In the note, shared internally and viewed by the New York Times, Brin urges staff working on Google’s Gemini AI projects to put in long hours to help the company lead the race in artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Some have praised Brin’s commitment to pushing the company’s success, but others argue that his approach reflects an outdated and harmful mindset.
“The hustle-centric 60-hour week isn’t productivity—it’s burnout waiting to happen,” wrote workplace mental health educator Catherine Eadie in a post shared by LinkedIn’s news editors.
Others said they feel that hard work is essential for success, with a COO of a business analytics business writing, “Brin is just being honest—successful people have always put in long hours."
Lmao dude trying to claw back some relevance with bait.
Sergei Brin has not accomplished anything since Pagerank and it must make him feel very small especially since his ass got dumped quite recently.
Sad little billionaire.
It’s burnout waiting to happen
So? Then you fire them and hire fresh meat.
Humans are replaceable, no?
/S, of course
Don’t worry the full mindset is: work 60h/week until you train your replacement… The AI…
Last summer there were a bunch of stories reporting findings that companies that experimented with a 4-day work week saw productivity gains over the traditional 5-day, so this billionaire’s opinion sounds out of alignment with reality
He fucked his assistant at work and got divorced over it.
ahahahaha!
What an idjit.
We are slowly shifting to a 4x8=32h work week here. 60h long term has nothing to do with productivity anymore.
“Fuck productivity! You’re my bitch and I’m here to show it!”
I dream of my company going to that schedule, but I don’t think they ever will. It’s great to see other companies shifting that way though :)
Ahh, the typical manager misconception. Nope. Long work hours don’t equal high productivity.
But I can understand that misconception, as it takes those people up there many more hours to get a single useful idea compared to those under them who actually do the work and earn the money.
I’m sorry that Sergey Brin apparently doesn’t have hobbies or family/friends that care about him, but 60 is still wrong. We have computers and work multipliers and have perfected efficiency… We don’t need to spend the majority of our lives toiling anymore! Some would argue against 40, but at least that gives a balanced workday: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of leisure. And I say all that as someone who actually likes their job…
Commuting should be included in the 8 hour work day. I shouldn’t have to give up some of my leisure time to drive to work.
This would also incentivize denser cities.
Commuting should be included in the 8 hour work day
This would also incentivize denser cities.
How come? You’d be paid the same regardless, be away from home for the same time regardless; suddenly it makes sense to move further away from work.
Because you won’t get hired if they have to pay you to drive longer hours. Employers would be incentivized to hire locally.
So you’re saying you want prospective employers to tell you “Sorry, you live too far, we hire only within 5 city blocks”?
There should be non-discrimination laws for distance, otherwise anyone not living in the city center would be truly fucked in the hiring process AND your employer would get to tell you that if you move farther away, you’re fired.
I want denser cities, the whole point is to discourage people from living outside the city.
It would require a transition period so people have time to leave the suburbs and small towns, but we need as many people as possible on as small a land footprint as possible in order to restore habitat, reduce transportation emissions, reduce the cost of transportation infrastructure maintenance, and otherwise reduce the amount of land and energy and time wasted on people driving 30 miles to work every day.
So you want the entire world to be forced to live in equivalents of Manhattan, or ideally, Kowloon Walled City?
Also, you say you’re against people driving to work, but the other potential consequence is that people in medium density cities are going to be told that they’re no longer allowed to walk to work.
Look, population density in general is good. Forcing it by telling employers they’re now both allowed AND encouraged to discriminate employees based on where they live is going to have so many unintended consequences there’s no point in even entertaining the thought. If they’re not allowed to discriminate, people are going to intentionally move far enough away to have a 4 hour commute each way.
There’s no winning here, the only way to make things better is to lobby for better zoning laws if you live in a country where those commonly prevent high-rises or mixed-use neighborhoods. That benefits everyone, regardless of whether they want to live in an apartment smaller than a standard shipping container, a luxury penthouse, or in the suburbs.
If you want maximum density, you need cities to be built from the ground up like they do in China. START with the skyscrapers, instead of building them when enough people live there for there to be demand.
I don’t really believe private car ownership should even be allowed and should be replaced entirely by either dense cities where we can walk to our jobs or public transit, preferably trains. That way we can still have small towns, but you have to take the train now.
Ultimately you’re right, the only way to make things better is using central planning like they do in China. There is no market reform that can save us.
That doesn’t change the fact that commuting should be considered part of your job. You can’t work without it.
Unless you work remotely,! Oh look, another thing that would be incentivized by paying people for their commutes.
Not to brag, but it is for me! But I’m also not paid a large amount. And it absolutely should be for everyone…
Well, if Sergey Brin wants to work 60 hour weeks, be my guest. Sounds like a good idea for the CEO class, since they should really justify what they’re paid.
Sounds like a good idea for the CEO class
Mate, he’s a class or two ABOVE the CEO class. He’s in the “trillionaire soon maybe?” class where you don’t get to be by just being a CEO, you have to own major stock in a massively overvalued company that just keeps on growing.
He should be working at LEAST 50000 hour weeks to justify his continued growth of wealth at this point. Why the lazy bastard isn’t doing it is beyond me.
Totally agree! I use CEO in that way, but yeah, he is definitely an uber rich asshole, who is paid way more than could ever be fair. Definitely more than could ever be what he ‘deserves’ or ‘earns’.
Right now, i think some of these people are absolutely unable to participate in society because they literally exist outside of the normal bounds, far outside of them. And exactly that will create major problems, well it already has and we’re living through it. What’s to keep these assholes from actually demanding this kind of work hours from workers? Like, they will do so, absolutely, once you let them.
I’m just not at all sure in what way in the current liberal system, we’re able to limit the wealth and power of these individuals. Yeah, taxes of course, but these people are so deeply connected to political class and are able to bully the legal system… So, that’s a hard challenge there.
Right now, i think some of these people are absolutely unable to participate in society because they literally exist outside of the normal bounds, far outside of them.
Yeah. These are people for whom a carton eggs could cost $5000 and it wouldn’t really matter. Not because they’re eating steak or salmon for most meals, but because the difference between $5 and $5000 is negligible.
They’re Lucille Bluth, but 10000x as rich as the Bluth family ever even pretended to be
And plus they say that they do all of the work, remember?
“Arbeit macht frei.”
Irony alert: pushing humans harder while building AI to replace them—brilliant strategy, Sergey.
😾
I thought 6 hours per day were best? Also, where I work, we’ve gone through voluntary overtime, working 60 hour weeks. People start to look like zombies and were more prone to mistakes by week three. It is simply not sustainable.
EDIT: spelling/grammar
I was gonna say after a few weeks of 60 hour weeks I’d be fucked. Didn’t realise that was legit.
Has there ever been a better call to eat the rich?!
people like this shouldn’t be allowed to finish their sentences on their own terms. it should be cut short by an extreme force.
I’d be down to work the 60hrs if it was voluntary overtime. But constantly? Probably not.
Only if it’s for two people - 30 hours each!
