It’s fucked that this is even news. This should be the standard. Everyone should turn down scammers.
Is India ok?
This happens in america now in many states. In mine, if you are a salary employee who does not to the main thing that earns the company profit, so any support roles like HR, Accounting, Management, etc., then you are exempt from the provision that requires you be paid overtime.
In my state its also legal for an employer to fire someone who refuses to work overtime. There is only a requirement that hourly employees are paid for overtime.
My company tries to trick people into salary positions because they think its a better deal, and most of them end up making less than the hourly workers when averaged per hour.
India would be amy Libertarian’s wettest dream if only they weren’t incredibly racist. Worker’s rights are almost non-existent due to a neverending supply of fresh labor at any skill level, barely any environmental regulations enforced by the government, and is essentially just a capitalist free for all.
I’m gonna need someone to explain what libertarian is again.
Thank you for letting me post this. Here is a copypasta that helps explain it:
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
LMAO
Tldr: “I should be able to do whatever I want”
Here’s an illustrated version
They claim to believe in maximum freedom regardless of the societal consequences.
A classic example is imagining the only water source for a hundred miles in any direction being claimed or purchased someone. A libertarian would tell you that they should be entitled to sell that water for any price they like regardless of how many people will die as a direct consequence, and they insist one of the state’s only functions is to shoot the people that try to take the water rather than just die quietly.
If you corner one in a debate, they’ll eventually admit that the personal freedom without accompanying social responsibility is the only thing that matters, and that society probably won’t be able to function as a result, but it is worth the collapse to maximize the freedom of the individual… to be a sociopathic dick.
They’re kind of modern Republicans minus the “because supply side Jesus told me so” Schick that absolves them of moral responsibility for their antisocial opinions and positions. Libertarians don’t tend to care about the veneer of finding a reason to blame the people who got hurt by their bulldozers, “I have a bulldozer so I win lol.” The state, in their warped mind, should only exist to protect citizens PROPERTY RIGHTS from others, full stop. No social supports, literally no public anything. They even fantasize about privatizing all roads/schools for private profit.
Most billionaires conduct themselves as libertarians. Cut taxes to the bone, with the sole exception being the defense/police/court system infrastructure that protects their Ill gotten dragon hoards from those they exploited it from.
Of course the really juicy contradiction in their claims that their ideology is about Liberty is that Wealth and Ownership are actually restrictions on everybody else’s freedom - you literally can’t go into the land somebody owns withour their authorization and the wealthy can at will stop you from getting the things you need by outbidding you for them and you have no chance if they wish it so.
Wealth and Ownership let the few control what the many can do, the very antithesis of Freedom.
Maybe the single greatest scam that Libertarians have played on everybody, especially the “Modern” Left, was to overload everybody with meaningless discussions and focus on Effects rather than Causes, to the point of silencing the much older discussions and thinking about Money and of Ownership as the greatest forms of Power and Control Over Others.
Kinda hilarious how they seem to want no control structures in their way so that they can run their own specific control structure.
They essentially just want a return to feudalism, but they know that would get them laughed out of any serious discussions, so they dress it up as “economic liberty”
At least feudalism would be honest about it’s exploitation.
Work-life Balance is ‘Western Behaviour’
As a westerner, I rate this statement FALSE
In my experience working in several countries in Europe and several industries (most of my career was as a Freelancer), it depends on the country and the industry.
Yeah, I quit one of my MSFT contract jobs a decade ago after 2 weeks. Team Lead verbatim told me he expected me to work overtime without pay, which is actually a breach of the contracting firm’s terms.
Applied as a DB admin and data analyst.
What this guy wanted me to do was make perfect little graphs in powerpoint for his slide deck meetings with superiors that were not actually possible to do with the visualization software provided.
So use paint! Use photoshop! Ok, follow his instructions verbatim. He comes back 2 hrs later, oh actually I think this minute detail should change and this color should be slightly less ‘bright’.
Ok, do that. 2 hrs later: No no no that’s too dark! That other change I asked you to make doesn’t look good, put it back!
But anyway, at other contract jobs for MSFT, I routinely saw Indian managers from a higher caste being horrifically rude and abusive to Indian temp workers from a lower caste, just screaming profanities and threats in Hindi.
