Google's Sergey Brin: Engineers Should Work 60-Hour Weeks in Office to Build AI
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Google is allegedly using large-scale changes, AI/LLMs to boost productivity, and have a large mix of good/great/awesome infra, so they shouldn't be stuck on mud needing to push 60hrs/w to be productive.
Awful way to signal despair.
The time for this sort of exhortation was before 2023, Sergei.
60hr/wk implies that after accounting for traffic etc, they are essentially signaling the need for sweat labor from ppl in their 20s without family etc.
It’s ofc Google’s right to demand whatever.
I hope this opens up other brilliant folks for the other companies. Google’s loss is hopefully others’s gain.
They realized they didn't have to employ all of the world's best software engineers to prevent new competition from starting up because they're already too entrenched.
The solution is DOJ/FTC mandated breakup. It'll oxygenate the entire tech sector by removing these bloated behemoths that aren't even monetizing most of their platform pieces.
The tech companies are becoming grocery stores, movie studios, primary healthcare providers, etc. and putting incumbents out of business. It's largess. Cross business unit subsidization to metastasize into entirely new markets. Because they have unreasonable scale where they can simply hulk into new things and spend a few billion dollars like it's pocket change.
Start demanding big tech breakup from your legislators.
That will never happen in the current administration.
That's up to Google.
It's not like Google are at the tip top of the market for comp these days, and they haven't been for a long time. It's easy to make similar money without destroying your quality of life elsewhere.
Even tech workers who mistakenly thought they were “too smart” to need a union actually need a union to balance out the uneven negotiating power. The house always wins.
Yes. And you have a choice. Agree to it or find some better place.
Demands of both employees and employers can be as unreasonable (within the law) as they want. As long as the whole process is voluntary and legal, I'm fine with it.
You don't like working long hours for extremely high pay, that's fine. Many people will happily take that deal.
Google engineers are paid well so they should have to work twice as hard? Google engineers are paid well, so they shouldn't complain about the contract under which they get paid changing to expect them to work 60-hour weeks?
This is a leading comment, but you're not willing to say the quiet part out loud, which is that you think they shouldn't get paid as well because others aren't paid as well. You're arguing for a race to the bottom which doesn't actually help you. You should be arguing for a race to the top (everyone should be paying their employees more), which might actually benefit you.
Unfortunately, my skills in this area are far short of my enthusiasm.
Like, he's punching down with all of these comments, and because he's still punching up from where 99% of workers are at, people buy the line from the billionaire who stands to benefit from this.
"All of the Google Grunts should be putting in 20 more hours a week so that I can make more money off of owning Google stock in exchange for the same pay, and no additional work from me, a billionaire." - What Sergey is actually pushing for here.
It's no wonder the American dream is dead. People don't even want others to achieve it unless they're already a billionaire, or unless they have to burn themselves out to achieve it.
Some people can't fit 10 hours of work into a normal work week, much less 20, 32 or 40.
When I get excited about a topic, it is hard for me to stop. And yes, there are times when I should add redo's on some of the hours, but there's more times when I'm happy where I just barreled in and kept going.
There is also the thing to think about that if by working 60 hours a week for 40 weeks this year I can retire a few years from now... That is a trade-off will worth making
for now.