Throwaway account because I don’t want this tied to me.
About eight years ago, I worked at a mid-sized tech company with a senior colleague—let’s call him “Dave.” He was in his early 60s, had decades of experience, and preferred “boring tech” and object-oriented programming. I was more into modern, cloud-native solutions and functional programming, which led to frequent disagreements.
We clashed a lot. Dave thought my approaches were unnecessarily complex, and I thought his ideas were outdated and inflexible. Most of our arguments happened during code reviews, and while things got heated at times, I assumed it was all part of working in a team.
I left the company after a few years. It wasn’t because of him, and I didn’t think much about those conflicts after I moved on.
A few days ago, I got a message from Dave on LinkedIn. He said he’d retired and had been diagnosed with a fast-progressing terminal illness. What stunned me was that he blamed me for it. He said the stress of working with me and dealing with my code had taken a toll on his health, ending the message with, “You shortened my life.”
Before I could respond, his account was deleted. I don’t know if he deactivated it or blocked me, but now I can’t stop replaying everything in my head.
Could I really have caused this? Can work stress lead to something like this? I always thought our arguments were just professional disagreements, but now I’m second-guessing myself. Has anyone else dealt with something like this? What do I even do with this kind of guilt?
About eight years ago, I worked at a mid-sized tech company with a senior colleague—let’s call him “Dave.” He was in his early 60s, had decades of experience, and preferred “boring tech” and object-oriented programming. I was more into modern, cloud-native solutions and functional programming, which led to frequent disagreements.
We clashed a lot. Dave thought my approaches were unnecessarily complex, and I thought his ideas were outdated and inflexible. Most of our arguments happened during code reviews, and while things got heated at times, I assumed it was all part of working in a team.
I left the company after a few years. It wasn’t because of him, and I didn’t think much about those conflicts after I moved on.
A few days ago, I got a message from Dave on LinkedIn. He said he’d retired and had been diagnosed with a fast-progressing terminal illness. What stunned me was that he blamed me for it. He said the stress of working with me and dealing with my code had taken a toll on his health, ending the message with, “You shortened my life.”
Before I could respond, his account was deleted. I don’t know if he deactivated it or blocked me, but now I can’t stop replaying everything in my head.
Could I really have caused this? Can work stress lead to something like this? I always thought our arguments were just professional disagreements, but now I’m second-guessing myself. Has anyone else dealt with something like this? What do I even do with this kind of guilt?