Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt worked 60-hour weeks: ‘I used to tell people my job is to sit in meetings 12 hours a day’—he says AI will kill that burden

Eric Schmidt spent nearly a decade atop Google as its CEO, steering the tech giant from its early days as a public company into one of the world’s most valuable businesses. 

But the job wasn’t always about launching the next Gmail or Google Maps. Instead, much of Schmidt’s time was actually spent behind the conference room table coordinating people and putting out fires across the organization.

“I used to tell people my job is to sit in meetings 12 hours a day, five days a week, and I work on the weekend, too,” Schmidt said in conversation with Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. “I would sit in meetings 12 hours a day—person, person, person, reason, narrative, so forth and so on.”

That extended his workweek to roughly 63 hours, Schmidt estimated. But the 71-year-old now believes AI can........

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