper a
few months ago. We were just coming back for our second year of Grad school.
He was full of life, working on a startup for which he had won some funding
via a competition, spending the summer at an Angel investor group, serving as
a favorite TA for a top VC professor. He was a self-made immigrant and the
best parts of life were right ahead of him. Nobody knew what happened, but it
hit too close to home.

His parents requested that his name was not mentioned on social media until
they had a chance to take him home to Europe and tell their family at home. We
got together to honor him and express condolences to family and after a week
or two, things went back to normal on the outside. On the inside questions
still remained, not about what happened, but about the implications it had on
us, his classmates, who are just like him in too many ways to count.

------
aortega
Thankfully never happened to my coworkers.

But many years ago I reported a pretty severe vulnerability in a common piece
of software. A patch was issued and that was it. One of the developers then
stopped answering emails and later I learn he died, probably by suicide. To
this day I don't know if both events were related but I try to be extra nice
when reporting vulnerabilities to developers since then.

------
bdamm
We had a fellow in our QA department pass away suddenly. He died at home from
"heart failure". I think everyone assumed it was a drug overdose, amid hushed
rumors of rather strange behavior during a previous-job Vegas trip. It was
sad, because he did good work. Like this fellow, a lot of people simply had
superficial contact with him.

I wish I could say that his death motivated me to have more meaningful contact
with everyone. But it didn't; it simply made me realize that you can't force
that even if you want to. At least not for me. Some people seem to have
meaningful exchanges easier than others, and I'm just not one of those people.

------
frankydp
I have personally experienced this on five occasions in the work place. I can
say that only once did no one have any idea that there was an issue. I have
seen CO's, junior enlisted, and the inbetween. The powers of self loathing are
in my experience not the driver, the most dangerous force is self confirmed
failure. The type or scale of the failure does not matter, only the persons
value of that failure matter.

That being said.

Go in to work tomorrow and make a forceful effort to engage with anyone that
you think may have any issue with failure overwhelming them. The only weapon
that can help is others.

~~~
DigitalJack
Are you talking about suicide? The man in the article died of natural causes.

Even so, I totally agree with regards to failure and its magnitude not
necessarily (or even frequently) having a relationship to the self loathing
one can feel due to that failure.

I struggle with this a couple times a year. Holding one's self to overly high
standards can be unhealthy.

~~~
frankydp
I am talking about suicide. I felt the article was mostly about that thought
process with the reality being kind of the side note.

When I have run across people that I thought were having a hard time with
failure, they are usually measuring themselves against the completely self
contrived version of the peer that they see as being better. My context may be
skewed, but the guys that have the hardest time are the ones that thought no
one else was having any issues. This is of course a symptom of the military
culture, but can play out in the tech world as the insanely successful skew
the perception of failure, upward. By that I mean tech people measure
themselves against, not the just doing fine peer, but to the exploding all
expectations peer, which is completely improbable and truly self defeating.

------
tn13
When I was working for an Indian out sourcing giant we had a 9 floored
building each with a wide gallery. I liked working beyond 8pm and when I was
about leave at 9pm I noticed a small crowd near one of the parking entrance.

Soon found that someone had jumped from one of those galleries. An sms from
the individual to his elder brother blamed the extreme work pressure. Knowing
his team and manager, surely that did not seem to be the case.

~~~
jodrellblank
Pressure isn't like mmHg or N/m^2, but a feeling tied to how your mind is
wired.

"it's not the words that are said, it's the words you hear".

------
theorique
_“That’s Colin,” says Bill. Dead people don’t get salaries, so Colin’s appears
as a surplus._

Cold.

