L&T Chief Pushes For 90-Hour Work Week as India's Tech Bosses Intensify Labor Demands (indianexpress.com) 115
Engineering and construction group Larsen & Toubro Chairman S.N. Subrahmanyan has urged employees in India to work 90 hours weekly, including Sundays, surpassing Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy's recent 70-hour workweek proposal.
"What do you do sitting at home? Go to the office and start working," Subrahmanyan said in a leaked internal video. He cited a conversation about Chinese workers' 90-hour weeks versus Americans' 50 hours to justify the stance.
"What do you do sitting at home? Go to the office and start working," Subrahmanyan said in a leaked internal video. He cited a conversation about Chinese workers' 90-hour weeks versus Americans' 50 hours to justify the stance.
Screw that (Score:2)
If 'magnates' of industry attempt to enforce this then I hope they stir a revolution within the population.
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This certainly adds a fresh perspective to the conversation on work-sleep balance.
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Until they all do this, like in China. Right now it's multiple large companies.
Then what do you do?
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old saying (Score:5, Insightful)
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Re:old saying (Score:4, Insightful)
If those beating are applied to the guy demanding 90 hour work weeks from employees... Morale absolutely will improve.
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Investors should be running.. How incredibly incompetent do you have to be to think a 90 hour work week or a good idea?
WCPGW? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you set foot in a building constructed by labour who are working 90 hours a week? Designed by a structural engineer working 90 hours per week? That seems like a recipe for disaster.
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Its India. Most safety rules that other supposedly civilised countries abide by don't seem to apply there.
Re:WCPGW? (Score:5, Informative)
Its India. Most safety rules that other supposedly civilised countries abide by don't seem to apply there.
Safety rules may not apply, but the law of gravity and other laws of physics certainly still do.
Re: WCPGW? (Score:2)
Maybe it's the Infinite Monkey paradox again, you know - monkeys with typewriters?
Throw enough people and time at a task and eventually they'll produce something good. Most of it will be shit and there will be casualties along the way but hey...
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Its not been proven false - its basically a mathematical certainty that it will happen with an infinite amount of time (not only would the infinite monkeys eventually duplicate every book we've ever written - they'd do a billions upon billions of times).
The only caveat is that it would take significantly longer than the universe has existed, or likely will exist in the future. That's the deal with infinity though - its a mostly mathematical concept that rarely has any real world relevance.
Too Many Infinites (Score:2)
its basically a mathematical certainty that it will happen with an infinite amount of time (not only would the infinite monkeys eventually duplicate every book we've ever written - they'd do a billions upon billions of times).
You only need infinite monkeys or infinite time, not both and in either case you'd produce every book it is possible to write an infinite number of times too. The problem then remains that you then have these books hidden in an infinite pile of crap. Indeed it is rumoured that the internet was an early experimental attempt to test this theory.
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How do i know if the quantum monkey is there or not and if it's working?
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Actually, recently that has been proven false.
It was "proven false" by mathematicians who considered the number 200,000 to be the same as "infinite." [slashdot.org]
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Why should SN Subrahmanyan care ? His workers do not build the sort of house that he lives in, just the ones that he sells.
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The Death Star 2 was built on nothing but overtime. It worked out just fine! Until it exploded.
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US healthcare has 80 hour work week residents. Yes, disasters happen, but its here was well.
"If God created the world in 6 days... (Score:1)
Imagine how much he could have accomplished in 7!" - Doom
Curiously enough, not observing the sabbath was punishable by death in Levitical law. Being lazy was not as far as I recall.
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religions manage to establish themselves by offering something to believe in while also offering something that is perceived as a benefit.
It's not a stretch that the sabbath was a convenient way to convince common laborers to join because they get a day off, where per the religion they're not allowed to work.
Of course various religions have put their own spin on what is and is not acceptable behavior or activity on this one day off, so it's not like it's always to everyone's benefit either.
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Of course various religions have put their own spin on what is and is not acceptable behavior or activity on this one day off, so it's not like it's always to everyone's benefit either.
Yep. For Christianity its in Luke 14:2-5 :
And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?
Basically a way of saying "Don't be stupid about the no work on the sabba
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Nevermind the quality... (Score:2)
... feel the volume. It's difficult to measure productivity accurately, but poor management can measure time at a desk! More must be good!
Staff would hate it and feel stressed and have no personal life. Must be good for business!
If only working 90 hours/week enriched the person doing the work...
