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.
He doesn’t work that hard, so why the fuck should we?
He has his own private chef to make him food, he has maids to take care of his house(s), he has assistants to do all his errands, if he has kids he has nannies to take care of them. So in his backwards ass head he can easily “work” more than 70+ hours a week and doesn’t understand why us lowly peons can’t do the same.
He probably thinks he works 80 hour weeks because he is including schmoozing with clients and company paid lunches and dinners as “work”
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.
Ok I’ll do 70 hour weeks as long as it promises I am also a billionaire by retirement. So that’ll be a salary of 21 million a year please.
There is a large body of research out there regarding 12h shift work in healthcare. I’m only linking 1 article, a quick search will yield more, easily.
A TLDR on it: 12h shifts decrease performance. Stacking them decreases safety and performance, cumulatively. Car accidents pick up significantly on day 4.
Oh fuck off, asshole… you need to be thrown in prison.
Japan has a habit of doing this. The birth rate cratered, productivity is not that great and economic growth is famously low. Most workers do a form of performance theater, an actual “we pretend to work”.
So what I’m hearing from that headline alone is that he’s a psychopath who doesn’t work more than 5 hours a week, and what little “”“work”“” he does consists of getting drunk at lunch and moaning to other CEOs about how lazy his workers are.
I learned that China had basically made this shit illegal years ago, but work hours in China are still insane. I am willing to bet that they will still have incredible growth and prosperity even if those workhours are strictly enforced.
People like this dipshit need to be stripped of all possessions and wealth and immured alive.
Yes they are illegal but companies will use workarounds to get people to put in more time. it’s a fake law basically
“Infosys co-founder suggested slavery could be brought back with updated terms and conditions”
This is how this news should be titled
So 6 days of 12-hour shifts? Sounds like a pretty novel way to tank your economy because no one’ll have the time to spend money or raise a family.
“Why aren’t the proles making babies? I specifically requested it!”
Shit like this should be shown to people who argue against unionization.
Remember, the parasites will take everything they can, even if it means their eventual demise.
The ultimate goal of capitalism is to have an infinite pool of workers, working infinite hours, for $0.
And who will buy the results of their labour?
The priviledged class will trade among themselves.
You can have a society with 7.5 billion people that are fed, clothed, sheltered enough to stave off early death, and 500 mil people with property rights trading among themselves.
Nothing says economies must collapse if not everyone is enfranchised. There is no such law.
I could see a black mirror 15 million merits type of society. Pointless work for pointless pay. But gotta keep the poors in a position that they get something they want from their meaningless work even if it’s got no real value but they want the shiny.
But then what happens to the individuals that reject consumerism? It clearly shown the main character racked up a shitload of cash by doing that. Couldn’t you then do very little work?
You can’t get cash rewards for consuming less. Spending is the least important variable in the accumulation game. All else being equal, spending less means you can spend more at other times. So if I penny pinch all year, I can splurge on New Year’s eve, that sort of thing. That doesn’t make you rich. That doesn’t elevate your status in societies where all the needed and useful resources are paywalled.
Income and time is what matters. And if you can get income while keeping all your time to yourself, that’s what elevates status. In other words you don’t trade your own time for income. That means there must be some slaves or extremely poor people that are constantly exploited to enable the elite living conditions.
A society doesn’t need parasitic elites. But if you want a better society you will have to pry it from the elites’ cold hands, because they won’t go along with a scheme that makes the world a happy and healthy place at their expense.
If I have 400 billion, but in a happy and healthy world I can only have 100mil max, which is 3 orders of magnitude less, I would rather burn down the whole planet than lose 1 cent. My interests are everything to me. My personal condition is what I experience first hand, while the rest of the world is just a theory, a story on a newspaper page, an image on TV, etc. I won’t accept tangible personally felt losses for gains which to me are theoretical.
Of course if I inhabit a worker instead of a billionaire, things are different, the calculus is different, but crumbs are always crumbs. Whether I am a worker or billionaire, man or woman, I refuse to crumb myself. I want a 10 course dinner, with hookers and blow to boot, with every trimming. Always. I’d rather have food I can’t eat than not have enough. No matter who I inhabit, the previous statement is true.
If what you want is in a tree, you have to shake that fucking tree. If you want fish you have to catch it.
Some assholes wanted to exploit people, so they killed, threatened, organized and propagandized and accomplished it. We need to understand this and take notes. Know yourself and know your enemy and you will always win.
If we want something else, if we want a different system, there will always be people that are super happy with how things are now. These folks have done very well under the present system. These folks will block our way. They are the tree, the fish, they are the soil that we have to plow and sometimes pave, to get to where we need to go. It will be ugly. It will not be without struggle.
If we just remain passive, and modestly undemanding, and we just politely wave our slogans on street corners, we know exactly what happens next.
I wasn’t talking about getting rich, my point was working less. If work doesn’t pay, there is no reason to work.
Slaves got no pay. They still worked.
Personally I’d make an exception to my moral stance that work as punishment is slavery, and would prefer to keep him around forcing him to work 70 hours a week, in addition to doing all the other chores required so that he can live - in prison - for the rest of his life.
Maybe we’ll make it 84 hours a week just for good measure, can’t be giving him a day off.
Seems more poetic
