What's your opinion on Narayana Murthy's statement that Indian youngsters should be aspiring to work 70 hours a week?

纳拉扬·穆尔蒂说印度年轻人应该每周工作70小时，你对此有何看法？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Subramaniam Duraisamy

Narayana Murthy’s statement stems from an old understanding of productivity where more hours = more productivity.

This model made sense in the 1990s when Indian IT companies played the headcount game and used the labor arbitrage to their advantage and provide low cost labour to western companies.

纳拉扬·穆尔蒂这句话源于对生产力的旧理解，即更长的时间=更多的生产力。

这种模式在上世纪90年代是有些道理的，当时印度IT公司就采用了人海战术，为西方公司提供了低成本劳动力。

Let's say Royal Bank of Scotland wants to migrate it's CRM system from mainframe to cloud. They need a team of support engineers who can maintain the servers and flag irregularities to the develo team. Obviously RBS cannot hire local engineers for this mundane work because the cost is high. Hence they outsourced this activity to Infosys.

The more hours an Indian engineer puts in this, the more they can charge £ / day. If the entire duration is 2 months, the bill is generated. The longer you work the longer you get paid. The more people you employ to work long hours, the more you get paid.

举个例子吧，如果苏格兰皇家银行希望将其客户关系管理系统从主机迁移到云端，他们需要一支工程师团队来维护服务器，并向开发团队报送错漏。因为人工成本高昂，苏格兰皇家银行无法聘请当地工程师来完成这项工作。所以他们把这项活动外包给了印孚瑟斯。

印度工程师在这方面投入的时间越多，他们每天的收入就越高。如果整个合同期为2个月，账单则慢慢积累。你工作的时间越长，得到的报酬就越多。你雇佣越多的人长时间工作，你得到的报酬就越多。

However today's Indian IT companies especially the newer ones in the emerging tech space use the same model and this is where the problem comes from.

Service companies must move up the value chain. Playing the headcount game is not going to be profitable for your team as the tasks can be automated. Unless you don't provide extra value add, you would lose your job or be redundant with limited opportunities.

但今天的印度IT公司，特别是新兴科技领域的初创公司依然使用这种模式，这就是问题的根源。

服务公司必须向价值链上游移动。人海战术已经无法为你的团队带来利润了，因为任务可能已进入自动化阶段。如果你不提供额外的增值服务，你将失去你的工作，或者因为工作机会有限而被解雇。

This is a perennial problem with old school enterpreneurs like Narayana Murthy. I respect the man- he is the one who pioneered the IT revolution in India and Bangalore is the hub of startups today because of his early contributions.

However NRN fails to see that Indians should move up the value chain. The 1990s model of more hours =more value added is outdated.

这是纳拉扬·穆尔蒂等老派企业家的长期问题。我尊重他，他是印度IT革命的先驱，班加罗尔之所以能成为如今初创企业的中心正是因为他早年做出的极大贡献。

但人们没有意识到印度人应该向价值链上游移动。上世纪90年代“更长的工作时间=更多的附加值”的模式已经过时。

Today instead of competing in cost , Indians should compete on value.

Let's say I build a new application which can automate the data processing steps in a large database of the bank, which saves the IT team £10 million pounds a year. Indian engineers should charge 30% of that value as the fees. This is competing on value, which is what new age startups, emerging tech companies do.

现在印度人应该在价值上竞争，不要在成本上竞争。

如果我研发了一个新的应用程序，可以为银行的大型数据库进行数据自动处理，每年可以为IT团队节省1000万英镑的成本。印度工程师应该收取该价值的30%作为费用。这是在服务价值上的竞争，这是新时代的初创企业和新兴科技公司的作用。

Karai Premnath

The best rebuttal that I have read on Quora to Mr. N. Murthy’s thesis has been written by Naveen Subramanian and I will refer to you to that post, that is chock full of data, statistics and analysis- that to my mind effectively demolishes Mr. Narayana Murthy’s anti-diluvian thesis- a thesis that would have been noddingly approved by many Tycoons in 19th Century Europe and US.

我在Quora上读到的对纳拉扬·穆尔蒂先生的言论的最佳反驳是纳温·苏布兰马尼安的文章，我推荐你们去读一读那篇文章，他引用了很多数据、统计和分析—在我看来，这篇文章有力地反驳了纳拉扬·穆尔蒂先生先生言论—但在19世纪的欧洲和美国，很多商业大亨都认同这一言论。

But as they say:

“For every problem, there is often a elegant and a simple solution posited that is often SIMPLY WRONG”.

I won’t present reams of data and statistics to show how backward or wrong his statement is.

Instead, I shall relate to you a real life episode from 1914 USA.

