Source: Storyblocks
A survey including 1,450 IT professionals from big-name companies like Adobe, Amazon, Salesforce, Uber, and more has revealed that nearly 72 percent of the respondents often exceed the 48-hour workweek, with one in four professionals logging 70 hours weekly at work, if not more.
The survey, conducted by anonymous professional community app Blind, also identifies companies with the most extreme work hours. These include Adobe, Amazon, Confluent, InMobi, Intuit, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Uber, UiPath, and Walmart, leading the way. A majority of the employees at the companies above report working beyond legally permitted work hours, with up to 42 percent of employees at Amazon, Cisco, ServiceNow, VMware, and Walmart claiming to be working over 70 hours per week.
83 percent of the survey respondents claimed to be experiencing burnout, exceeding 90 percent at companies notorious for their extreme work hours, such as Cisco, InMobi, Salesforce, Confluent, Uber, and Intel, among others.
Extreme work hours or workloads have historically been linked with higher employee burnout rates. Professionals also argue that longer work hours do not necessarily increase productivity. A 2023 report from the World Economic Forum about a four-day workweek trial in Spain details better physical and mental health and increased productivity.
Burnout doesn’t end with extreme office hours, either. Blind’s report further claims that as many as 68 percent of IT professionals feel compelled to respond to work-related messages outside of official work hours—a habit rose due to the remote work model adopted by companies during COVID lockdowns and has since been adopted into corporate culture.
Systematic pressure to overwork is one of the root causes of mounting work hours as well. Nearly 75 percent of individuals claim to either feel pressured themselves or have observed colleagues being pushed to work beyond regular work hours. Paired with the push of industry leaders advocating for unrealistic work hours, the culture doesn’t seem to be improving anytime soon. In the past, leaders like Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan have come under fire for advocating for 70 to 90-hour work weeks.
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