Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 144 posts

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#121

Post by dangus »

meowfly wrote: post #119
pierrefermat1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your CEO may very well be working those hours too except for good reason since he's value aligned+ highly leveraged and able to capture the benefits from the extra work

CEOs also just don't have the kind of work most of us do. They have tons of latitude to direct their day. They can skip meetings. They have executive assistants that they can offload much of their admin work. If they find themselves too in the weeds they can hire a COO. Being able to be self-directed changes how you perceive "work".

Exactly. From director or VP level to C-suite are people who can hire and delegate. If you’re an IC and you are drowning in work you have to live with it.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#122

Post by dangus »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #67
dangus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe mad that he wasted his life having no work-life balance and then realizing that lots of companies with work-life balance are productive and profitable. I’m ordering something from Europe where the factory is shut down for the entire month of August. I just have to wait an extra month for that item. The company still gets my money because I need the item. I also use a piece of software written by a European c…

Sorry, but that smells like bullshit. No European company I worked at or know of entirely shuts down in August. That's just a meme. There's still people at work keeping things going that month. Vacation approvals need to be requested in advance and staggered because of that to keep things going while people are on vacation. And if you're still giving them money despite being absent for a month because like you say yo…

You’re calling bullshit on the thing that the manufacturer told me verbatim? They literally said the factory was closed in August for holiday.

Here’s the direct link where Colossal Order (Finland) talks about going on a month-long break: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/949230/view/42441613...

> The company I work in now, the managers check in on things even on vacations.

Bruh, my manager would never do that to me. It’s against our team norms. If your manager makes you do a significant amount of work when they “check in” or requires you to answer their messages, that policy is illegal and you’re owed your time off back. You need a new job or a new manager.

> Vacation approvals need to be requested in advance and staggered because of that to keep things going while people are on vacation.

You’re just saying what I said: that the companies in Europe make extended time off possible by staggering leaves. Some companies stagger leave, others decide to shut down or slow down operations. I never said that every company in Europe shuts down to make holidays work, but I can guarantee you that every company in countries like Denmark, Finland, and France are allowing their employees to take 25 days of leave (plus national holidays) because that’s the law.

The important part is that the individual gets to take time off. Whether the entire company shuts down or not is up to the specific business. The two companies I mentioned decided that it’s easier for them to shut down for a month because their work is essentially in a queue. For the factory making physical goods, they can receive orders while they are closed and catch up on them when they are opened again. For the software company, they can continue selling their software digitally while the company is on leave and their users just wait an extra month for software updates.

This never-ending work culture in the USA isn’t even helping overall production and productivity all that much.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#123

Post by dangus »

golergka wrote: post #48
dangus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe mad that he wasted his life having no work-life balance and then realizing that lots of companies with work-life balance are productive and profitable. I’m ordering something from Europe where the factory is shut down for the entire month of August. I just have to wait an extra month for that item. The company still gets my money because I need the item. I also use a piece of software written by a European c…

Not working for a whole month just sounds awful. I have a lot of hobbies outside of work, but it is still the most interesting and fulfilling part of my life. Even though I need breaks for it now and then doesn’t mean I won’t miss it. I get to spend time with wonderful people, solving interesting puzzles, building something that people love and that makes their days better. I used to work in game dev, so it brought p…

And what happens to this paradigm if you don’t really love your job more than your family and friends and just work out of necessity to survive?

Only half of all Americans are “very satisfied” with their jobs.

Lower income people are less satisfied with their jobs than higher income people.

What about people who work jobs that are physically demanding where time off is literal physical rest?

This idea of work as fulfillment is highly classist IMO.

And anyway, you wouldn’t like to have a month every year to spend on your own personal coding projects that don’t become owned property of your employer? Nobody said you have to spend your time off sipping margaritas on the beach.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/30/how-ame...

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#124

Post by techolic »

pierrefermat1 wrote: post #54
congulio wrote: post #47

Really fascinating to see such a mix of blind spots, insecurity and, yet, good insights on full display here. It’s almost as if he’s a normal human being at the end of the day, despite his circumstances.

The biggest difference between him and a "normal smart person" is they realize they have blind spots and choose not to publicly spout opinions on them.

