Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google has now taken back his claim that Google is losing the AI race because of its its remote-work policy, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Schmidt, who was Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, said at an April lecture at Stanford University that Google was putting itself in a disadvantageous position by focusing on work-life balance.
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“Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning,” he said. “And the reason the startups work is because the people work like hell.”
Schmidt added that startups are “not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups.”
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However, he has taken back his claims, telling that he “misspoke about Google and their work hours,” in an email to The Wall Street Journal, adding, “I regret my error.”
What do other famous CEOs have to say on remote work?
Eric Schmidt’s initial stance is something many tech CEOs have promoted before.
For example, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that he believed one of the tech industry’s “worst mistakes” was to allow employees to go “full remote forever,” to Fortune Magazine in 2023, adding that he felt technology has not gotten good enough to allow full remote work forever.
However, OpenAI still has a mix of hybrid and remote policies.
Google has a similar policy which requires most workers to come to office at least three days a week, according to a company blogpost.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that remote work is “morally wrong” in a 2023 CNBC interview.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “people who work from home are not efficient and engineers who come to the office get more work done.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, said that he believes some employees have to be in office. “Our engineers are extremely productive at home,” he said. “We have lots of people who are extremely productive at home. But there also has to be salespeople who are productive in the office.”