Elon Musk is a Bully and he is no different from the Managers I worked for.
Commit to working long hours at high intensity or else leave says the email from Elon Musk.
I have heard that a dozen times in my own career and I most definitely have not worked for Musk. I must also admit that I have never been offered any severance package at all, one month or three months.
Honestly, what is it with these corporate fellas strutting around bullying people and commanding them to do whatever they will ? Do they act so because they are insanely rich and superbly healthy? Or because no one in their family has an illness or a disability or people that have care giving responsibilities? Or may be they just simply don’t care. Since they are very busy uplifting the society. They work so hard so that they can become a force of good in this world. Yeah, right.
Anytime I come across such news, I can’t help but get angry. As if hearing such BS from my own work place was not enough. It had to be wall plastered everywhere, screaming down from every direction. There are some real consequences to employees of other companies who are not even in the slightest way related to the billionaire empire. To put bluntly, collateral damage.
When I worked in India, almost no company initially used any system of tracking the actual number of hours logged by an employee during the day. But, one fine morning some idiot genius from IBM decided to do it. A friend of mine told me that their logging in and out would now be tracked so that it can be made sure that people are actually inside the walls of the company for 8 hours.
Next thing I knew, my company had implemented it. For 10 hours. That’s right. We had to maintain 10 hours each day in the office. Any shortage and you’ll get an email from the HR asking for an explanation. And your supervisor is CC’ed. Surveillance packed with humiliation and a going-to-be-fired-anytime sword hanging over you all the time.
This ripple effect is what I’m afraid of. I don’t care what some bully head of a man says or does. But if every bully head from every other company adopts the same policy, what will then become of the workers? Do I become expendable because I’m just another worker? It’s a scary thought.
It takes me more than 3 hours each way in my commute. My company was a classic Scrooge. I could not leave until my time in office is complete no matter what day it was. I had to be in the office even if it means I had to swim my way through floods, through riots, through traffic that clears not in minutes but hours, literally.
“I have people who work for me 12 — 16 hours every day”. My Manager once told me that during one of our evening calls in his just-saying-not-at-all-threatening voice. Because I had asked for time off in the evening so that I could eat my dinner. I had been working my ass off for more than 12 hours continuously for 2 weeks. But that was not enough. I wasn’t allowed to stop working even after the working hours.
During the evening calls or more accurately during the nightly calls since they were always around 9 PM, my Manager and another colleague often asked each other if they finished their dinner. I could hear them burping loudly on the call. They did not care if I had my meal or not. Never asked me even once. I took the calls each day with my stomach rumbling, afraid to say that it was too late or that I was too tired to work anymore. I just wanted some food. To rest a bit.
The day I decided to speak against working longer hours, I faced repercussion. My Manager had other people who worked for him more than 12 hours every single day. How could I beat that?
On the one hand, there were Men who had wives who would cook them good, healthy and home made food that was the ultimate secret of their energy and youth (they touted it to be so). The wives worshipped their husbands, literally. Strong men who hit the gym every other day so that they could showcase their fit bodies to their colleagues (mostly female). Men for whom there was no fear of getting out late in the night, since they simply were men.
On the other hand, there were people who were first generation graduates, utterly grateful to have even got a job, who live by themselves in a foreign place, no spouses or parents to help with, who cook every meal & clean their houses themselves because they cannot afford a help or a takeout, who commute for more than three hours each way, who have care giving responsibilities, who try desperately to navigate the nuances of the corporate politics and who, God save them, happen to be a minority (in religion/race) or a woman.
When I landed a job after my graduation, I was paid $220 (US dollars) for the entire month. That was my only source of income. It increased to $857 after 11 years of employment. 11 years. Yet very much under $1000. And no promotion was given during the whole term, despite my consistent performance and great feedback from the clients. It did not matter to my employer. It was always the Bell Curve. It always is.
It could be that the remaining employees at Twitter agree to work for longer hours all time. After all, the Big Tech employees get paid way more than us common people. Big fat compensation it is.
Or may be, they would push back the stupidity and stop the ripples from affecting the Small Tech worker bees. Which I sincerely hope for.
Peace!
If you enjoyed reading my article and would like to support my work, follow me on Medium to stay connected.
