Wow Seriously... 70 Work Hours / Week

There's a new debate in India about 70 work hours / week, started by one of the founders of biggest IT Services company Mr N.R. Narayana Murthy... As usual many of the industry biggies from various fields joined the "Yes.... Yes.... Yes..." bandwagon.

As a career professional with over 25 years of experience and who has done my share of long hours and still doing it when needed, I can definitely say with all honesty that this is not one of the suggestions i will agree to.

Also, I know for fact that in majority of the IT services company (atleast in India) most of the employees do put in long hours in office unofficially for meagre salary compared to industry standards for various reasons which i will not discuss here as its a separate topic on its own.

The world is experiementing with 4 day/week and here is a man who was a pioneer in his field suggesting 70 hrs/week without bothering or mentioning about the finer details like employee welfare, work/life balance, remuneration....

If you think that I sound pedantic, lets do a simple Math

Step 1. A week has 7 days (24 hours/day) which works out to 168 hours

Step 2. If we assume that an average person sleeps 8 hours day. So for 7 days that works out to 56 sleeping hours.

Step 3. Balance awake hours left (Step 1 - Step 2) = 168 - 56 = 112 hours

Step 4. Commute to office and home, 2 hrs average considering all the traffic in major cities where the IT offices are located. So for 5 days that works out to 10 hours minimum.

Step 5. Balance awake hours left (Step 3 - Step 4) = 112 - 10 = 102 hours

Step 6. Current official working hours (40 hours to 48 hours). But i am going with lower end of 40 hours.

Step 7. Balance awake hours left (Step 5 - Step 6) = 102 - 40 = 62 hours

Now that 62 hours from Step 7 is comprised of weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and few hours in the evening during work days....

If we make 70 hours/week as suggested by Mr. N.R.Narayana Murthy (cant even imagine this is happening in this day and age), we are crossing the limits of insanity and greediness...

Read somewhere in a news article which said that "The rich will get richer and the poor getting poorer". Does company bottom line i.e profits and shareholder interests the main criteria for these kind of ideas?

What do you think folks... Share your views and maybe someone with common sense will read and stop this insanity...