Skip Navigation
News @lemmy.world
HellsBelle @sh.itjust.works

Google co-founder says 60-hour workweek the ‘sweet spot’ for productivity

In the note, shared internally and viewed by the New York Times, Brin urges staff working on Google’s Gemini AI projects to put in long hours to help the company lead the race in artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Some have praised Brin’s commitment to pushing the company’s success, but others argue that his approach reflects an outdated and harmful mindset.

“The hustle-centric 60-hour week isn’t productivity—it’s burnout waiting to happen,” wrote workplace mental health educator Catherine Eadie in a post shared by LinkedIn’s news editors.

Others said they feel that hard work is essential for success, with a COO of a business analytics business writing, “Brin is just being honest—successful people have always put in long hours."

You're viewing part of a thread.

Show Context
117 comments

  • So you want the entire world to be forced to live in equivalents of Manhattan, or ideally, Kowloon Walled City?

    Also, you say you're against people driving to work, but the other potential consequence is that people in medium density cities are going to be told that they're no longer allowed to walk to work.

    Look, population density in general is good. Forcing it by telling employers they're now both allowed AND encouraged to discriminate employees based on where they live is going to have so many unintended consequences there's no point in even entertaining the thought. If they're not allowed to discriminate, people are going to intentionally move far enough away to have a 4 hour commute each way.

    There's no winning here, the only way to make things better is to lobby for better zoning laws if you live in a country where those commonly prevent high-rises or mixed-use neighborhoods. That benefits everyone, regardless of whether they want to live in an apartment smaller than a standard shipping container, a luxury penthouse, or in the suburbs.

    If you want maximum density, you need cities to be built from the ground up like they do in China. START with the skyscrapers, instead of building them when enough people live there for there to be demand.

    • I don't really believe private car ownership should even be allowed and should be replaced entirely by either dense cities where we can walk to our jobs or public transit, preferably trains. That way we can still have small towns, but you have to take the train now.

      Ultimately you're right, the only way to make things better is using central planning like they do in China. There is no market reform that can save us.

      That doesn't change the fact that commuting should be considered part of your job. You can't work without it.

      Unless you work remotely,! Oh look, another thing that would be incentivized by paying people for their commutes.

      • Okay, so you're for completely tearing up all rural communities and abolishing farms, I can dig that. What about people who get mental health issues from living in the concrete jungle though?

        Then there's people like me. I work as a software engineer, but can't work at home for shit. Too many distractions. However, if I started commuting to work in this proposed system, my employer would have to pay me the same for fewer hours spent on the actual work, or pay more for the same amount of hours, just because it takes me half an hour to walk to work and half an hour to walk back home as I live pretty far from the city center. I imagine I'd be told to fuck off if I wanted to go to the office. Okay, technically all this no longer applies because I'm now working for myself at home (which has been a bit of a mistake), but it would have applied a few months ago.

        Also what about factories and such? They often pollute, so it's actually better if you have them a slight distance away from major population centers. But if they have to start paying for peoples' commutes, you'd have to have them in-between apartment buildings to save money.

        • Okay, so you’re for completely tearing up all rural communities and abolishing farms, I can dig that. What about people who get mental health issues from living in the concrete jungle though?

          No, I did say that we can have trains.

          I live in Iowa, we also have a shuttle program that transports ag workers without cars. The farm to market routes are perfectly usable for shuttles (basically they're like small buses and large taxies)

          We can actually abolish private car ownership without forcing everyone to live in the concrete jungle (although I think many of the issues caused by cities could be addressed by better and safer infrastructure, I recognize cities can be overstimulating for some people).

          However, if I started commuting to work in this proposed system, my employer would have to pay me the same for fewer hours spent on the actual work, or pay more for the same amount of hours, just because it takes me half an hour to walk to work and half an hour to walk back home as I live pretty far from the city center.

          So under the current system you are having an hour stolen from you every day because of the commute. That's unpaid labor! Commuting is actual work! You have to do it for your job, that means it's work.

          You're essentially saying "my employer needs to be able to steal labor time from me to make me employable" and that's a serious problem.

          Also what about factories and such? They often pollute, so it’s actually better if you have them a slight distance away from major population centers. But if they have to start paying for peoples’ commutes, you’d have to have them in-between apartment buildings to save money.

          Factories can be much cleaner than they have been, but zoning laws take care of this. Factories would like to not have to pay for longer commutes, but that's too bad because the city won't let them build inside of neighborhoods. Also, the shuttle program here in Iowa also transports factory, warehouse, and meat packing workers.

          Look either the employer has to pay for the commute or the government does, but either way we need to incentivize shorter commutes and we need to pay workers for the time stolen from them by their commutes.

