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Writer's pictureNishant Mittal

Is Mr. Narayan Murthy right about 80 hour work-weeks?

Mr. Narayan Murthy recently said he was "disappointed" when India shifted from a 6-day workweek to a 5-day workweek in 1986. Because "hard work is crucial to India's progress".


As Mr. Murthy drilled on the point, he also pointed to the example of post-WWII Germany and Japan, suggesting India follow a similar path of hard work and national rebuilding. “This is what they did to rebuild their countries,” he said.


Now everyone is entitled to their opinions, obviously. Mr. Murthy is an entrepreneur par excellence whose contribution to the Indian economy is so huge that it's difficult to even measure it in the complete sense. Infosys has given jobs to MANY CRORES of people directly and indirectly ever since it began as a 7 member shop back in 1981. For that, we should all be thankful.


However, how do his recent statements fare when judged objectively? Do they really make sense?


Before we jump into that, what must be said is that Infosys has always been a "body shop", i.e., in the most basic sense, it's always done tech outsourcing work for international clients by billing them "man-hours" in Time & Material (T&M) or Fixed Price contracts. The number of "Man-hours" is the holy grail on which a business like Infosys is built. All Infosys basically does is hire people from India (where "man-hours" are cheap) and then bills those to a company in US or Europe (where "man-hours" are expensive). The client saves money, Indians get jobs. And whatever Infosys pockets in the process is what makes one sing Tunak Tunak Tun (or Bolo Tara Rara).


So when India shifted from a 6-day workweek to a 5-day workweek, it was only natural that Mr. Murthy got "disappointed" because in one fell swoop, he lost 16.7% of the erstwhile billable "man-hours". Margins got hit. Operations got ruffled. Ass got pained. Terrible tragedy.


This is perhaps why Mr. Murthy always talks of work in terms of "hours per week". You can take a man out of outsourcing, but not outsourcing out of a man. It's understandable.


That said and considered, quoting Japan as an example to motivate Indians to work hard is perhaps not a great way to make an argument.


It's true that Japan experienced rapid industrialisation post World War 2 and it led to something called the "economic miracle" from 1950 to 1970s. Japanese worked extremely hard, displaying terrific work ethic. But what did it lead to?


The economic bubble popped in 1990 and Japan crashed. From 1991 to 2003, Japan's GDP grew only 1.14% yearly. From 2000, the growth rate averaged to 1%. Japanese people worked so hard that there's a word in their language called 'Karoshi', which basically means "working oneself to death". Due to the (otherwise beautiful) culture of "salaryman" ethics, Japanese people never spent too much money. The country's domestic consumption always remained lower than Western nations and the savings rate stayed among the highest, even during the economic boom.


Most importantly, Japanese stopped having babies. Raising children is already incredibly hard. And it understandably must become even harder with that kind of a work culture. So the beautiful people of Japan made a choice and basically stopped reproducing altogether. Japan’s current fertility rate of 1.2 is well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman necessary to maintain a stable population. The world’s average stands at 2.3 at the moment.


Peter Thiel recently noted that considering the current birth rate of Japan, the country’s population with totally disappear in 33 generations. Considering an average generation lasts close to 20 years, basically all of Japan will be gone in about 660 years. How’s that a good thing? I love Japanese people!


Forget about reproducing, Japanese people are not even engaging in sexual activity as much as the rest of the world. Does that have anything to do with overwork? Of course! It’s not hard to make that connection.


A similar analysis can be done about Germany. Germany course corrected much faster than Japan, and everyone benefited from it. But the nuances of each country’s history aside, the bottomline is that Mr. Murthy is wrong. Unless it’s manual labour, number of hours don’t matter as much as the quality of work does. That’s what India should be focused on. A good way to think would be to not ask “How many hours did you work last week?”, as Mr. Murthy probably would. But instead ask “What did you get done last week?”, like Mr. Musk.


So.. What did you get done last week?



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Anshuman Patra
Anshuman Patra
Nov 16

As an ex-infoscion, Infosys is the body shop and nothing more.

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