Four years on, the world is still feeling some of the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. One effect was on work life. Millions of people needed to work from home, and many still maintain an either full or partial work-from-home life. Eric Schmidt had some harsh words about Google’s strategy for work-from-home life, but he has since retracted his statement.
Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, but he’s still a prominent figure in the tech world today. He serves as chair of The Broad Institute along with being the co-author of The Age of AI: And Our Human Future among other achievements. Back in April, he gave a speech at Stanford University.
During the speech, he mentioned that the way that Google handled work-life balance was flawed, and it’s the reason it’s falling behind in the AI race. “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.”
That’s a pretty tough statement to swallow, especially because sounds like he’s condemning having a work-life balance. As much as we want the companies we’re working at to succeed, it’s more important to have a proper balance between work and life.
Eric Schmidt randomly retracted his statement on Google and its remote work policy
The way it goes for several companies, employees are required to go into work a certain number of days each week and work from home the rest. It’s been working for several companies over the years, despite the pushback it’s gotten from many individuals.
Well, Eric Schmidt pushed back….. then pulled back. In an email to The Wall Street Journal, he mentioned that he “misspoke about Google and their work hours.” It seems pretty out of the blue, as we don’t really know why he said that. “I regret my error,” he continued.
Unfortunately, he didn’t give any additional details about the matter. Either he really misspoke or Sundar Pichai gave him a stern talking-to. We’re also wondering if he came to this decision after seeing the AI innovations introduced during the company’s latest Made By Google Event. Hopefully, we get more information on this.
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