The boss of a tech company says: He has worked 70 hours a week for 40 years and considers it meaningful. However, not many may share that opinion. In many countries, there is even consideration of reducing working hours.
In many countries, including Germany, there is a debate about whether a 5-day week with 40 working hours is still up-to-date. In some cases, it has already occurred that employees have already secretly introduced a 4-day week.
However, currently 5 days with 40 hours remain the norm in Germany. According to the boss of an IT company from India, people should work more – he has done it himself for many years.
40 years, 70 hours a week, and sometimes even 90 hours
Who says that? Narayana Murthy is the boss and founder of the Indian IT company InfoSys. It provides digital services and consulting worldwide and is also publicly traded. Murthy himself is married and has two children. He is referred to by some as the “father of the Indian IT sector.”
The founder stated that his ideal is not a shortened 35-hour week, but a 70-hour week. Because that’s how he worked for many years. By the way, another boss shares a similar opinion, as the boss demands an 80-hour week from his employees.
These are his arguments: Murthy defends his idea by claiming that he has worked so much for years. Hard work is crucial for the economic growth of a nation. In a conversation with the Indian daily newspaper Economic Times, he explains in December 2023 that he learned these values from his parents (via jeuxvideo.com):
I was in the office at 6:20 AM and left at 8:30 PM and worked six days a week. I know that all nations that have achieved prosperity have done so through hard work.
My parents taught me early in life that we can only hope to escape poverty by working very, very hard – of course, on the assumption that one achieves the highest productivity from every hour of work. Over my more than 40 years of working life, I have worked 70 hours a week.
He further states that he has even worked “90 hours a week” for years. This is not comparable to today’s working hours.
The boss of another company did not want to extend working hours but rather significantly shorten them: Therefore, he wanted to find out where his employees spend their time so he could optimize it. However, this resulted in a female employee being discovered who was not only working for one company: A company wants to introduce the 4-day week – meanwhile, an employee is discovered who has been doing two jobs the whole time.
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