Is it possible to work part time and survive?

Sarvshreshth Gupta, an employee at Goldman Sachs, was found dead in a car park in San Francisco in April, presumed to have committed suicide. ' Sarvshreshth ' means ' supreme ' and he appeared to be so. A student of Delhi Public School he studied at Pennsylvania University, which is Ivy league, and then at Wharton, one of the top business schools in the world. He could not take the pressure at Goldman Sachs where he had to work 100 hours a week. A week is only 168 hours in total. Perhaps, being a high achiever he could not bear the thought of giving up. Deaths of people working in banks is not unusual as pressures to improve profits are relentless. Such pressure to make profits forces youngsters to resort to illegal activities with profound effects on the world. The Libor scandal could have affected trillions of dollars of business and worsened the financial crisis of 2008. Fines of a few billion dollars are loose change for banks and will not alter habits because the rewards are many times more. How much more? A trader at the London branch of JP Morgan Chase, nicknamed the London Whale because of his huge trades, lost the bank $6.2 billion in 2012 but the bank made record profits of $21.3 billion the same year. US regulators have forced banks to employ compliance officers to oversee their work, which is naturally hated by bank bosses. Now the New York Times has published an article, detailing the extreme working conditions at the e commerce firm, Amazon. The company actually boasts of " unreasonably high standards " for its employees. Employees talk of grown men crying, pressure on fathers to spend less time with their families and workers are encouraged to criticise their colleagues. Employees returning from cancer treatment or a miscarriage were edged out and thousands of staff are sacked every year, in what is known as, " purposeful Darwinism ". But Amazon is not alone. Elon Musk of Tesla scolded an employee for missing a corporate event to witness the birth of his child and a former Apple employee in Australia wrote that when he missed a business trip when his pregnant wife fell down stairs it was marked as a " performance issue ".  Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos wrote a memo to his employees saying," I don't recognize this Amazon, and I very much hope you don't either." He also said that it would be crazy to stay at such a company and," I know I would leave such a company." While 82% of employees approved of the CEO only 62% would recommend a friend for a job there. Former employees of Amazon are in great demand because they are used to hard work and Uber recruits them heavily. Tech giants and banks are not the only ones. The Japanese have a word, ' karoshi ' which means ' death from overwork '. Fortunately, our civil servants are not in danger. They get paid to relax.