Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, has reiterated his stance against profit-driven motivations in essential professions. In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), he highlighted that roles such as farmers, doctors, teachers, and priests are often chosen for reasons beyond financial gain.
Vembu’s comments come on the heels of his earlier critique questioning whether society truly desires these vital professions to be influenced primarily by profit. He emphasized that these roles are foundational to civilization and suggested that businesses should support them rather than solely measure value through profit.
His perspective raises important questions about the societal expectations of various professions and the implications of prioritizing profit over service.
Because they expect financial rewards, vembu also included priests in the same group, arguing that people do not generally train for such roles.
“Ask a farmer who made a choice to be in farming and they would tell you it is their love of farming,” he wrote. Instead, he said, farmers may leave the profession when they can no longer afford to continue. He said doctors are expected to follow professional and ethical rules that put patients first. Doctors who enter the profession mainly for money are not respected by their peers, according to Vembu. “No one ever becomes a teacher because the money is good,” Vembu wrote. “Economic models would consider all of that behaviour irrational,” he wrote.
Sridhar Vembu began his latest post by asking readers to consider why people choose certain professions. He argued that farmers are unlikely to describe money as the main reason they entered agriculture. Vembu also used doctors as an example. He made a similar argument about teachers. Sridhar Vembu then turned his criticism toward economic models. However, he argued that this willingness to pursue work for reasons beyond money is essential to society. “Yet without that deeply evolved character trait in humanity, civilization itself would collapse. The Zoho founder’s comments build on a broader argument he made in his previous X post about profit, capitalism and society. He argued that modern finance and economic theory often pushes people toward making more activities profit-driven. Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.
A day earlier, Vembu had asked: “Do we want our farmers, teachers, doctors and priests to be profit-driven?