The comments made by SN Subrahmanyan, the Chairman of Larsen & Toubro (L&T), about working 90 hours a week and wanting to make his employees work on Sundays continue to trigger passionate debates on social media. While some have argued that the likes of Subrahmanyan and Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy made the comments based on their own experiences of working long hours, others have argued that making employees work more hours is going to result in burnout.
As the debate continues, Nikesh Jain, the CEO and co-founder of Edurigo Technologies, has opened up about what working long hours did to his body.
"Forget 70 hours or 90 hours, I have worked ~100 hours a week and that too consecutively for 6 months! What did I get in return - a BP pill for life," Jain said in a LinkedIn post.
According to Jain, it was back in 2007 when he was the manager at AOL (America Online) to manage their travel portal.
"I estimated the entire effort and said it would take around 18 months! They said we have just 6 months! I said, can't be done but the pressure came from Indian leadership," he said.
According to Jain, his team managed to deliver the results, working day and night, but it came at a cost.
"My 13-member team worked day and night - my day would start at 9 am and would end at 2 am - every day, including weekends and holidays. We managed to deliver but in the process destroyed our health and, in some cases, relationships! Was it worth it? I don't think so. We didn't get any monetary benefits," he said.
Jain further said that he and his team had no other choice as "everyone knew if they didn't do it, someone else would."
Despite this experience, Jain said he again worked close to 70 hours for a startup.
"This time I was a stakeholder and we all benefitted financially for that effort because our stock value skyrocketed," Jain said, adding that "pick your battles smartly - not every battle is worth fighting."
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