On one hand, we have industry icons urging young Indians to work 70 hours a week. On the other, the death of an overworked 26-year-old Ernst and Young (EY) employee caused national outrage. Both sides have their followers. The ‘work more’ brigade believes that being young is about hustling harder, building your career, and contributing to the nation. Work-life balance, according to them, is for the weak. Who needs sleep or health when you can add more to the company’s bottom line? Working hard, they argue, is just another way to outwork the competition. And life is about beating the competition.
The poor EY employee who died had only recently cleared the notoriously competitive Chartered Accountancy (CA) exam, which only a small percentage of people pass, often after several failed attempts. She was then thrust into a demanding new job at a prestigious MNC. According to her parents, she worked late into the night and came home only to receive more work. Being a CA, her work likely involved poring over thousands of pages of documents and preparing reports. It’s a never-ending mountain of work.
It’s not just accountants. We recently saw the horrible RG Kar case, where young doctors were working sleepless 36-hour shifts. IT managers, investment bankers, consultants, salespeople, media professionals—these are just a few more examples where the work never ends. And in all this, if a junior employee at the bottom of the food chain gets overloaded with work, what exactly is he or she supposed to do?
I remember an incident from my investment banking years long ago. I went to Perth, Australia, to conduct credit due diligence on a mining company. I wanted to set up a meeting with the finance manager. He said his last meeting slot was at 3:30 PM because at 4:30 PM, come what may, he left for home. And he left in his self-driven boat. The office building was located right next to the Swan River, which runs through Perth city. Our man commuted to work every day in a boat! And 4:30 PM meant it was time to leave. He never took work home either. That was his life. And yes, the mining company he worked for did just fine.
In my banking job in Hong Kong, we worked until 10 PM several days a week. That was the culture in my company and in Hong Kong. This same work-long-and-hard culture is prevalent in India as well. Junior employees don’t want to leave before their senior does. The senior doesn’t want to leave until their senior does. Consequently, everyone sits around late trying to show how dedicated they are. Remote work technology has made things worse. Tools meant to make life easier are now being used to ensure you are always online and instantly responsive. If you don’t respond to midnight messages within three minutes—wow, you lazy sloth!
The irony is, Indian companies aren’t particularly more productive, efficient, or profitable than global counterparts. True wealth creation in a company comes from vision and innovation. This requires creativity and freedom. It also requires enough free time for people to think of new ideas. If it’s only about the daily grind and showing each other how hard one is working, nothing great is ever achieved. One of the biggest time-wasters in Indian companies is meetings. Be honest—hand on your heart and answer this: Has any company meeting ever really achieved anything? Couldn’t a message on the group have achieved the same thing? But no, corporates love meetings, if only to massage the egos of low-competence managers who want to feel like they are running a kingdom.
Indian companies actively dislike innovation. The idea of junior employees making valuable contributions makes us more insecure than excited. Hence, there is no effort to keep junior employees in a happy, creative, and free mental state. Junior employees aren’t free-thinking minds; they are commodified resources, sugarcanes, and lemons to be squeezed until there’s no juice left. If you can pay junior employees half of what they deserve and make them do the work of two, an Indian manager sees that as a major success. The competitive advantage of Indian companies, particularly in the service sector, is almost always cheap labor, which is another term for employee exploitation. Even many of our hyped-up internet companies rely on one major advantage—the availability of cheap labor, from delivery boys to riders to cooks. Take that away, and there isn’t much profitability left.
In this pressure cooker system, where egomaniacal, boring, uncreative, insecure, insensitive, and psychopathic managers are running the show called India Inc., what is a junior employee supposed to do? Should you rebel? No, you’ll lose your job. Should you quit? Only if your daddy is rich because you’ll need the money. Should you suck it up and work harder? No, because you don’t want your life force drained out of you. So how does one navigate this?
First, accept that being junior often means you have towork hard. However, you could be working too hard if any of these things are happening: you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re constantly fatigued, you’re in poor mental health (depressed or anxious), you don’t have any fun in your life, or you feel like throwing poisoned darts at your manager (okay, I made that last one up). If any of this is happening, you need to talk to your senior. This could be extremely difficult in a toxic work environment. You could be labeled a “snowflake” for telling your manager you need decent sleep. Still, at the cost of alienating yourself from the mindless workaholics around you, have that talk. Do not compromise on sleep. Sleep is directly linked to immunity and mental health. Lose sleep, and eventually, you could lose everything—even if you manage to finish that amazing presentation. Work hard, but make time for yourself, your family, and your friends. Nobody ever discusses PowerPoint presentations on their deathbed.
What if the manager doesn’t listen? What if that sadistic person laughs you off? Then you use my patented method for surviving in corporate life, which I did for years. Implement the LBDN policy. What’s LBDN? “Look busy, do nothing.” Once a project ends, don’t honestly say it’s finished. Say you still have work on it. That way, they won’t dump new work on you too quickly. Meanwhile, open an old client report or spreadsheet and keep staring at it in the office, with an intense expression. During that time, meditate, watch prank videos on YouTube, sign up on dating websites, chat with friends, make travel plans, or book a pedicure appointment. The moment the boss walks by, type away furiously on the spreadsheet. Wipe your face in frustration and bite your lip to show you’re busy and upset about something. The boss will leave you alone. Remember: LBDN—Look busy, do nothing.
Indian managers are often clueless, with zero compassion or people management skills. They think sharing motivational LinkedIn posts makes them good managers, even as they ignore their team’s motivation, enthusiasm, and exhaustion. Reason with them if you can. If they don’t listen, do your own thing anyway and exploit your corporate job with zero guilt—just the way they exploit you.