          • If commutes are paid and people are free to choose where they live, you're incentivizing LONGER commutes.

            If commutes are paid and you need to incentivize shorter commutes, either the government or the employer is going to be able to tell you exactly where you're allowed to live. And if you and your partner work far away from each other, you'll just have to live in separate homes.

            You're already free to live closer to your job. I could live 150 meters from the office but choose not to because I want there to be greenery around my home. So I live 3 kilometers away and walk through a pretty nice part of town, including several parks.

            You're telling me you want a system where my employer can tell me to fuck off and drive to work or pay more rent to live in a worse apartment. It'd be prohibitively expensive to build a train line I could take to work. Buses are slower than driving.

            Plus think about it. Downtown rent is already super high. If your location now determines which jobs you're allowed to work, this gets worse.

            There are much less draconian solutions for what you're after. Here's one I literally just came up with: Mandate new developments to have a minimum occupant density. Make it dependent on total population of the city. Include downtown office and shopping zones in this law, they also need to have a minimum population capacity so you'll have a condo tower next to an office tower, or an office tower with apartments on some floors. Include a clause that old neighborhoods are to be demolished once they haven't been compliant to the regulations for 5, maybe 10 years. By the time this happens to anyone, the land under the house will be worth way more than the house because it could house more units and once population is up, demand for real estate goes up too.

            Or just have really high congestion charges and include suburbs for it. When nobody can afford to drive to work, apartments near jobs go up in demand and more get built. Demand for public transit goes up and ideally more gets built.

            • We aren't free to choose where we live! We're forced to choose what we can afford. Your employer already tells you where you're allowed to live by what they pay you!

              You're describing a world that already exists. This just changes the incentive structure.

              • I can live in any part of my country with what I'm paid, just as long as I don't try to rent or buy a gigantic penthouse apartment or mansion. That's while my wife stays home, too. No, I'm not super highly paid, I just live in a not particularly dense country and have a good career.

                The world you're proposing would not allow me such freedom. Like I said, if employers get to decide our commutes, the simple luxury of walking to and from work are gone because it's an inefficient use of company time. I want this to be my time, not company time. Hell, managing my own time is why I started working B2B instead of full time so the commute doesn't apply to me anymore, but if I ever have to work directly for someone else again, I'm not willing to let anyone tell me which neighborhood my family needs to move to in order for me to get the job, or how I must arrive at work.

                I get that for you all that matters is borg-like efficiency, but some people value individual humans and their rights too.

                • Most of us don't have careers like that, surely you realize this? We live where we can afford, our individual rights don't really matter.

                  You actually do raise a good point that this would disincentivize walking, biking, and public transportation. The boss would demand the fastest possible commute i.e. driving. Not good!

                  Paying people a standard rate based on the optimal estimated commute would address that issue, but that's not exactly fair to people that can't drive and that still leaves motorists being underpaid for traffic jams and the like. It's better than just forcing workers to bare 100% of the cost and be uncompensated for their time.

                  Also the Borg made a lot of good points.

                  • Something you might want to look into is the de minimis benefits in the Philippines. Employers can literally give their employees something like a rice subsidy tax free. It's a poor country so their benefits are different from what we'd need in the west. And the de minimis are supposed to be really tiny benefits.

                    In Estonia, we have something called a personal car usage compensation. There's a monthly limit in euros compensated per employee and a limit amount per kilometer as well. This year it was raised to max 550 EUR per month and 0.50 EUR per kilometer tax free. So you drive your personal car around for work for 100 kilometers, you get up to 50 euros (depends on employer). Significantly more than the fuel costs, but that's how it's supposed to be - cars also depreciate and need maintenance.

                    So what do I propose? A tax-free commute benefit. Limit the tax-free status to say 10 miles each way worth of benefit and (this is crucial) make it have rapidly diminishing returns. First mile is 10 dollars, second mile is 5 dollars, etc. Stop reducing it once you hit a dollar per mile. Now your commute time is worth money, but it's worth more money if you live closer to work. Round up to the nearest whole mile too. Live 100 yards from work? Employer can pay you for a mile worth of commute tax-free. This is now the most efficient minute of your day with regards to earnings.

                    This structure incentivizes employers to pay it out as a benefit because it's tax free so it's more efficient than paying the same amount as wages plus adding it on top of your existing compensation package makes you more attractive as an employer. It doesn't incentivize the employees to increase their commute length on purpose because the extra amount drops off so quickly plus it doesn't incentivize employers to set limits on where they hire from or how the employees compute.

                    Drawback is that it doesn't do a whole lot to address the density (lack of density) issue, but there are other solutions for that. Maybe sometimes two problems need two or even three or more solutions, rather than one single unifying solution that causes more problems than it solves.

117 comments