~~~
bryne
I couldn't help but read this in the voice of Ed Norton's character from Fight
Club.

~~~
theorique
Yeah, I think it would go well with that bored, disconnected tone talking
about terrible, inhuman things.

    
    
      JACK (V.O.)
    
      I'm a recall coordinator. My job is to apply the formula.
    
      ....
    
      JACK (V.O.)
      
      Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply
      it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the
      result by the average out-of-court settlement, (C). A times
      B times C equals X...
    
      JACK
    
      If X is less than the cost of a recall ... we don't do one.

------
rdl
It was interesting working in a "high death rate" environment, and seeing the
ways different organizations dealt with that.

The military (US, especially) seems to rely on tradition. I still think the US
Army "last roll call" is among the best.

There were contractor and local companies who did basically nothing, and where
the big issue was getting personal effects packed up/returned, and risk that
final paychecks (or, in some cases, 6+ months of pay held until completion)
would be paid out. And some where the loss of enough people led to the company
folding, too, so there wasn't even anyone to pay that money.

Probably not frequent enough to be meaningful for a silicon valley tech
company with mainly 20-50 year old employees, but maybe in an industry with
older people (or, in 10-20 years, in tech), there will be companies which
differentiate themselves by how they handle this kind of thing.

There are some conferences where one of the first parts of the yearly meeting
is listing all the former attendees who have died in that year; for the more
ee-specific conferences where the average attendee is ~50-60, it's a much
longer meeting.

------
jbegley
I rarely read comment threads here. I'm almost as edified by the stories
people are sharing as I was with the original post. Thanks to all.

------
zacinbusiness
I've not had a coworker die but I've experienced immediate family loss (my
mother when I was 10) and I know that being around things that reminds you of
that person can be very difficult. I chose to move away (obviously not when I
was 10, but as soon as I was 17 I moved a few towns over, now I live at the
other end of the state, and as soon as possible I'll be leaving the country,
but it seems that sometimes you can never go far enough).

It's interesting though, the way a conversation like this will turn in a
community like HN. It goes into religion, but sort of the opposite of how it
turns out in RL (or at least here in the bible belt of the U.S.) - most people
will say "I'm praying for you and your family." and it's usually received with
a "thank you" or similar, here on HN though (and in a lot of communities, such
as at a university) these sorts of comments will be met with anger that
someone believes something differently.

Personally, I've never had much use for religion. Most of my family is highly
religious, and it's never seemed to do them much good though it does help them
cope when bad things happen. And that's where I see the value in it. I know
it's unhealthy to try to runaway from past pain, but that's how I cope. And
when my family says things like "Well, God works in mysterious ways." I know
that they are just trying to cope as well, and I have no right to judge them
for that.

Empathy is a very important thing, I think, and people who get all defensive
when religion comes up should take a step back and think about their own
beliefs. The majority of these people (myself included) will talk about
science, how we believe in things we can prove. But the simple fact is that
isn't _really_ true, is it? I believe, for instance, in the speed of light,
and that highly gravitational objects can bend light and even space itself.
However, I personally have not measured light or the effect that gravity has
on it. I've read papers about it, and I've watched documentaries. But it's
still just faith.

------
mpclark
I was at a start-up that was essentially a bunch of young lads who had all
been close friends since school. Without going into too much detail or
focussing on the human tragedy, one of us died in an accident and, looking
back, I think it really delayed the growth and progress of the company by a
year (or maybe two) while everyone came to terms with loss, death and their
place in the universe.

I think the company was quite lucky to get through the experience intact, and
it was probably only the presence of a couple of older, more detached execs
that made that happen.

------
moron4hire
Moving houses, I found a t-shirt I kept meaning to give back to an intern I
had had a few years before. We were close in age when I was at that job and we
spent a lot of time together outside of work. I looked him up and found his
Facebook page, where the last post was a year old, a memorial post from one of
his family members. No information on how he died. It hit me a lot harder than
I expected.

Holy crap, it's been a couple of years since I even learned he died and it
still breaks me up a little.

------
rowdyrabbit
When I was 20 and studying at university I worked during my summer break at a
small company. We went on holiday for a couple of weeks over Christmas but
just after Christmas Day I got a call from my manager telling me that one of
the guys in my team was killed in a car accident and his wife badly injured.

I went to the funeral which was heartbreaking, the place was never really the
same again without him. I still think about him every now and then, even
though that was more than 10 years ago now.

------
sidcool
I have seen a lot of departments in my office understaffed. Immigration
department, Talent management department, the HR department etc., who job is
seen as mostly mechanical and less stressful. In reality, they juggle between
a lot of things and are stressed. People keep on calling them and act as if
the they are there to serve. I have raised this concern in my organization,
but only to deaf ears.

------
angrybits
A decade later you stumble across code they still had checked out in the
ancient VSS repo. And then the rest of your day is a bit crappier.

------
dobbsbob
I worked with a guy who went golfing on one of the hottest days, drank too
much and died of heat stroke in his sleep. Healthy guy too who was in perfect
shape and ate disciplined nutritional food everyday and ran 5km in the morning
while we ate mystery noodle bowls from a chinatown takeout window and rolled
out of bed late

------
alandarev
Luckily I cannot tell a similar story of mine.

But I would like to _thank_ everyone and OP for sharing tough and eye opening
moments, others usually go silent about.

Even-though people prefer not to talk about deaths, it is an ultimate force to
rethink our own lives.

------
davidw
Well that was a cheery way to start my day. That and the chargeback from a
confused customer, and the (really) mirror I broke by accident. Perhaps I
should just crawl back into bed and watch movies....

------
Mustafabei
DUDE! That's all I have to say.

------
notastartup

        Colin’s boss is on vacation this week. He recorded a message by webcam. 
        He’s lying on his side on a hotel bed. He talks about the clarity of 
        Colin’s press releases as palm trees shudder in the wind behind him.
    
        “I wish I had gotten to know him better,” he says. “He seemed nice.”
    

Reading this kind of made me rage...and sad.

Tragic, but the inequality, and the indifference free market creates, makes me
steer clear away from corporate environments. I'd rather be a writer or an
artist working on one's creation and dropping dead than die for someone's
marginal materialistic desires.

I know this is just one way of looking at it, maybe the company was a great
place to work at and the words alone do not carry justice.

Unsettling. Knowing that you can die at any moment, yet you work to fulfill
the desires of those above you.

When I start a company, I don't want people below me or be insensitive. I'm
gonna pay them well, make their work not overwhelming (by creating more
software to automate and lighten their workload). Maybe I'm just young and
naive. but I sure as shit not going to be an insensitive jerk to my partners
in crime. Nobody is killing themselves or getting sick because of being
overworked. Fuck that ferrari man, if someone kills themselves in the process
of making money for you, I'd be devastated. I don't know how I'd feel when I
turn old though, as your frontal cortex deteriorates, causing you to have less
empathy and concern for your surrounding.

~~~
hudibras
To all supervisors:

If one of your employees dies while you're on vacation, cancel the rest of
your vacation. No exceptions.

~~~
randomacct
Why?

~~~
cdcarter
If for no other reason, to be with the rest of your employees, the dead
fellow's direct co-workers?

------
andresidhil
Lets hope something like this won't happen again.

~~~
visakanv
Alas, it will. Hope is never enough.

------
rurban
commonly called the bus factor.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

~~~
itsybitsycoder
The article was about the personal impact of a person's death on their
coworkers, nothing to do with the bus factor.

