Former Google CEO blames work-from-home policy for company lagging behind OpenAI

midian182

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A hot potato: As artificial intelligence companies race ahead in their development of generative AI technology, Google is being left behind by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the reason for this is simple: his former company prioritizes working from home and flexible hours for its employees.

Schmidt served as Google CEO from 2001 to 2011 and was executive chairman until 2015. He recently took part in a discussion led by Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and students at Stanford University, where he made his feelings on remote work clear.

Brynjolfsson noted that Google had been a leader in the AI field, with researchers inventing the transformer deep learning architecture in 2017 – the technology powers many of today's LLMs, and is the T in ChatGPT. But the company has since fallen behind OpenAI and startups such as Anthropic in artificial intelligence development.

Brynjolfsson said he had asked Sundar Pichai about the situation, but the current Google CEO never gave him a "sharp" answer, so could Schmidt offer an explanation?

"Google decided that work-life balance and going home early, and working from home, was more important than winning," Schmidt said. "And the startups, the reason startups work is the people work like hell."

Update: The YouTube video of the discussion, which we had embedded, was made private a few hours ago, possibly because of Schmidt's "work from home" comments. Here's a clip of the moment.

Like many current and former executives, Schmidt seems to loathe the idea of employees working from home. He praised the fact that more workers were being forced back into the office in 2022, claiming it improved professionalism and allowed younger workers to develop their managerial styles.

Schmidt wasn't finished with his tirade. "I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is, if you all leave the university and go found a company, you're not gonna let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups."

It's worth pointing out that Schmidt is exaggerating for effect here: like many companies, Google requires workers to be in the office at least three days per week.

Schmidt then highlighted Elon Musk as an example of a driven leader who gets the most out of people. In June 2022, Musk mandated that SpaceX and Tesla workers must spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week or they would be fired.

The former CEO also talked about the work ethic in Taiwan, especially TSMC, which has a rule that starting PhDs work in the factory on the basement floor. "Can you imagine getting American physicists to do that?" Schmidt asked.

TSMC's extreme work culture is said to be causing problems when it comes to hiring new staff for its Arizona foundries. Twelve-hour workdays that extend into the weekends, calling employees into work in the middle of the night for emergencies, a harsh management style, and threatening to fire workers for minor infringements are not going over well in the US, leaving the chip maker struggling to fill vacancies with US workers.

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Former Google CEO blames work-from-home policy for company lagging behind OpenAI

 
There’s a good reason he’s the FORMER CEO. Googles issues revolve almost entirely on hiring practices based on physical traits plus abusing the H1B, resulting in an inefficient bloated workforce that follows instructions but has no vision.

That and getting rid of “don’t be evil” . Once google became OMNICORP people just stopped caring. It’s the fate of any company that starts chasing investors over their own users.
 
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Theinsanegamer said:
There’s a good reason he’s the FORMER CEO. Googles issues revolve almost entirely on hiring practices based on physical traits plus abusing the H1B, resulting in an inefficient bloated workforce that follows instructions but has no vision.

That and getting rid of “don’t be evil” . Once google became OMNICORP people just stopped caring. It’s the fate of any company that starts chasing investors over their own users.
Click to expand...


I agree with you and want to add that Google has become a company that has little to no commitment to anything other than search and how they can exploit that to monetize it. They have started and stopped so many things that had the ability to be great products.

Remote work is not as evil as Eric and Elon are making it out to be. They are just controlling micromanagers. These two used to be such visionaries but have lost that ability.
 
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Interesting thesis, but if Google's work from home policies are a problem, then why is it that it is struggling only in AI? Shouldn't we expect these alleged consequences in all its areas where employees are working from home?

I don't work there, but I see Google's AI situation and motivations as a lot more conflicted than a generative-AI pure play startup. ChatGPT isn't doing anything else that I know of, and Bing is not putting up much of a fight as a search engine. Meanwhile Google has probably had plenty of smart employees wondering what today's state of AI is really going to add to either Google's bottom line or to user satisfaction beyond the marketing buzzwords. They also have a lot more systems, business models, and ecosystem that their AI needs to integrate smoothly with. Of course it's going to take longer.
 
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So what if they're lagging behind OpenAI? It remains to be seen if LLMs ever become productive. As of now, they're pretty lousy at providing specific industrial answers that are more complete than what Google search yields, without AI. The baby is still teething.
 
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Wall Street Journal now reporting he "misspoke":

Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and executive chairman at Google, walked back remarks in which he said his former company was losing the artificial intelligence race because of its remote-work policies.

