“I recommend being in the office at least every workday… 60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity… I think we have all the ingredients to win this [AGI] race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts.” Don’t fall for it, guys. - ThreadSky

shannonmattern.bsky.social • 4 days ago

“I recommend being in the office at least every workday… 60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity… I think we have all the ingredients to win this [AGI] race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts.”

Don’t fall for it, guys.

Comments

7leaguebootdisk.bsky.social•4 days ago

Well, I'm at Google, and if you count my commute, it's 60 hours a week. I don't get paid enough to live closer, I don't get paid enough to hire people to do all cooking cleaning shopping and such, and I don't get any equity, no matter how well Google does, I get paid the same.

7leaguebootdisk.bsky.social•4 days ago

And Google makes an insane amount of money, they could pay everyone far better, including every cook, janitor, and security guard. Like an extra $100k a year better. He's made his choices, and now he's complaining about them.

timothyburke.bsky.social•4 days ago

"Exhaust yourself and use up your life in order to create a monstrosity that will destroy your professional value and damage the entire world." I think we have seen this speech in a movie before and it's usually given by supervillains in garish costumes.

shannonmattern.bsky.social•4 days ago

Exactly. Some version of this speech is marshaled in caring and “calling” professions, too. Like the academy, where austerity and public service and devotion to students and engineered scarcity and fetishized competition compel obsession :)

sumingkhoo.bsky.social•4 days ago

All of the above 💀

feralrobots.bsky.social•4 days ago

If you're working 60 hours a week you're well into negative productivity returns territory. So this take on Brin's part is not just bullshit, it's nonsense.

feralrobots.bsky.social•4 days ago

I don't just know this as an intellectual fact. I've done it. Sometimes for months at a time. At my age it literally takes me a year or more to recover; I'm arguably still paying, 20 yrs later, for a sustained stretch working 60-80 hour weeks (I recall that clocked 100 hrs one week on that gig).

shannonmattern.bsky.social•4 days ago

I’ve done it — 70 to 80 hrs / week — for 20 years. It’s burnt me out.

feralrobots.bsky.social•4 days ago

Worked at a country club kitchen in my 20s. Seeing the chefs work those kinds of hours turned me away from food as a career.
Then I went into web tech & did that shit anyway.🤷

pb63.bsky.social•4 days ago

Labour exploitation seems to have always been a part of their business model.

thelasttheorist.bsky.social•4 days ago

If everyone has to do 1.5 jobs, your company is 1/3 understaffed. It might also be a sign that your job-eliminating superproduct doesn't work very well.

arjayne.bsky.social•4 days ago

This is: I want to pretend I’m a startup on the backs of my employees. Demands suspiciously similar from owner of a dotcom when he was trying to sell the co (he did: all but 4 people were laid off).

monkeyrotica.bsky.social•4 days ago

risefromtheashes.bsky.social•4 days ago

Fuck off, Sergey. Who’s raising your half-Shanahan spawn? Maybe the rest of us can’t afford full-time live-in nannies and personal assistants, but maybe we also want to live fulfilling lives instead of pathetically slobbering for more bucks to add to the already sickening oligarch-sized piles!

benlockwood.bsky.social•4 days ago

60 hours a week?? In this economy?

unclewaffles.bsky.social•4 days ago

"The tech giant’s co-founder said that if employees worked harder and were in the office more, the company could reach an artificial general intelligence breakthrough."

After that breakthrough, we can fire you all and make sure we never need to hire people again!

sumingkhoo.bsky.social•4 days ago

This is kind of gross, isn't it?

nothhart.bsky.social•4 days ago

“At least every workday”? Is he implying they should also be coming in on their days off/weekends?

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