Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy has once again called for longer working weeks has returned, this time with an emphasis on schedules like the 996-pattern used in parts of China.
Murthy’s comments revive a debate which began in 2024, when he argued that Indian employees should work 70 hours a week.
Crunching does not work!
Instead, it reduces productivity to a fraction (often 10% of normal), countering any time added.
You want to improve your productivity, you make your workers happy. Make sure they can eat, have good healthcare, have adequate family life, etc.
We now have studies that counter the crunching myths and time theft myths.
Is maxxing the productivity top priority?
They might value control over their workforce above productivity.
In actuality, yes, their job is to maximize productivity for the dollar spent, hence maximizing profits, and the best way to do that for most job pools is by improving the QoL of the workforce.
They likely do value control over productivity, but that’s not the job of upper management. A lot of jobs (the bullshit jobs ) are to fulfill a personal need for an entourage, the illusion of business activity. That is a – human – trait.
Our c-suite execs might believe it controlling the workforce is their job, though, if they’re inadequately educated about the current state of the art. Hopefully, their AI replacements will be more current and won’t be interfered with by the BoD or shareholders.
Imagine if every muscle cell in my biceps wanted to self-actualize. I want to grab a cup of coffee, but every muscle cell in my arms has their own ideas. Something that normally takes a second, now takes 10 years of negotiations. It would not do me a lick of good if I had the strongest muscle cells in existence if I could not control them.
Of course people should not be regarded as mere muscle cells, but the point here is to show how obviously valuable and vital control can be when you want to serve some ambition.
Should workers be controlled like they are soldiers?
Whose interests does the business prioritize? And how heavily?
In a worker cooperative workers are the owners. Workers hire and fire their managers at every level of management. All power flows are bottom up. The workers are the entourage. In this case workers are better positioned to self-actualize, because there is no capricious, lazy, ignorant, spoiled silky pants tyrant at the top.
But what about a more typical business? Well, there is either one owner or a tiny cabal of owners, and everyone else is just a resource, a means to an end. And you have to exert control over the means of labor to benefit the entourage at the top. If the entourage can figure out how to produce things without workers, they will get rid of them immedeately, why? Because the workers are just a means, they are incidental, they exist because slavery was deemed too toxic, and because no one figured out a way to get rid of the workers yet. That’s the only reason workers exist in capitalism.
Managers want to give orders and see those orders followed immediately. They don’t want debates, challenges, counter proposals, etc. If workers want to self-actualize, that’s a huge problem for a top down power flow. That’s why it is essential to beat the desire to self-actualize out of workers early. That way mindless servility is assured, which is good for control.
Also, if your workers work 80 hour weeks, they won’t start competing ventures in their spare time. Again, control.
I kinda feel sorry for all the workers out there, because self-actualization is a heavenly mandate for every sentient being, and yet they are plugged into and slotted into a structure where worker (out group) self-actualization is a huge obstacle for the (in group) entourage.
Getting everyone happy can be a slow and messy process. What if you make weapons and your workers decide it is unethical to make weapons? You are a manager of youtube and you order workers to censor channels for entourage’s benefit, but they have their own ideas, and they pretend to be censoring while actually not censoring? There is no end to such possibilities. Hence why the soul of many people MUST be crushed if the top down power flow is to be served in full measure.
Every so often there is an oddball manager like Ricardo Semler. But Ricardo Semler is the exception.
If the workforce makes a pittance and is too exhausted to rebel, the bosses win.
The bosses win if winning is continuing to manage the company poorly.
The shareholders lose since cruel treatment reduces productivity and weakens profit margins. It depends on how seriously the business controllers want to actually do a capitalism and create a product and turn a profit.
If you pay low enough wages and workers are too exhausted to do anything about it, lower productivity is profitable. It’s about the bottom line.
CEO: has lunch and answers a phone call. “I’m working!” Writes a proposal from a yacht “I’m working!” Goes golfing with industry buddies. “I’m working!” Paid tens of millions not including stock options. Spends time in the c-suite. Actually is working. Writes a letter about his cubicle slaves who are chained to their cubicle at work, their phone at home, unable to actually use PTO due to fear of negative performance reviews, working 50+ hours on the clock and uncounted hours off the clock “You need to work more!!” With their pay and benefits constantly under assault by managers.
Like hell the CEO is writing a proposal himself on a yacht. That’s what his secretary, Sugartits or Kathy or whatever, is for.
Saint Luigi preserve us.
I don’t understand why these assholes insist on people working more hours. What’s the difference to them between 1 person working 70 hours a week or 2 people working a combined total of 70 hours if they’re both paid the same hourly rate?
if they’re both paid the same hourly rate?
