In leaked memo to Google’s AI workers, Sergey Brin says 60 hours a week is the ‘sweet spot’ and doing the bare minimum can demoralize peers 

Jason Ma

<ul>
<li>In an internal memo to employees who work on Gemini, Sergey Brin recommended being in the office at least every weekday and said 60 hours is the &#8220;sweet spot&#8221; for productivity, according to the New York Times. He added that competition to develop artificial general intelligence has ramped up but maintained his belief that <a href="https://fortune.com/company/alphabet/" target="_blank">Google</a> can come out on top if the company can &#8220;turbocharge&#8221; its efforts.</li>
</ul>



Sergey Brin believes Google can win the race to artificial general intelligence and outlined his ideas for how to do that—including a workweek that&#8217;s 50% longer than the standard 40 hours.<div class="paywall-selector"></div><div class="paywall">



In an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/technology/google-sergey-brin-return-to-office.html" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/technology/google-sergey-brin-return-to-office.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">internal memo seen by the New York Times</a>, the Google cofounder told employees working on Gemini, which develops the company&#8217;s suite of AI products, that he recommends being in the office &#8220;at least every weekday&#8221; and that &#8220;60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity.&#8221;



He also warned against working more than 60 hours a week, saying it could lead to burnout, while calling out those who work less.



&#8220;A number of folks work less than 60 hours and a small number put in the bare minimum to get by,&#8221; Brin wrote on Wednesday. &#8220;This last group is not only unproductive but also can be highly demoralizing to everyone else.&#8221;



A source close to the matter declined to comment, but the Times said the memo doesn&#8217;t signal a departure from the tech giant&#8217;s official policy for employees to work in the office at least three days a week.



Brin&#8217;s exhortations highlight the urgency to develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which is AI that&#8217;s as smart as or smarter than humans.



&#8220;Competition has accelerated immensely and the final race to AGI is afoot,&#8221; he said in the memo. &#8220;I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts.&#8221;



Brin added that Gemini staff can boost their coding efficiency by using the company&#8217;s own AI technology.



The memo is the latest indication of his shift to a more hands-on role. In 2019, Brin and fellow Google cofounder Larry Page stepped down from their daily executive duties at parent company Alphabet.



But OpenAI&#8217;s release of ChatGPT in late 2022—and the tech sector&#8217;s rush to generative AI that followed—inspired Brin to get back into the mix. Since returning, Brin has also spent a lot of time at Google&#8217;s <a href="https://fortune.com/company/deepmind/" target="_blank">DeepMind</a> AI division, according to the Times.



Last year, he acknowledged that he &#8220;kind of came out of retirement just because the trajectory of AI is so exciting.&#8221; That also coincided with some high-profile gaffes in Gemini&#8217;s AI, including an image generator that produced <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/03/04/sergey-brin-google-definitely-messed-up-gemini-image-generation/" data-type="link" data-id="https://fortune.com/2024/03/04/sergey-brin-google-definitely-messed-up-gemini-image-generation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">racially diverse Nazis</a>. 



Meanwhile, tech companies and corporate America overall are emphasizing in-person work. <a href="https://fortune.com/company/amazon-com/" target="_blank">Amazon</a>, AT&amp;T, and <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/jamie-dimon-popped-off-jpmorgan-employees-fighting-against-full-time-rto-petition/">JPMorgan Chase</a>, for example, have told employees to <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/12/19/elon-musk-amazon-att-return-to-office-desks/" data-type="link" data-id="https://fortune.com/2024/09/16/amazon-ceo-5-day-rto-return-office-management-cuts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">work in the office five days a week</a>. And President Donald Trump has ordered <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/01/23/donald-trump-rto-workers-employers-wfh-wars/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">all federal workers to return to the office</a> five days a week, too.</div>

"I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts."

Sergey Brin says 60 hours a week is the 'sweet spot'

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In leaked memo to Google's AI workers, Sergey Brin says 60 hours a week is the 'sweet spot' and doing the bare minimum can demoralize peers 

Sergey Brin says 60 hours a week is the 'sweet spot' | Fortune

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