The race to stay ahead of the artificial intelligence boom could mean big changes for Google's in-office policy as the Silicon Valley tech giant faces pressure to ramp up its pandemic-era work mandates.
Sergey Brin, one of the tech company's co-founders, told employees in an internal memo that they needed to work harder and be in an office more regularly in order for Google to establish itself at the forefront of the race by the global tech industry to embrace AI.
“I recommend being in the office at least every weekday,” Brin wrote in a memo viewed by CoStar News and earlier reported by The New York Times. “Competition has accelerated immensely, and the final race to [artificial general intelligence] is afoot. I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts.”
He added that “60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity," a benchmark far higher than the three-day office mandate Google currently employs for a majority of its corporate workforce.
A company spokesperson declined to comment on its existing in-office mandate or any future changes to it.
To be clear, Brin's comments have yet to result in any changes to the Mountain View, California-based company's return-to-office policy.
Even as fellow tech giants such as Amazon, Meta, TikTok and Microsoft have ramped up their in-person requirements, Google as recently as a few months ago assured employees that it had no immediate plans to require a five-day return to the office.
Minimum requirements
A lot has unfolded over the past few months, however, as a broadening spectrum of employers across the country step up their in-person requirements to move past the pandemic-related shift toward increased flexible work arrangements.
Office market stakeholders point to the escalated mandates, many of which will take effect this year, as a signal that demand for office space will be on the rebound after nearly half a decade of depressed leasing.
Large employers such as JPMorgan Chase, Starbucks, AT&T, Southwest Airlines and Walmart have recently stepped up their in-person requirements, and many employers are now demanding workers commute to an office all five days of the workweek.
Amid backlash from their workers, some companies are justifying the mandates with claims that the in-office time is more valuable and productive than work done outside of it.
The national arm of Japanese automaker Nissan, for example, is betting that having its employees back to working in an office more frequently will be the remedy it needs to turn around slumping sales and help it catch up with the rest of the car industry's electric vehicle race. The company recently began asking its corporate employees to commute to its U.S. headquarters in the greater Nashville area in Tennessee at least four days per week — ideally five — as it looks to implement a widespread turnaround.
Google by comparison is in a far-stronger financial position, yet Silicon Valley's notorious competitiveness could be enough to push the company to adopt stricter in-person standards.
At the very least, Brin wrote, employees need to step up their own level of commitment.
“A number of folks work less than 60 hours and a small number put in the bare minimum to get by,” he wrote. “This last group is not only unproductive but also can be highly demoralizing to everyone else.”