Eric Schmidt: AI Will Cut Thousands of Jobs at Big Companies

Eric Schmidt, who ran Google for nearly a decade, says a 10,000-person company today likely employs about 2,000 people it no longer needs—and AI is the reason why.

"Let's say you're running a 10,000-person company, my guess is you've got a couple of thousand people who you don't need," Schmidt said in conversation with Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. "And you better figure out a way to legally and humanely transition them, retire them out, or what have you. You just don't need them."

The 71-year-old former CEO knows the cost of corporate coordination firsthand. His own tenure at Google, he says, was consumed by it.

What did Schmidt's job actually look like?

"I used to tell people my job is to sit in meetings 12 hours a day, five days a week, and I work on the weekend, too," Schmidt told Tangen. "I would sit in meetings 12 hours a day—person, person, person, reason, narrative, so forth and so on."

Add the weekends, and that's roughly a 63-hour week—about 60% more than a standard 40-hour schedule, sustained for years at the top of one of the world's most valuable companies. Schmidt wasn't launching Gmail or Google Maps in those rooms. He was coordinating people and putting out organizational fires.

His verdict on that overhead now: "Much of that coordination tax can be eliminated by these AI platforms for business."

What does this change for corporate workforces?

Schmidt pointed to an unnamed friend who recently laid off 20% of his workforce. Among those cut were the "glue people"—employees whose job was planning, coordinating, and moving information around the business rather than producing anything directly.

That's the practical takeaway for managers and mid-level staff alike. If your role exists primarily to route information between departments, Schmidt expects that role to shrink as AI platforms absorb it. He predicts such reductions will become more common as AI makes businesses more efficient.

For Schmidt personally, the AI boom is not an abstract forecasting exercise. His estimated net worth stands at $66 billion, and it was revealed this week that he owns roughly a 1% stake in Anthropic. If the AI company goes public at its $2 trillion target, that stake could translate into a $20 billion windfall.

Can workers still get on the rocket?

Despite predicting thousands of unnecessary roles, Schmidt sees demand for people who adapt. "You're going to need the great inventors, the great salespeople, because it's a human deal," he said. "You're going to need some great leaders. And you're going to need people to talk to the government."

Speaking to graduates at the University of Arizona earlier this year, Schmidt urged young people not to resist AI but to join those building it. That message didn't land with everyone—some students booed him when he began discussing the technology.

"Whatever path you choose, AI will become part of how work is done," he told the graduates.

His closing advice was blunt: "When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on. Graduates, the rocket ship is here."

The comment lands at a moment when CEOs are actively testing Schmidt's math. If the 20%-of-headcount scenario he describes from his friend's company becomes a pattern across large employers, the bigger shift isn't layoffs themselves—it's which jobs survive them: builders, sellers, leaders, and government liaisons, with coordinators first out the door.