HR’s line was that actually that’s just a cultural difference and it would be rude and untoward to stand up for those guys because it would be perceived as racism.
… So yeah I don’t work in tech anymore.
But anyway, at other contract jobs for MSFT, I routinely saw Indian managers from a higher caste being horrifically rude and abusive to Indian temp workers from a lower caste, just screaming profanities and threats in Hindi.
Yeah, see that shit first person got me all sorts of uncomfortable…
Can’t even really say anything since they got so e wierd dynamic either without looking like culturally insensitive shit lord
Damn boy… Keep this attitude up and I will assign a mandatory 1 hour “mental health” seminar in the middle of the day
The battle for work-life balance is in a far better state in most western economies (including the US) than it is in many developing economies like India. The middle class in India is like 2 generations old. The grandparents of the current middle class are still around and they remember how poor they were and how much has changed. Basically , for many Indian workers, hard work and perseverance on its own (from their perspective at least) has actually been a path to a better life. That social contract hasn’t yet broken the way it has in the west.
The problem with this is that it results in the workplace culture in the private sector in India being utterly abysmal. Workplaces where the work expectations align with what this toxic boss is aiming for are incredibly common to the point of being the norm. Somewhat comparable to western economies a century ago. The fact that such overwork is not actually productive beyond a point is not an idea that has penetrated into the culture to any appreciable degree.
There is awareness of this of course, but change on this scale takes time.
The battle for work-life balance is in a far better state in most western economies (including the US) than it is in many developing economies like India.
Easy to say from an office suite in the downtown financial district than a slaughterhouse in Iowa or an Amazon Work Fulfillment Center or a prison farm in Alabama.
The problem with this is that it results in the workplace culture in the private sector in India being utterly abysmal.
Bosses will exploit their workforce as far as the workforce tolerates it (typically with the assistance of “business-friendly” state officials to compel obedience through debt or bondage). One of the major conflicts in India today is in the northern districts, where the Hindu nationalist state is trying to break the agricultural workers unions that date back to the 1950s when India was aligned with the USSR. If conditions are deteriorating abroad, it is largely because of the expansion of the police and military and the functional enslavement of working people under their domain. If they’re deteriorating at home… gestures towards the suppression of BLM street protests and the mass imprisonment of migrant workers… it’s the same picture.
change on this scale takes time
Conditions can change for the worse, and regularly do. But people quitting day one and making their outrage known is a good first step towards reversing the trend.
Somebody at a news organization, being generous there probably, wrote an entire article about a Reddit post?
Fuck you, and let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And I get paid.
But when you’re paid, do you always see the job through?
The absolute absurdity of work without pay becomes blatantly obvious when you reverse the situation.
Imagine you going to your boss and asking them if they could pay you for 10 hours of work even though you only worked 8 today.
It’d be considered ridiculous. But it’s the same thing.
In a employment relationship you got a contract stating the conditions in which you trade your time and skilled labor for money and benefits.
Neither side should feel entitled to free handouts on top.
How is PTO ridiculous, exactly?
PTO is a finite resource and the equivalent of being paid overtime. Demanding your employees work overtime without pay is an infinite resource, much like demanding your boss to pay you for an unscheduled day off or time you didn’t work that doesn’t get covered by PTO.
That would be part of the benefits he is referring to.
pay you for 10 hours of work even though you only worked 8
This is PTO.
PTO is necessary because life happens.
Overtime is only needed when the company isn’t being managed properly.
You are still comparing something that a regular person can only have one of at a time, to a business which has multiple employees. Its like comparing 100% of time to <5% of a company.
You’d have a point if every single employee would take PTO at the same time. Then they would be paying and no work would get done.
The problem arises when one party of the contract has much more control over the other party in said contract.
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It’s based on a reddit thread
Jeez that site is awful. Article text:
Man Resigns on First Day After Indian Boss Expects Overtime Without Pay: Work-life Balance is ‘Western Behaviour’
October 10, 2024, 00:59 IST
A product designer called it quits on the first day of work after his boss expected him to work beyond normal working hours without compensation and dismissed the concept of work-life balance as a “fancy term” and a “Western behaviour”. The boss also pressured him to “burn the midnight oil” in a threatening manner, which the designer found to be “unreasonable, inhumane, and inconsiderate”. Additionally, he felt belittled when the boss scolded him and subjected him to treatment he deemed “unacceptable”. The man, named Shreyas, shared his experience on Reddit and even turned to the online community to refer him for UI/UX roles.
