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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.
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…
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…
On people who refused to get a good WFH setup (e.g., WiFi): I bet those are terrible people to work with in the office, too.
& I agree with your last point.
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I'm not a googler, but my take would be that Google was a smaller ship with technical founders at the helm who understood the problem and acted accordingly with first mover benefits. I remember when I started to use search engines in grade school (AskJeeves, AltaVista, etc) and Google just had the most relevant answers. Google is now a behemoth that seems to just chuck money and promo packets at problems (Stadia, Goo…
I don’t think startup aficionados and hustle culture members realize that the world runs on C-players. You’re right, startup people have a drive to build great things and they burn the midnight oil and they get divorced during the development of the original iPhone, etc. But the people who keep the lights on at most companies especially big ones like Google are a sea of average, steady, stable employees who do their…
If you want a "diverse" team, having both kinds of above stated people on the team is crucial. The above mentioned A players can't do the steady boring work the so called C players can do & likewise that the C players can't do what the A players can. Also C players can be great at questioning all the bleeding edge new tech A players want to implement. For reasons like this, I think it's important that more senior positions are made up of both kinds of people.
Good managers will help everyone identify which kind of person they are & help them have work that fits them best. They'll keep the C players motivated & the A players feeling challenged.
See the "Public positions" section of the above article.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took this more as Schmidt being disappointed in what Google has become. He really did build Google, its completely valid for him to be mad about the state of the company culture wise.
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…
And if you're still giving them money despite being absent for a month because like you say you need their product, that's more like survivorship bias where that company probably has a monopoly and no competition so you're forced to only buy from them but that's no your average European company, not by a long shot.
The company I work in now, the managers check in on things even on vacations.
> Brynjolfsson: ”I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. > Schmidt: Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you go found a company and compete against the other star…
At some point, someone is going to realize that people are not going to slave away for the privilege of living in a rental and drinking meal replacement shakes because they're too busy to eat. People who worked at Google early on were always going to get rich, people who bust ass for Google now might wake up to a 10,000 man layoff in the morning. /me shrugs
> Brynjolfsson: ”I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. > Schmidt: Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you go found a company and compete against the other star…
> I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. Correction: this statement was made by the interviewer, Erik Brynjolfsson, and not Schmidt.