Workaholic espouses workaholism
However, I did wonder if the author has a side-hustle with the Grauniad, thus undermining the thrust of their argument.
Indian billionaire and Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy has doubled down on his comments that India’s youth should voluntarily work 70-hour weeks. Murthy’s first call for very long working hours came in October 2023, when he called on the nation’s youth to work long hours out of a sense of duty to the nation. He suggested …
Only if she's working more than whatever hours you'd assert as a maximum. As a freelance journalist she'd ideally have a lot of different publications publish her work, and the very nature of journalism and freelancing will result in some weeks being super busy, others being pretty slack.
The best part about being a freelancer/contractor is writing your own work week. Freelancers generally get more freedom in that aspect as their work is more focused on one-off, quick-fix jobs that often can be spawned out of nowhere (i.e. selling product or effort into a market where there is always demand, such as stock/prefab content and journalism) vs. contractors which may stick with a contract or company for months at a time until the project is completed.
I would like to see his time sheet. I expect many of his "working" hours are spent in meetings and lunches and dinners with business people. Plus, he has assistants to do the research, planning, and logistics. And I suppose he gives a talk now and then, like when giving and receiving awards.
Or you know both you and the Misses could work 35 hour weeks, share the domestic duties, and raising the kids together and both have interesting and fulfilling lives, whilst achieving significantly higher efficiency results at work.
But that would require you to clean the bathroom on occasion... No, ok, we will do it the other way that's been proven to produce crappy work, burnout, and dysfunctional families...
Muppet...
If they both work the same 35 hours, say 40 after commute, then there is a large hole in the day requiring childcare and other stuff. So a third salary is required, neither of them are cleaning the bathroom and one of them is working for almost no money.
If they don't work the same 35 hours and do not have childcare they will barely see each other.
So no paradigm shift but nice try.
Come again?
The majority of families these days consist of 2 income families. That means both parties work. A 35 hour week means 7 hours a day, plus an hour for lunch, so 8 hours. 8-4 or 9-5. With Home Office you get significantly more flexible as well.
Schools runs from 9-3 (usually), so one parent brings the kids, the other collects. maybe one parent works a longer day one day, and a shorter the next and alternates (that's personally what we do). After school care is a thing for those parents who cant get to the kids on time (and is often subsidised by the state - although that depends heavily on what country you're in of course). Or if the kids are old enough they can be trusted to come home and amuse themselves for an hour or two before one of the parents arrives home.
If you have younger kids, maybe one or both parents needs to/wants to reduce hours to 25-30 hours a week if the kindergartens/pre-school are not opening long enough to accommodate the extra hours or the incomes dont stretch to cover after school care.
Every situation is different, every country is massively different. But to say both working 35 hours would never work, I call bullsh%t. My wife and I do it with 2 kids under the age of 6. Although we've taken the decision to reduce to 30 hours each in order to avoid the need for after school care. It's an income hit, but we can do it, and then we both get fulfilling work lives AND the opportunity to have great family lives.
Also what the hell are you talking about, that working a 40 hour week precludes you from cleaning the bathroom?!?! WTF?
"Also what the hell are you talking about, that working a 40 hour week precludes you from cleaning the bathroom?!?! WTF?"
Everybody (and ESPECIALLY the rich) should have to clean their own bog at least once a week, simply to remind themselves that none of us are any better than those who do clean toilets for a living.
...it isn't actually possible to maintain concentration at a high level for more than a few hours a day.
I suspect that the job he does consists of going to meetings where other people are talking, rather than working on mathematics or writing legal papers.
Indeed. If India (or China for that matter) want to improve their national lot and their status, then Murthy and his rich, entitled mates need to focus on quality, not quantity. And Infosys have a lot of focusing on quality to do.
Whether it's code, support services, customer services, manufacturing, rule of law, public or private governance these countries could be so much better off if they'd do the job properly,
Or they can focus on influencing the policy increasing the regulatory capture (like here the changed IR35 that limits competition and favours these corporations) and just continue to make massive profit delivering garbage.
There is nothing to stop them.
