Old school,new Google?

(A screenshot from an HP ad)

Suddenly, tech companies are in a tizzy.

The prospect of another recession lowered profitabilityandeven, gasp, an uncertain future fills tech leaders with a peculiar horror.

How can the future be uncertain when tech companies have always been used to creating it?

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It was bracing, then, that Google CEO Sundar Pichai muttered heresies the other day. He demanded, of all things, more productivity from his staff.

He spouted heinous concepts. You know, likeefficiency, urgency and hunger.

What was this? 1982 and the collected thoughts of Jack Welch? Oh, you might scoff, but remember that Welch began as a chemical engineer before he became, as a new book has it, "The Man Who Broke Capitalism ".

What on earth, then, will Pichai do next? Swing a large axe and frighten all those well-meaning, remote-working, future-creating Google employees?

It's not as if Pichai is alone. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is meta-displeased with some of his allegedly slacking employees. He believes some of them need to leave. I can think of one, at least.

It's odd, then, that HP has chosen this particular moment to laugh at the hunger-crazed, efficiency-obsessed leaders of tech's tomorrow. Here's HP's latest ad campaign, one that champions the new way of tech working life.

A suitably sneery old-school CEO is in his large office, dispensing even larger wisdom. There are old-school ground rules for success, he explains.

You need to come in early. You have to work through lunch. You have to burn the midnight oil.

In short, then, you have to be really good at uttering clich