The 90-hour work week debate: From Samir Arora to Harsh Goenka to Rajiv Bajaj, experts have different opinions

The 90-hour work week debate: Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Chairman SN Subrahmanyan advocated for a 90-hour work week and suggested that employees should even give up Sundays, sparking an online debate with D-Street analysts and industry experts taking a stand for or against the idea . From Samir Arora to Harsh Goenka to Rajiv Bajaj and more, the debate over work-life balance has engulfed people across industries and sectors social media.

Devina Mehra, Chairman, Managing Director and Founder of First Global Devina Mehra advocates against the 90-hour work week. Mehra said: “After L&T Chairman SN Subrahmanyan’s comments that he expected employees to work 90 hours a week and essentially hated the idea of ​​them having any life outside of work, let me repeat it as politely as I can

This suggestion of working for “nation building” or “company building” is complete nonsense and makes no sense

1. Research shows that increasing working hours beyond a certain point (which is, of course, well before 90 hours) significantly reduces productivity. The human mind (or body) is simply not capable of working at a focused, high-quality level for long periods of time—at least on a regular basis.

Not to mention the toll it takes on physical and mental health.

Interestingly, I remember from my days at Citibank, there was a very late working culture (except for exceptions like Aditya Puri who got off work at 5:30 sharp) and many officers would kill their time like 3 to 6 p.m. point, and then go back to work again to show their boss that they are at their desk until 8:30 or 9.

This is a dysfunctional work culture that I eschewed when I became an entrepreneur.

As an employer, my focus is always on output, not face time at work.

I have some great coworkers who try to leave work by 6pm every day and still stay productive. Others who stay up late will kill time by smoking regularly, chatting with their girlfriends, etc.

2. Most people, including the person who suggested this, have families, including children.

This type of working time advice assumes that the man (almost always a man) works around the clock while his wife takes care of the home and children. This is also clear from the book I recently read about Mr. Narayan Murthy and Mrs. Sudha Murty.

Mr. Murthy completely outsourced child-rearing not only to his wife, but also to Suhaji’s sister and parents – to the point where the children believed that their grandfather was the real father, while their father was merely A “spare” father. They also had no doubt that their father did not love them as much as he loved his company. Of course, after a huge payoff, all is said and done!

This is one of the reasons I found this book disturbing.

Also, this attitude means that most women will be excluded from this type of workplace and work culture; or at least, have to give up their dream of having children (unless there is a social revolution and Indian men become something of a equal partners).

Women can then have their own careers, or have families with children, without all those men having to make that choice.

3. More importantly, all the data shows that no country has moved from low-income to middle-income with significant participation of women in the labor force.

So if our goal is to build the country and its economy, we need to attract more women into the workforce, not fewer.

So a 90-hour work week is not a recipe for moving the country to the next level.

This is a basic thing, but even well-educated people are deliberately blind to it!

4. In Korea and Japan, the social impact of this culture that requires people to hang out in the workplace all day long is that women in these countries decide the smart thing to do is not get married at all, and birth rates in these countries have dropped. plummeted well below replacement level

5. Having said that, while I don’t necessarily believe in working long hours in an office, the fact is that if you want to be truly proficient in stock research or any other real area of ​​knowledge, you need to put in those 10,000 hours to actually learn it. Skilled work.

This means reading, maybe taking college courses on your own time, etc. Without it, you wouldn’t be at the cutting edge. So, at least for the first few years, the time you need to invest may not be in the office, but in studying. “

Helios Capital founder Samir Arora weighed in on the “90-hour work week” debate on Friday as outrage mounted on social media platforms. Earlier this week, controversy arose after a video showed Larsen & Toubro chairman SN Subrahmanyan calling for longer working hours and advising employees to give up their weekends.

“Yes. In the beginning, one has to work harder than others to study, get noticed and succeed. In my first job after IIM, I was working in Delhi and my working hours usually were from 9 am to I enjoyed traveling this way for about an hour at a time around 10 pm but was still looking for a job with more sober hours,” recalls Arora.

The IIM graduate said he eventually transitioned to a new job where people worked from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and often “started thinking about leaving an hour early.”

“It was so boring, so I went back to my old company,” he added.

Arora also noted that he has enjoyed working with Alliance and Helios so much in recent years that he “doesn’t see it as work 95 percent of the time.”

“Bottom line: It is not correct to say that the CEO/sponsor works 70 hours because he is the owner, the salary is much higher, etc. You have to ask, why was that person able to become the CEO or the first generation sponsor Or whatever first. Your choice,” he added.