“I’m sorry to be so blunt,” Schmidt continued in the video posted on Stanford’s YouTube channel on Tuesday. “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.”
If I were going to found a company I’d make it remote only because I’d have access to a global labor pool, often in places with lower cost of living, and I won’t have to pay for an office. Seems like a win-win.
I absolutely would do that, in point of fact. And, like, tons of successful startups started in a founder’s (or even founder’s parent’s) basement or garage. So I don’t know what this C-suite dipshit thinks he’s on about.
He’s speaking to a bunch of Standford students and giving advice, so it’s not that absurd. But it is pretty absurd to tell potential entrepreneurs “Make sure you pay as much as possible for real estate in a big city, and then overpay for talent because your office is in a big city.”
Talking to students at Stanford about startups is fine. Projecting his concerns about WFH employees for his own company onto them is nonsense and disingenuous, as Google is about the furthest they could possibly be from a startup nowadays.
If I were going to found a company I’d make it remote only because I’d have access to a global labor pool, often in places with lower cost of living, and I won’t have to pay for an office. Seems like a win-win.
i’m guessing he offered approximately zero data to support the claim that WFH startups always lose against office-only startups?
I absolutely would do that, in point of fact. And, like, tons of successful startups started in a founder’s (or even founder’s parent’s) basement or garage. So I don’t know what this C-suite dipshit thinks he’s on about.
What an absurd statement. Absolute lunacy on his part to compare Google to a startup.
He’s speaking to a bunch of Standford students and giving advice, so it’s not that absurd. But it is pretty absurd to tell potential entrepreneurs “Make sure you pay as much as possible for real estate in a big city, and then overpay for talent because your office is in a big city.”
If his goal is for his company to win I wouldn’t be taking his advice.he has a financial incentive to sabotage future competition
Talking to students at Stanford about startups is fine. Projecting his concerns about WFH employees for his own company onto them is nonsense and disingenuous, as Google is about the furthest they could possibly be from a startup nowadays.