Google’s former CEO made a gaffe | Criticizing WFH for causing Google to lose the AI ​​competition, former CEO apologizes – EJ Tech

originalPublished in Hong Kong Economic Times Financial NewsEJ Tech Innovation Lab“

Working from home (WFH) has become the new normal after the epidemic, and it is also a common means of attracting talent. The Wall Street JournalNewsIn April this year, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, attended a university lecture and pointed out that remote work policies weakened competitiveness and caused Google to lose the artificial intelligence (AI) competition. He later apologized for his gaffe. The organizer of the lecture, Stanford University in the United States, recently removed the YouTube video.

OpenAI plans to return to the company 3 days a week

In response to criticism about Google’s competition with OpenAI, the developer of the chatbot ChatGPT, Schmidt said at the lecture: “Google believes that work-life balance, going home early and working from home are more important than winning.” He declared: “Startups are successful because people work hard.” He also pointed out, “But the fact is, if you leave college to start a company, you will not let people work from home and only come to the office one day a week if you want to compete with other startups.”

According to its annual report, Google’s parent company Alphabet had about182,500 employeesThe Alphabet Workers Union, which represents more than 1,000 employees in the United States and Canada, posted a tweet on the social platform XReiterate“Flexible work arrangements will not slow down our work speed”, bluntly stating that understaffing, shifting work priorities, continuous layoffs, stagnant wages, and lack of follow-up on projects by management are factors that slow down the pace of Google employees every day.

Anthropic, an American AI startup, stated in its recruitment advertisement:Hope employeesWork in a physical office “at least 25% of the time.” Fortune MagazineMentionedOpenAI implements the same3-day work weekIn contrast, Musk, CEO of electric car maker Tesla, issued an ultimatum to employees in June 2022, requiring them to return to the office for at least 40 hours a week. If they did not show up, it would be assumed that he had resigned.

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