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“I recommend being in the office at least every weekday,” he wrote in a memo posted internally on Wednesday evening that was viewed by The New York Times. He added that “60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity” in the message to employees who work on Gemini, Google’s lineup of A.I. models and apps.

“A number of folks work less than 60 hours and a small number put in the bare minimum to get by,” he wrote. “This last group is not only unproductive but also can be highly demoralizing to everyone else.”

Sergey Brin, who is worth $145 billion, thinks workers should come to the office on weekends, and work 60 hours a week as a “sweet spot”.

  • @dormedas@lemmy.dormedas.com
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    11418 days ago

    The science actually says that 60 hours a week, when maintained, is less productive than 40. You can gain productivity in the short term by mandating overtime, but the limit is around two weeks. You also pay for it in lost productivity the following weeks anyway, so it’s more a shifting of productivity.

    If he actually cared about productivity (which is related to service/development and eventually profit), he wouldn’t be saying this falsehood.

      • shastaxc
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        216 days ago

        Can confirm. Fuck around for a scheduled 2 hrs per day (30 mins at the start, 1 hr lunch, 30 mins at the end), and put the pedal to the metal for the other 6 hours. You’ll be amazed how you don’t feel burnt out but still got the same amount of work done.

    • Scrubbles
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      3618 days ago

      I’m always surprised at myself how much more productive I am during 4 day weeks. If I have a 3 day weekend and I only had to work 4 days I get so much more stuff done than even if I had the full 5 days.

    • ikt
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      2118 days ago

      60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity

      Where did he get this number from? (please don’t say something like his butt, genuinely curious here)

      Is it because Googlers are supposed to be high performers who are highly motivated and well paid therefore can do the 60 hours without dipping in productivity?

      How do they measure productivity at Google? surely it wouldn’t be lines of code written?

      • Rhaedas
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        2618 days ago

        My response when managers at my work use the word “productivity” is, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

    • Hegar
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      1418 days ago

      The point isn’t to increase productivity it’s to tire and emiserate the minions.

        • Rhaedas
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          517 days ago

          And uneducated. They do not like awareness of reality.

  • Scrubbles
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    4518 days ago

    Oh my god I had to re-read that. Fuuuuuck that. Seriously fuck that. All those FAANG companies are like that now. Laying off hundreds/thousands and now are trying to squeeze their employees. Nope, I do 40 hours a week and I’m content with it.

    • Em Adespoton
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      2018 days ago

      My workplace is OK with people working 24 or 32 hours a week as well; they pay them less for the 24 hours, but for 32, if the same amount of work is being done, they’re fine with less time on the job.

  • Dr. Wesker
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    2718 days ago

    Sergey has basically stated he wants slaves, not employees.

    • @throwback3090@lemmy.nz
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      917 days ago

      He’s rich and hires youth to rob them of their youth. None of them will ever unionize either, they think they are the lucky ones.

  • @Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org
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    2618 days ago

    You would have to be super human to work 60 hours a week and actually be productive.

    Like maybe if your work was actually legitimately your hobby. Something that you absolutely loved and were addicted to doing. But even then, I can’t even do my hobbies 60 hours a week. That’s legitimately insane.

    The only thing I can think of that I could do for 60 hours a week is sleep. But I haven’t been able to do that for years now because of work-life imbalance

  • JokeDeity
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    2417 days ago

    Sounds like a great candidate for the Luigi method to me.

  • @t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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    1617 days ago

    Give me a salary that guarantees $1 million a year post-tax, and I’ll do it for a couple of years until I’ve saved up for a seaside llama farm I can fuck off to. But even at Google, almost no one is making that as an “IC”.

    • @spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.orgOP
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      717 days ago

      a salary that guarantees $1 million a year post-tax

      to keep the mind-boggling numbers in perspective:

      you’re paid $1 million/year post-tax, like you said.

      and say you have no expenses to speak of - you take all your meals in the Google cafeteria, take the Google shuttle to work, and live with your parents or in some other form of housing that doesn’t cost you anything. this means you can put that entire $1 million/year into a savings account.

      even in that contrived scenario, you would need to work 1000 years to accumulate one billion dollars.

      at which point, you would have 1/145th of Sergey Brin’s current wealth. if you wanted to match it, you would need to work 145,000 years.

  • @Eryn6844@beehaw.org
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    1418 days ago

    NO! dont do it peeps don’t let them make you go back. find another fucking job or better create one together where you do not have to put up with bull shit like this ever again! FUCK THEM

  • Drew
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    1218 days ago

    How much more money does this guy want?