Eric Schmidt Walks Back Claim Google Is Behind on AI Because of Remote Work (msn.com) 82
Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and executive chairman at Google, walked back remarks in which he said his former company was losing the AI race because of its remote-work policies. From a report: "I misspoke about Google and their work hours," Schmidt said Wednesday in an email to The Wall Street Journal. "I regret my error." Schmidt, who left Google parent Alphabet's board more than five years ago, spoke earlier at a wide-ranging discussion at Stanford University. He criticized Google's remote-work policies in response to a question about Google competing with OpenAI. "Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning," Schmidt said at Stanford. "The reason startups work is because the people work like hell."
Video of Schmidt's talk was posted on YouTube this week by Stanford Online, a division of the university that offers online courses. The video, which had more than 40,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon, has since been set to private. Schmidt said he asked for the video to be taken down.
Video of Schmidt's talk was posted on YouTube this week by Stanford Online, a division of the university that offers online courses. The video, which had more than 40,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon, has since been set to private. Schmidt said he asked for the video to be taken down.
He's paid not to make that sort of mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
He's obviously overpaid ;)
Re:He's paid not to make that sort of mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Eric Schmidt is well known as a dipshit on the scale of Elon Musk. Proof of this. [rights.com] Or maybe at least he has some shame, jury's out.
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Megacorp? Naaah.
HR priestesses? Oh yes, absolutely.
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Megacorp? Naaah.
HR priestesses? Oh yes, absolutely.
Nah, this wouldn't be HR. If their HR people are anything like ours they'd be standing on their desks screaming and clapping at his public faux pas. HR folks *DESPISE* work from home. At least every one of them I've met do. It lessens their control over your day, and HR is all about their own power.
It likely came from public relations and marketing, trying to slow the building animosity in the public at large towards the tech-bro culture and the giant corporations that its birthed. But the words were spoken
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Your argument against my HR poke is persuasive.
I don't find your argument on PR part being that as persuasive though. Google and other SV giants have been pushing extremely unpopular far left narratives on their platforms and still do. They really don't seem to be very concerned with public opinion, as they see themselves as guardians of what ordinary people get to see anyway.
"We did something unpopular again? Just collectively ban it on all SV platforms, brouhaha will die out in a week".
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Your argument against my HR poke is persuasive.
I don't find your argument on PR part being that as persuasive though. Google and other SV giants have been pushing extremely unpopular far left narratives on their platforms and still do. They really don't seem to be very concerned with public opinion, as they see themselves as guardians of what ordinary people get to see anyway.
"We did something unpopular again? Just collectively ban it on all SV platforms, brouhaha will die out in a week".
PR doesn't have to be about improving public perception. They're just as likely in large companies to become prognosticators of the company line. Preachers of the company faith. Police spokespeople for the company will and rule.
I find your lack of cynicism both refreshing, and confusing. I'm not sure how you exist in this world and see things as what they are officially defined as, rather than as they actually are. HR = power mongers hellbent on control. PR = company spokespeople, hellbent on preaching the
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I must've not made my point clear above. I didn't intend to suggest that PR is merely about being spokespeople for the company. I'm instead pointing out that SV giants have a long history of being exceptionally skilled at information manipulation at scale to manage public perception. I.e. that is one of the main functions of the "platform" companies like google, that exists outside it's PR department and spread throughout other departments within these companies.
And as such, PR department at those companies
Re: fuck you google (Score:2)
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A bunch of vastly overpaid corporate leaders have made sweeping statements about a lack of productivity in WFH. None have provided a shred of actual proof, including the ones in actual data science. More guys with limited expertise who think their opinions on other matters are invaluable.
Our society has deemed them better because they make more money. There's no turning away from that simple fact. We filter based on greed, because greed is our only god. And the people who feed their greed the most are clearly better people. The rest of us are slaves and idiots, because we aren't greedy enough to be considered better./p>
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I'm a developer, don't know if you include that in your positions, but it's not my experience. It's true that group communication is harder, but we have daily standups and lots of one on one meetings that make up for the difference, and it works. What you get back is a much wider pool of talent, and much higher job satisfaction levels.
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WFH developers can be successful, but it depends on the company and the individual. *You* may be just as productive remote, but you know there are others that do not have the work ethic. I bet you have a few of your peers in mind right now. And that's assuming you are even as productive remote, you said so yourself: "group communication is harder". Anything that impedes communication results in lower efficiencies, doesn't matter what mitigations are put in place, there are still only so many hours in th
Group communication easier with remote (Score:3, Insightful)
*You* may be just as productive remote, but you know there are others that do not have the work ethic. I bet you have a few of your peers in mind right now.
I agree but you can kind of tell that in remote interviews, however remote based companies can be more proactive in firing workers who are not very productive.
