Here’s what Eric Schmidt, who was Google’s CEO from 2004 to 2011 and then chairman until 2015, had to say recently during a talk at Stanford:

Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. And the reason startups work is because people work like hell.

Update, August 14th: It appears that Schmidt didn’t intend for his comments to make headlines! Stanford has taken the video of his talk down, so here’s a clip that is still online: