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

“I’m sorry to be so direct, but the fact is, if you all leave university and start a company, you’re not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete with the other startups.”

Google representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside of regular business hours.

Schmidt served as CEO and chairman of Google from 2001 to 2011 before handing the reins back to the search giant’s co-founder Larry Page.

He then served as Google’s executive chairman and technical advisor before leaving the company permanently in early 2020.

Schmidt is not the only executive who believes that teleworking is damaging companies. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, for example, is a vocal advocate of employees returning to the office.

“It doesn’t work for younger kids in education, it doesn’t really work for creativity and spontaneity, it doesn’t really work for management teams,” Dimon said in an interview with The Economist that aired in July 2023.

Certainly, since 2022, Google has moved away from the rule that its employees can work 100% from home.

Google employees are currently working on a hybrid model where they spend “approximately three days in the office and two days wherever they work best—whether that’s the office or at home,” according to the company’s 2022 Diversity Annual Report.

Google has also begun tracking office badge attendance and using it as a metric for performance reviews, CNBC reported in June 2023, citing internal memos obtained by the company.

“Of course, not everyone believes in ‘magic hallway conversations,’ but there is no doubt that collaborating in the same room makes a positive difference,” wrote Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief human resources officer, in an employee email seen by CNBC.