You just called out the Infosys work philosophy. Throw crap cheap labour at it. If it doesn't work get some more in. Rinse and repeat. Heaven forbid they actually train and skill staff to do the job or try to retain the ones that can actually do it.
Well, Murthy was recently quoted in the Economic Times (india's FT) as calling for the state to spend a billion a year to re-train retired teachers. So presumably on Planet Murthy, that's the state to pay for everything Infosys can't be bothered with, a 70 hour week for everybody, and no retirement. When your eyesight or brain goes, you can chew leather to soften it for industry, when your teeth go, you can become that leather.
Presumably the state should pay billion to Infosys to conduct the retraining
https://www.infosys.com/about/springboard.html
If I am to be cynical, retraining retired teachers could be a perfect scam. Get the state to pay for shoddy e-learning platform. Pay peanuts for apprentices to do the courses. If retired teachers perform poorly? Well they are old and not bright enough anymore, totally not the fault of the system.
And who benefits from those long hours ? Today the Grauniad reports: World’s five richest men double their money as poorest get poorer
> out of a sense of duty to the nation.
Maybe, and I know this is way out there, maybe if the Billionaire is concerned about duty to the nation and improving the lot of the poor he could perhaps, just perhaps, stop hoarding all the bleeding cash? That's not to say there aren't things that others could and should do, but talking about improving the lot of your country whilst sitting on a Scrooge-McDuck pile of cash does rather suggest that what you're actually saying is "help make me richer".
> The Infosys co-founder described his long hours at work as a “puny” effort compared to the accomplishments of India's historical leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, other heroes of India’s independence movement, and the nation’s early prime ministers.
All of whom were notable and were remembered for much, much more than "we never saw Dad because he was always working".
In a new interview posted this week, India Today consulting editor Rajdeep Sardesai asked Murthy if he sticks by his 70-year plan.“Absolutely,” he answered. “I don’t think 70 is important, all that it means is that you are productive, work very hard like the Germans did after World War II, like Japanese did. We owe it to the poor people to work hard and make the quality of their life a little bit better.”
Certain aquarellist from Austria even said something along the line "Work sets one free".
It's funny how in my opinion he thinks poor people owe him more work to better his life or did I get this wrong? How many more stuff he needs?
In the case of Germany, a lot of that hard work was done by immigrant labour - particularly Italian and Spanish people from dirt poor rural regions of their home countries.
It was also a completely different kind of work to the sort that Murthy's company generally does. Physical labour, rather than churning out shit code because Murthy has taken all the profits that should have gone into training and decent wages.
70 hours might be OKJ if your work is undemanding (e.g. meetings), but not if the work is something that is very mentally challenging as 70 hour weeks will lead to lower quality of work and burn out over time.
Would not be great for the family dynamic or children either (I'm sure some psychology expert could add lots of links to research articles on how barely seeing one parent can be detrimental to the child(ren))
I stopped contracting as the roles typically involved a massive commute each way (many years ago, in the days when remote work was rare) so long days and meant saw little of the family and after trying it for a while we all agreed that it was having a bad effect on family life so I switched back to perm work.
70 hours might be OK if your work is undemanding (e.g. meetings), but not if the work is something that is very mentally challenging as 70 hour weeks will lead to lower quality of work and burn out over time.
The British experience during WW1 where the initial solution to a shortage of shells (sound familiar?) was to require 24 hour production, achieved by 2x 12 hour shifts and banning resignations from munitions manufacturers, led to a bit of a fatigue problem and the discovery that while the initial production was fantastic, people started making so many avoidable mistakes that production (passing QA tests) actually dropped compared to working sensible hours. This led to the formation of the Industrial Fatigue research board to figure out precisely what the best ratio of working hours for optimal productivity should be, which pointed out that having regular breaks during the day, canteens etc was as important as working hours.
The result was that working hours were somewhat shorter in WW2 and if sufficiently trained men couldn't be found then huge numbers of untrained woman were employed and trained to do only a single step of a job, with the actually trained people acting as line managers and trainers. Production increased to the point where German WW2 notes for officers fighting the UK who'd moved from the eastern front fighting the Russians warn of extremely heavy artillery bombardments of several thousand shells against any identified German positions even when the British forces advancing were on the other of single company sized (60 men) advances.
