Eric Schmidt says AI could remove the “glue people” burden he remembers from running Google

Eric Schmidt, who led Google for more than a decade and later chaired its parent Alphabet, said the job used to mean long stretches of coordination, often through meetings. In a conversation reported by Yahoo Finance, Schmidt described telling colleagues that his work was essentially to “sit in meetings 12 hours a day,” and said his weeks could run to roughly 60 hours.

Schmidt framed the time cost of that kind of leadership as a structural problem for large technology organizations and other knowledge-work businesses. He characterized many roles as “glue people,” meaning employees whose primary function is to connect teams, reconcile dependencies, and keep information flowing across organizational boundaries.

In the same discussion, Schmidt argued that artificial intelligence could reduce the demand for those glue-oriented tasks. His central claim was that AI will be able to handle coordination work that currently requires human attention, which in turn could eliminate thousands of such roles, according to the account cited by Yahoo Finance.

The remarks come as Alphabet continues to invest heavily in AI, including through its generative AI efforts embedded across product lines and through the development of AI infrastructure and research. While Schmidt’s comments were not presented as a company announcement, they align with the broader business question facing large firms: how much of the modern workflow can be automated or assisted without breaking decision-making and accountability.

For Alphabet specifically, the practical implication is that AI can change not only customer-facing features, but internal operations. If AI tools can draft, summarize, route information, and reduce back-and-forth between teams, the organization can potentially run with fewer coordination layers, though the company’s internal staffing decisions and timelines are not disclosed in the reported interview.

Schmidt’s comments also highlight a recurring tension in AI adoption. Managers often want to remove friction, but they also rely on human judgment, context, and escalation paths when stakes are high. The Yahoo Finance report, as summarized in the prompt, did not provide details on which coordination tasks Schmidt expects AI to automate first or how rapidly AI-driven systems would be deployed across teams at scale.

Still, the interview underscores why AI is more than a product story. It directly affects labor demand in corporate settings, especially roles tied to cross-team communication and planning. The “glue people” framing suggests a shift from human-mediated coordination toward machine-supported coordination, even if human oversight remains necessary.

Schmidt did not, in the material referenced here, specify any quantified employment impact, provide evidence about AI capability thresholds, or outline an implementation plan for Alphabet or any other employer. Observers will likely want to see whether such labor impacts materialize through workforce reductions, changes in hiring plans, or reclassification of roles as AI-assisted workflows mature.