Eric Schmidt’s car crash Stanford interview showed big tech’s true colors on remote work

Eric Schmidt certainly ruffled a few feathers last week after a controversial interview at Stanford University – and it’s not hard to see why.

Speaking to students, the former Google chief exec essentially suggested successful startups not worry about stealing IP and embarked on a diatribe about why remote work was the reason behind Google’s supposed poor performance in the generative AI race.

There was even talk of cultural differences between American and Taiwanese PhD students, in a bid to highlight the apparent lack of drive on the part of the former. This was the definition of a car crash interview, before it was swiftly taken down (at his request, it’s worth noting).

“Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning,” Schmidt said. “And the startups, the reason startups work is the people work like hell.”

“I’m sorry to be so blunt,” he added. “But the fact of the matter is, if you all leave the university and go found a company, you’re not gonna let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups.”

While Schmidt has since backtracked on his comments, they nonetheless point toward an antiquated view of remote working culture that seems pervasive among both the old guard of Silicon Valley and a host of major organizations.

The horse has well and truly bolted on strict in-office attendance – the pandemic saw to that – yet so many big tech firms are slugging it out in a war of attrition with staff to claw them back on-site.

Google, Schmidt’s former stomping ground, is arguably among the best examples of a company trying by any means to get staff back into the very expensive real estate it needs to justify filling.

Last year, the tech giant embarked on a series of bizarre moves to tempt staff back to the office, one of which included discounted prices on rooms at an on-campus hotel. I’m sure staff were delighted to learn they could pay for the privilege of returning.

Sadly, more extreme measures have been employed by other big tech names, such as Dell Technologies. Earlier this year, the firm introduced new policies forcing hybrid employees to track attendance and ensure they entered a physical office space 39 days a quarter, or roughly three days a week.

Notably, those who classified themselves as remote workers had to agree they were no longer eligible for promotions or role changes. Dell was officially cracking the whip and tackling the pesky, unproductive practice of full-time remote work.

Suffice to say, it hasn’t gone well.

The tech giant’s internal survey, ‘Tell Dell’, painted a grim picture of the state of morale among staff. Sources told Business Insider they’d never seen such negative sentiment among employees.

Productivity, or the illusion of it at least, has been the major stickler for many tech companies as they’ve contended with challenging macroeconomic conditions in the wake of the pandemic. A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2023 suggested that remote workers are indeed less productive, and executives have been keen to use this as a stick to beat workers with.

But productive workers aren’t always happy ones, and staff have become increasingly conscious of their own wellbeing in the post-pandemic world and demand flexible working options.

A recent study from Great Place to Work found that RTO mandates such as those relentlessly pursued by Dell actively hurt productivity.

“Productivity was lower for both on-site and remote employees when their employer mandated where they work,” the report states. Respondents whose employer allowed them to decide on – or play a role in shaping – working policies were more likely to report “going the extra mile”.

Workers can take solace in knowing that many firms are aware of the potential risk of brain drain if they maintain a rigid approach to modern work. A recent study from Flex Index, for example, shows executives are backpedaling in the face of a workforce revolt.

Last year, around 8% of organizations were found to have enforced strict RTO mandates that required full in-person attendance, while this year that number stands at just 3%.

With such a small number of companies mandating full in-person attendance, one has to wonder whether the tantrums thrown by some industry execs are less about creating a productive, collaborative, and innovative workforce and more about maintaining the status-quo they were forced to conform to in their heyday.

Worse still, it may point to a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ mentality. Starbucks is bending over backwards to accommodate its new CEO’s remote work demands – would they do the same for a corporate staffer at head office?

Tech execs can cry all they want and mandate away, but the idea that workers must be in the office to be productive, and must work themselves into a burnout-ridden pit of despair just won’t cut it in 2024. Some might finally realize this when their best talent looks elsewhere.