"group communication is harder"
I've not found this to be true at all. Group communication is vastly quicker remote because it is the work of a second to include anyone on Earth in your slack cha
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I agree and disagree.
For basic comms, digital communication can be adequate. Bug reports and the like, minor feature requests, ect...all fine. But when hashing out things like program design, structure, scheduling, concepts...in-person is superior every time. Give me a conference room with 5 nerds and a white board and a stack of notes, I'll beat your remote teams/zoom sessions every time and turn out a better product.
Now, when it comes to actual programming? Ya, WFH can be as efficient, possibly even m
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I agree and disagree.
For basic comms, digital communication can be adequate. Bug reports and the like, minor feature requests, ect...all fine. But when hashing out things like program design, structure, scheduling, concepts...in-person is superior every time. Give me a conference room with 5 nerds and a white board and a stack of notes, I'll beat your remote teams/zoom sessions every time and turn out a better product.
Of course, the number of times in most people's careers when they have needed multiple people to hash out a design for something can usually be counted on one hand. I can think of twice in my career — one about five years ago, and one about twenty years ago. The rest of the time, the design process involved one person figuring out how to architect things to solve a specific problem, followed by people poking at it a little bit around the edges in a review meeting.
That's about four or five weeks out
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I've not found this to be true at all. Group communication is vastly quicker remote because it is the work of a second to include anyone on Earth in your slack channel post about an issue.
Are you really not aware that you can do that if you work in an office, too?
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Re:Who is he scared of? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a developer, don't know if you include that in your positions, but it's not my experience.
This is typical of slashdotters and because it is, that's why your post was modded "insightful" while the post you're responding to was modded "troll", even though yours is no more insightful than his. Your insight, however, is one typical of slashdotters.
Yes, if your job is simply to write code, work from home can be more productive, especially if you tend to be a bit anti-social anyway. For many other jobs, however, no.
Re:Who is he scared of? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a developer, don't know if you include that in your positions, but it's not my experience.
This is typical of slashdotters and because it is, that's why your post was modded "insightful" while the post you're responding to was modded "troll", even though yours is no more insightful than his. Your insight, however, is one typical of slashdotters.
Yes, if your job is simply to write code, work from home can be more productive, especially if you tend to be a bit anti-social anyway. For many other jobs, however, no.
I'm an IT project manager. During the height of COVID I was able to manage a huge Oracle migration project that involved numerous business units including HR, Tax, Payroll, Benefits, Audit, and Supply Chain with teams in the US, Canada, South America, Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia - all while everyone was working from home. After we went live, on schedule, we had 0 major issues and a handful of minor issues. People who say that remote work lowers productivity and provides worse outcomes are full of shit. I agree that it can, if you have a shitty team and shitty management but it is not a tautology.
People that shit on WFH sound like boomers when computers were first introduced to their jobs. Yeah, you're too old and stubborn to learn anything new, so of course it is going to dramatically decrease your productivity while the people who embrace it actually see increased productivity.
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I'm a developer, don't know if you include that in your positions, but it's not my experience.
This is typical of slashdotters and because it is, that's why your post was modded "insightful" while the post you're responding to was modded "troll", even though yours is no more insightful than his. Your insight, however, is one typical of slashdotters.
Yes, if your job is simply to write code, work from home can be more productive, especially if you tend to be a bit anti-social anyway. For many other jobs, however, no.
I'm an IT project manager.
And your anecdote perfectly illustrates my point.
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Not really.
Yes, really. What I said was:
Yes, if your job is simply to write code, work from home can be more productive
When you said "I'm a developer, and in my experience working from home can be more productive," you were agreeing with me.
I am not anti-social and I'm not coding. My entire job depends on communication and collaboration, and yet I'm able to do it just fine remotely.
Bully for you. I also said "For many other jobs, however, no." You don't work in one of those many other jobs.
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I'm a "boomer" and not only did I welcome WFH, when computers were first introduced to my engineering job (early 80s) I embraced that.
I was personally much more productive working from home, especially at the beginning of
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Ditto. I wonder who the PP thinks created the computers in the first place.
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Re: Who is he scared of? (Score:2)
Fair enough. I certainly did deal with a lot of folks who forgot to plug in their brain, let alone whatever component they were complaining about not working.
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The truth: what you see in a modern cube farm these days is a bunch of developers working remotely anyway, even though they are sitting at their office desk. Oh, correction, sitting at a desk, because it is now an uncommon luxury to have your own desk. So developers come in with their laptops, find some empty cube, grab a cup of coffee, and go to work exactly like they would from home, but with the addition of the bullshit commute. Yeah, it's easier to get actual face time with your manager, but it's far fr
Re:Who is he scared of? (Score:5, Insightful)
For a majority of positions, WFH results in lower productivity and worse outcomes. Anyone honest in the industry will tell you this. It comes down to how you communicate with others; in person communication is far superior to any digital methods, and without effective communication your output will suffer.
