I'm sure most people wouldn't outright say that, but I have no doubt that many corporate leadership types think that way. After all, the C-suite has higher incidences of NPD and ASPD so it shouldn't be surprising. Along with being out of touch, some of them probably think their peons should have the means to do the same.
But he's also not recommending 40 hours, he's recommending 150% of that. Even then, I'd assume that when he says "sweet spot" he's also talking about a median, meaning you'll have to put in additional hours sometimes.
There's a reason why execs get perks - free housing, transportation, personal assistants, etc are all common things at the VP and up level for these large corportations. The whole reason for that is to free up time so they can work 60 hour weeks.
For a standard IC, that's not the case. Life takes time. You can do it, but it will be at the cost of those around you. I spent the last ~2 years working 60-80 hour weeks at Figma. At one point my boss asked me to work from my honeymoon. My life, health, and relationships suffered because of the pressure I was putting on others as a result of that.
If Google wants and expects that out of their ICs, they need to provide the same level of accomidation they do for execs, otherwise it just comes off as an exec being out of touch with the needs of every day life.
Essentially no one should be working 60 hours a week, the human mind needs breaks to unconsciously work on problems.
I would posit unless someone is doing pure labor, anything involving creativity / problem solving actually has worse returns past 30 hrs a week of intense work.
Anyone in exec positions claiming otherwise likely would hesitate to let someone actually see what they do all day / week. No doubt they "work" all day in some cases, but that day is filled with lots of non work / downtime.
With all honesty it was the most technically complex feature I’ve ever worked on. I think my boss at the time didn’t think he could cover for me. That doesn’t mean it was a fair ask though - I had requested that time off 6mo in advance and had everything approved, it was also between thanksgiving and Christmas, the slowest time of the year. It soured me quite a bit.
Doing that amount of hours is what makes execs think they can ask that of other people too
I will comment, that once you left, the next person who joined won't have the benefit of your experience, allowing them to be similarly exploited... and the cycle continues.
I seriously doubt they’re working harder than the average SWE in the trenches, even though they probably think they are.
From my vantage point, C-suite jobs are basically hired nobility.
In tech I dunno, in finance/trading the answer is pretty simple: European markets open at 9am, US closes at 10pm. There is your 12 hours with 1 hour lunch break.
Most frequent answer to this is: "But look we have all the high tech everyone of us can afford easily". But that cannot be the answer, because even if I choose to live like a luddite hermit while working 40h a week, I'm still not becoming super rich or can afford a house, which people my age could do 50 years ago.
So the productivity gains went elsewhere. The question is, into whose pocket? I guess into the pockets of those people who demand we should work even more than 40h a week.
Productivity gains by design go primarily to the investor class, the owners of corporations. There’s no mechanism for those gains to go to laborers. If a company performs 10x better, you don’t get a 10x raise, but the equity might be 10x higher.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
In addition to that, the monetary policy of money printing has severely diluted the dollar since 1971, with an extreme surge that happened during COVID. This policy effectively reduces the wealth of the labor class and increases the wealth of the investor class. If there’s 100x more dollars and the same amount of Tesla stock or houses, the Tesla stock and houses are suddenly worth way more in dollar terms and whoever only had dollars has effectively 1/100 of what they used to have. So any productivity gains the labor class received have been getting leeched away for decades.
On top of this, the investor class has the entire system rigged in their favor. They're protected from their bad investments like in the 2008 financial crisis or the Silicon Valley Bank fiasco. The tax code allows many of the investor class to get away with paying little to no taxes. There are restrictions on building new housing because the current owners don't want to see their homes devalued. It's basically easier to make money the more money you already have.
Now, these aren't really strict "classes." If you own a retirement fund, you are at least partially in the investor class. But there are many people who don't own any assets, and because of this dynamic where it's easier to make money the more you already have, the people at the top of this pyramid scheme are always extracting the most out of any gains that society achieves.
Most productivity gains went into enterprise value because most of the productivity gains of the last decades are the result of capital investments.
As a salaried worker the only stable way to increase your wage is to upskill yourself (99% of companies don't do that anymore).
What are we, as a society, gaining from working this much?
Billionaires is the only answer at this point.
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-...
Every minute counts as three. You'd be crazy not to use that productivity hack.
The game within the game within the game, IME, is enough to make one yearn for the simplicity of soul-crushing and personal liberation of Middle Class.
Not a fan of how big tech has become the parable of the frog in slowly boiling water.
At the same time having these large companies that operate in emerging economies where they hide under the rug all child work exploitation.
> The number of child labor violations has risen fivefold in the last 10 years, but Republicans across the US are continuing to propose and pass legislation that rolls back protections or regulations for workers under the age of 18.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/22/child-labor-...
Obviously ageist, probably anti-partner. Does this include commute time, or is this gratis?
The rest of us have no guarantees, and have learned the trade-offs are less and less likely to be worthwhile.
Multi-billionaire says to work harder to make him richer faster. The sooner this attitude is recognised as a sickness the better.
I have a hard time getting worked up about this. This is a team where the median engineer is probably approaching 7-figures total comp, working on a strategic project comparable to the iPhone—or at least Google sure thinks so.
They all have plenty of other options (albeit probably not as prestigious or high paying) if they want to level down their expectations.
That works out to 7000 per week. He will not listen to me so why should I listen to him.
Some discussion then:
This is capitalism, my dude, people don’t work at your company, because it’ll cure cancer or something, they do it for the compensation.
And for those that do work there 60 h/week out of blind loyalty - you deserve the thousands of layoffs they’ve had the past years.
If, like Brin, you're the boss and you can delegate all the unpleasant parts of work to your minions then why not work 60 hours only in the pleasant parts (including having sex with a marketing manager) and, still, cash billions?