What’s up with Bangalore’s work ethic? PS: This is not a 70 hour work week post. A typical Bangalore tech employee's workday starts at 11 am and ends at 5 pm. Traffic is intense between 9 am to 11 am and from 5 pm to 7 pm. Breakfast joints are busy till 10:30 am, bars start filling up from 5: 30 pm. I am frequently travelling within India. In Mumbai's office towers, lifts have long queues in front of them starting at 8 am. Delhi work days seldom end before 8 pm. In Chennai, a breakfast meeting is usually at 7: 30 am over dosa and steaming filter coffee. What's giving Bangalore the leverage to get away with such short work days? Cost arbitrage (for GCCs)? Tech leverage (for product companies)? or external funding (for startups)? What if the party comes to an end?
I don't really know what your observations are based out of but Bangalore as a city has the biggest hustle culture anywhere in India, I have worked and seen people working throughout the night readying for launch and working 12 hour shifts, maybe they go home early but they are still working on their laptops, throughout the annoying cab ride back home and sometimes throughout the night hence the late mornings..please get your facts straight before commenting on anything...you cannot imply people and startups working in Bangalore are laid back if they do not conform to your perspective of what do you call a work day..
Nitin Pulyani
1mo
Your observation is correct when we see the rush hours. To a large extent, it is tech leverage where less hours used to give high returns. But during that surge period, a lot of free loaders got in and created a sort of entitled culture. That's the majority. The party is coming to an end. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people in GCCs that work for 5-6 hours in office and late evenings, join calls from home.
Gaurav Aggarwal
1mo
Unfortunately largely true, Srivatsan. Don't be surprised if most Bangalore tech folks disagree with you though!
Akshath Dharna
1mo
This is so freaking insane to me that this man's upset because people aren't hanging themselves upside down for the colonial "providing value to shareholders" Cope harder Mr Sridhar, this is insanely in bad taste for someone this senior in the industry. Y'all ruined your work life balance and try everything to shame the ones who don't want to live by your truth
HS Sandesh
1mo
Superficially right but factually incorrect! Let’s not form conclusions with minuscule data (& lead them to become virtual popular opinions) 🤷♀️
Sindhu Guruviah
1mo
Very interesting observations and rich, insightful comments. However I am wondering whether we are mixing up culture and ethic.
Aswinlal B
1mo
A typical Tech employee starts their workday at 11:00 am and ends at 5 pm? That has to be a very crude analysis based on assumptions. From what I've seen over the past several years, A much more accurate scenario would be: Employees leave their home at 8:00 am for their 9:00 am work time, gets stuck in traffic (which is not their fault), reaches a bit late at around 9:30 - 10:00 am and then tries hard to catch up on the hours lost by over working till 7:30 - 8:30 pm!
Hemal Panchamia
1mo
I cannot believe that in this day and age, we are still equating number of hours clocked in to "work ethic?" Do we define ethics on the basis of number of hours we clock in each day or to the impact that we create?
Nitesh R.
1mo
I don't understand why people fuss over hours and visibility instead of quality & timely outputs. I often wonder how different the world would be if output was the only metric that professionals were measured against. Does it really matter how many hours one puts as long as the goalpost is reached timely? Is it really bad that the workday ends at 5? Or that people are seen in bars & breakfast joints, living life? Work culture and work ethic are two very different things, for if Bangalore did not have work ethic, a lot more startups would've shut down in 2020, especially in fintech where trust is usually the biggest lever to conversion. Trust is easy to lose when products start breaking because people don't deliver quality output on time or do not react quickly enough. Work ethic ensures this does not happen. A culture of forced hustle and control over a person's time is the best way to lose great talent, especially ones who take pride in their work ethic. :) Perhaps why most top talent will always choose structure & balance over chaotic 12 hour workdays regardless of how appetizing that 7:30 AM dosa might seem.
Product @ Amazon
1moMost people here are justifying this behavior. However, I have a different take - Nos when taken out of context can bring out any story you want. In a place like Bangalore, with xx% young crowd, yy% operating outside of normal 9-5 roles, it is evident that bars and breakfast counters will always see people - it is the sheer population of the city which ensures a certain % of people are not working at any point in time. This post would've been interesting if you said, x% of people having breakfast at 10:30am were also seen at a bar at 5:30pm. Otherwise, it's just click bait :)