Which says something about the sheer number of shells being produced on the British side.
Well then, to help the poor, maybe instead of asking young men to work double time, you could hire the women and make a true equality happen ?
I think that would "help the poor" a lot more.
But hey, he's 70+. You don't change your mentality at that age.
@Pascal. Ageist twaddle. 70 plus year olds can change their minds if (a), persuaded by demonstrable information, (b) not emoted at as if deaf, ignorant or stupid for disagreeing with 18 year old first year uni student who has never had responsibility. However, regardless of age, a truism holds as follows. It is very hard to change someones mind if their job/wealth/position depends on not knowing something.
Also to be considered. Some people have ideas. Some ideas have people. Lastly a quotation about a Roman soldier comes to mind about having suffered, he saw no need to reduce the suffering of others. That may be appropriate in this not uncommon case. Most of us have managed to attend meetings in body, but not mind.
Do keep in mind that one's mind hardens as you age, naturally. This can of course be prevented and actively reversed for some people with mind exercises, correct diet, and good sleep; but it is an invariable fact that as you age your neuroplasticity lowers in many respects, your memories become harder to recall as old pathways break down and are lost, your convictions become more engrained as you begin to lack the mental power necessary to challenge them.
There is nothing ageist about basing your opinions or musings on scientific fact, and in repsonse to a viewed situation at that; it's certainly questionable to brand an entire generation of people with that same generalization, without the sort of nuance the context of this article provides.
Don't take things so personally.
Work is a painfully simple contractual arrangement. Your time and skills in exchange for money.
Overtime not paid? Bye.
Unless you're on the board or the CEO, the company won't do you any favours. You're simply there to fulfill a role that needs to be done. Your boss is not your friend, (s)he's a work colleague. Different dynamic (beware of favours, it's often a one way street). And beware of "team spirit" crap. Those usually happen when somebody screwed up and stuff needs to be done by yesterday. If it's a friendly group, then fine. But if it's a bunch of backstabbers who suddenly turn on the charm and start yabbering on about company values and team spirit, they're probably trying to guilt trip you into doing something they don't want to do. Beware, especially if it's one of those "overtime isn't paid" places.
Like I said - time and skills in exchange for money. That's what "work" is.
Why not get the people who the menial shitty work to work for nothing and give them the status of property.
The people who do slightly less shitty work aren't quite property are still severely restricted on what work they can do and with whom they may interact.
As you go up this dismal scale of decreasing shittyness slighly fewer restrictions and very slighly more compensation.
While palookas* at the top are free to what they will with the rest below them.
Ah, silly me - that is the crap they have/had which, if it had been consistently applied, would have spared us from this nutjob's Muskish ravings.
Got bitten by overtime claim getting scrapped just because due procedure was not followed (manager had to request it, and sign off on that, which was never done).
So.
I'll work my 8-5 slot and bugg'r orf home after.
Any work left over will be continued the next day.
You can take your overtime and shove it. I'm done with that sort of scheisse.
A friend of mine told me about a time at his old company. A new boss came in, and banned all overtime pay. If you wanted, it had to be approved a week in advance, and signed off by the new Boss himself. And this was rigorously enforced. If you worked extra, you did not get paid for it...
My friend worked in Concessions. i.e the poor bastards who when production makes a mistake, work out if the part can still be used, what mods are needed to make it work, and sign off on the changes.
A very important manufactured piece that was due to be delivered the next day to the customer and had just been finished at 4pm and a mistake had been discovered. My friend's boss came to him as he was putting his coat on, and said "I need you to work this concession." my friend shrugged "Will I get paid Overtime." His Boss umm and ahhd and ended up admitting probably not because the big Boss had already sloped off home and so wouldnt be able to approve the Overtime in advance. He politely told his Boss "No Pay, No stay!" put on his coat and walked out.
The piece didnt get delivered, and there was a huge delivery penalty. The upper levels of the company exploded with indignation. The next day he was called into the Big Bosses office to get a telling off. My friend simply handed him a print out of the company policy the Big Boss had written about No overtime being allowed. Apparently, the Big Boss turned so red everyone though he was having a heartattack kicked my mate out of the office and that was the end of it.
