Comment by notaslave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notaslave | Hacker News Reader

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Do these GCC's have great work life balance? They may be better that the service companies, and may pay better, but WLB is shitty everywhere in India as far as I can tell. As an example, the death of Ernest & Young employee Anna Sebastian sparked a lot of discussion in Indian media since it was attributed to work pressure.[1] Another example I recently heard was a USA Texas based company called CorroHealth suddenly closing shop and laying off 800+ employees in India, the employees allege it was retaliation for asking for overtime payment since they were being made to work till 10 pm.[2]

If you are an American or European with colleagues in India, and if they are working or attending meetings after regular work hours, they don't have good WLB. Given a choice, I doubt they would want to attend the late night meetings. Life in India is already like playing a video game in hard mode, and yet we have to work lot more hours for lot less pay, and be regularly told how shitty offshoring work is.

[1]https://www.news18.com/viral/26-year-old-ey-pune-employee-su...

[2]https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/it-employe...

> but WLB is shitty everywhere in India as far as I can tell

This was what I believed, then I saw how pretty much ALL of my friends at Fortune 100s or 500s and they were amazing. I am sure awful companies exist and the bar for what is good WLB can be lowered by these, but the whole "it is bad everywhere" was simply not true and I felt I had a distorted vision of my Indian friends until I actually visited a lot of them.

My so works at a reinsurance company in one of these GCCs, and her WLB is unmatched. Hours are really flexible. Has a really great manager and team. She even gets to take a day off every month as menstrual leave.

> work lot more hours for lot less pay,

This depends, while the vast majority of roles pay "market rate" there is a strange sweet spot where roles pay a significant amount considering purchasing power and cost of living.

WLB is truly awful in India. People are stretched and stressed out at work, in addition to awful civic conditions which makes travelling to and from work a nightmare. I am not sure how long this can continue.

It does depend on the company and your role. Working a senior role at a FAANG in India is much nicer than junior roles in the local WITCHes (Wipro Infosys etc), which are notorious for their crap salaries and shitty labour practices.

Yes, fair point.

Please don't take me wrong, but FAANG is like not even 0.00001% of Indian labour. Outside of may be the FAANG (have doubts about Amazon), pretty much all companies are bad, even the American or European GCCs don't seem to be good. Note that I am not thinking just about IT - banks, police all seem to have terrible work cultures.

Will we have good civic sense, streets and road culture before we get old? I can only hope.

From https://theprint.in/opinion/indias-poor-little-rich-people/2...

"The purpose of life of an Indian is to escape India, it can either be done by leaving India physically or figuratively by shifting to a gated community. Once the Indian escapes India, India becomes the best country in the world & requires no improvement".

"By walling themselves away, India’s rich secede from society. If the elites don’t use public services, there is less pressure on the state to improve them."

I presume they organized some cringe dances and cultural programme when GP visited, which might have led the GP to conclude that these people live great WLB.

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