Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has blamed “work from home” as the reason for the company’s poor performance in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. Schmidt said the search engine giant lost its leadership in the field after it began prioritizing work-life balance and remote work.

Schmidt led Google as CEO between 2001 and 2011 and later as executive chairman until 2015. He has repeatedly raised concerns about the remote work culture prevalent in the industry following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Google decided that work-life balance, going home early and working from home are more important than winning. And the reason the startups work is because people work like crazy,” Schmidt said in a video that went viral on social media.

“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,” Schmidt added.

However, Schmidt’s statement was not well received by Internet users, who accused him of having a short-sighted worldview, especially given that Google was facing other problems.

One user said: “They’re losing because they gave in to bureaucracy and politics a long time ago. They actively hate half of their customers and the product isn’t the first thing they think about.”

“But nothing about how Google stopped innovating and is now run by MBAs who can’t even innovate out of nothing,” commented another, with a third adding, “Amazing that the blame always lies with the employees, not the VPs, not the people at the top of the pyramid.”

Although Schmidt tried it at his previous company, reports say that Google requires its employees to be in the office three days of a five-day work week.