Google's Sergey Brin Asks Workers to Spend More Time in the Office

60 hours a week equals to shit work/life balance. 5 days/12 hours, 6 days/10 hours, 7 days/8.5 hours...doesn't mater, they're all bad. Throw in the commute because RTO, and it becomes even worse.

The only time I consistently pulled 60+ hour weeks, was back in my fresh grad years - where I worked 2 years of that, because I knew the work would lead to better opportunities. Should come as no surprise that me, and practically all my other junior colleagues were all under 25, single, and had no kids or family. After two years 90% had moved on to greener pastures, or enrolled MBA program.

In professional fields like finance, consulting, law, etc. it is accepted - precisely because everyone assumes it will only be a 1-2-3 year ordeal. Maybe big tech companies look at it the same way. But it would sure suck to be a dedicated employee that decides to stay, and expected to work those kinds of hours...burnout will come sooner than later.

I don't get it. He's an intelligent person that knows that working after a certain number of hours per day leads to diminishing returns.

Why say something like this?

> On Wednesday, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, said the company could lead the industry in artificial general intelligence — when machines match or become smarter than humans — if employees worked harder.

If only these pesky meat machines would work 50% harder for 50% more than fulltime, all the time, he could have his silicone bot that will work 100% of the time.

The more hours you work, the higher the morale.

> “A number of folks work less than 60 hours and a small number put in the bare minimum to get by,” he wrote. “This last group is not only unproductive but also can be highly demoralizing to everyone else.”

I’m curious about the amount of time people spend in meetings at these places where they work 60 hours a week. I’ve noticed that meetings at my workplace have become quite excessive. They aren’t always the most productive use of my time, so I end up working extra hours to compensate for the time wasted in meetings.

Do the tech billionaire elite, like Sergey, actually believe that AGI is going to happen any time soon?

Firstly, I don't think it is, so I tend to assume that they're just being hype-guys for staff/investors, but assuming I'm wrong, it seems very weird to suggest that the difference between success or failure in bootstrapping AGI hinges on burning through a generation of AI hires, vs working them at a reasonable pace.

“No punting — we can't keep building nanny products. Our products are overrun with filters and punts of various kinds. We need capable products and [to] trust our users.”

What does Sergey mean by this?

I think the Indians started this trend...Infosys, L&T etc.

Wow. I posted this link and the feedback is just incredible. It's disappointing to see "Hacker" News so much against hard work. I am sure the Gemini team has pretty much infinite demand for engineers to join, so if someone wants to leave for other teams or companies that should be fine for them.

This feedback indeed substantiate Sergey's point that such bare-minimum people really do destroy the morale for everyone else. I certainly would have felt that had I were at Google on a critical exciting project that the company deeply cared about to the degree that a founder was actively participating in.

If the ship sinks to irrelevance, it will sink for all Googlers. In fact, the top billionaire will be the least affected.