How business leaders like Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban feel about work-life balance
Many CEOs and business leaders have shared their thoughts on work-life balance.
Some support it while others call it a hindrance to success.
Here's what some of the biggest names in business make of work-life balance.
How do you juggle your personal life with your work?
Just about everyone has an opinion on work-life balance, including CEOs. Some business leaders see it as an important equilibrium to maintain, while some outright hate the idea.
Here are some top business execs' takes on work-life balance.
Mark Cuban says, "There is no balance" for incredibly ambitious people
On a recent episode of "The Playbook," a video series from Sports Illustrated and Entrepreneur, billionaire entrepreneur and former "Shark Tank" star Mark Cuban said, "There is no balance" for the most ambitious people.
"People are like, 'I need a work-life balance,'" he said. "If you want to work 9-to-5, you can have work-life balance. If you want to crush the game, whatever game you're in, there's somebody working 24 hours a day to kick your ass."
Leon Cooperman encourages young workers to "love what you do," but remember there's more to life than work
Billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman said in a recent interview with Business Insider that there's more to life than hustling.
"I've been married 61 years to the same woman," he said, adding that his greatest success in life is that "my kids still come home."
"Love what you do — it's too demanding and difficult not to," the Wall Street veteran said. "Pursue it with a passion," he continued. Cooperman said that while he spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs, it never felt like work because he enjoyed it so much.
Jeff Bezos says work and life should form a circle, not a "balance"
In 2018, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that workers should aim for work-life harmony, not "balance," at an event hosted by Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer. Bezos also called the concept of work-life balance "debilitating" because it hints that there's a trade-off.
Bezos said that it's not a work-life balance, but "it's actually a circle."
Bezos said that if he feels happy at home, then it energizes him and makes him more productive at work, and vice versa.
Satya Nadella thinks you should focus on "work-life harmony"
Microsoft 's CEO also thinks that "work-life balance" isn't the goal. Instead, he says to focus on work-life "harmony." In 2019, he shared his thoughts with the Australian Financial Review, saying he used to think that he needed to balance relaxing and working. But he's since shifted his approach, aligning his "deep interests" with his work.
TIAA's CEO thinks the entire concept is a "lie"
"Work-life balance is a lie," TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett said in a 2023 fireside chat. Brown Duckett has previously said she used to struggle with guilt and balancing her demanding job with being a mother.
Brown Duckett says that she views her life as a "portfolio," and that she takes time to perform different roles like mother, wife, and business executive. Though she may not always physically be with her children, she says she strives to be fully present during the time she is able to spend with them.
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt said work-life balance was why Google was behind in AI — then walked back the comments
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt criticized Google's remote work policy and work-life balance during a lecture at Stanford University in 2024, saying these were contributing factors to the company trailing behind startups like OpenAI on artificial intelligence.
"Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning," the former Google exec said in a recording of the lecture that was posted online in August. "And the reason the startups work is because the people work like hell."
He added that those looking to start successful companies today are "not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups."
After his comments gained attention, Schmidt walked back the comments.
Arianna Huffington says you shouldn't have to choose between work and life
Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global and HuffPost, told Great Place to Work that we shouldn't view productivity and relaxation as two opposing forces. Huffington said that when one area of your life improves, the other does as well.
Huffington said employees should focus more on "work-life integration" since "we bring our entire selves to work."
Still, Huffington believes that your personal life should always come first.
"While work is obviously important and can give us purpose and meaning in our lives, it shouldn't take the place of life," she said. "Work is a part of a thriving life, but life should come first."
Don't expect a work-life balance if you work for Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a known workaholic, and he expects those who work beneath him to be as well.
In 2022, just after Musk took ownership of X, formerly Twitter, he sent out an email to employees telling them to either dedicate their lives to working or leave the company. Musk reportedly made X employees work 84 hours a week. While some people think remote work improved their work-life balance, Musk has often criticized it and called it "morally wrong."
