What Apple TV’s ‘Severance’ teaches us about corporate indoctrination and the illusion of purpose amidst India’s work week debate

There’s something serene about the symmetrical sterility of Lumon Industries, the central setting of Severance. With its sophomore season back after three long years, the Apple TV+ series creates a world of impossibly clean lines, unpigmented lighting, and a distinct lack of clutter; save, of course, for the existential detritus festering in the minds of its “innies”. For the unacquainted, employees at the fictional megacorporation willingly undergo a surgical procedure that bifurcates their consciousness into two: an “outie,” who lives their life blissfully ignorant of work, and an “innie,” whose entire existence begins and ends within the office. The logical conclusion behind this terrifying corporate utopia is obvious — workers are stripped of any semblance of individuality to become the perfect cogs in the machine.

For its Indian audiences tuning in amidst the recent conversation about grueling 90-hour workweeks, the uncomfortable ideas that drive the series forward may be starting to hit a little too close to home. When Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy spearheaded the ongoing work week debate by suggesting that India’s youth should clock longer hours to “compete with global standards,” he was likely unaware that his words mirrored the ethos of Lumon.

The absurdity of Lumon’s existence, of course, is what makes Severance so compelling. Employees spend their days performing tasks incomprehensibly abstract — sorting numbers into meaningless categories based on instinct (disturbingly relatable for anyone who’s ever contemplated the value of their Excel sheet). The conceit feels painfully reflective of the compartmentalisation required to survive the unspoken reality of modern work and Lumon workers have no reason to question this system, having been denied the very concept of life outside of it.

Though technically free to walk out the door, India’s young workforce faces its own form of cognitive severance. The growing chorus of business leaders advocating for marathon work weeks couches its demands in the language of patriotism and sacrifice. “Work harder for the nation,” they implore, as if citizenship were contingent upon unpaid overtime. But beneath this mythology of personal achievement, lies a familiar refrain: time is currency.

What Severance captures so brilliantly is the corporatisation of human identity itself. Its characters are stripped of everything that makes them human: families, friends, desires, even names. They become the most efficient tools of productivity, rewarded not with any fiscal benefits, but with infantilising perks — melon bars, waffle parties, and the infamous “Music-Dance Experience”. It’s hard not to draw parallels to the performative incentives that have often been dangled before corporate employees: the patronising pat on the back after a 12-hour shift, the ubiquitous beanbags in the break room, the platitudes about “teamwork” plastered on HR emails announcing budget cuts. Severance suggests that the true horror of Lumon lies not in its strangeness but in its familiarity. We recognise its rituals, its language, and its logic, because we’ve lived them. It’s a distilled corporate indoctrination that creates the illusion of purpose. 

If Lumon’s innies represent ideal worker — fully compliant and eternally available — then their outies also embody the aspirational employees who are detached enough to sign away their autonomy but still invested enough to stay. The much-maligned comment by L&T’s S.N. Subrahmanyan, who quipped about employees spending Sundays “staring at their wives,” drew ridicule for its crudeness, but the underlying sentiment seems quite familiar. After all, if life outside work is framed as meaningless, why bother having it at all?

Though what makes Severance more than just clever satire is the manner in which it explores the cracks in the system. Beneath the impeccable facade of Lumon’s corporate Eden, brews a simmering rebellion. Whispered conversations shielded from higher-ups’ gazes and stolen glances at ‘forbidden’ files are the small acts of resistance that serve as a powerful counter-narrative to the dehumanising grind. Even the most oppressive systems rely on the complicity of those they oppress, and that resistance, no matter how quiet, is always possible.

The internet’s reaction to Luigi Mangione’s alleged assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson recently, has exposed a similar seething undercurrent of anti-capitalist rage. For many, Mangione’s ascent into a pop cultural messiah seems to tap into the same chagrin that led Willy Loman to his tragic end in Death of a Salesman or drove Peter Gibbons to rebel against the corporate tyranny in Office Space. 

Today’s working class increasingly views corporate behemoths as adversaries in a zero-sum game, and it’s no coincidence that much of the support for Mangione came from a generation saddled with crushing debt and dwindling faith in institutions that seem incapable of reform. The internet’s response to the workweek debate only furthers this disillusionment, as calls for these inhumane hours reduce life to the same transactional drudgery that defines Lumon. 

For the Indian workforce, the show has started to feel alarmingly cautionary. The push for longer hours has begun redefining labour as identity, as morality, and as duty; and it’s the selfsame worldview that flattens the complexity of human lives into neat rows of KPIs. While none of us will ever walk Lumon’s halls, many may yet recognise its suffocating grip in our own workspaces. Whether it’s a 90-hour workweek or another weekend devoured by the ceaseless pings of Outlook notifications, the insidious unspoken mantra remains: your time belongs to the company.

By presenting Lumon as this dichotomy of plausabilty and exaggeration, Severance has forced us into confronting distressing truths about the systems that govern our lives. How much autonomy can we surrender in the name of professionalism or patriotism before we lose sight of ourselves entirely? How much of our time have we given up to employers who see us as columns on a balance sheet? And how much further are we willing to endure before we finally say enough?

The debate over workweeks isn’t merely about clocking in more often than not; rather, the kind of society we’re willing to sustain. Will we continue extracting time as though it’s an infinite resource, or finally reclaim it as something precious — a space for joy, rest, and, perhaps most radical of all, rebellion? For those staring down the bleak eternity of another insufferably long day at work, the question might just feel especially urgent.