Work Culture In India

How many of you actually only work 9-5? Do you get paid for overtime? Is Indian corporate culture disconnected from the 40-hour workweek belief?

I am a 6 yrs experienced Software developer and part of a mid-stage startup. This is my third job; I have been working here for 3 years. I was involved here as one of the core engineers at the start in developing the overall platform, After that, my growth as an engineer stagnated for 2 years . Constant importance and priority are given to business requirements and hacky work getting pushed to production in the name of fast iterations and business impact every week. My engineering manager lacks proper engineering skills and doesn't respect engineers even after their impact on the company and constantly keeps saying the engineering team doesn't contribute to the revenue of the company despite us pushing work that improves business positively. Last year around November, around 80% of the engineering team was subtly suggested to start looking out for work (basically a soft layoff) because management was too scared of a social media backlash Due to all this,2 years' worth of technical debt has accumulated on the overall codebase and apart from giving justification for every code improvement that we try to make there, we still have to work on business/product requirements. My growth as an engineer has stopped and I am worried about missing out on the latest developments in the tech industry, especially with AI in the picture, and want to make my skillset somewhat AI-proof. I have come back to hands-on coding this year , so that's a positive start. I am considering taking a 3-4 month break after resigning from my company to study, develop side projects, develop a portfolio etc Has anyone else been in this boat ? How did you come out strong?

How many companies still have 6 days working? I am in robotics/manufacturing in MSME, I have a 6 day Workweek, is it a general trend in manufacturing or general trend in MSME?

So I left my job at one of the big 4s few months ago. Will discuss the reason some other time. But one of the issues I'm facing right now is that I never felt good in the corporate environment. Bosses shouting at you for your mistakes, you feel threatened to stand up against your own boss since they unfortunately have too much power. You need to take permission for leaves. People can be rude to you and you need to maintain your calm. The corporate politics. Then I left big 4 for some reasons. Took a short break. And now I'm working in one of the Indian firms. They have such policies that your TAT cannot be more than 5 minutes. You cannot log off before 8 pm. If you login after 5 minutes of the actual login time, then you would be marked as absent. Sometimes you're given deadlines which are very difficult to manage and hence you remain stressed out with your work. You don't have the freedom in your work and need to do everything as it has been told. So I don't really feel good in corporates. I feel there is too much pressure and it is just making me feel more and more sad. I don't feel myself anymore and I feel like a puppet. Does anyone else feel the same? How do I deal with this feeling? It scares me to think about how I have just started my career 3-4 years ago and need to work for the significant years of my life and I don't want to wake up and sleep with this feeling EVERYDAY. I think this is the first time I'm talking about it. If anyone would like to share their thoughts, or guide me regarding how do I feel better, or anything you feel I'm doing wrong and could be improved, then I'm all ears. Let's talk it out.

Context: I work at a startup, it's a pretty chill work environment, very flexible, hybrid model. Everything is great. Problem: They take flexible work hours too seriously, I have meetings at 10 PM on weekdays and almost every weekend there's some work which they need the next day in most cases but apparently have to keep the meeting on the weekend with no prior notice. I mean, i like going to office twice a week around 11-12 and coming back around 7, wfh when I have a few meetings that day but is it normal to work on weekends? and after work hours? P.S. I've only been in this company for a month and joined as a fresher. Now that I've put it down, this is such a gen z problem lol But what should I do?

Hi Folks, has making a 9hour workday become a standard practice in all offices? This is sucha shitty role.. why can we just finish our work n leave? Why do we have to stay n complete 9hrs as it’s some school.

It’s should and will always be about how productive those hours actually are. You see, no knowledge worker puts out more than 2.5 to 5 hours of real work in a day. That’s 12.5 to 25 hours of productive work in a week. The rest? It’s just meetings, updates and moving things around. Five-day work weeks? If you’re measuring by butts in seats, sure. But if you’re looking at actual output, it’s a joke. We need to obsess over productive time, not clocking hours. The attendance/week hours mindset is a pseudo-metric killing the workforce, making us focus on quantity over quality. Think about it: As a knowledge worker - your days are filled with meetings, status updates, and email threads. How much of that is real, impactful work? Very little. We’re stuck in busyness, mistaking it for productivity. But then again, if orgs obsess on outcomes only, employees will call them out: 'You don’t see my effort to go from A to Z, you don’t acknowledge it.' Hence, orgs measure you by hours. And for those thinking, 'Pay me by hours, overtime factored in' – great on paper, but useless for knowledge workers. IMHO, we are way more more comfortable measuring by hours than outcomes. We rave about deep work, about focus hours, but in reality we laude how long someone stays logged in. Weird isn't it.