So who is he afraid of offending? Any current employees that would cause issues over his position deserve to find employment elsewhere.
I used to think the same. But his statement can't be broadly applied. For certain technical jobs, WFH can be superior - for example: I can have my own space and quietness. I can engage in a meeting with a technical peer and review code or designs through a screen share, and have a copy of the work shared electronically. Contrast that to walking over to a colleagues desk and looking over his/her shoulder and having to remember what we discussed or wait for a copy to be sent to me by the time I get back to my desk. Sure I can do the same thing in an office - but I don't _need_ the office to accomplish the collaboration. Now for other job functions, face-to face in office is essential and superior. Sales, marketing, physical design and assembly etc.. I would think that for something like AI work at a company like Google, WFH helps, not hurts. But it depends on what cog you are in the machine. Heck, look at what has been accomplished in the open-source community for an example of how WFH can create greatness - the Linux kernel was written "at home" by dozens of people across the globe collaborating electronically.
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For certain technical jobs, WFH can be superior - for example: I can have my own space and quietness. I can engage in a meeting with a technical peer and review code or designs through a screen share, and have a copy of the work shared electronically. Contrast that to walking over to a colleagues desk and looking over his/her shoulder and having to remember what we discussed or wait for a copy to be sent to me by the time I get back to my desk.
Sure I can do the same thing in an office - but I don't _need_ the office to accomplish the collaboration..
Yup.
I'm a programmer. When I collaborate, it works better remotely. No distractions, comfortable quiet environment, sharing links, screenshots, code snippets.
Nobody physically popping into my office or cubicle with whatever they think is more important than whatever I am doing at the moment, and with little to no way to show me what they are talking about.
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For a majority of positions, WFH results in lower productivity and worse outcomes
Worse outcomes for who? Stock market has gone up and profits are at all time highs since WFH was normalized.
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For a majority of positions, WFH results in lower productivity and worse outcomes. Anyone honest in the industry will tell you this.
Please provide actual independently-verifiable figures to support that. Until you do, you are just talking through your asshole - I do not give a shit what "anyone honest in the industry" will, or will not, say.
"misspoke" (Score:5, Insightful)
You fucking LIED. What's the deal with people, usually politicians, claiming they misspoke? WTF is even misspoke? Just say you fucking lied. "I lied. Deal with it."
Re:"misspoke" (Score:5, Insightful)
misspoke := he spoke his mind while he should not have, ie said something out of line
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Fools expound upon entire whole detailed fucking scenarios .. and then when found out .. they're like "sorry I misspoke" .. the whole shit about combat and my best friend who never existed dying in my arms .. I just misspoke .. the whole shit about about camaraderie in our platoon .. I was never in the Army. .. I misspoke. Fuck.
Re: "misspoke" (Score:2)
"It seemed like a good idea at the time".
- Steve McQueen
Re:"misspoke" (Score:5, Insightful)
Me, I would ask, if he left Alphabet/Google 5 years ago, then how does he know this/where did he get the data to make that assessment? and honestly, with all the products that have been successful, then canned by Google, I don't think WFH killed them, I think rather PHB's killed them.
Re:"misspoke" (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically, I think the prefix that should apply to these situations is "dis-". He disspoke.
"Misspoke" implies you tried to say something other than what you said, like you wanted to say a tongue-twister three times fast and it went wrong.
Disspeaking, by contrast, is when you say something bad and shitty that you actually believe, and your utterance demonstrates what a bad and shitty person you can be. We all do it sometimes, but some of us try to learn from the experience and be better people in the future.
But some of us lie about disspeaking and say we "misspoke". This is one of those cases.
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Linguistic familiarity often conflicts with accuracy.
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You fucking LIED. What's the deal with people, usually politicians, claiming they misspoke? WTF is even misspoke? Just say you fucking lied. "I lied. Deal with it."
You never make contradictory statements? Complain about X in one instance when it's causing you problems, then praise it at another time?
I'm sure there's times where Schmidt loves the fact that Google is doing as well as it is with remote work and a nice work-life balance for it's employees. And there's times (like during that discussion) that he's frustrated that they're getting beat in the LLM race by OpenAI.
Perhaps one instance is a lie, though I think it's more likely he believes both at times (though t
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You never make contradictory statements? Complain about X in one instance when it's causing you problems, then praise it at another time?
Then I'd say "I was wrong when I said X was bad" or "I was upset that X was not functioning properly when I said that.", or "I was referring to X in a particular context".
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You never make contradictory statements? Complain about X in one instance when it's causing you problems, then praise it at another time?
Then I'd say "I was wrong when I said X was bad" or "I was upset that X was not functioning properly when I said that.", or "I was referring to X in a particular context".
I think it's more subtle than that, he does lament some of the lost productivity and creativity due to WFH*, but he also recognizes that it's not a battle he can't win and the employees are happier for it.
