Varun Vummadi, the San Francisco-based Co-founder and CEO of Giga ML, an applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab focused on building end-to-end customer agents, has raised concerns about the work ethic of Indian engineers. He claims that despite being offered high salaries, many engineers are unwilling to work for six days a week.

Vummadi took to the social media platform X, yesterday, Thursday, January 30, to express his frustrations regarding the hiring process for his company’s Indian office. According to him, it has been difficult to find engineers willing to work six days a week, even when offered a substantial salary package of Rs 1 crore per annum or more.

In his post, the Giga ML CEO questioned the work ethics of Indian engineers, particularly those with three to eight years of experience.

"I’ve noticed a pattern in hiring engineers for our Indian office. Even with a base salary of ₹1 crore, many are unwilling to work hard. A significant number of engineers with 3–8 years of experience are reluctant to work six days a week," wrote Varun.

X users, in no time, slammed Vummadi for his view.

One user wrote, "You can't buy cracked folks. They appreciate money, don't worship it!"

While another user commented that the work might not be "interesting enough."

Another user commented on the redundancy of such a culture of high salaries and endless working hours.

"Be it any field, the days of "pay high salary and make them work 24x7" are gone, in my opinion. 5 days work week and 8 hours per day are conducive to mental and physical health. And also productivity," the user wrote.

Varun Vummadi is the Co-founder and CEO of Giga ML, an applied AI lab that develops end-to-end customer care agents. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, Vummadi is currently based in San Francisco.