India, July 11 -- An Indian job seeker claimed their cold message to a US tech founder took a shocking turn, sparking an intense online debate about workplace toxicity. The candidate claimed that after reaching out about an open engineering role, they were bluntly warned that they would have to completely sacrifice their work-life balance. To make matters worse, the CEO allegedly stated that the ideal hire must leave their ego behind, as they would be told they are "dumb" almost every single day.

"Is this thing getting super normalized in India ? (a US CEO messaged me this btw)," a Reddit user wrote. Adding context to the statement, the individual continued, "I've been unemployed for months now and tried cold DMing a US founder, he repli...