According to Walter Isaacson's biography of him, Musk would stay at the office overnight and shower at the YMCA when he joined the workforce in 1995. Musk has continued the habit while working at Tesla and buying Twitter, often spending the night at work.
In 2018, Musk said that he works 120 hours a week, amounting to 17 hours a day.
Jack Ma has also actively endorsed long work hours
One of China's richest men, Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma in 2019 expressed his support for the controversial "996" work system in many Chinese workplaces, which refers to working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. He's called "996" culture a "huge blessing" for younger workers.
"Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996," he said in 2019. "If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?"
"If you find a job you like, the 996 problem does not exist," he added. "If you're not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
44 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Meet America's typical live-at-home 20-somethings
Your parents' basement might be looking pretty good these days. In 2023, around 40% of younger Americans lived with their parents. Living with mom and dad is a popular safety net for Gen Zers who face steep housing costs, expensive higher education, and a shaky job market. "If you have the luxury of being able to move back home and pay less for rent, groceries, and other basic bills and put some money away in an emergency fund or towards other big financial goals, it can be a really big deal," Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree, told Business Insider. BI examined the demographics of America's live-at-home young adults — the 42% of 18- to 30-year-olds who lived with at least one parent — using the 2023 American Community Survey, available from the University of Minnesota's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. So, who made up that 42%? The charts below show the young adults who were more likely to be living at home. A majority of young adults living with at least one parent were men Over half of young adults living with at least one parent were men, while just under half of young adults not living with a parent were men. There's also a cultural element to multigenerational living. Pew Research Center found Black, Hispanic, and Asian young adults in the US were more likely than white young adults to live with their parents. Young adults living with at least one parent were more likely not to be in school The share of young adults living with at least one parent in the household who were in school was about double that of those living on their own — 39% compared to 20%. They're less likely to have a college degree Fourteen percent of young adults with at least one parent in the household had a bachelor's degree as their highest educational attainment, compared to 27% of those without a parent. Single young adults were more likely to live with at least one parent More young adults without a parent in the household were married than those living with at least one parent. Nearly all young adults living with at least one parent were never married or single, at 96%. They're not stay-at-home kids; they're more likely to be working than not Almost two-thirds of young adults with at least one parent in the household were employed, compared to 82% of young adults without a parent in the household. The share of young adults living at home who were out of the labor force — that is, neither employed nor looking for work — was nearly double that of those living on their own. While many were employed, they weren't earning as much as those not living with a parent On average, employed young adults with at least one parent in the household weren't working as many hours or making as much money as their peers who didn't have a parent in the household. According to Pew Research Center researcher Richard Fry, who authored a recent report on where in the country younger Americans live with their parents, young people are more likely to live with their parents when jobs are hard to come by and wages are stagnant. Pew previously found the share of people living in multigenerational households surged during the Great Recession and continued rising afterward. Living at home can also mean being disconnected from work and school There are those who choose to live at home for family connection and financial convenience, and there are others who don't have a choice. So-called disconnected youth who aren't employed or in school made up about 11% of the 16 to 24 age group in 2022, per a 2024 report from the research firm Measure of America. This cohort was more likely than their peers to live in poverty, lack health insurance, and receive government aid. Minorities and young people of color have higher rates of disconnection. "These are creative young people who, for a whole host of reasons, haven't had the opportunities or the support they've needed to explore what they want to do and figure out how to transition to adulthood in a way that's exciting for them," said Megan Millenky, a senior research associate at MRDC who studies youth development. In an unsteady economy, it's unlikely that Gen Z and younger millennials' interest in living at home will fade anytime soon. And, as Millenky said, the group reflects "quite a spectrum" of America's socioeconomic ladder.
Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Business Insider
Kelsea Ballerini says fitness in her 20s was all about looks. Here's what changed once she hit her 30s.
