Unless you need to deal with a lot of dumb tasks, unnecessary meetings and boilerplate, then you shouldn't need more than 40hrs, and in all honestly, 32hrs, as the more hours you push the worse they get. This AI race isn't going to be won with bulk hours, but quality hours and actually thoughtful ones.
Google is allegedly using large-scale changes, AI/LLMs to boost productivity, and have a large mix of good/great/awesome infra, so they shouldn't be stuck on mud needing to push 60hrs/w to be productive.
Why would anyone be motivated to work 60 hours a week on Sergei's say-so when Google has amply demonstrated that they will lay people off at random regardless of their work ethic or contributions? I would think the layoffs demoralize people a lot more than the work habits of their colleagues.
The time for this sort of exhortation was before 2023, Sergei.
To me it is just another step in series of layoffs. Throw some insults see if some leave after this humiliation. Or they pretend nothing has happened and wait for their turn in next layoff.
60hr/wk implies that after accounting for traffic etc, they are essentially signaling the need for sweat labor from ppl in their 20s without family etc.
It’s ofc Google’s right to demand whatever.
I hope this opens up other brilliant folks for the other companies. Google’s loss is hopefully others’s gain.
The layoffs were a coordinated effort to take back power from the workers.
They realized they didn't have to employ all of the world's best software engineers to prevent new competition from starting up because they're already too entrenched.
The solution is DOJ/FTC mandated breakup. It'll oxygenate the entire tech sector by removing these bloated behemoths that aren't even monetizing most of their platform pieces.
The tech companies are becoming grocery stores, movie studios, primary healthcare providers, etc. and putting incumbents out of business. It's largess. Cross business unit subsidization to metastasize into entirely new markets. Because they have unreasonable scale where they can simply hulk into new things and spend a few billion dollars like it's pocket change.
Start demanding big tech breakup from your legislators.
Given the abuses in the tech industry, software development should be non-exempt hourly. Unionization isn't going to happen, especially with how visa dependent the industry is, but non-exempt will claw back some of the protections that have been lost.
If Google didn’t tell you the job involved unpaid overtime before you accepted, they’re giving you a pay cut now. Like any other business deal, that should happen in writing.
Even tech workers who mistakenly thought they were “too smart” to need a union actually need a union to balance out the uneven negotiating power. The house always wins.
> If Google didn’t tell you the job involved unpaid overtime before you accepted, they’re giving you a pay cut now.
Yes. And you have a choice. Agree to it or find some better place.
Demands of both employees and employers can be as unreasonable (within the law) as they want. As long as the whole process is voluntary and legal, I'm fine with it.
You don't like working long hours for extremely high pay, that's fine. Many people will happily take that deal.
Google engineers are paid well so they should have to work twice as hard?
Google engineers are paid well, so they shouldn't complain about the contract under which they get paid changing to expect them to work 60-hour weeks?
This is a leading comment, but you're not willing to say the quiet part out loud, which is that you think they shouldn't get paid as well because others aren't paid as well. You're arguing for a race to the bottom which doesn't actually help you. You should be arguing for a race to the top (everyone should be paying their employees more), which might actually benefit you.
And they can continue to earn that salary without a 50% increase in their working hours, and the cost to their health, relationships and life expectancy that comes with it.
Some startups are paying pretty good salaries, maybe not at the level of Google, but fairly close from what I've seen in recent recruiter messages. If you consider that many offer a hybrid working policy and this lets you relocate to a cheaper area, it might be possible to keep the same purchasing power without getting exploited.
It's not like Google are at the tip top of the market for comp these days, and they haven't been for a long time. It's easy to make similar money without destroying your quality of life elsewhere.
I would legitimately be stoked to make $1 million plus per year to work at the leading company developing the most important technology we'll see in our lifetimes. It would be easy for me to recover 20/hours per week in the conveniences that kind of salary could bring.
Unfortunately, my skills in this area are far short of my enthusiasm.
Yeah, and how much money does he make vs how many hours he works?
Like, he's punching down with all of these comments, and because he's still punching up from where 99% of workers are at, people buy the line from the billionaire who stands to benefit from this.
"All of the Google Grunts should be putting in 20 more hours a week so that I can make more money off of owning Google stock in exchange for the same pay, and no additional work from me, a billionaire." - What Sergey is actually pushing for here.
It's no wonder the American dream is dead. People don't even want others to achieve it unless they're already a billionaire, or unless they have to burn themselves out to achieve it.
There‘s IMO no way to recover 20h/week on that salary. Cutting the commute to zero could be something like this, but I don’t think that’s possible in this case.
