Former employee at Narayana Murthy’s Infosys on work culture of 1990s: ‘We slogged like…’

Infosys was founded in 1981 by Narayana Murthy and many other leading engineers.

A former employee of Indian tech giant Infosys shared his experience of working for the company decades ago. He gave this insight while reacting to an old video purportedly from the Infosys canteen in Bengaluru that went viral on social media platforms. Param Arunachalam told X what life and work was like at the tech firm when the industry was just starting to take off in India and globally.

What was the work culture like back then?

In a series of X posts, Arunachalam said that long working hours defined the IT work culture of that period. “We worked like crazy. A 15-hour day was routine. I once spent 50+ hours in the office. Don’t be fooled by the 90-second videos.” But he added that it was a great time to work. “But this was because we were from a humbler background than the average employee now and had more or better opportunities as the industry was nascent. My first field trip was before I completed my first year at Infosys and there were others in my batch who had gone before me,” he said.

‘We were living our dream’

Arunachalam also fondly remembered the early days at Infosys’ office in Mangaluru (then called Mangalore). “Our first batch of 20 employees from Infosys Mangalore featured in a recruitment advert on Udayavani about three months after we joined! We were living the dream.” He added: “My experiences were different from my big-city counterparts in Bengaluru; we were more close-knit and had more fun.” Arunachalam’s posts quickly went viral, and many X users appreciated the balance and originality of his insights.