In her 20s, Kelsea Ballerini says she worked out to look good. Now that she's in her 30s, it's all about feeling good — physically, mentally, and emotionally. In an interview with People published on Wednesday, the country music star spoke about how her approach to fitness has changed over the years. "Especially in my early twenties and mid-twenties, the idea of fitness was very much only aesthetically driven, and that was my goal," Ballerini, 31, told People. Now, she wants to be healthy and have the energy to keep up with her career and the people she loves. "The goal now is like, can I run around onstage for 90 minutes and have that energy to do it? Can I wake up and take both the dogs on a walk, and make sure that Dibs is going to all of his doctor appointments, and I'm on Zooms in the middle of it? Can I be present for everything that I need to? Can I make time for my friends, for my family, in the middle of all the chaos?" Ballerini said. While Ballerini practices Pilates to stay in shape, her go-to workout is a good walk. "Walking is so good for you. It also makes you get fresh air and some good sunshine, and that's so good for your mental health," she said. Diet-wise, Ballerini follows the 80/20 rule: eating healthily 80% of the time and being more flexible for the remaining 20%. She also says she enjoys eating at home, and her go-to meal is a chimichurri steak, which she has "a couple of times a week." However, there's one guilty pleasure she can't give up: McDonald's. "As a kid, I was such a picky eater, and my parents joke with me, like, 'All you would eat were waffles and chicken nuggets.' So I think it's just probably my inner child craving it still," Ballerini said. Six health and fitness specialists previously shared with Business Insider five key habits people can adopt in their 30s to boost longevity. They include eating a Mediterranean diet, wearing sunscreen, and managing stress. A representative for Ballerini did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular hours.
Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Business Insider
'Keep AI on the leash' because it's far from perfect, says OpenAI's cofounder Andrej Karpathy
Andrej Karpathy thinks we're getting way too excited about AI, especially when it comes to deploying agents that act without supervision. In a keynote at an event hosted by Y Combinator earlier this week, the computer scientist said people need to "keep AI on the leash." The OpenAI cofounder said current large language models still make mistakes no human ever would. Karpathy likened LLMs to "people spirits" — uncanny simulations of human intelligence that hallucinate facts, lack self-knowledge, and suffer from "amnesia." "They will insist that 9.11 is greater than 9.9 or that there are two R's in 'strawberry,'" Karpathy said in a talk published on Y Combinator's YouTube channel on Thursday. "They're going to be superhuman in some problem-solving domains and then they're going to make mistakes that basically no human will make." Even though LLMs can churn out 10,000 lines of code in seconds, he said, that doesn't mean developers should sit back and let them run wild. "I'm still the bottleneck," he said. "I have to make sure this thing isn't introducing bugs." "It gets way too overreactive," he added. Karparthy urged developers to slow down and write more concrete prompts. "I always go in small incremental chunks. I want to make sure that everything is good," he said. "It makes a lot more sense to spend a bit more time to be more concrete in your prompts, which increases the probability of successful verification, and you can move forward," he added. Karparthy did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The OpenAI cofounder coined the term "vibe coding" in February to describe the process of prompting AI to write code. The idea, he said, is that developers can "fully give in to the vibes" and "forget the code even exists." AI still needs supervision Karpathy isn't the only one urging caution. Bob McGrew, OpenAI's former head of research, said on an episode of Sequoia Capital's "Training Data" podcast earlier this week that human engineers are still essential — not just to guide AI, but to step in when things get messy. When something goes wrong or if a project "becomes too complicated for AI to understand," a human engineer can help break the problem down into parts for an AI to solve. AI agents are like "genies," said Kent Beck, one of the authors of the seminal "Agile Manifesto" — they'll often grant your wish, but not always in the way you'd like them to. "They will not do what you mean. They have their own agenda," Beck said on a recent episode of " The Pragmatic Engineer" podcast. "And the best analogy I could find is a genie. It grants you wishes, and then you wish for something, and then you get it, but it's not what you actually wanted." Beck also said results are so inconsistent that using AI to code can sometimes feel like gambling. Despite the nascent tech's limitations, even the biggest tech companies are betting on AI for the future of coding. AI writes more than 30% of Alphabet's new code, up from 25% last year, said CEO Sundar Pichai on the company's most recent earnings call.