Been working in this industry for about 30 years, every time there’s a pivot or a gold rush, it’s the same old song and dance from management/ownership/shareholders. There’s a huge difference between a properly motivated and focused team (in my experience, most engineers don’t care about the hours and hardship if it’s balanced with reward, respect, and a reasonable amount of autonomy), and a team suffering under a bunch of dipshit managers/owners/stakeholders who are flinching and trying to push leadership failures, unexpected changes to the business, or just plain bad luck down on workers. It’s insulting, entitled, and exacerbates problems. Acting like a hard ass and you’re the lone sensible adult stuck wrangling insolent children is exactly how you turn a team into insolent children. In this case it’s worse because I don’t think he’s being entirely on the level, that whatever set of things making his asshole pucker is because people aren’t working 60 hours a week in an office. Plus, you know, fuck a guy worth $144B who’s throwing something of a fit that his thralls aren’t tearing themselves apart to make him more money.
He is working long hours most likely. The problem is that C-levels include all commutes in the work hours (not possible for a lowly grunts), all dining in the work hours, all meetings and chatting in the work hours, all golf matches and so on. So the real work hours are most likely not that higher than 50-60, but he is paid for that x1000 times or more (indirectly, 1$ stunts are for the dump media).
Part of a benefit of a 60+ hour work week is focus, if you can do it.
Some people can't fit 10 hours of work into a normal work week, much less 20, 32 or 40.
When I get excited about a topic, it is hard for me to stop. And yes, there are times when I should add redo's on some of the hours, but there's more times when I'm happy where I just barreled in and kept going.
There is also the thing to think about that if by working 60 hours a week for 40 weeks this year I can retire a few years from now... That is a trade-off will worth making
And here I thought AI was ready to replace engineers. Maybe the lazy billionaire should test that theory rather than regale us with his understanding of where "the sweet spot" is for productivity.
Unless you need to deal with a lot of dumb tasks, unnecessary meetings and boilerplate, then you shouldn't need more than 40hrs, and in all honestly, 32hrs, as the more hours you push the worse they get. This AI race isn't going to be won with bulk hours, but quality hours and actually thoughtful ones.
Google is allegedly using large-scale changes, AI/LLMs to boost productivity, and have a large mix of good/great/awesome infra, so they shouldn't be stuck on mud needing to push 60hrs/w to be productive.
Awful way to signal despair.
"Google announces layoffs in its HR, cloud units" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/27/google-makes-cuts-to-hr-and-...
Why would anyone be motivated to work 60 hours a week on Sergei's say-so when Google has amply demonstrated that they will lay people off at random regardless of their work ethic or contributions? I would think the layoffs demoralize people a lot more than the work habits of their colleagues.
The time for this sort of exhortation was before 2023, Sergei.
To me it is just another step in series of layoffs. Throw some insults see if some leave after this humiliation. Or they pretend nothing has happened and wait for their turn in next layoff.
7am-7pm
60hr/wk implies that after accounting for traffic etc, they are essentially signaling the need for sweat labor from ppl in their 20s without family etc.
It’s ofc Google’s right to demand whatever.
I hope this opens up other brilliant folks for the other companies. Google’s loss is hopefully others’s gain.
I was hoping last 1,2,3..layoffs at Google would've opened lots of brilliant folks already.
40 is already plenty of hours, just hire more people rather than destroying the lives of the ones you have
The layoffs were a coordinated effort to take back power from the workers.
They realized they didn't have to employ all of the world's best software engineers to prevent new competition from starting up because they're already too entrenched.
The solution is DOJ/FTC mandated breakup. It'll oxygenate the entire tech sector by removing these bloated behemoths that aren't even monetizing most of their platform pieces.
The tech companies are becoming grocery stores, movie studios, primary healthcare providers, etc. and putting incumbents out of business. It's largess. Cross business unit subsidization to metastasize into entirely new markets. Because they have unreasonable scale where they can simply hulk into new things and spend a few billion dollars like it's pocket change.
Start demanding big tech breakup from your legislators.
> The solution is DOJ/FTC mandated breakup.
That will never happen in the current administration.
For a 40 hour a week salary, of course.
Given the abuses in the tech industry, software development should be non-exempt hourly. Unionization isn't going to happen, especially with how visa dependent the industry is, but non-exempt will claw back some of the protections that have been lost.
Google engineers are paid pretty freaking well. Almost double of what a regular company would pay.
If Google didn’t tell you the job involved unpaid overtime before you accepted, they’re giving you a pay cut now. Like any other business deal, that should happen in writing.
Even tech workers who mistakenly thought they were “too smart” to need a union actually need a union to balance out the uneven negotiating power. The house always wins.
> If Google didn’t tell you the job involved unpaid overtime before you accepted, they’re giving you a pay cut now.
Yes. And you have a choice. Agree to it or find some better place.
Demands of both employees and employers can be as unreasonable (within the law) as they want. As long as the whole process is voluntary and legal, I'm fine with it.
