COO recalls Indian boss rejecting a 'capable' marketing candidate as he played guitar: 'I regret it'

Parminder Singh is the Singapoe-based COO of British magazine Tatler Asia. (Image credit: @parrysingh/X, Unsplash)

The ongoing debate about employees deserving of work-life balance has prompted a Singapore-based COO to recollect how his Indian boss once rejected a "capable" marketing candidate only because he played the guitar and ran marathons. According to the boss, the candidate's hobbies made him unsuitable for the job.

Parminder Singh, the COO of British magazine Tatler Asia, took to X to share the incident.

"Once a candidate applied to my team for a marketing role in India. Besides being a capable marketer, his CV mentioned that he runs marathons and plays guitar. My boss didn’t let me hire him, saying, 'Yeh aadmi yeh sab kuchh karta hai to kaam kab karega (This man does all this so when will he work)?' I thought such managers were extinct. Turns out they aren't," he wrote, referring to similar comments made by L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan in an undated viral video.

In a separate post, Singh added that he regretted not being able to hire the candidate.

"I couldn't hire him, and I regret it," he wrote. "This happened many years ago. I've been away from India and assumed things would have changed, but it looks like they haven't. Compare this to my time at Google, which had an unwritten policy: if you excelled in the Olympics, you could walk into a Google office and get a job. Excellence is a transferable skill!"

Singh had worked with Google for over six years as a managing director for Google's advertising business in the Asia Pacific region. He has also worked as a managing director for X (then Twitter) for three years.

How L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan's comments triggered a row

Subrahmanyan has come under intense scrutiny after suggesting that employees should work 90 hours a week and even on Sundays to stay competitive. His remarks, made during an internal interaction, surfaced in a video shared on Reddit, sparking widespread criticism and comparisons to similar contentious statements by Infosys founder Narayana Murthy.

In the undated video, Subrahmanyan was responding to an employee's question about why the company mandated working on Saturdays. He stated, “I regret I am not able to make you work on Sundays, to be honest. If I can make you work on Sundays, I will be more happy because I work on Sundays also.”

Challenging the need for time off, he added, “What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? How long can the wives stare at their husbands? Get to the office and start working.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from L&T said, “At L&T, nation-building is at the core of our mandate. For over eight decades, we have been shaping India's infrastructure, industries, and technological capabilities. We believe this is India’s decade, a time demanding collective dedication and effort to drive progress and realize our shared vision of becoming a developed nation. The chairman’s remarks reflect this larger ambition, emphasising that extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary effort. At L&T, we remain committed to fostering a culture where passion, purpose, and performance drive us forward.”