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Why stop at 90? What are you doing HAVING a home? Live in your cubicle, work 24/7 for the glory of your betters, slave.
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170 is a nice round number. Or 200.
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"If only working 90 hours/week enriched the person doing the work"
Doing the thing you love and getting paid well for it 90 hours/week is great.
Being forced to work 90 hours/week at a job you hate, being paid a pittance, sucks mightily.
What's next? Legalizing slavery?
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Re:Nevermind the quality... (Score:4, Informative)
A long time ago (when I was in my 20's), I was working for a small H/W company and I wrote the low level SW/firmware. During a temporary crunch [of a month or so], the programmers were authorized to do (and got paid for) overtime.
I experimented with various amounts of hours/week. Up to 60 was doable [when I was young :-)]. Beyond that it was burnout [I tried 80 hours ;-)] and, more importantly (for the company) mistakes/bugs.
I discovered that staying at or below the threshold [60 hours], I was about as productive / hour as I was at a normal 40 hours.
After that, the rate of mistakes was high enough that productivity dropped because creating extra bugs (and fixing them) took longer than writing [relatively] bug free code in the first place.
The extra hours actually reduced "throughput" because the "error rate" grew.
Pillocks (Score:5, Interesting)
What a bunch of imbeciles these people are. Do they really think that the purpose of life is to work - not only that but to work like a slave for other peoples benefit ? (e.g. their benefit ?)
The fact we haven't got an average work week of about 20 hours shows how stupid we are a species. All this automation, yet we're still stuck in a 17th century work house mentality "Don't just sit there thinking... DO something... sweep the floor (again)" etc. etc. etc.
If I was forced to work for someone like this I'd be looking to do as little as possible (as badly as possible) whilst actively seeking out ways to quietly and effectively sabotage his company at every opportunity. Treat people like shit and they'll treat you like shit right back.
Grade A arseholes the lot of 'em.
They don't care (Score:2)
The "leaders" at the top of western industry have their psychopathy kept in check by strong labour rules. That doesn't apply in somewhere like India that socially is still living in the 19th century. You only have to look at how the Dalits and other lower classes are treated in that country to know its a real dog-eat-dog society. No wonder so many of them leave.
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Re: Pillocks (Score:2)
No, it starts with a union telling the bosses that.
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What a bunch of imbeciles these people are. Do they really think that the purpose of life is to work
Yes.
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These are the people who would straight up have slaves if that were an option. Fuck. Them.
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Well, yeah!
I mean, that's the goal of billionaires and world leaders; to be the last man, sitting on a throne at the top of a pile of 8 Billion+ skulls. At that point they will know they have actually won and are better than everyone else.
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The fact we haven't got an average work week of about 20 hours shows how stupid we are a species.
>
To be fair, some of this is workers' fault.
If you get a job and they say "we will give you $X per hour and we ask you to work 20 hours a week", you may do some math and say "well, I'd like to spend more than that and I don't have a lot going on personally, so... can I get some additional hours?"
A human's desire to spend increases as their income increases. For most people there isn't such a thing as "enough".
Clearly that's not what this article is about, nor the majority of your comment, but it's wor
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By now... the world is run by a bunch of pyschopath, that wont end well...
Modern day folklore (Score:3)
Just like John Henry, today's workers will have to work themselves to exhaustion and death in order to beat their AI replacements.
India has huge unemployment (Score:3)
There's a 9% unemployment rate there right now. And that's after all the government massaging that hides how bad things are with a <50% actual workforce participation rate.
These fucks can just hire more people if they want to do more work. But they like it better this way where they can threaten those lucky enough to have jobs with becoming one of the unemployed and squeeze every last ounce of life force out of them.
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Might be an idea if they had fewer kids but they seem to pop them out like smarties. Its a social and enviromental disaster.
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India's fertility rate has dropped drastically (just like almost every other country.) It's now at 2.0 live births per woman [bbc.com], which is less than the replacement rate.
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Which is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
People have gotten used to the idea of retiring from working as they get to a certain age. However, that concept only works if you have a larger population of working adults (younger people) able to supply the material needs of themselves plus those out of the work force (retirees and those incapable of working - eg, the disabled). This relies on the population always growing, but that also causes problems with crowding and overconsumption of natu
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Presumably a steady-state population would eventually be self-sustaining. But I agree... we're unlikely to get that.
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Unless you're willing to make a few HR violations.
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From what I've heard, there's plenty of fucking at work in call centres. The pay is rubbish, so they don't take the job seriously.
