Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Infosys founder Narayama Murthy has tripled down on his previous statements that 70-hour work weeks are what's needed in India and revealed he also thinks weekends were a mistake.
Speaking on Indian TV channel CNBC-TV18 at the Global Leadership Summit in Mumbai last week Murthy once again declared he did not “believe in work-life balance.”
“I have not changed my view; I will take this with me to my grave,” he asserted .
The argument from Murthy, and like-minded colleagues he quotes, is that India is a poor country that has work to do improving itself. Work-life balance can wait.
The Infosys founder held prime minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet up as an example of proper workaholics, claiming the PM toils for 100 hours a week, and suggested that not following suit demonstrates a lack of appreciation.
“Frankly I was a little bit disappointed in 1986 when we moved from a six-day week to a five-day week,” he added.
[...] In response to his Murthy’s comments, some have suggested that long working hours are acceptable when you own your own company, but perhaps not ideal as an employee.
“This man has been given too much of an importance by asking his opinion about everything under the sun. His words remind me of those exploitative barons of medieval ages from whom the 8 hours work day rights had to be snatched,” quipped a commenter who claims to be a former Infosys employee.
[...] Despite its founder’s firm stance that India’s workforce be fully engaged, Infosys has recently received attention for promising 2,000 graduates a job and them making them wait up to two years to start work.
The engineers-in-waiting were allegedly kept busy with occasional training and promises after being selected for employment during Infosys’ 2022/23 recruitment drive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21, @07:31PM (5 children)
I'm not a communist; but I totally understand its appeal. I'd probably want to throttle this guy if I met him personally. That's not the way though. Cooler heads must prevail, and ignore such twats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21, @07:43PM
Exactly. The point isn't to reserve cruelty for those who "really deserve it". It's to stop being so cruel. To make people empathetic to the struggles of others, up and down.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21, @09:08PM
I worked for one of these companies once when my hitherto employer decided to save money by replacing us with cheaper "passionate" Indians and we all got transferred. They provide cheap, young, impressionable, enthusiastic and underpaid staff who have been fed propaganda about a bright future with no limits. It's all about the money. It's not about the engineering. It's about signed contracts, boxes ticked and money changing hands. Working products are irrelevant. Statements of Work fulfilled are what it's all about.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 22, @12:02AM (2 children)
I really wish Communism could work, but it can't. It can't because it doesn't scale, and it doesn't scale because most humans are simply not good enough people to make it work at scale...and my suspicion is that if we *were* good enough, Communism would never have even been thought of, because *any* economic system people that good came up with wouldn't be an engine of suffering. In other words, if humans on average were good enough for Communism to work, we'd be good enough for any economic system to work.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by evilcam on Friday November 22, @06:58AM (1 child)
Counterpoint: Capitalism doesn't really work either, except in theory. Like sure, capitalism has worked some of the time in that it has led to enormous prosperity for about 1% of the population, but there about 100M more people living on less than two dollars a day [imf.org] than two decades ago under that same system. Since the death of Karl Marx in the 1880's the Gini coefficient-the measure of global inequality-has worsened [wir2022.wid.world].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 23, @03:37PM
Oh, absolutely correct, and it comes down to the same reason capital-C Communism doesn't work either: people fucking suck. The main difference is that capitalism *could* work if it were to set its sights on sustainable, level production instead of growth at all costs. Of course, since the innate drive of capitalism *is* "growth at all costs" and "all costs" would include "buying the actual regulators and making sure they don't regulate," it's only a matter of time until capitalism explodes too.
I liken what's happening in late-stage capitalism to diseases of lifestyle and excess: countries like the US have removed basically all restraint (or are about to...fucking Zoomer men!), and it has about the same effect on the body politic as a human being who's deliberately abused his or her system with so much alcohol, drugs, promiscuous sex, and unhealthy food in unhealthy amounts that the usual satiety signals don't fire any longer and all sorts of irreversible metabolic and neurological damage has been done.
Basically, late-stage capitalism is when your economy is built in the image of the love child of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and Jabba the Hutt. And it shows.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...