Former Amazon employee’s post on Bengaluru tech team sparks debate as India tops work week duration heatmap today news

Former Amazon senior manager, Adam Broda, shared a post on his social media platform LinkedIn on Saturday, December 22, citing the longest work week in countries around the world.

According to the heatmap shared with the post, India ranked highest in the list with the average number of working hours of an employee at 56 hours.

According to the heatmap citing information collected from the International Labor Organisation, India ranked highest, followed by Bhutan, Bangladesh, Uganda and Cambodia.

According to the Post, the length of the work week in the Netherlands, Rwanda, Iraq, Austria and Denmark is among the shortest in the world.

“I worked hard at Amazon; Some weeks I work more than 60 hours – but never as much as our team members in India,” Broda said in his post on LinkedIn.

The former Amazon senior manager also highlighted how people on the Indian team were always online, be it 7 am, 10 am staff meetings or 4 pm review calls.

“And here’s the crazy thing… most of them were happy to do it. Like 60+ hours was totally normal,” Broda said.

The former employee also advised other managers to investigate their employees working in different countries and ask them about their working hours. Also, a way to better accommodate the needs of different time zones can also be found.

“Even if they want to work more hours, it doesn’t mean they should always do so,” Broda said.

The post sparked debate on social media about why people want more jobs from India and what the working conditions are like in the country.

netizens reaction

People on social media responded to Adam Broda’s post, criticizing the normalized work culture of the 60+ hour work week. Alan Stein, a former Google, Salesforce and Meta employee, said people take jobs from India because it is convenient and cheaper than hiring an employee in the US.

Stein said people “want to hire talent in India because they cost us 25% of what U.S. labor costs us. And those employees will work really hard. Very hard. And some of the employees they know in our U.S. offices Kind of didn’t complain,” according to his response to Broda’s post.

Others like Anil Batra, chief executive officer (CEO) of Optigent, highlighted the need to look at the financial status and conditions of employees before accepting the context of work culture in India.

“Did they want to be there or did they think you wanted to hear this and that’s why they said it? You have to look at the context of the financial situation, background of those people, age/family and work culture in India to understand it completely,” Batra said in his response.