why are we proud of burnout

My cousin Aditya sent me a screenshot at 1:47 AM last month.

It was that viral X post from Indian web developer Priyanshu Tiwari showing young tech workers hunched over laptops at 4 AM. The caption: "It's 4 AM guys, but builders are building. What's your excuse?"

When Bryan Johnson called it "terrible for health", someone shot back: "Fair, but you're only able to make this comment from the comfort of your longevity villa because you did the same at one point."

Aditya's message below the screenshot stopped me cold: "Bhaiya, this is literally us. Except we don't have someone posting about it. You have to suffer to win. That's just how it works."

He was describing an identity.

In Indian startup culture, we're performing suffering like it's proof we deserve success.

Last August, Microsoft employee Pratik Pandey was found dead at the Silicon Valley campus at 2 AM. The 35-year-old from India had badged in at 7:50 PM. No prior health issues. His roommates said he'd been working late nights for "a very extended period of time."

His family's message to tech companies: "Stop pressuring your employees to overwork themselves."

And if you pause and think, companies aren't making us do this.
We're doing it to ourselves?

Psychologists Joseph Vandello and Jennifer Bosson discovered something in 2008 that explains everything. They called it Precarious Manhood Theory.

The research showed that manhood, unlike womanhood, is seen as a "precarious social status" that must be constantly earned and can be easily lost. It requires continuous public demonstrations of proof. When men feel their masculinity is threatened, they respond with anxiety and prove themselves through "socially verifiable acts" like risk-taking, aggression, and overworking.

Think about that 4 AM post again.

The work itself is almost secondary. The performance of suffering is the point.

When you build your identity around something that can be "lost," you can never stop proving you still have it.

And this is evident throughout our corporate culture in India.

The CII-MediBuddy Corporate Wellness Index 2025 found that 86% of Indian corporate employees struggle with mental health issues. That's 4.3 crore people out of India's 50 million corporate workforce. Our burnout rate stands at 78%, far exceeding global averages.

But we wear it like a badge.

Deloitte's workplace mental health survey calculated the damage: poor mental health costs Indian employers ₹1.1 lakh crore annually. ₹51,000 crore lost to presenteeism, people showing up but not actually functioning. ₹45,000 crore lost to attrition. ₹14,000 crore lost to absenteeism.

And nearly 50% of Indian employees are actively looking for new jobs. Not because they found better opportunities. Because they're trying to escape.

We're destroying ourselves for likes on LinkedIn.

The data gets worse. Indians work 46.7 hours per week on average. More than Japan at 36.6, South Korea at 38.6, and even China at 46.1. A Blind survey of 1,450 verified IT professionals found 72% routinely work more than 48 hours weekly. One in four reported 70 or more hours. The burnout rate? 83%.

Your body doesn't care about your X engagement.

After just one night of sleeping 4 hours, insulin sensitivity drops by 25%. India already has 101 million people with diabetes. Another 136 million are pre-diabetic. That's 237 million people with blood sugar dysfunction.

The Great Indian Sleep Scorecard 2025 surveyed 4,500+ Indians. 55% now sleep past midnight, up from 46% in 2022. 40% get less than 6 hours per night.

Batman has Alfred and a Batcave full of medical technology.

You have a Practo subscription and parents who think diabetes is genetic.

I called Aditya last week.

"Bhaiya, I know the research," he said. "But if I leave at 7 PM while everyone's staying until 11, what does that say about me?"

This is exactly what the research predicts. When your identity requires constant proof, you can never stop proving yourself. The moment you rest, you feel like you're losing who you are.

A Stanford study found that productivity drops sharply after 49 hours per week. After 55 hours, it collapses so much that someone working 70 hours produces nothing more than someone working 55.

The suffering isn't even working. It's just performance.

I asked Aditya one question:

He went quiet.

We've confused suffering with achievement. Turned exhaustion into social currency. We post at 4 AM not because we're productive, but because we need everyone to see that we're suffering enough to deserve success.

The trap has an exit. But it requires admitting that the performance isn't helping anyone. Not your company. Not your career. Certainly not your health.

The founders posting at 4 AM will either burn out, sell their companies, or become cautionary tales. The real achievement isn't surviving on 4 hours of sleep. It's building something sustainable while keeping your health intact.

Start with one boundary. No Slack after 9 PM. Sunday mornings off. One thing you protect for 30 days. Research from University of Illinois found that workers with greater "boundary control" were significantly better at preventing stress from spiraling.

Stop testing if you can handle this suffering.
And start asking if you’re willing to stop performing it…

Hit reply and tell me: What's one boundary you could set this week?

I read every email.

Until next week,
Ritesh

PS: we’ve spoken about work productivity before, yes. But it’s the first time I realised we as Indians wear it as pride.