Henry Ford and his Model T.

但正如他们所说的：

“对于每个问题，经常会有一个巧妙而简单的解决方案，但往往都是错误的”。

我不想列举大量的数据和统计来证明他的说法有多么落伍，或者错得多离谱。

相反，我想跟你们介绍一下1914年美国的一个真实事件。

亨利·福特和他的T型车。

Henry Ford was an unapologetic ruthless Capitalist, who founded the eponymous FORD Motor Company.

No one in his right mind would ever accuse Mr. Ford of being an acolyte of Herr Friedrich Engels, the Capitalist, who bankrolled Karl Marx throughout his life time.

This is what Mr. Ford did.

Mr. Ford made an astonishing announcement on Jan 1914.

亨利·福特曾是一位冷酷无情的资本家，他创立了以自己名字命名的福特汽车公司。

没有哪个头脑正常的人会认为福特是资本家弗里德里希·恩格斯的追随者，恩格斯一生都在资助卡尔·。

但这就是福特的惊人之举。

1914年1月，福特先生发表了一份震动商界的声明。

Ford announced that he was doubling the wages of all his male workers from $2.34 to $5 an hour.

This was an astonishing wage more than a 110 years ago.

Not stop there, Ford scaled back the 48-hour work week to a 40-hour work week.

福特宣布，他把所有男性工人的工资提高了一倍，从每小时2.34美元提高到5美元。

这在110年前，是非常惊人的工资水平。

不仅如此，福特还将每周48小时的工作时间减少到40小时。

Was Mr. Ford on Drugs?

No, when asked why he doubled their wages and cut their working hours at the same time.

He replied simply,

I want my Workers to stay working in my factories and not walk away.

AND

I want my Workers to be able to buy the Automobile that they build.

This ushered in the rapid growth of the American Middle Class and the begng of the Consumer boom.

福特先生疯了吗？

不，当被问及为什么他把工人的工资翻倍，还减少工人的工作时间时。

他只是回答了一句：

我希望我的工人能继续在我的工厂里安心工作，不会转头离开。

另外，

我希望我的工人能够买得起他们制造的汽车。

此举引领了美国中产阶级的快速增长和消费热潮的开始。

Mr. Narayana Murthy’s views are troublesome, as it betrays a very unoriginal template of “old world” thinking going back to 19th Century Europe.

To my mind, Maybe his statement also hints that he views his company as a Chinese style Sweatshop.

Let me elaborate:

A low-tech, low value added sweat shop, where his high tech coolies churn out cheap lines of unimaginative code, much like a Chinese Sweatshop and their coolies would churn out making more and more widgets like buttons or t-shirts. Yeah sure, working long hours, means more low value-added widgets and more profit.

But for a company that views itself as a Tech Company and for someone like him to harbor this “mindset” is worrisome.

纳拉扬·穆尔蒂的观点很麻烦，因为它暴露了一种全盘照搬的“旧世界”思维，可以追溯到19世纪的欧洲。

在我看来，这句话也暗示了在他眼中，他的公司和中国的血汗工厂没什么两样。

让我来详细说明一下：

他（纳拉扬·穆尔蒂）的高科技苦力们在采用低端技术、低附加值的血汗工厂大量生产廉价、缺乏想象力的代码，就像中国人在血汗工厂里大量生产小部件，比如钮扣或T恤。当然，长时间的工作，意味着更多的低附加值产品和更多的利润。

但对于一家自诩科技公司的企业，对于他这种商界大亨，这种”心态”着实令人担忧。

And his prescription for longer unpaid hours as a solution for the Country’s prosperity means that in his mind, he is probably telegraphing that his company and frightfully the country can never grow beyond the low-value added, arbitrager of low cost of labor as the only competitive advantage.

That is not how countries grow to be economic giants, as Mr. Naveen Subramanian amply demonstrates with Data.

为了国家的繁荣发展，他开出了免费延长工作时间的处方，这意味着在他看来，他可能想传达这样一种讯息：他的公司，乃至这个国家，永远无法超越低附加值、低成本劳动力套利这一唯一竞争优势。

这并不是一个国家成长为经济巨头的正确方式，纳温·苏布兰马尼安用数据充分证明了这一点。

IF low Labor costs and long hours of this low cost labor is the only “competitive advantage”，then there will eventually always be another country with even lower labor costs that can siphon off your market share.

It is indeed one of the problems of both Society and Media, that many Successful Entrepreneurs like Mr. Murthy, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are given undue amount of press and worshipfully listened to for their “thoughts” -owing chiefly due to their phenomenal success and their newly found “celebrity status”.

