The former head of Google blamed remote work for the company’s lagging behind in the field of AI, and then took it back

This week, the public was drawn to a video of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaking to students, during which he attributed the corporation’s lag behind artificial intelligence startups to the characteristics of a corporate culture that does not reject remote work from home. Later, the former head of the Internet giant took back his words, changing his point of view.

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«Google decided that balancing work and personal time, as well as the ability to go home early and work from home, was more important than winning [the competition],” Business Insider quotes Schmidt as saying. For this reason, he explains, startups are more efficient because their employees “work like hell.” According to Schmidt, it is difficult to count on a company’s competitiveness if its employees visit the office only once a week and work from home the rest of the time.

The pandemic forced many corporations to switch to remote work, but even Google, starting in 2022, began to move away from the practice of such concessions for 100% of employees. The company’s annual report for that period said its employees mostly worked in a hybrid mode, showing up in the office three days a week and no one prohibiting them from being there for all five. Since June 2023, Google employees’ attendance at the office is tied to their performance assessment. Managers regularly remind employees how often they should be in the office.

The story continued yesterday when Eric Schmidt wrote to The Wall Street Journal to repent of earlier comments he made about Google’s corporate culture. “I misspoke about Google and staff work schedules, and I regret my mistake,” the former CEO and chairman of the company’s board of directors admitted in his letter. Schmidt added that he asked to remove the video recording of his speech to students at Stanford University, in which he made similar statements.