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Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, has walked back on comments in which he suggested flexible working and employee wellbeing have hampered the company’s performance in recent years.
In a video uploaded by Stanford Online and reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Schmidt spoke to students about what he argues is a slow performance from Google in the race for AI innovation.
“Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning,” he asserted in the video, adding that “the reason startups work is because the people work like hell.”
Schmidt has now done a U-turn on his claims.
“I misspoke about Google and their work hours… I regret my error,” he wrote in an email statement to various news outlets.
Ex-Google CEO comes under fire for comments on work-life balance
Schmidt’s comments have drawn criticism from many pro-labor groups and HR professionals, including The Alphabet Workers Union.
Writing on X, the labor group representing over 800 staff at Google’s parent company countered his remarks.
“Flexible work arrangements don’t slow down our work,” read the tweet. “Understaffing, shifting priorities, constant layoffs, stagnant wages and lack of follow-through from management on projects - these factors slow Google workers down every day.”
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Google, like many other big tech companies, has conducted a series of layoffs across departments since early 2023, when it announced cuts to 12,000 jobs it deemed were unnecessary for its future priorities.
In May, when the company laid off hundreds of core staff, a spokesperson for the tech giant said it was “simplifying our structures to give employees more opportunity to work on our most innovative and important advances and our biggest company priorities while reducing bureaucracy and layers.”
Many of the priority areas include the development of AI-enabled products.
Flexible working remains a controversial topic at Google & beyond
In June 2023, Google scaled back freedoms for its staff to work remotely. The company introduced a policy mandating workers to be based in the office three days per week, tracked using methods including badge scanning, with metrics around in-office attendance becoming a part of performance reviews.
“There’s just no substitute for coming together in person,” said Chief People Officer Fiona Cicconi. While Schmidt felt, at one point in time, that the policies didn’t go far enough, many employees were unhappy with the changes.
Similar mandates from companies including Dell, Salesforce, and Amazon have also drawn heavy criticism from their respective employees.
“Remember when we were measured on metrics that actually mattered?” one Amazon staff member said after the e-commerce company announced plans to stop its workers from ‘coffee badging’ by tracking the time they spent in the office.
And in Dell’s annual engagement survey, employees tanked the company’s employee net promoter score (how likely a worker would be to recommend Dell as a place to work) from 62 to 48 in the space of one year. Employees have slammed the company for telling staff they will only be eligible for promotions if they agree to a hybrid work model.
Contrary to the once-held beliefs of Google’s former CEO, strict RTO mandates that infringe on work-life balance and the freedom to work from home could be costing them their best staff.
The “Return to Office and the Tenure Distribution” report, which focused on three major US tech employers (Apple, Microsoft, and SpaceX), found that each reportedly lost a share of its high-ranking workers after implementing an RTO mandate.
Countless studies have also shown the positive impact of trust, flexibility, and protections for employee wellbeing on employee engagement and productivity.
Schmidt has not revealed exactly why he is walking back his claims but has asked the University to take down the video. The recording of the talk has now been made private, but clips continue to circulate online.