That’s the fun part: you only have to pay them for 40 hours!
Overworked peasants have neither the time nor the energy to revolt.
Insurance, benefits and labor expenses. Even in places with little worker protections there are costs that scale with the number of workers instead of the number of hours.
A brief look indicates employers in India can expect to budget on the order of 18% of an employees take home per year for those expenses.There are some circumstances and places in the US where you don’t need to provide as many benefits to employees who work below 40 hours. Then you see employers hire more people and schedule them for just under the threshold to give them benefits.
The answer is always because it’s cheaper for them somehow.
if they’re both paid the same hourly rate?
That’s the fun part: you only have to pay them for 40 hours!
“Infosys co-founder suggested slavery could be brought back with updated terms and conditions”
This is how this news should be titled
can someone kidnap this motherfucker and make him work normal labor job for 80 hours a week, for a year, and see how much he likes this stupid fucking pants on head idea after that
These people may as well tattoo “slave owner” on their foreheads by now.
Fuck that! We should be aiming for 21-28 hours being the normal length of the employed week for everyone everywhere, and it not being necessary to work any more than that unless you want to for yourself. We can’t accelerate forever, we need to do less work hours and have good quality of life, otherwise what’s even the point of technology?
Technology is now used as a tool to perpetually force the working class to obey the ever increasing draconian rules. AI is one thing, highlighting that all it matters to them is a profit with no gratitude towards the workers.
This is essentially legal slavery, fuelled by big corp and the governmental bootlickers.
Arguably we are already there. Depends how much you want to yourself. My house? No comrade, our house.
Share a house and you can do very little work. You could take it pretty far too. Think of those capsule hotels, could fit loads of capsules in my current bedroom even if you want to have your own capsule - sharing can further increase population. Less than 20 hours of work a month for static fees (mortgage, tax) per person. Food is about 4 hours of work a month. Heating wont change, though you will use more hot water for washing, probably 2-5 hours of work for energy and water.
All essentials covered, less than 30 hours of work a month required per person. Basing this on my expenses in the UK and minimum wage.
@oftenawake @throws_lemy starting with 4 working days per week would be an massive improvement already
You could replace most management people with a rack of GPUs and nobody would notice. Mostly they are a very unimaginative lot parroting the same misguided group think that devalues the employees that create all their companies value. Infosys is a consulting company. They don’t make anything or own valuable IP. They pimp out Indian labour to undercut the labour rates and conditions in developed countries which already makes them a shitload of profit.
You would think with increasing options to Indian professionals, their recruitment people would be shitting bricks trying to hire talent with this bullshit out there but they have probably sacked them as well. Though, if I wasn’t poor I would probably say all sorts of shit to pump share prices and cash out before the AI bubble bursts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi
Overwork people until they die/kill themselves, great idea, what could go wrong. Really, I want to see homeboy do a month of whatever his lowest employee does with that schedule and THEN say he’s still for it. Bet he’ll be real fuckin’ quiet.
He would go back exactly to where he was. These people have no empathy
Go fuck yourself, parasite. Signed, the world.
It’s not just saturday morning cartoon villain evil.
It’s also incredibly fucking stupid.
Anything that you get better outcomes from by making people work longer, like assembly lines, can be done better by robots anyway, and of course you as capital owner don’t have to live life after your dominant hand gets crushed and amputated.
Anything that isn’t pure rote work, you get better results when people are not overworked and spending thirty hours a week sticking fucking pencils in your acoustic ceiling because nobody’s fucking brain works that long and hard.
Also automation is getting better and better all the damn time. The only reason why we haven’t hit 30 hour workweek is due to declining unions and and exploitation politics.
70 hours a week? What? So we can just stare at our screens pretending to work for half that time, if not more?
Go to hell.
To be Frank guys this is the sick reality of Indian workers in India. The Labour and Workers are always exploited as much as Possible. Indian Labour Law is mostly in Favor of the Corporate Crooks, even its harder to start a WORKER UNION in Service based sectors like IT and Non coding Jobs. Normal working hours is 8 hrs but most Indian worker in such sectors their minimum working hour is 10hr (Personal experience), even the work environment it evolved into is one Most Sick and Selfish environment you could ever Imagine. Yes, sadly many Indians Lack Civic sense I don’t object and we too are being discriminated in a stereotypical way for that. But I must say that many Indians who leave for On-site is not just for higher payroll but for better Work environment and to embrace their basic Work-Life Balance which is a JOKE in India.
~ Random Comrade
Luigi’s work is piling up, isn’t he about to be acquitted?
