Onboarding time and brain drain when someone leaves are real problems for companies. Burning people out in a few years is just not efficient.
I also don't think people can be productive for that long, for me personally the limit is at about 36 hours in 5 days.
And why would you let a single person work for 60 hours when you could easily spread that work over multiple people? I assume ABC is large enough to do that?
Sergey could decide to be put in a shared cube farm for 6x 10s a week and see how long he lasts.
I think there's a large difference between the fatigue invoked in work that is some variant of managerial "in meetings where it's low information hot takes 80% of the time" work, and actual engineering work where drafting design documents, working on code, and context switching while waiting for CI or other compute intensive processes to complete, or for folks to do a code review.
It's almost like how many hours a week a person can work on a thing depends on their ownership of the thing, their domestic situation, and their financial state.
Just to add: ownership and agency, I know a few startup founders who completely wrecked their mental health after accepting dumb money which took away their agency to pursue their vision while still having to work absurd hours.
There is a difference between choosing to work 60 hours at your own startup with the prospect of a very large payout and being salaried at a giant company.
I did the same for the projects I created or were fun for me. However, there is a limit and at some point you just hurt your body, some of it can be irreparable. You may not notice it when being younger but you will need to pay for that later.
feed the cat do the laundry clean the toilet sweep the floor buy the groceries pay the bills call the cable company change the oil in the car water the plants take out the trash scoop the litterbox file your taxes cook dinner do the dishes make a dentist appointment mow the lawn go to the post office buy your brother a birthday gift change the sheets fix the lightswitch unclog the shower get the brakes fixed on the car get the car washed clean out the gutters…
I would argue that the difference is not as much in the type of activities, but rather in your ownership and control over them. When it's "your" project and you decide how to do things (at most with feedback from a handful of others whom you all know personally), then you can be extremely productive and motivated working even more than 60h/week for months.
This is valid, when you're not encumbered by a process or person that has to have input on your every move, you can be very productive.
As someone who actually really likes process, if you want to encourage some sort of best practice without causing pain, you absolutely must automate the process and not put people in the critical path. For example, if you have a coding standard make sure that linters that are fast and cheerful enforce it, not other people.
Also, I don't agree with the "months" - maybe a weekend or whole week, but other than that you're headed into burnout territory.
This is not true. Even if it is your project. For a regular person without all the paid support systems (maids, cooks, etc), burn out is inevitable. You can do it for a while, but its not a sustainable situation. It is also likely that recovery from burnout will take longer and reduce your efficacy much more than was gained from overworking in the first place.
That's the thing, with these guys that have been lucky enough to make it in the current economic system, their detachment from reality and their indifference toward other human beings always goes further than their intelligence, which, like everyone else's is generally limited and narrow.
Why do people keep making the mistake that smart people are good at doing everything? A person could be a mathematical genius or an amazing computer scientist, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a good leader or even a good parent. Just look at how badly Ilya Sutskever messed up at OpenAI. And in Google’s case, Sergy himself, divorced from his wife, leads me to believe he’s not someone who knows how to balance a family with work.
I'm going to continue to shill for the billionaire in this instance: what's the right number of hours to work on the most important technology of our lifetime (or maybe ever)?
Completely agree, but if the right things align: low bullshit, good team, worthwhile work, compensation fair to effort and outcomes, 60 hours can be very manageable for a period.
I definitely am not on the side of making policy of such work hours (it's illegal to work more than 40 hours / week and on Sundays [for most] here in Germany, and I support that), but to play devil's advocate a little bit...
I feel I've benefited a lot from being really obsessed with certain programming projects earlier in life, "worked" (?) something like 80 hours per week, basically every waking hour, got well ahead of my peers and set up the great and relaxed career I enjoy now.
So actually in some ways, working your ass off early in youthful exuberance and then reaping the benefits later can be the "lazy" option, no?
>"Competition has accelerated immensely and the final race to AGI is afoot"
And of course Sergey needs to win since poor thing need another yacht for Mondays. And of course those ungrateful workers must work their asses off to help the "needy".
If you want a team to work 60 hours, it’s definitely possible to filter hiring for workaholic types who genuinely love doing that. But it’s a really bad idea to force people who aren’t like that to maintain face in office.
It's strange to have so much anti-sentiment here about the internal data that Google has.
Of course Sergey doesn't have to spend 60 hours as he retired.
I have never been asked to work more than 40 hours when I was working at Google, I had amazing salary, and I knew that the people who are getting promoted over level 4/5 were working on the weekends as well, 60 hours was just normal for them.
Google has enough data to see that the most productive engineers are the ones who spend so much time mastering their skill.
Also I believe an AI company (which Google categorizes itself as) can't stay competitive with China if the 100 people in the core AI team work just 40 hours a week. For the rest of 100000 people it doesn't matter that much, as they are working more on integration and less competitive stuff.
It's making more money selling ads than the AI companies selling AI, so it's classic innovators dilemma: they can't really launch an AI product that gives better quality results then Google search ads, which are really bad at this point.
I should have talked about the Google of pre 2010, while it was a great company and the time I also wanted to work 60 hours a week there.
Seems to be normal elsewhere, why not here in the West? What makes the "workers" here any different to those in other places?
This is globalisation, internationalisation and capitalism. Be thankful not to have to go down the mines to fetch the rare metals needed for the "digital" revolution. Nor working slave-like conditions making the fast fashion to glorify our individualised tastes and styles. Or having to work on container ships carry the cheap plastic products from China to the West. Those kind of jobs don't have "work from home" clauses.
Sergy has too much money for me to take him seriously.
Advice from back when he wasn't wealthy is still good, but seriously, why would you take any working-class advice from a multi-billionaire? That would be the most out-of-touch advice you could receive.
Observations that most people who are supposed to be on the clock 40 hours never got anywhere close to that amount of time working.
We have our fun games we have to check into Reddit Facebook other social media, not to mention actually talking or their coworkers about cat videos etc. The amount of work actually done during work is fairly small. Wrapping that up to 60 hours a week will probably just make the most people double down on figuring out how to make those bad hours more endurable
Hours worked isn't the problem. It's super easy to work a ton when the motivation is right.
Google becoming organizationally deadlocked is the problem.
It bears repeating: Google _basically invented_ the transformer architecture and were out-executed. Doesn't matter whether people were working 40 hrs remotely or 100 hrs per week on-site; this is an organizational failure.
Anyway, it sucks to see Sergey sell out like this.
65 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadhttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-w...
Derek Thompson likens it to a religion: "Workism". It should be viewed with disdain and suspicion, but is instead valorized and celebrated.
He also warned against working more than 60 hours a week, saying it could lead to burnout, while calling out those who work less.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43211925
Google's Sergey Brin Asks Workers to Spend More Time in the Office
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201709
Sergey Brin says AGI is within reach if Googlers work 60-hour weeks
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43208890
Google's Sergey Brin: Engineers Should Work 60-Hour Weeks in Office to Build AI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43211925
In memo to Google's AI team, Sergey Brin says 60 hours a week is 'sweet spot'
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213982
Sergey Brin says RTO is key to Google winning the AGI race
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43221105
60 Hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43229125
Onboarding time and brain drain when someone leaves are real problems for companies. Burning people out in a few years is just not efficient.
I also don't think people can be productive for that long, for me personally the limit is at about 36 hours in 5 days.
And why would you let a single person work for 60 hours when you could easily spread that work over multiple people? I assume ABC is large enough to do that?
Sergey could decide to be put in a shared cube farm for 6x 10s a week and see how long he lasts.
I think there's a large difference between the fatigue invoked in work that is some variant of managerial "in meetings where it's low information hot takes 80% of the time" work, and actual engineering work where drafting design documents, working on code, and context switching while waiting for CI or other compute intensive processes to complete, or for folks to do a code review.
If you are not privileged, running a family is another 40 hour a week job.
He is Empire and he is what Matters.
As someone who actually really likes process, if you want to encourage some sort of best practice without causing pain, you absolutely must automate the process and not put people in the critical path. For example, if you have a coding standard make sure that linters that are fast and cheerful enforce it, not other people.
Also, I don't agree with the "months" - maybe a weekend or whole week, but other than that you're headed into burnout territory.
Zuckerberg is in a lot of ways a pretty impressive outlier to get into the club as late as he did and that was only a few years later.
Then right number of hours very much depends on this.
I suppose 60 hours might be a good spot for someone who doesn't have a family and isn't interested in having one.
But until then I'm just going to work the maximum minimum that my employer is OK with.
But I'm a Beatles fan
I feel I've benefited a lot from being really obsessed with certain programming projects earlier in life, "worked" (?) something like 80 hours per week, basically every waking hour, got well ahead of my peers and set up the great and relaxed career I enjoy now.
So actually in some ways, working your ass off early in youthful exuberance and then reaping the benefits later can be the "lazy" option, no?
And of course Sergey needs to win since poor thing need another yacht for Mondays. And of course those ungrateful workers must work their asses off to help the "needy".
Go fuck yourself Sergey.
Of course Sergey doesn't have to spend 60 hours as he retired.
I have never been asked to work more than 40 hours when I was working at Google, I had amazing salary, and I knew that the people who are getting promoted over level 4/5 were working on the weekends as well, 60 hours was just normal for them.
Google has enough data to see that the most productive engineers are the ones who spend so much time mastering their skill.
Also I believe an AI company (which Google categorizes itself as) can't stay competitive with China if the 100 people in the core AI team work just 40 hours a week. For the rest of 100000 people it doesn't matter that much, as they are working more on integration and less competitive stuff.
For the last 10 years, not a single innovative product out of selling ads, search sucks and have been outclassed in AI.
Maybe work smarter?
I should have talked about the Google of pre 2010, while it was a great company and the time I also wanted to work 60 hours a week there.
For the current one, not so much
Seems to be normal elsewhere, why not here in the West? What makes the "workers" here any different to those in other places?
This is globalisation, internationalisation and capitalism. Be thankful not to have to go down the mines to fetch the rare metals needed for the "digital" revolution. Nor working slave-like conditions making the fast fashion to glorify our individualised tastes and styles. Or having to work on container ships carry the cheap plastic products from China to the West. Those kind of jobs don't have "work from home" clauses.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
Advice from back when he wasn't wealthy is still good, but seriously, why would you take any working-class advice from a multi-billionaire? That would be the most out-of-touch advice you could receive.
We have our fun games we have to check into Reddit Facebook other social media, not to mention actually talking or their coworkers about cat videos etc. The amount of work actually done during work is fairly small. Wrapping that up to 60 hours a week will probably just make the most people double down on figuring out how to make those bad hours more endurable
Google becoming organizationally deadlocked is the problem.
It bears repeating: Google _basically invented_ the transformer architecture and were out-executed. Doesn't matter whether people were working 40 hrs remotely or 100 hrs per week on-site; this is an organizational failure.
Anyway, it sucks to see Sergey sell out like this.