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.
I do not understand his logic.
Paying someone 70 hours has the same cost as paying two persons 35 hours, right? (In my country technically no, because higher base taxation)
Someone working 70 hours is a mindless drone. This is how you get 13" iPads accidentally sold for 15€ “because the computer said so” (happened in a big box retailer in my country, no human involved in the process objected the price until WEEKS after the sale, when accounting noticed it, and they had to beg customers “pwease return our €1000 iPads and we give you a €25 gift card as a token of gratitude” and everyone just laughed about that)
Especially for developers, for the same price is better to get two that can do tasks with full attention rather than a single one that after 12 hours of job is just mindlessly clicking on “accept” on whatever a LLM is spitting out or half assing solutions because don’t have the right state of mind to think for a proper one.
What he wants is to pay one person for 70hrs, the same as he’d pay one person for 35 hrs.
And he wants person 2 to be desperate for person 1’s job
AND he will massively underpay that worker for their 35 hours.
Pay workers the vare minimum they need to survive, and have them spend all their waking hours working for you. That’s how you get rich, apparently.
I mean it isn’t, but the difference is like marginal, but you get added costs like more hardware,more HR needed ( after a certain number of people) It support for those people etc.
But really it’s penny pinching.
That’s the thing. They wont pay you more. Maybe some people would get the extra money, but all new employees would get the same salary for more hours.