A ‘fireside chat’ moderated by Vinod Khosla.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Indian American entrepreneur and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla was the moderator at a “fireside chat” with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in which all three men shared their visions for the future of the tech industry.
Perhaps the most noteworthy discussion of the roughly 45 minute discussion was about the nature of the US workforce, and whether or not full-time employment is really all that it’s cracked up to be. In his comments, Page said that part-time employment may actually be the best way to move forward for a variety of reasons.
“I was talking to [Virgin Group founder] Richard Branson about this,” Page said. “They don’t have enough jobs in the U.K. He’s been trying to get people to hire two part-time people instead of one full-time, so at least the young people can have a half-time job rather than no job.”
The idea, explained Page, is that part-time employment not only creates more jobs, it allows people to have more free time outside of work. This allows them to spend more time with their families, pursue other interests and hobbies, and makes them feel happier and more satisfied overall. These feelings, says Page, will inevitably lead to higher productivity in the work place.
“Most people like working, but they’d also like to have more time with their family or to do their own interests. So that would be one way to deal with the problem, is if you had a coordinated way to just reduce the work week. And then, if you had slightly less employment, you can adjust and people will still have jobs,” said Page.
Khosla and Brin seemed to agree in part, with Brin specifically saying that the need for human labor will never completely go away, despite the fact that several human jobs have been replaced by machines over the last century.
“I don’t think that in the near term, the need for labor is going away. It gets shifted from one place to another, but people always want more stuff or more entertainment or more creativity or more something,” said Brin.
Other topics that Brin and Page touched upon were their desire to move Google into the healthcare realm (and their fear of the regulations that come with that), Google Glass and the possibility of accompanying smart-watches, and self-driving cars powered by a Google operating system.
Khosla’s full chat with Brin and Page can be viewed below, courtesy of Khosla Ventures: