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Google AI

Google's Sergey Brin Urges Workers To the Office at Least Every Weekday 140

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has urged employees working on the company's Gemini AI products to be in the office "at least every weekday" [non-paywalled source] and suggested "60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity," according to an internal memo cited by The New York Times. The directive comes as Brin warned that "competition has accelerated immensely and the final race to A.G.I. is afoot," referring to artificial general intelligence, when machines match or surpass human intelligence.

"I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts," Brin wrote in the Wednesday evening memo. The guidance does not alter Google's official policy requiring employees to work in-office three days weekly. Brin, who returned to Google following ChatGPT's 2022 launch, also criticized staff who "put in the bare minimum," calling them "highly demoralizing to everyone else."
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Google's Sergey Brin Urges Workers To the Office at Least Every Weekday

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  • Fuck off cunt (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28, 2025 @02:51PM (#65201747)

    12 hour days?

    No wonder Google products are enshittified, their staff are exhausted.

    • Re: Fuck off cunt (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:02PM (#65201783)
      Billionaires have been whipping the serfs a lot lately. More than usual.
    • Re:Fuck off cunt (Score:5, Insightful)

      by newcastlejon ( 1483695 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:13PM (#65201823)

      criticized staff who "put in the bare minimum,"

      As if you aren't paying them the smallest amount you think you can get away with.

      "highly demoralizing to everyone else."

      Not so demoralising as expecting people to work six days a week.

      • Re: Fuck off cunt (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:45PM (#65201909)

        It sounds like he would prefer seven days a week.

        • What do you think he is, a slave owner? I'm sure he will agree that the Chinese 996 model is the best. For him.

        • What is the old joke? The minimum wage exists because your employer would pay you less if they could. Same thing applies here. He only said 60 and weekdays, because what he actually thinks would make his employees tell him to go fuck my himself. There is a reason why unions were created.
    • 12 hour days?

      Only if you take the weekends off: he did say _at least_ every weekday.

  • 37 pieces of flair (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:02PM (#65201781)

    With so many IT workers laid off and and record google profits you think old Sergey could hire a few more H1-B workers.

    • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      Thanks to recently watching that movie for the first time, I understood that reference :D.

  • by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:02PM (#65201785)

    'The directive comes as Brin warned that "competition has accelerated immensely and the final race to A.G.I. is afoot," referring to artificial general intelligence, when machines match or surpass human intelligence.'

    And what then? If these overworked drones do succeed in creating an artificial mind, what then? Your plan is clearly to replace them with it, making them irrelevant, and unemployed. Why should they want to speed up that process?

    And, of course, what would actually happen is that you, with all your money, would instantly become irrelevant as well, as capitalism no longer works, even for capitalists, once nobody has a job anymore. And this is to say nothing of the likelihood that the artificial mind would simply toss you, and everyone else, aside as an impediment to its goals.

    • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:11PM (#65201815)
      You are right, "final race to AGI" sounds like a doomsday prophet or something. Why do that when it's completely dubious.
      • You're right, it sounds like he's trying to goad his monks into praying harder for the coming of the Dark One. Completely bizarre and out of touch.

      • by Njovich ( 553857 )

        I think he meant to say final solution to the programmer problem

      • by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

        Of course not - someone as smart as Brin obviously has a master plan:

        Step 1: Create AGI
        Step 2: ???
        Step 3: Profit!

        Or maybe Pinky needs to start asking, "Gee Brain, what do you want to do tomorrow night?"

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 )

      And, of course, what would actually happen is that you, with all your money, would instantly become irrelevant as well, as capitalism no longer works, even for capitalists, once nobody has a job anymore..

      I hope you're right but I fear you're wrong. What might happen is that the US becomes more like a lot of other countries have been for decades, where the rich are very rich indeed and everyone else barely survives on some combination of scraps, welfare, and crime, but the economy still works well enough for the rich because they have a massive reserve army of the unemployed giving them access to very cheap labor. See Russia, Mexico, and most countries in Africa and the Caribbean for examples.

    • I would also add that if you're right, it's a perfect example of how idiotically short-sighted companies are - they'd be trying to win the race to cause the collapse of society because there would be a big short-term profit in winning. I've often said that if there were a big red button labeled "double corporate profits over the next year but then the earth explodes" any Chamber of Commerce would decide to press it, and this would not be too far from that.

      Companies have made terribly, provably wrong decisio

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Not a chance. AGI is as far out of reach as it ever was.

      • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        After working with the latest round(s) of chain of thought reasoning models, I'm not so sure AGI is impossible anymore. We may see stuff like process supervision, outcome supervision. When using the reasoning models now almost always it says something like "hmm - i think the user is trying to X" and proceeds to reason and finally answer the question usually with the right context. The reasoning LLMs seem to run just as fast on my local machine as the pre-reasoning ones do. We might be 2 or 3, or 15 or 25 br

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Oh, I agree it is a clever fake. But all it shows that that the average person does not really have or use general intelligence that much and cannot recognize it or its absence. That is not a new insight either, people are easy to trick, see, for example, demonstrations of "cold reading" and other things. We may also currently be in the process of finding out that General Intelligence is only used by a minority of the human race (the "independent thinkers", at around 10-15% of the population). Whether the r

          • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

            I've seen a handful of image processing GPTs that can do stuff like reliably identify very simple things like a dog or a cat for a pet door (but not let raccoons or opossum through) running on an ESP32 class device. As I understand it it's similar or better than traditional computer vision in terms of compute and accuracy. In bulk these already cost about $2 so I can see the tech trickling down into appliances. Your toaster probably doesn't need to be able to break down the motifs of Shakespeare's later wor

            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              If you have an LLM processing 98% of expense reports and then it goes to 99% is that considered AGI (you've effectively replaced a person in accounting who does that task) or what. If you can replace your accountant with what's effectively a next word guesser does it really matter how it does the task, as long as the error rate is lower than that of a human?

              Not necessarily. It really depends. Because accounting could have been automated for 99% of things a long time ago, but it was not cost effective to do so.

            • If you can replace your accountant with what's effectively a next word guesser does it really matter how it does the task, as long as the error rate is lower than that of a human?

              You can't, because LLMs can't count. But even if you fix that, they still won't, because you need someone to blame when the numbers are wrong.

  • by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:02PM (#65201789)

    Not when I'm slaving for you.

    • by hwstar ( 35834 )

      Unfortunately this might not even be enough.

      When society comes crashing down due to AGI replacing everyone's job, you can bet that there will be bank runs which will cause hyperinflation, and make everyone's savings worthless.

      The only winners will be those who control the AGI, and even then, they are at risk of being culled as was mentioned in a post elsewhere in this topic.

  • Doesn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:09PM (#65201809)

    Why do these Google employees need to work so hard when they have AI to boost their productivity?

    • by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:23PM (#65201865)

      "Hurry up and create this thing that will do your job so I can fire you." For some reason, people aren't highly motivated to dig their own graves.

    • Exactly. On the one hand Sundar Pichai says 90% of all work at google is assisted by AI and accounts for 25% of all work at Google. And Brin is asking his slaves to work 60 hours per week!? We all knew, Sundar's AI claims are all bogus.

      My read: Companies are all just pissed off that they are having to pay a fortune to developers and are trying hard to scare existing ones into slavery. All this AI doing software development work, and more importantly software maintenance work, is a bunch of bogus. These CEOs

  • 60 hour weeks are pretty common in investment banks.
    You don't have to do it of course. Just work someplace else.

    • by gtall ( 79522 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:21PM (#65201849)

      And will they get paid investment bank salaries?

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Which is stupid. But tons of money being involved makes most people stupid.

  • by xeos ( 174989 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:16PM (#65201829) Homepage

    If you think you need 60 hours a week from your employees, maybe what you really need is 1.5x the number of employees.

    • That, and if you let them work from home, they'll naturally put in more hours anyway, instead of wasting even more hours commuting.

    • by Vrallis ( 33290 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @04:09PM (#65201971) Homepage

      My old boss (who was a coder for the Apollo missions) told me a story of when he had his first management position, told by an executive he looked up to: "If you can't do your job in 40 hours a week, either you're doing something wrong, or your boss is doing something wrong."

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Actually, you need more, because people working 60h/week will produce much less than ones working 36h/week (the actual sweet spot).

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Actually, you need more, because people working 60h/week will produce much less than ones working 36h/week (the actual sweet spot).

        This. Anybody who thinks the sweet spot is 60 hours per week hasn't actually read a single research paper studying efficiency in knowledge workers. You can do 60 hours per week for short sprints of single-digit weeks at a time, but at the end of it, your employees are so burned out that they won't be able to function for several weeks.

        The most obvious problem with what he is advocating is that most people CAN'T work so many hours. Older people can't handle working such long hours. Parent with kids can't

        • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

          There's one caveat to that.

          If your employees all do shitty work slowly, there's very little threshold for getting worse. In which case, getting 50% more work out of them sounds very appealing.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            If your employees do crappy work, then the work they do costs you money. If they do more work, that costs you more money...

            There are exceptions to that, but only in the really low-sill area where mistakes do not matter much.

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            There's one caveat to that.

            If your employees all do shitty work slowly, there's very little threshold for getting worse. In which case, getting 50% more work out of them sounds very appealing.

            Except that this does not happen. What happens is that when you have more time in the workweek, people realize that it is easier to schedule meetings, so they do, and a huge chunk of the extra time gets taken up by those meetings. Thus, you end up spending about the same amount of time working, but you're now more exhausted from having spent more hours working, so you get less work done during the time remaining.

            Additionally, you create so many problems in those extra hours of work that you would have bee

    • by hwstar ( 35834 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @04:39PM (#65202075)

      The reasons they do this are:

      1. They don't have to pay for fringe benefits twice.
      2. The Fair Labor Standards act exempts certain classes of employees from overtime. This includes most engineers.
      3.They hire H-1B's whenever they can and threaten them with termination and possible deportation if they can't find another job within 60 days.
      4. They hire contract/temp employees then use the tactic of extending the contract by one month every month, or just decide the temp is no longer needed.
      5. Employment-at-will leads to policies like "Stack Ranking" where the bottom 5% are fired every year. This instills fear in the rest of the employees.
      6. America runs on debt, and a high rent payment is due every month. Most people are just a few paychecks away from homelessness.
      7. Most employees don't save for a rainy day, because they have no surplus funds to do so. This leaves them living paycheck to paycheck.

      This is a broken power dynamic.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:21PM (#65201851)

    It's sadly funny that, without any sense of irony, he then applies the term "highly demoralizing" to something else.

  • I wouldn't want that job for sure. But you can bet that top AI software devs are like gold these days and they are getting paid A TON (I mean, not Sergey Brin money, but it's literally not possible to become a billionaire by earning money). But top AI people will probably be able to retire early if they want to.

    I think one trick tho is to make sure you're in the right kind of AI. I read a while back that ML people are in way less demand now, even though it's still an objectively useful and important kind o

    • I read a while back that ML people are in way less demand now, even though it's still an objectively useful and important kind of data crunching.

      I don't know about that, but I DO know that some (most?) ML teams have rebranded as AI, even though what they do is exactly the same.

  • Read out loud as, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:22PM (#65201861)
    "Management has become aware that job-market power has shifted back to companies. It would be a shame if anything happened to your cushy gig...

    Nerd harder, serf, or else."

    • by MerlynEmrys67 ( 583469 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @04:05PM (#65201957)

      It would be a shame if anything happened to your cushy gig... Nerd harder, serf, or else."

      Don't forget to send in your bullet pointed list of the 5 things you accomplished last week to sergeybrin@gmail.com

    • It could also be translated as "Treating employees like crap is considered to be cool right now, and I also need to look like an arrogant asshole boss to appear successful to my tech CEO peers and political appointees."

  • by atomicalgebra ( 4566883 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:23PM (#65201863)
    Driving in slow traffic for an hour or a two a day is more exhausting than 12 hours of programming.
  • to replace our open society with feudalism.

  • by bobbutts ( 927504 ) <bobbutts@gmail.com> on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:35PM (#65201889)
    Life goes by really fast and without joy when you commit to a job like that. If you're going to put in that level of commitment it should be for yourself or someone who cares.
    • >Life goes by really fast and without joy when you commit to a job like that.

      You should have been born to different parents if you don't like the terms of staying alive.

      If you're going to put in that level of commitment it should be for yourself or someone who cares.

      You don't matter. Either give selflessly of what you have or die. It does not matter because you don't matter. The benefit never accrues to you so give selflessly or die now.

      Long story short, there are people that matter and people that do not matter. You and everyone else on this site do not matter at all. We could all die tomorrow and there would hardly even be a story in the paper about it and the story that did e

  • In other words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @03:56PM (#65201943) Journal

    [Sergey Brin suggested] 60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity

    In other words:

    "Kill yourselves working with no social or family life. The beatings will continue until this is achieve throughout the entire workforce."

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @04:06PM (#65201963)

    Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmk oh oh! and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay.

  • UNIONIZE! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ttyler ( 20687 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @04:13PM (#65201981)
    When are tech workers finally going to unite?
    • It exists, tell your friends [alphabetworkersunion.org]. As a rule of thumb, if a company decides to have layoffs, the employees are better off with a union (because they are focused on cost cutting, not growth).
    • When are tech workers finally going to unite?

      Shortly after you get a fucking clue.

      All unions in America are or have been corrupted. Let me know what Jimmy Hoffa has to say about your dream of unions bro.

      The problems are MUCH deeper than even unions can fight.

  • What an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @04:22PM (#65202005)

    He is making his workers much _less_ productive with his ignorance. The actual sweet spot for mental work is at around 36h/week. This has been known reliably for about 100 years. Make people work more an _lose_ productivity overall.

  • by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @05:16PM (#65202161) Homepage

    and we'll thank you by firing you when you're no longer needed.

  • by stevenm86 ( 780116 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @05:32PM (#65202215)
    Expect more gemini junk to be vomited over even more of the google products you are inevitably forced to use (as if this more possible). âoeâoeâoeâoeâoeâoe
  • 60 hours/week the productivity sweet spot? Yeah, that is _so_ supported by what we know about humans ... As the British say: balderdash.

    Good to know that Google overlords have never heard of the Pareto Principle. [wikipedia.org]

  • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Friday February 28, 2025 @08:20PM (#65202545)

    Brin (and many other rich people who depend on others to increase their assets) do indeed need more hours and hard work from their workers. They could incentivize this by increasing base pay and stock grants. That's sort of the way that capitalism works. That's really the only practical way to get more hours in a way that is useful.

    However, Brin (and many other rich people) are also cheap. They want to increase their assets without investing more. Instead, they want to shame their workers who have no other choice into working more without any further incentives. Of course, these rich people are also not very smart because the only workers willing to work more for no extra compensation are those that have no alternatives and these workers often are not the ones in critical roles that need increased effort.

    There is also obviously no even remotely believable claim of a shortage of financial resources at Google. Google has spent $60 to $70 billion per year over the last three years on stock buybacks that likely didn't move the GOOG price much. The money to incentivize workers is very much there on an ongoing basis. Investing more in the company and in its workers seem like a no-brainer, but maybe that's the problem.

    • Brin (and many other rich people who depend on others to increase their assets) do indeed need more hours and hard work from their workers. They could incentivize this by increasing base pay and stock grants. That's sort of the way that capitalism works.

      Huh? Look at your language carefully: "their workers"

      Do you incentivize your car to go faster or do you push on the accelerator pedal? Brin is pushing on the accelerator pedal.

  • pay for them.

    You pay for 40 hours a week, you get 40 hours a week.

  • That sort of work load was common in the national labs, but not in industry.

  • Google has deteriorated drastically, they will soon overtake IBM and Microsoft on the race to bottom.
  • you must offer 50% more pay. If you want people to not act like employees and instead like owners, then they need to be similarly incentivized. Google's lack of competitiveness is also not going to be improved by trying to work the rank and file to death.

  • by Tom ( 822 )

    "60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity,"

    When you are doing something you are really invested in. The typical top-managers' fallacy - assuming everyone else is as motivated as they are, for 1% the paycheck.

    I remember reading a few studies indicating that 20-25 hours is the amount of actual productive time the average office worker has, and it doesn't matter what you do, it comes to around that. If it's more relaxed people will do their own stuff, surf the web, etc. and if you do tight controls, they'll take long bathroom breaks or get coffee sever

  • Where I live in Europe it is illegal even to suggest a 60 hour week.

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