Indian Luigi (Score:3)
Sounds like Indian Luigi is about to make an appearance.
Eff you (Score:2)
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Work, die, get replaced. (Score:2)
Subrahmanyan has urged employees in India to work 90 hours weekly, including Sundays, ...
"What do you do sitting at home? Go to the office and start working,"
I mean, what else do you (poor) people have to do? You need the job, get to it.
Me? I have a party to attend, with that money you're making me.
If you're lucky, I'll bring you some cake. (That worked for the French, right?)
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Re: Work, die, get replaced. (Score:2)
Putting my pedantic hat here but if you refer to Mary Antoinette comment when people asked for bread... she never said that. The quote is from books that predated the revolution by several decades.
https://www.britannica.com/sto... [britannica.com]
That said, to go back on topic, yes these ruling elites are completely out of touch with the daily realities of 99% of the world population. Here is a prime example: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/gam... [yahoo.com]
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Mary Antoinette ... never said that.
Yup. I actually did know that, but thanks! It's still good for the sentiment though.
Convincing; tell me another... (Score:2)
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Who benefits from 90-hour workweeks (Score:2)
Is it the employee? Their wife & children? Their health?
You can trade your time for money to own things, but it will be of small comfort when you're old.
He's a sociopath who will make more money (Score:1)
This guy is a sociopath who doesn't care about the well-being of the workers. He stands to make a lot of money by forcing long working ours. Don't let him do this.
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He stands to make a lot of money by forcing long working ours.
Actually, no. He is hurting his bottom-line severely. Above 5 days 40 hours per week, overall productivity even for simple manual labor _drops_, i.e. you get less out of them per week. This has been reliably known for about a century.
Whips have to be brought from home? (Score:2)
I guess just like chains.
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I bet Saudi Arabia agrees (Score:2)
90 hours (Score:2)
That's more than 2 times the standard working week. In other words, it's taking a piss.
Slackers! (Score:2)
Are they paid for 90 hours? (Score:3)
Of course not.
Work the hours you're paid. Go home.
Just like... (Score:1)
I see, so, just like it was in the US - 16 hour days common, six, and sometimes seven days a week.
Until socialists and unions got the 8 hour day, and 40 hour week.
But you libertarians hate unions, so off you go to your 16 hour days.
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To be fair? As a U.S. tech worker who has been part of the workforce for 30+ years now? I'd say most of the people proud of putting in extra hours were coming from a place of getting pretty good compensation and benefits, plus some prestige that came with employment with a respected company.
Being well-compensated in a salary position? They were happy not to be reduced to clocking in and out all the time, with their breaks and lunch hours micro-managed. Putting in extra hours seemed like a good trade-off to
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Wrong. The 8/40 model is from Henry Ford. It has nothing to do with "socialism", he did it to get maximum productivity (per week) and therefore maximum profit. Turns out that if you have manual laborers work more than 8/40 (or mental ones more than 6/30), you get less out of them due to increased error rates, more accidents, more sickness, etc. Working more than 8/40 or 6/30 is utterly dumb. Well, sure, you can do it for one week, but that is it. The second week you already see no gain anymore and after tha
Math Fail. There are 168 Hours in a Week. (Score:3)
168 Hours of exploitable time. Provided a slav.. sorry, I mean employee needs to sleep 8 hours. Wait, this just in. It has been proven via scientific study that optimal sleep period is six hours per twenty four hour period. So, they need to sleep six hours per twenty four. They can eat while working, so that's available time. Provided you can give them toilets at their desk, there's no need to leave the work area for bathroom breaks. A cart with a hose can be brought by once a week to hose them off where they sit. So, technically, you should be able to get employees to work 168 - (6*7) - 15 minutes a week to check in with family and let them know they're still alive. That's 125.75 hours of working potential per week. And think of the lack of stress from never having to go home and suffer a commute! MY GOD! OPTIMAL EMPLOYMENT POTENTIAL!
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That's 125.75 hours of working potential per week
but... but... when will they have time to spend their hard earned money to stimulate the local economy? When????
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That's 125.75 hours of working potential per week
but... but... when will they have time to spend their hard earned money to stimulate the local economy? When????
This has been the problem with capitalism all along. Thus far, we've allowed the slav..., sorry, I keep doing that, I meant employees to spend or not spend the money as they see fit. In this new model, the money won't even pass to the employee. Most of it will go straight into the upkeep fund to provide them with company slop at their desks and to pay for the soap wasted on washing their filth. A secondary portion will be directed to government to cover the business and employment taxes required to keep the
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Wouldn't pods with nutrient baths be more efficient?
