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posted by hubie on Thursday November 21, @04:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the hardcore dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 21, @08:54PM (4 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday November 21, @08:54PM (#1382758)

    >I have yet to work for anyone, any company, perhaps with the exception of the nuclear industry, where the pressure to cut corners for short-term gain wasn't too great.

    I have worked at enough varied places to say: there's a definite (inverse) correlation between corners cut and time to implosion...

    I am fortunate enough to work in a quiet (read: more profitable than most) corner of a large corporation where upper management has been leaving things more or less alone, because: why mess with success? We still cut corners, but not so much in the well staffed departments.

    The ironic thing is: most places, most implosions have nothing whatsoever to do with cutting corners and everything to do with being ill prepared to handle unpredictable challenges from the market, economy, etc. I suppose if you're already cutting all the corners, then the unexpected challenge is always more than you can handle. Anyway, the cut corners never really came out as an identifiable root cause of implosion anywhere I worked - though there are plenty of case studies highlighted by the corner expansion and reinforcement regulatory agencies showing where they did cause serious trouble - kind of like those "death on the highway" movies they used to show in driver's ed. Sure, it happens... but other things happen much more often.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday November 21, @09:00PM (1 child)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 21, @09:00PM (#1382760) Journal

    It's about sustainable institutional knowledge, a sustainable work pace, cohesive and well-functioning teams and time to plan rather that a constant fire-fight. You can get away with the fire-fight mentality for a quarter or two but it soon all comes down in a heap.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 21, @09:33PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday November 21, @09:33PM (#1382767)

      >a sustainable work pace, cohesive and well-functioning teams and time to plan rather that a constant fire-fight.

      It is, but during my current 12 year tenure, I have seen two division chief replacements and one CEO replacement. The "new guys" up top are always fired up to "change things for the better." The CEO seems to have simmered down in the past 7 years, but those division chiefs came in, stirred things up, then were shown the door.

      >You can get away with the fire-fight mentality for a quarter or two but it soon all comes down in a heap.

      I briefly (5 months) worked for a place that ran on the fire-fight mentality for nearly 15 years. COVID took them down - not directly, but the economic shifts were more than they could handle.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday November 22, @04:52AM (1 child)

    by sjames (2882) on Friday November 22, @04:52AM (#1382806) Journal

    Of course, cost cutting, especially reduced head count often leaves business and it's processes brittle. It's also worth considering that nobody wants to tell the people who cut costs that the ship may sink due to cost cutting, lest they become the next cost to be cut.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 22, @12:19PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday November 22, @12:19PM (#1382836)

      Thus: the golden parachute. CEOs aren't always the brightest bulbs, but many of them know enough to get advice and advice that tells them to write their own contracts such that they make piles of money whether they do well or poorly tends to be taken.

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