The Indian Engineer Who Said "I'm Out" and Vanished. Honestly, He Had a Point.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately.

Japanese workers carry too strong a sense of responsibility.

It’s not a bad thing in itself. Working diligently, not causing trouble for others — these are valuable cultural defaults that hold society together.

But I’ve seen a serious number of people in this industry who are just visibly exhausted because of that responsibility.

Not just engineers. PMs, sales, managers — same story.

“If I don’t do it, no one will.” “If I bail now, I’ll cause trouble.” “I can’t run away here.”

Saying things like that, while working weekends, sleeping badly, and somehow always looking a bit pale.

But honestly, work isn’t your whole life.

It’s a means to make money and live. That’s about it.

If your current company disappears, people somehow keep living. There’s job-switching, there’s freelancing, and at worst you can take a break.

And yet Japanese workers bet their whole life on “the current workplace.”

The Indian engineer who said “Yeah, no”

I once worked with an Indian engineer.

One day, out of nowhere, he sent us a message saying “I was in a traffic accident” — and disappeared from the project.

Was it actually a traffic accident? Honestly, I have no idea. Personally, I think it was probably a lie.

The project was pretty rough at the time. Late nights, unreasonable demands, endless spec changes. The Japanese team members were grinding through with “we just have to push through” — but he was different.

“Yeah, this is impossible.”

The moment he made that call, he was out.

I was surprised at the time. But looking back, I think there was a kind of rationality to it.

To be clear, I’m not saying all Indian engineers are irresponsible. There are plenty of diligent, excellent ones.

But at minimum, they seem to have a stronger “prioritize yourself” instinct than Japanese workers do.

I once saw a YouTuber who’d worked in India saying something similar.

In India, apparently, there are cases where people quit a job and barely do any handover.

The reasoning is simple:

“The evaluation of a company I’m about to leave has nothing to do with my life.”

To Japanese ears, this sounds irresponsible.

But Japanese workers swing too far in the opposite direction.

People burn through their mental health for a company they’re already leaving, wreck their physical condition, and sometimes can’t function for a while afterward.

Do we really need to carry all that?

The diligent ones are the most at risk

The more diligent the person, the more dangerous it gets.

The stronger their sense of responsibility, the harder they corner themselves.

“If I bail, the project won’t run.”

It will. It’ll run.

There’ll be some chaos, but the company keeps going just fine.

You leaving doesn’t break the organization. Capitalism, more or less, is structured that way.

But the burned-out version of you? The company doesn’t take care of that.

So once in a while, it’s okay to be a little dry about it.

If you’re at your limit, you can leave. If it’s impossible, you can quit.

Japanese workers could use a bit more “prioritize-yourself” rationality.

Anyway

…having written all that,

the diligent people reading this will probably just show up at work tomorrow as usual, and absorb the unreasonable demands as usual.

“But my situation isn’t that simple…”

Yeah. That kind of thinking.

Still — about once a month, please remember.

That Indian engineer who said “Yeah, no” and vanished.

He’s probably somewhere right now, in another country, doing some other job, perfectly fine.

Life keeps going just fine even with that level of casual.

So — don’t push yourself too hard. Take it easy out there.