My mate left for brighter pastures about 3 months later. The writing was clearly on the wall at that point...
I think I've done it once in semi-recent memory. Something bad(TM) happened at the company and required all hands to help fix it. Cue a couple of 16-hour work days, with 12-hour days for probably another week or more. All voluntarily given.
The director even went out to get lunch & dinner for us while we worked. Overtime was never discussed and, technically, never received. But the company got dug out of a big hole and a couple of months later a whopping big bonus landed. So yeah, if I'm needed I'll be there.
The same company once gave me a right old telling off for merely suggesting the idea of overtime, so mixed signals were definitely given.
Having meetings and drinking champagne and eating caviar in a restaurant is not working, you clown!!
It always strikes me that C-level management pride themselves on making long hours, but when you look at what they're doing during those hours it's mostly non-productive work, fooling around on their computer, going to meetings or restaurants or spending time in an airplane in First Class. I guess they've forgotten what REALLY working means: getting up early, toiling from dusk till down with some manager shouting in your ear and going home tired and standing in traffic jams for hours.
Someone please tell this guy to sod off.
Before they are sent to the slaughterhouse, they milk them until they run dry.
I hope millenials will be the first generation that is not so stupid to waste their lives away in cubicles running like donkeys after the carrot for the promise of "success".
Success in private companies is what people did in the last quarter, the rest is totally unimportant.
Asian culture did not experience an age of Enlightenment, that was promoting independent thinking among people in Western societies.
Probably they will be sensitive to calls asking them to trade their lives for the sake of some random billionaires.
The chronic workaholics I've known (including myself at one time) all have one thing in common -- a very large chunk of equity (real or potential). It makes a difference. It also explains why they can't figure out why the 'little people' just want to work a reasonable number of hours for a reasonable wage and then go off and do other stuff. Like have a life.
Its also incorrect to swallow the 'I pulled myself up by my bootstraps' line. From the timelines that I know there's usually some significant opportunity that fell into a person's lap, often just being in the right place at the right time. (Not everyone is willing or capable of taking advantage of this, though, so there is some kudos involved.) Given that one of the job requirements for these self-made entrepreneurs is an inflated ego they're hardly likely to acknowledge the leg up -- they get to write history so the history paints them as heroic.
All I know is that for the next 5 years I'll be looking at that big life timer and awaiting retirement while doing as little as possible. I've done my share and thats it.
Because I know from friend's experience working 12 hrs a day 6 days a week destroys marriages quite nicely. and I've no further wish to put up with an old friend sleeping on my sofa while his missus rings me up asking to talk to him before it degenerates into a loud shouting match.
And besides I've had the job offer from hell a few years ago.... asked about the hours and they said 30-40 hrs a week............ overtime.. on top of a full 40 hr week.
Eat. Sleep. Work. repeat until your wife leaves and you're on a friends sofa no thank you (they called up the next day offering more money )
And in any case I'd like to see one of these C-level twats humping 3 lb lumps of metal in and out of machines for 12 hrs a day or sweating over making sure a bunch of process threads didn't deadlock acccesing a database.
Funny that he would mention Japan. Which is undergoing demographic collapse.
The simple rule being "if you work 70 hours constantly, you don't have a lot of oomph left for nookie". Japan, Korea are both declining at far beyond the rate seen in industrial nations anyway (due to whatever reasons there).
Worked on a big project that expected near 7 days a week, 10 hours a day output.
Not necessarily quality output, but definitely quantity.
They got a bunch of new staff and told them they were ineligible for overtime at their level.
I knew better and worked my solid 5 days at 8 hours. Many did much more, some even slept under their desks.
Eventually I got sick of the BS, but before leaving I told all the “ineligible” staff that they were entitled to overtime.
And so they were! The claims flew thick and fast…
My work there was done.
Having been in IT related roles that required ridiculously long hours you soon realise the price that comes with that commitment includes a high degree of really stupid errors. I had to review some of my own work done during one such period and completely changed the resulting documentation.