To me that is still the case of power corrupting people. If you are surrounded by positive feedback all along, you loose some of that self-awareness.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#125

Post by NBJack »

musicale wrote: post #71
inferiorhuman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm sat in a car There are other ways to commute. Commuting via train gave me a chance to go for a walk through parts of the city I'd otherwise not spend a lot of time in. Being stuck in suburban hell currently, working 100% from home is a nightmare scenario for me. Asshole neighbors. Constant noise (far worse than e.g. Oakland). Shit infrastructure (electric, telecom, whatever). And, in my experience, collaborati…

Commutes can be great when they aren't crowded. But overcrowded trains and subways, highway traffic jams, and risk-your-life city cycling are commuting nightmares.

Or cities that have seen a uptick in crime but refuse to either fund security measures or empower the existing workers to do anything about it on mass transit.

Seattle used to have a great transit setup between the busses and the light rail. But post Covid, the security and enforcement was scaled back dramatically, making it a real crap shoot on how safe a ride could be. This is slowly being recognized and changing [1], but I don't need the stress of being stabbed or shot each morning on the way to work.

[1] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/sound-transit-beefing-up-se...

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#126

Post by dangus »

ackbar03 wrote: post #96
dangus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe mad that he wasted his life having no work-life balance and then realizing that lots of companies with work-life balance are productive and profitable. I’m ordering something from Europe where the factory is shut down for the entire month of August. I just have to wait an extra month for that item. The company still gets my money because I need the item. I also use a piece of software written by a European c…

What are these companies you speak of? I would like to take them over in a leveraged buyout, chain the employees to their desks, and make an immediate 9% return

You might be surprised that chaining employees to their desks doesn’t make them more productive.

It’s easy to figure out that a lot of companies collect the same checks from their customers regardless of how much their employees burn themselves out. Google doesn’t magically get to charge more money for cloud storage because they decide to work their engineers harder. Labor is only a small component of the cost of that product.

https://hbr.org/2023/07/how-taking-a-vacation-improves-your-...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-four-day-workwe...

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#127

Post by SkyPuncher »

zooq_ai wrote: post #84
nextos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of great startups have remote teams so this argument by Schmidt is pretty weak. Google is hybrid, not even remote. Also, I don't think that well motivated and engineers work or produce less while WFH. It could be the opposite. Less interruptions are key, as explained in Peopleware . But bad managers love controlling people in open plan offices. Regardless, I found it surprising Schmidt didn't talk about other st…

can you name successful remote-only startups? Yes, I know gitlab, others?

I have worked for 2. Granted, they're unlikely to be massive, unicorn successes - but they are successes, none the less.

My opinion is largely the era of the unicorn is essentially gone. Except for extremely rare moonshots (like OpenAI), markets just don't simply have many multi-billions of value for a disruptive startup.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#129

Post by 1oooqooq »

it's funny how both threads here on hn, the top comments focus on his quote badmouthing work life balance.

when anyone with half a brain can see that work life balance has much less impact on a tech company than replacing the tech founders with the likes of him and a sea of business major middle Managers...

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#130

Post by ryandrake »

panarky wrote: post #40
tialaramex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week Huh, I guess I dreamed the first start-up I worked for (a couple of decades ago) where indeed I only came in one day a week. Yes of course you "work like hell". We had a nasty leak bug and I set things up so that day or night if the leak was detected my stereo would go maximum volume and play "Straight Outta Compton". How does commuting c…

People who sit in their cars an hour every morning, stressed by traffic and pollution before they even set foot in the office, who then attend back-to-back meaningless meetings and email and slack, and then get back in the goddamn car again for another hour if they're lucky, think everyone who doesn't perform this unhealthy and destructive ritual is a slacker.

One thing I noticed after switching to WFH is that I am no longer dealing with that 15-30 minute "mental haze" that happens right after I finish my 2 hour car commute: That decompression period where my brain is fatigued from being on high alert, white knuckling it down I-580, then I-680, then I-880, watching for hazards, accidents, or just slogging through bumper-to-bumper traffic. I'd walk into the office but my brain was just too fatigued to work without a little time spent just walking around like a normal person.
Post reply on HN