- As a newly minted billionaire, Google CEO Sundar Pichai says that embracing discomfort is key to personal and professional growth—a mantra that helped him advance from a little-known product manager to CEO of the $2.3 trillion tech giant. While climbing the logical paths up that ladder may seem right, he tells Gen Z that listening to your heart will help you find your true calling.
The path to success is never easy—even for the world’s top leaders. In fact, for Google CEO Sundar Pichai there were times he felt that stinging feeling that other people in the room were better than him. But he assures Gen Z that feelings of discomfort are all part of the process.
“At various points in my life, I’ve worked with people who I felt were better than me,” Pichai recently told Lex Fridman’s podcast. “You want that feeling a few times, trying to get yourself in a position where you’re working with people who you feel are kind of like stretching your abilities, is what helps you grow.
“Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, and I think often you’ll surprise yourself,” he added.
For Pichai, this mantra has helped him climb the ranks at the tech giant after starting out as just a product manager in 2004. Within a decade, he had caught the eye of cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin before being named CEO in 2015. And while he admits there is always an element of luck to success, he encourages Gen Z to do what they love—even if it seems irrational at first.
“You’re thinking about what you want to do, your brain is telling you something. But when you do things, I think it’s important to listen to your heart, and see whether you actually enjoy doing it.”
Success in the workplace centers around the people
Finding the right people to work with is not only important for personal growth, Pichai added, but also for making sure work gets done, something that’s been crucial in turning Google into a multitrillion-dollar giant.
“You find mission-oriented people who are in the shared journey, who have this inner drive to excellence, to do the best, and motivate people, and you can achieve a lot that way.”
The drive for excellence at Google may also mean the willingness to work far beyond the nine-to-five, according to Sergey Brin. In an internal memo seen by the New York Times, the cofounder encouraged the company’s AI-focused workers to be in the office “at least every weekday”—with 60-hour workweeks being the “sweet spot of productivity.” And while Pichai has publicly said in the past that he anticipated the future of work to be focused around flexibility, the AI arms race has put pressure on tech giants to be ahead of the game.
Still, amid the high-stakes environment, Pichai told Fridman he prefers staying calm as a manager, believing that the best employees are usually the first to know when they’ve messed up—and overreacting can just make matters worse.
“At times, you’re working with people who are so committed to achieving, if they’ve done something wrong, they feel it more than you do, so you treat them differently,” Pichai said. “Occasionally, there are people who you need to clearly let them know, like, ‘That wasn’t okay,’ or whatever it is, but I’ve often found that not to be the case.”
Fortune reached out to Pichai for comment.
Striving toward the billionaires club
Though Pichai has been the leader of one of the biggest public companies in the world for just shy of a decade, he’s only just now joining the billionaires club—a far cry from Brin and Page, who are among the top 10 wealthiest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The net worth of Brin and Page is about $163 billion and $174 billion, respectively, compared with Pichai’s $1.1 billion.
While there is no perfect path to emulating the success of Google, Page told college graduates in 2009 that they should think about solving problems that can ultimately allow them to be lazier:
“Technology, and especially the internet, can really help you be lazy,” he said to University of Michigan students. “Find the leverage in the world, so you can be more lazy.”
Much like those who graduated into the Great Recession, today’s young people are facing their own set of daunting challenges, thanks in part to AI reshaping the job market. However, Page isn’t a believer in giving up.
“Overall, I know it seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity, and be ambitious about it,” Page said. “Don’t give up on your dreams. The world needs you all.”