So if he's in a context where they're just talking about keeping up with a startup, yeah, he's honestly saying bad things about WFH. If he's talking about employee satisfaction and work/life balance, he's honestly saying good things. I don't think either is dishonest or disingenuous, it's just talking in a
Let's be honest here, at least... (Score:4, Insightful)
What this REALLY tells us is that Eric believes the whole "work / life balance" thing is nonsense for any business startup or one that wants to aggressively get ahead with a new idea or product. He was probably attacked for making his statement based on his opinion/feelings (as he didn't have hard data belonging to Google internally to prove the work from home initiative put them behind), so he had to pull the "I misspoke." card.
Well...yeah.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason the world's business owners ever cared about work/life balance were:
1. Legal requirements to care (where applicable)
2. The ability to hire high talent in a competitive labor market
3. Keeping the common-talent workers around long enough that the profit from their work exceeds the costs spent on hiring and training them.
Any concept of morality, altruism, or empathy is beyond them. They might pay lip service to that sort of thing, for popularity reasons, but that's it. They live in a different world than the rest of us, and only see other equivalently-wealthy people as actual people with a right to exist and some entitlement to respect. Us low-level functionaries are just beasts-of-burden to them, and any statements of respect or care towards us are just posturing.
So, if work/life balance is important to you, you should:
1. Perpetually shop for jobs that provide it to your satisfaction.
2. Apply legal pressure towards the creation and enforcement of laws that protect it.
3. Encourage your peers to do the same.
Don't bother with:
4. Make an appeal to the moral character of your employer
That last option is a fool's errand, at best.
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Correct, and really, this is how it should be. Humans are all flawed characters, and I don't believe for a minute that your "common man on the street" who'd complain about this situation would act any differently, if he was given the opportunity to instantly become a wealthy CEO of a successful business. I mean, maybe initially he thinks he would? But give it a little time. Once his new circle of friends are all wealthy people with concerns that only the wealthy have, and he gets used to/comfortable with hi
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Yep. A few may resist the corruption power brings ... but it's foolish to count on that. That's why we have the concept of legislation to limit some behaviors, and we have to exercise our ability to walk away from bad arrangements and to negotiate for better offers.
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Yes, I did all the experiments, all the maths, and admined the Linux mid-frame as well as the PCs. Ave week was 70-hrs --- wrote papers in my spare time and became rather good with s
I personally subcribe for hybrid work (Score:2)
WFH 3 or 2 days a week, and office for 2 or 3 days.
I'd personally opt for 3 days at office myself (mostly to set the example) but to each (team member) his/her own.
We all need in person meetings for more efficient communication (compared to video calls) and to generate intra and inter team rapport (and many other things)
but again, to each their own...
Jm2C
YMMV
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We all need
to each their own
Those statements contradict each other.
I've been working from home since way before it was cool. I ran a business out of my house which was my primary source of income for 15 years and then I reentered the job market right before the pandemic by taking an in-person job. For that position, I temporarily relocated away from my wife and teenage children to live across the street from the office in the downtown of a major city.
The pandemic was starting to kick off *just* as I had managed to return to my small-m
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Yes, I WFH 5 days a week, since March 2020. I went to office maybe 6 times in 4 years, to take/bring back hardware stuff
Am I so out of touch? (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Don't care why they're behind. (Score:2)
The Beatings Will Continue (Score:2)
The Beatings will continue until morale improves
I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.
E. Schmidt.
A failure of management (Score:3)
“Flexible work arrangements don’t slow down our work,” Alphabet Workers Union, which represents more than 1,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada, said in a post on X. “Understaffing, shifting priorities, constant layoffs, stagnant wages and lack of follow-through from management on projects—these factors slow Google workers down every day.”
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I'd be more trusting of an opinion by someone without a heavy bias on an extreme side of either issue. Yeah the CEO is wrong, but that doesn't mean the worker's union is right. The correct answer will be somewhere in the middle.
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It might be, but it might not be; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation [wikipedia.org]
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>> Yeah the CEO is wrong
Eric Schmidt is not the CEO, and you will notice he walked back his statement. "I misspoke about Google and their work hours"
Get laid off at Google (Score:1)
wtf? (Score:2)
Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning
Holy shit, I'm happy I never worked at Google!
Not walking back really (Score:2)
Stay Strong Standford (Score:1)
Stay strong Stanford! Keep the video up. Actually make it public again. It is important hear what "titans" of industry think, especially when they say the quiet parts out loud.
"Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning," -Eric Schmidt https://www.msn.com/en-us/mone... [msn.com]
ooops - (Score:2)
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When people like Eric Talk... (Score:2)
When assholes like Eric Schmidt open their mouth you realize we really should have a top tax rate of 80% for people like him.
Um... "misspoke"? (Score:2)