A Bengaluru-based CEO has revealed that his employees are voluntarily working late nights and weekends — not for better incentives, but to spite a rival company. Vikram Pai, CEO and co-founder of ReferRush, shared an X post elaborating on this unusual decision by his staff.
Along with the post, he shared a screenshot of an employee declaring that he would not take any Sundays off for the next three weeks, barring an emergency.
“Spite might be the greatest employee incentive”
In his X post, Vikram Pai explained that a customer who treated his team terribly went on to build a rival product. It was to spite this former customer that his employees were working extra hard.
“A customer of ours who treated my team terribly decided to go build a competing product,” he wrote.
The Bengaluru-based CEO of ReferRush said that he had tried every trick in the book to make his product move faster, including better incentives, bonuses and equity for staff. Nothing, however, had worked quite as well as animosity.
“I’ve tried everything to make us move faster: bonuses, incentives, deadlines, equity. Nothing has worked quite like this,” Vikram Pai wrote on X. “My team is so pissed off they’re voluntarily working nights and Sundays.”
{{/usCountry}}“I’ve tried everything to make us move faster: bonuses, incentives, deadlines, equity. Nothing has worked quite like this,” Vikram Pai wrote on X. “My team is so pissed off they’re voluntarily working nights and Sundays.”
{{/usCountry}}He acknowledged that he was happy to see his employees working overtime of their own volition.
“Turns out spite might be the greatest employee incentive of all time and as a founder I’m way too happy about this,” he concluded.
Internet reacts
The post has collected over 22,000 views and a number of comments on X.
“Humans are wired differently,” wrote one X user. “I tried this too but my employees spent the time DDoSing his product,” another said.
(Also read: ‘I worked over the weekends’: Employee seeks advice after HR questions them for being 15 minutes late)
Some, however, raised doubts about the authenticity of the story.
“That really does make 0 sense. How does one treat a referral org badly and go on to make a competing product? What logic is this? Call it by name if it’s real,” wrote one X user, urging Pai to name the competitor.
Vikram Pai refused to name the rival CEO, saying he would “rather not”.
“Has the single guy added so many features that your team needs to work non stop to just level up? And you have multiple years lead time, no?” another questioned.
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)