如果低劳动力成本和长时间的低成本劳动力是唯一的“竞争优势”，那么总会有别的国家拥有更低的劳动力成本，抢走你的市场份额。

这确实是社会和媒体的问题之一，许多成功的企业家，比如穆尔西、埃隆·马斯克和彼得·蒂尔，因为他们的巨大成功和”名人地位”，他们的”想法”得到了媒体的争相报道，收获了观众的膜拜。

Karteek Sheri

So, basically, it's a loud cry for free labour. They pay peanuts and ask people to bind their exstence to work.

Do you know what people regret the most in the end? Working more and more without actually taking some time to live life outside of work.

If he is actually trying to inspire or motivate youngsters, he should suggest everyone spend more time upskilling each week.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that working more is learning more. It's rarely the case.

这就是想要人们贡献免费劳动力吧。他们只想支付很少的工资，却要求人们把生活与工作捆绑在一起。

你知道人们最终觉得什么事最后悔吗？那就是不停工作，越来越忙，却没能真正抽出时间来享受工作之外的生活。

如果他真的想要激励年轻人，他应该建议年轻人每周花更多的时间提高技能。

而不是错误地认为做得越多就是学得越多。

In the IT industry, there are weeks where you will work more than 70 hours, but that should be an exception, not the usual.

Employees should not be treated like a candle; at some point, they will burn out.

They should be treated like a tree, meaning, give everything needed for them to grow, and at the end of the day, you will have more shade to stand in (skilled employees do more work in a given time).

在IT行业，有时候工作时间会超过70小时，但这是特殊情况，不是惯例。

员工又不是蜡烛，如果不眠不休地燃烧，总有消耗殆尽的一天。

员工应该得到树一般的待遇，我的意思是，要给他们生长所需的一切，这样你才能拥有更大的树荫(熟练的员工能在给定的时间内完成更多的工作)。

Vasanth Sampath Kumar

It just makes me wonder whether they are aware of what happens in their own organizations.

If someone did it at IT and expected to grow these are the questions he/she would get at appraisal

You don't have time management skills. It is not company's fault that you were not able to complete it in 8 hours.

Working long hours is to get work done. What did you do outside of work to generate revenue or save soft/hard dollars for the organization.

这让我怀疑他们是否意识到自己的企业中发生了什么。

如果有人在IT行业中真的这么做了，那么以下就是他/她在工作评估时会面临的问题：

你没有时间管理技能。这不是公司的错，是你自己没办法在8小时内完成工作。

长时间工作是为了完成工作。你在工作之余做了什么来为公司创造收入或节约成本？

Does the person get paid for extra 30 hours.

There is tracking to ensure employee clocks 9 hrs in office. Does this extra hours atleast provide time off. Not just a day or two. Is it fully compensated in the hours clocked.

70 hours per week comes to 14 hours per day assuming they don't work weekends.

员工额外工作30小时，这部分工作时间有工资吗？

企业会核实员工是否在办公室工作满9个小时。企业对员工额外的工作时间提供了休息时间吗？这可不是一两天的事。企业会在统计工作时长的时候给予全额工作报酬吗？

如果周末不工作的话，每周70个小时就相当于每天工作14个小时。

If you consider commute its 2 more hours. They need to get ready eat or do something, take care of family etc which takes minimum of 2 more hours.

The remaining hours is just 6. That's the sleep they get.

Certain jobs pay to put in long hours like lawyer, realtor, investment banker etc.

For your average IT guy it's just extraction and exploitation.

考虑到通勤还需要2个小时，还要花时间准备三餐或其他事情，还要照顾家人等，这至少又需要2个多小时。

那么一天只剩下6个小时了。这就是他们仅剩的睡眠时间。

有些工作需要长时间工作，比如律师、房地产经纪人、投资银行家等。

但对于普通IT员工来说，这就是剥削和压榨。

Nagarajan Srinivas

This is typical old world management thinking of equating productivity with longer hours of work.

Modern management thinking relies on how smart one works than how long or how hard. What should matter is not how many hours of work you put in, but how much of work you put in your hours.

The tragedy of today's India is that despite having the largest youth population, we still have only seventy plus years old industry leaders steeped in old world thinking like Mr. Narayana Murthy.

这就是典型的旧式管理思想，将生产力等同于延长工作时间。

现代管理思维取决于一个人能否高效高质地工作，而不是长时间工作或埋头苦干。工作时长并不重要，重要的是你在工作时间内完成了多少工作。

印度如今的悲剧就在于，虽然印度拥有全世界最多的青壮人口，但我们仍然只有70多岁的行业领袖，依然抱着旧世界的思维，就好比纳拉扬·穆尔蒂这样。