IANS | 04 Dec, 2023
Indian-American businessman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Vinod
Khosla has backed Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy's suggestion that
India's youth must work 70 hours every week to improve the country's
overall work productivity.
Responding to a question by a user on
X, Khosla, the ace venture capitalist, said those who felt "attacked" by
Murthy's opinion needed mental health therapy.
"For people who
'felt attacked' by this they need mental health therapy. They should
learn to 'toughen up' and not feel attacked. OK to not work 70 hrs/wk
and live with the consequences of the choices you make. He is speaking
to 'career ambitious' young people but there are other ways to live with
different choices," his post read.
The 68-year-old billionaire
had said in the past that he works 80-hour weeks, and that the "grind
doesn't appear to stop anytime soon".
Further, Khosla said that one should be internally-driven as bigger titles, bigger houses don't make everyone happy.
"Not
working 70 hrs/wk may not get you the biggest house or car to show to
your neighbors, but you can make that choice. Lots of other things make
people happy. Be internally driven and not externally driven by what
others expect of success: bigger titles, bigger house don't make
everyone happy," the Silicon Valley veteran said.
In a recent
episode of the "The Cerebral Valley Podcast", Khosla said he plans on
investing for the next 25 years if his health permits.
"I have
this saying 'You grow old when you retire, you don't retire when you
grow old,'" the investor continued. "I've seen too many people retire
and grow old. So I clearly plan to do -- health permitting -- this for
the next 25 years. And then I'll be Warren Buffet's age and he's still
doing it."
Khosla's investing career began after he became a
general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1986. In
2004, he started his own VC firm he called Khosla Ventures, which backed
companies like Instacart, Impossible Foods, and DoorDash.
Murthy
had sparked a debate after he said in a YouTube podcast that if India
wants to compete with developed economies that have made remarkable
progress in recent decades, young people should work for 70 hours a
week.
In a recent interaction with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil
Kamath at the Bengaluru Tech Summit, he also advised infrastructure
sector employees to work in three shifts instead of one.
While
some people agreed with Murthy, the majority were sceptical and worried
about the health implications of such a demanding work schedule.
Prior to Khosla, Chairman of JSW Group Sajjan Jindal and Bollywood actor Suniel Shetty, backed Murthy's views.
CRED
founder Kunal Shah said that "no big achievement can come with
work-life balance" while mentioning that choosing “work-life balance is a
personal choice”.