The CEO of a company in India suggested that any job novice should work 18 hours a day for the first 4-5 years of their career, adding that young people should consider maintaining a work-life balance early in their career, “it’s too late” morning”. When this remark came out, it caused an uproar.
BBC News reported on August 31 that Shantanu Deshpande, founder of the Bombay Shaving Company, asked young employees to “worship” work in an online post. Don’t “sigh”.
Angered responses followed on social media, saying comments like Decipander were promoting a “toxic work culture”.
India has strong labor laws, but rights activists say officials need to do more to strictly enforce them.
Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Indian software giant Infosys, faced similar criticism in 2020, when he claimed that Indians should work at least 64 hours a week for two or three years to make up for Economic downturn caused by COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) lockdown measures.
According to the LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Index released in 2020, 2 out of 5 professional workers in India experience increased stress and anxiety.
Deshipand wrote in a LinkedIn post on August 30 that it is “too early” for young people to consider maintaining a work-life balance early in their careers.
One Twitter user said Deshipand was “justifying a toxic work culture” at a time when “massive layoffs at Indian startups are the norm.”
Another user pointed out that Deshippande did not say he would “pay extra” to people who worked longer hours.
“Businesses tend to exploit people who work long hours. In many cases, this leads to premature fatigue, which ultimately leads to people jeopardizing their careers,” the user wrote.
Deshipand added a note to his post following his comments were widely criticized. “Oops! Everyone hates working 18 hours a day, that’s what ‘frugalism is’ from,” he wrote, adding that anyone who has concerns regarding his company’s work culture is welcome to chat with his employees chat.
Nowadays, the term “quiet quitting” is popular on social media, which means that you only do your job well, and the rest has nothing to do with yourself. According to TikTok video creator @zaidleppelin’s own explanation, “silent resignation” means: “This is not a direct resignation, but a change of the concept of going through fire and water. You still perform your duties, but you no longer accept that work is the toil culture of life.”
The BBC’s Perisha Kudhail wrote that the overall wave of “silent resignations” may have originated in China, where the popular hashtag “#lieflat” was used to protest the high-hour work culture, but “lieflat” ‘ is now blocked.
Responsible editor: Yu Weining