“At the end of my first day, October 7, my reporting manager made it clear that he expected unreasonable commitments—work beyond normal hours without any compensation,” Shreyas wrote on Reddit.
He added, “When I tried to establish boundaries, he mocked me for talking about ‘work-life balance’, calling it a ‘fancy term’ and ‘Western developed nation behaviour’. He also ridiculed my desire for time to read and exercise, dismissing it as an excuse.”
“Just to avoid any misunderstanding, it is not that I am unwilling to work for a minute post work hours, it’s about the personal attacks, belittling, ridiculing me for mentioning that I have a life outside of work and have hobbies like reading, underpaying, not having any overtime policy and still expecting to work over and beyond work hours every day. (12-14 hour workday every day). I am mature enough to understand there’s a difference between exploitation, toxic environment and those that aren’t,” he further explained.
Shreyas was offered the role of an Associate Product Designer with a package of Rs 7 LPA, which he considered “below fair median pay” given his two years of experience. He accepted the offer because it was fully remote, noting that he is open to working in an office, hybrid, or fully remote setup.
He also attached a screenshot of his resignation email in which he expressed serious concerns about his boss’s approach to work. “You’ve repeatedly made remarks about my activities outside of work hours, which I believe is highly inappropriate and unprofessional. What I choose to do in my personal time – whether it is exercising, spending time with my family, sleeping or reading books – is my prerogative and should not be subject to criticism,” Shreyas mentioned.
“Expecting work without fair compensation undermines both legal standards and the respect that every employee deserves,” he added and concluded the email with the words: “I believe it would be best for you to find another person who is willing to meet your expectations in the manner you desire. I hope you understand my decision, as I prioritise both professionalism and respect in my work relationships.”
Shreyas also shared the response he received from his boss over email. The boss acknowledged that both parties should find an employee and employer that align with their expectations. He noted, “Trying to close the gap between what was said and what was understood by both sides is not fruitful in this situation when there is a clear consensus on parting ways. There are definitely a few lessons that I have taken from this entire encounter, and I thank you for that.”
The boss also wished him luck in his “future endeavours” and confirmed that the payment for his one day of service would be processed by the accounts department.
Take a look at the Reddit post here:
Quit My Job on the 1st Day After Standing Up to a Toxic Boss. Email attached in the comments. byu/Old-Ad169 inindia
Earlier, a 42-year-old Bajaj Finance employee died by suicide after bosses allegedly forced him to pay for EMIs. Tarun Saxena, who had worked for Bajaj Finance for around eight years, left behind a suicide note addressed to his wife. In the note, Saxena revealed that he had been under immense stress due to pressure from his bosses, who were allegedly pushing him to either meet his targets or call it quits.
Responding to the incident, the company said in a statement that they are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of their employee and expressed their heartfelt condolences and full support to his family.
“Based on allegations, we have relieved the concerned employees of their current responsibilities and placed them on administrative leave, allowing for an unbiased and thorough investigation of the matter. We are also extending our full support to the authorities investigating the matter. We stand in support of Tarun’s family. Our thoughts and prayers are with them,” read a part of the statement issued by Bajaj Finance.
via that other site
That’s a really great way to sign off on obnoxious bosses tbh.
thanks, that was a terrible experience this web page
Why are they bringing up INDIAN so many times, as if that makes any difference between a bad boss and a good one?
They’re bringing up Indians because the article is from an Indian news site. They mention the employer is Indian to show why some random Reddit thread is relevant to the Indian audience.
deleted by creator
Gotta bring the racists in.
Also it is at least anecdotally known by a lot of people that Indian/Chinese and general Asian work culture is bad. A large supply of workers, caste systems, etc mean capitalism has been riding very high and very strong for a long time.
Just looked at the chart of labor productivity per country, of the top 20, only found 1 non-western: Singapore ranked 19^th. Maybe western way is the better way
It’s not.
You think bosses demanding unpaid overtime is good?
No, the opposite, hence why the Western way is worse, despite it’s higher productivity.
Wage theft, which includes unpaid overtime, is a larger category of theft in the US than all other categories combined.
