Family of MSFT employee who died warn tech companies not to overwork workers

The sad part in all of this is that Microsoft likely had no policy that required him to work this much and yet the Microsoft cultural pressure combined with H1B unknowns drove him to not take care of himself and apply immense amounts of undue pressure. Managers need to be aware of this and question why their employees feel the need to work this much. Either hire more or coach the employees not to burn out.

> Microsoft likely had no policy that required him to work this much

They do have these policies written down: bi-annual performance reviews, stack ranking, PIPs.

You're implying that he was under performing, and therefore felt the pressure to avoid a bad review and the resulting PIP.

We don't have enough information to support that.

Bi-annual performance reviews themselves aren't a bad thing that force overwork.

If he had a history of good performance reviews (100% or higher on average), the risk of getting a PIP would be very low.

Microsoft stopped stack ranking years ago.

I don't think we should speculate on people's behavior or how they aligned with company policies, because we might accidentally be insulting this man.