And analog work interfaces are really low-tech. Probably should just jack in to the nervous system and make direct use of the organic nodule.
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Wouldn't pods with nutrient baths be more efficient? And analog work interfaces are really low-tech. Probably should just jack in to the nervous system and make direct use of the organic nodule.
We have a tech billionaire currently working on that. It's just not quite ready for prime time yet.
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You have they pay for all the services you are providing them, you dummy!
In fact, perhaps the rent for their cubicle has to go up this month since we are making more profit...
Re: Math Fail. There are 168 Hours in a Week. (Score:2)
Please cite that study about 6 hrs being the optimal amount of sleep. I'm pretty sure this is not correct, and the amount varies widely per individual.
Just call them slaves already (Score:3)
Extract every last ounce of value out of your human resources. You can just buy more later.
These are sociopathic thugs (Score:3)
But there's a larger problem: they're being quoted as if their psychotic opinions matter, as if their expressions of all-encompassing greed and sadistic contempt for the welfare of their fellow humans are worth publishing. I'm as big a supporter of journalism as you'll find, but it's not journalism to blithely publish the rantings of clearly crazy people unless they're placed in context....and the context here is that these men support, endorse, and encourage the slow, brutal murder of other people so that they can become even more obscenely wealthy than they already are.
Haha, another link to use (Score:2)
These guys keep providing more ammunition that can be used as easy counter-arguments whenever a random Slashdotter tries to convince people that India isn't a third-world country.
If you don't care about quality, sure. (Score:2)
If buyers don't care if your goods are crap, then use slave labour. Why the pretense that these are actual employees, chain them to the desk and get whips and electric cattle prods to keep order.
May as well. If that's how you work and think, then might as well be honest that you're a depraved psychopath who is 300 years behind the times.
If you want to maximise the quality of goods and services, and thus profit by controlling both the market in what you produce and the market for top-quality employees, then
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Indeed. Dumb psycho that want to see people suffer, massively decreased productivity (overall) included.
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That's not even a hard one to answer.
Choice 1: Slave-labour digital TV that costs $1000 less outright but you have to buy a new one every month because it breaks and has no meaningful warranty, costing you $120,000 more at the end of ten years, OR
Choice 2: Quality TV that is obviously $1000 more expensive if bought ourright but will last you 10 years and can be paid for with monthly installments that are practically in the pocket money range. They can do this because there's nothing the competition can do i
How about something more productive? (Score:2)
We'll spend 40 hours a week at work. And 50 hours at home building guillotines.
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This is one of the inevitable results of overpopulation.
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It doesn't help that tech bros think the movie Elysium is a good idea.
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The really stupid thing is that this does _not_ increase productivity per week. It massively decreases productivity. Productivity peaks at around 40h/week and above that productivity per person per week _drops_ due to mistakes and accidents. This has been reliably known for about a century. No, C-levels are not exempt, this holds for everybody. It does explain why so many C-levels make so many stupid mistakes though.
Why not 168-hour week? (Score:2)
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I doubt that most people staring out trying to enforce such mandates from a position of comparative dominance thinks that they'll be the one to fall, even though a great many of them fall.
Yep (Score:2)
And this mindset is why India will never graduate to a real first world country.
I think ... (Score:3)
"What do you do sitting at home? Go to the office and start working," Subrahmanyan said
37.5 hour work week butts in (Score:2)
Construction accidents (Score:2)
I wonder what will happen to the CEO during his next visit to a construction site. Maybe some employee will fortuitously forget safety protocols. And he will be able to blame it on being overworked.
The slaves must work! (Score:2)
Surprising that scum like this one even get to have any power.
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You sure about that quote? No hit for the quote on Google for that.
Wikipedia: There are 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes in India
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Lord Trumpkins buddy Muskox advocates working 80-90 hours per week.
Yep. And the "quality" of his works shows clearly that he is doing it wrong. Not only a complete asshole, but utterly dumb.
Re: MAGA mind (Score:2)
98% of the message was right on target. Only 4 words may have triggered some. That hardly seems worthy of moderating as troll.
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It is not. At around 6h / 5 days per week, mental work peaks. Do more and quality drops enough to negate any advantages and productivity per time drops. For physical work the same happens at about 8h / 5 days. This is reliably known. Goes back to the time of Henry Ford and stays valid.
This asshole here is not only aggressive and inhumane, he is _dumb_.