'Don't take whatever he said...': TCS CEO Krithivasan reacts to L&T Chairman's 90-hour work week

TCS Managing Director and CEO K Krithivasan on Wednesday addressed the ongoing debate over work-life balance, which began after recent remarks from L&T Chairman SN Subrahmanyan. Subrahmanyan recently suggested that employees should work for 90 hours a week. Before him, Murthy pitched for 70 hours a week.

However, Krithivasan said that the number of hours doesn't really matter. "There are weeks I work 60 hours, there are weeks that I work only 40 hours. I think over a period of time you find your own balance and you become happy," he said in an exclusive conversation with Business Today Executive Director Rahul Kanwal.  

When asked that some industry veterans believe that today's youth are interested only in balance and not work, the TCS CEO said that he won't comment anything on the young workforce. "They (youth) put in their best effort." He, however, also said that the people are taking the comments from these veterans out of context and blowing it out of proportion. "We have to see the spirit of what they said. We're just getting into meme war and memefest. That's not doing justice to the veterans and what they have achieved over the years. I think you take the spirit - they are saying that we need to work sincerely like put in all the best effort."

When asked about Subrahmanyan's suggestion that employees should also work on Sundays, Krithivasan said: "Don't take whatever he said out of context. Because I was not there you were not there when he said that. Taking something out of context is unfair to them. But if you take our work, the way we all grew up, there are times we worked on Sundays. When there is something going live on a Monday, you will work on a Sunday. But there are times when you don't work on Thursday, Friday, Saturday also because there is not much of work or you work the previous week." 

"So as I said work-life balance is something that what you find is most comfortable to you and sometimes what the situation demands. And nobody's going to be asked to work for Sundays for years together. We are blowing these things out of proportion. When people say something we have to take the context on what they intend to say. They are people that have achieved so much and don't disregard what they have done."

H1-B Visa 

From TCS' business continuity perspective, don't see any impact, Krithivasan said as Donald Trump's arrival has sparked debate over the future of H1-B Visa. "We have roughly about 40,000 associates working in North America. Out of that, more than 50% are locals and we, on a given year, take around approximately 3,000 visas. People go from here. So our dependence on H1B is quite limited. If the number of visas issued decreases even further, we'll be able to manage. We have a very strong local pipeline. We can take people from there. We have a good training program."