“I misspoke about Google and their work hours,” Schmidt said in an email to The Wall Street Journal. “I regret my error.”

(Subscription may be required.)
 
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Hey, if your company wants in office, then deal with it. If they want WFH, then deal with it.
I think a lot of the companies against WFH has to do with if they are RENTING buildings having
to pay the huge rent for people WFH.
 
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People at start-ups work like hell not because of policy... but because of equity. Google's salaried positions are not incentivized to share their billion dollar ideas.
 
p51d007 said:
Hey, if your company wants in office, then deal with it. If they want WFH, then deal with it.
I think a lot of the companies against WFH has to do with if they are RENTING buildings having
to pay the huge rent for people WFH.
Click to expand...
Let me slip in some ideas like manager commission for renting a huge building during covid forced-at-home era.
Or the customs of driving hardworking, creative employees into burnouts by clueless managers/nepotism and promoting their buddies, just as clueless.
 
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Hexic said:
It's not a WFH problem, it's management problem
Click to expand...

EXACTLY.....

My company made 90% of the staff (1,253 people at the time) switch to WHF as soon as it became clear what was happening with Rona....and here it is 2024, and we STILL have flexible/hybrid choices for about 80% of the staff. I myself have never went back to the office, except for a few short visits to the IT department for lappy swaps/upgrades.....

AND GUESS WHAT: we got thru it just fine, but then again, we have always had strong, solid & flexible management teams too, so there's that !

Leave it to da Shmitzer to pawn off his responsibilities & failures onto everything/everybody EXCEPT himself...once a schmuck, always a schmuck I guess :(
 
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Everyone is lagging behind OpenAI. I wouldn't expect Google or anyone else to be caught up with them either. Everyone is excited about ChatGPT and even just catching up is not enough. You'd have to beat them significantly before people start to care about other AI's. At least Microsoft is smart enough to know this. But remote work makes a great scapegoat though.
 
I strongly disagree. I remember their newly launched image generator clearly showing how politics
was on the front place rather than creativity and innovation. I also remember a man who worked on that thing
Involving into questionable politics, which he undoubtedly brought to this creation.
Stop doing politics, Google. And go back to just making money.
 
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BogdanR said:
I would love to see morons like this one or Musk for that matter, come to work in the tents Tesla has set up for overflow work outside in the sun.
They have no effing clue what real work looks like.
Click to expand...
One of the biggest complaints Musk's exes have had is that he is in the factories so much there is basically no relationship. He's certainly a lot closer to the metal then most C suites.
toooooot said:
I strongly disagree. I remember their newly launched image generator clearly showing how politics
was on the front place rather than creativity and innovation. I also remember a man who worked on that thing
Involving into questionable politics, which he undoubtedly brought to this creation.
Stop doing politics, Google. And go back to just making money.
Click to expand...
They'll figure that out once the blackrock/vanguard BRIDGE funding finally runs dry.
 
This would be the same Eric Schmidt whose terrible leadership and poor decision making took Novell from the dominant position at the start of the Network Era, with a share price of $40 to only $7 a share. This man destroyed wealth on an incredible scale, and burned a company to the ground doing so. He oversaw Novell sacking most of their key technical staff - and has now ridden the coat tails of more good people at Alphabet. Schmidt's role is that of a parasite - his wealth was built by other, better people, while he has repeatedly opined the wrong way. Why anyone would listen to him now bemuses me.
 
StupidPeopleSuk said:
EXACTLY.....

My company made 90% of the staff (1,253 people at the time) switch to WHF as soon as it became clear what was happening with Rona....and here it is 2024, and we STILL have flexible/hybrid choices for about 80% of the staff. I myself have never went back to the office, except for a few short visits to the IT department for lappy swaps/upgrades.....

AND GUESS WHAT: we got thru it just fine, but then again, we have always had strong, solid & flexible management teams too, so there's that !

Leave it to da Shmitzer to pawn off his responsibilities & failures onto everything/everybody EXCEPT himself...once a schmuck, always a schmuck I guess :(
Click to expand...

It depends on what you consider work. If you are in service and sales, then managing that is just phone work. If you produce an actual tangible product and have engineers and project work and work flow...

Unless you have a $20k system and a dedicated room, allowing you to draw and work (in-parallel) in realtime with your co workers on said project(s)... then working from home is essentially for customer service type jobs.

Otherwise the Company's team can't feed off each other in realtime. Realtime on the job elbow grease is real.
 
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