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Some have praised Brin’s commitment to pushing the company’s success, but others argue that his approach reflects an outdated and harmful mindset.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."
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.
Not to brag, but it is for me! But I’m also not paid a large amount. And it absolutely should be for everyone…
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.
what a useless clown
At this point, it’s an insult to clowns.
fair, “clown” as in the study of physical comedy is genuinely hilarious
Mba say the darnest things
Not true. They know exactly what theyre doing to extract wealth from the workers.
Yes. The rich prefer slavery if they can get away with it .
Even if it’s less efficient than better treatment of the workforce
My ass it is. We’re going the other direction.
Theres 182,502 employees at Google.
Maybe if Brin wants to work hard, he can do all the work at 60 hours a week himself, since he’s so fucking smart.
That’s only 10,950,120 hours a week, Brin. Those are rookie numbers! You can do it yourself, right? Right?
You wouldn’t be sitting on your ass doing nothing demanding others do all the work, right? Right??
Narrator: Brin was indeed sitting on his ass doing nothing.
Also, for context, 60 hours a week divided by 7 days a week is 8.6 hours a day with no days off.
often these fucks do work 60–100 hour weeks because they are soulless, friendless, loveless, hobbyless people with no interior life or social life.
Nah, they count shit like going to the gym for two hours or having a three-hour-three-martini “business lunch” as part of their “work week” so those numbers are way overinflated. They count every little thing they do that they tell us “isn’t working” (like eating) as “work” when it comes to their own schedules.
There’s middle managers who really work like that but its because they hate their home lives, their wives, their children.
Exactly! I worked at a really small company in a rural area and and even at that insignificant place my bosses would sit around, drink coffee, maybe drive their fancy company cars visiting their friends at another company for chatting and berating their employees for being lazy and being egoistic for having a low working morale. While leaving early everyday. I used to say I’d like very much spend my holidays like they spend their days working.
“I am the all-important central pillar of this company, so looking after my health needs is how I do my job. It would be bad if I joined investor calls and virtual meetings without getting 10 hours of sleep and 3 square meals per day, so of course that time is billable. And I’ll need the company to pay for my various trainers, aides, counsellors, and spiritual advisors who keep me physically and mentally healthy, otherwise we wouldn’t have a leg up on the competition.”
“Hey, does it make our company look bad if the Apple CEO owns a larger yacht than I do? We need to fix that ASAP. How can we make more room in the budget for my compensation? Do we really need to keep all these engineers?”
Now we are talking!
I work 60-100 hours a week because I own my business.
They aren’t “working” in the same way I am or you are. They don’t work their businesses. Their hobbies social life and business are all blurred. That’s why they can make the claim they are always working but it’s not the same thing.
I hope you can return to a healthy balance soon.
Why? Fuck me, that’s like a 12 hour day over a 5 day week. No-one is doing productive 12 hours day for very long, so he’s basically just arguing for an adult version of fucking daycare here.
Well yeah. If you’re at the office that long, you’ll be too tired to do anything else like protest, organize, live life, etc.
My thoughts also. Totalitarian regimes make people work all the time so they’re too burned-out and disorientated to rebel.
…or 8.6 hours a day 7 days a week with no days off. There’s no way to math this that isn’t “fuck you, you don’t deserve a life outside of working to replace yourself with AI.”
Or 10 hour days 6 days a week, only so the “responsible” employees can go to church.
Ew.
Depends on your job, this is definitely true, specially on Fridays. No one wants to work on Friday, productivity is lowest on Fridays.
Specially developers, you’re going to spend the first 3 hours of work every day, fixing all the shitty code wrote in the 3 last hours of the preview day.
Yep. If you want max productivity from devs, it’s salary and ad hoc.
Do your work when the fuck ever. Just get it done.
I’d work work 60 hours a week if I was going to get paid the millions they make but I’m not doing that work just to make someone else rich.
It’s beyond just making millions for someone else, it’s about literally building their replacements.
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). **
They want an AGI that will do all the work “for free” and they don’t have to worry about pesky human workers who want things like “human rights” anymore.
Most big players in the AI field have already said that they are not going to reach the goals they set for environmental impact by 2030. The “for free” part simply means that Earth will become unlivable for human beings sooner
Yep, just plug 'em in and they’ll work 24x7x365 without a complaint. That’s the goal.
“The race” to AGI is just the race to unemployment and complete subservience to the TechBro super-rich and their ilk.
Let’s see, can’t grow your own food, can’t make your own clothes, can’t fix your own home, have to pay property taxes no matter what, have to pay for health insurance or you die…
They have a lot of people between a rock and a hard place. Might even be all of us.
Please join my TED talk on “Why whip is a more efficient motivational tool than bonuses?”
Hitting Brin in the balls repeatedly would increase my happiness.
60-hour workmonth? Sign me up!
Have fun paying out overtime in developed countries
Assuming overtime pay and other employee benefits aren’t completely gutted
That’s why I specified developed countries. Countries stuck in the 1800s don’t count.
They won’t pay overtime. Obviously.
workweek
Joiningwords forno reasonis weirdwhenhyphens stillexist.
punktetrefferanerkennung
arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekeringsmaatschappij
Kicking Sergey Brin in the teeth and working 30 hours a week is max productivity.
So nice of him to support the abuse of his employees for his personal gain.
It’s not about productivity. Productivity drops exponentially when people are tired. It’s about crushing the human spirit.
Hey Brin, kindly go fuck yourself, you out-of-tpuch ass.
Classic correlation v. causation. The sweet spot for productivity is believing in and wanting to do your work. For some people, this motivates them to spend tons of time working. For some people, this boueys then to high productivity even while exercising great work life balance and avoiding burnout.
Google used to know this, and spend huge amounts of effort and resources on trust, enjoyment, innovation. Now that’s something to find at other companies.