Guess you missed this was an Indian boss demanding unpaid overtime.
Wow this site is cancer on mobile
For those complaining about the ads even though they are using adblockers, I’m using Mull as my browser with uBlock Origin on medium mode. There were absolutely zero ads or other pop-ups.
I had to see for myself and I think my phone is infected.
I’m so sorry :c
Firefox+simple page mode+ uBlock Origin fixes most of the cancer.
I don’t care enough to read the article.
If you don’t care go be a cretin somewhere else
What crawled up your butt and died?
I wish it was that guy, he’s super annoying
I’ve gotta remember this in case someone ever asks me what crawled up my butt and died. I don’t know how annoying or whatever the other person is, but this is like, the perfect response to this question.
What? Like Crete?
from French crétin, from Swiss French crestin ‘Christian’ (from Latin Christianus ), here used to mean ‘human being’, apparently as a reminder that, though deformed, cretins were human and not beasts.
Are you ok?
Fair enough, but that combo does make the internet much more enjoyable and ad free.
You ain’t kidding. FFox with ad blockers don’t even do anything to all the shit that popped up.
Unfortunately from my experience lots of Indian news websites are ad-infested hell-holes even with a good adblock. Nevertheless I felt this article was fit to post on this thread.
It does. I would have commented with the text of the article though. Considering the source. Live and learn.
It’s a “news” article reporting on a Reddit post. My expectations were already low.
I couldn’t even glean that info.
It’s literally unreadable to us. Thank you for the run down.
its fine here on firefox with ublock origin.
seriously guys why to you put up with ads.
I’m using those and it still popped shit up, impressively cancerous site
did you enable the annoyance filters?
nothing came up here with those enabled. they really should make them enabled by default.
I did not! Thank you for teaching me this
I’m running Thunder on iOS. It automatically goes into reader mode.
No problem.
I guess I missed it having mine on default to reader mode in Voyager
Absolutelly the right decision - that kind of work environment is caustic and should be avoided like the plague.
I’ve made a career as a Software Developer, and as a Portuguese I started by working in Portugal, were that kind of shit is pretty common, and I had a metal breakdown within 2 years of starting on my first job (and we’re talking back when I was in my early 20s).
So after that I moved the The Netherlands which has a completelly different work environment, 100% respectful of employees’ work-life boundaries and of work-life balance. The funny bit is that my productivity working 8h/day in a Dutch management system was so vastly superior that I produced more in those 40h/week than I did before working 60h/week in Portugal and the product of my work was even higher quality.
You see, it’s not just that unpaid overwork is a fucking insult and that overworked people are more tired hence make more mistakes ending up wasting all those extra work hours and more fixing the mistakes they do from being overworked, it’s also that the kind of manager who thinks “more hours worked” = “more results” is invariably deeply incompetent at managing, at various levels: not just in their obvious inability to adequatelly balance the load on actual humans for maximum output (only an incompetent simpleton thinks more operating hours = more output for humans in a creative area), but also in things like operating in constant or near-constant reactive “firefighting” mode, doing little or no preparation and upfront analysis of what’s supposed to be done in a project, measuring all the wrong metrics (“bums on seats at late hours” rather than “requirement points implemented”), never accounting for unknown-unknowns and barelly for known-unknowns and hence always overrunning deadlines, generally causing massive wastage by having the wrong things done thus requiring and vastly inflating the costs of any issues because of, rather than having them spotted and prevented early one, only going after them when they’re turned into full massive problems at much later stages of a project when they cost many times more work to solve (and when fixing it generally leaves a trail of barelly-working hacked code prone to break and even outright bugs).
It’s the absolute total management incompetence of such managers than leads them to try to use the time of those employees put under their management way beyond what’s contractually agreed, always with no overtime pay so that their own extreme incompetence doesn’t stand out to upper management as massively inflated budgetary costs due to overtime pay.
Mind you, nowadays any manager who tries shit like that with me or my team gets an outright and firm “No” and if they push I’ll make sure they get fucked - almosts 3 decades of working in companies of all sizes - from the tiniest to massive multi-nationals - has made me pretty able at playing company politics if I need to and getting the right words to the right ears - I’m not the wide-eyed recent graduate who let himself be exploited in his first job anymore.