You don't like working long hours for extremely high pay, that's fine. Many people will happily take that deal.
Hi, please finish this thought.
Google engineers are paid well so they should have to work twice as hard? Google engineers are paid well, so they shouldn't complain about the contract under which they get paid changing to expect them to work 60-hour weeks?
This is a leading comment, but you're not willing to say the quiet part out loud, which is that you think they shouldn't get paid as well because others aren't paid as well. You're arguing for a race to the bottom which doesn't actually help you. You should be arguing for a race to the top (everyone should be paying their employees more), which might actually benefit you.
And they can continue to earn that salary without a 50% increase in their working hours, and the cost to their health, relationships and life expectancy that comes with it.
> And they can continue to earn that salary
That's up to Google.
Some startups are paying pretty good salaries, maybe not at the level of Google, but fairly close from what I've seen in recent recruiter messages. If you consider that many offer a hybrid working policy and this lets you relocate to a cheaper area, it might be possible to keep the same purchasing power without getting exploited.
That's one way to force attrition, I guess.
It's not like Google are at the tip top of the market for comp these days, and they haven't been for a long time. It's easy to make similar money without destroying your quality of life elsewhere.
I would legitimately be stoked to make $1 million plus per year to work at the leading company developing the most important technology we'll see in our lifetimes. It would be easy for me to recover 20/hours per week in the conveniences that kind of salary could bring.
Unfortunately, my skills in this area are far short of my enthusiasm.
I can assure you, regardless of your skills or the hours you put in, Google would not be paying you $1M/year.
Good correction. Looks like the audience he might be addressing makes more like $300K/year.
Yeah, and how much money does he make vs how many hours he works?
Like, he's punching down with all of these comments, and because he's still punching up from where 99% of workers are at, people buy the line from the billionaire who stands to benefit from this.
"All of the Google Grunts should be putting in 20 more hours a week so that I can make more money off of owning Google stock in exchange for the same pay, and no additional work from me, a billionaire." - What Sergey is actually pushing for here.
It's no wonder the American dream is dead. People don't even want others to achieve it unless they're already a billionaire, or unless they have to burn themselves out to achieve it.
There‘s IMO no way to recover 20h/week on that salary. Cutting the commute to zero could be something like this, but I don’t think that’s possible in this case.
Been working in this industry for about 30 years, every time there’s a pivot or a gold rush, it’s the same old song and dance from management/ownership/shareholders. There’s a huge difference between a properly motivated and focused team (in my experience, most engineers don’t care about the hours and hardship if it’s balanced with reward, respect, and a reasonable amount of autonomy), and a team suffering under a bunch of dipshit managers/owners/stakeholders who are flinching and trying to push leadership failures, unexpected changes to the business, or just plain bad luck down on workers. It’s insulting, entitled, and exacerbates problems. Acting like a hard ass and you’re the lone sensible adult stuck wrangling insolent children is exactly how you turn a team into insolent children. In this case it’s worse because I don’t think he’s being entirely on the level, that whatever set of things making his asshole pucker is because people aren’t working 60 hours a week in an office. Plus, you know, fuck a guy worth $144B who’s throwing something of a fit that his thralls aren’t tearing themselves apart to make him more money.
How many hours per week does he work? How much is he earning by hour?
He is working long hours most likely. The problem is that C-levels include all commutes in the work hours (not possible for a lowly grunts), all dining in the work hours, all meetings and chatting in the work hours, all golf matches and so on. So the real work hours are most likely not that higher than 50-60, but he is paid for that x1000 times or more (indirectly, 1$ stunts are for the dump media).
Nobody says Googlers should earn 50% more to build AI
Part of a benefit of a 60+ hour work week is focus, if you can do it.
Some people can't fit 10 hours of work into a normal work week, much less 20, 32 or 40.
When I get excited about a topic, it is hard for me to stop. And yes, there are times when I should add redo's on some of the hours, but there's more times when I'm happy where I just barreled in and kept going.
There is also the thing to think about that if by working 60 hours a week for 40 weeks this year I can retire a few years from now... That is a trade-off will worth making
Looks like the human mind just cannot cope with being a billionaire. They all seem to go crazy.
I mean how many hours does one need to work to make the search results even worse by adding more adverts?
It’s funny but what else would Google do with the AI?
And here I thought AI was ready to replace engineers. Maybe the lazy billionaire should test that theory rather than regale us with his understanding of where "the sweet spot" is for productivity.
My read: if you have the right skills you’ll never be out of work.
At least it's one day off from 996.icu
for now.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201709
talk about showing your hand early
Whatever happened to this? https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/google-founder-former-disney...
You first, Sergei!
He probably already surpassed that when he was creating Google way back when.
Founding a business and simply working for one are very different things, especially choosing to sacrifice your personal life for it.
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