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Just when you thought the dust had settled on the return-to-office wars, one startup founder has reignited the debate\u2014accusing remote workers of sneaking off and doing life admin on company dime for a third of their working day.<\/p>\n
Serial founder Bridger Pennington panned his camera around an office full of people still at their desks on a Friday evening to prove his point that in-office working is more productive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get a lot of hate, but I\u2019m a big believer for working in an office in person,\u201d Pennington posted to his Threads account, where it\u2019s racking up thousands of reactions. \u201cYou can look at the time, it is five exactly on the dock, and you can see everyone\u2019s still working.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Utah-based co-founder of the startups Fund Launch and Ugly Unicorn explained that, despite offering workers incentives to work in the office\u2014including free dinners for anyone who stays past 7 p.m.\u2014he still faces backlash for not letting staff work remotely.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou try that with your startup, go ahead. Good luck,\u201d he bluntly responded to anyone pushing back on him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll bet your bottom dollar, Susan or Joe, whoever, on a Tuesday afternoon that\u2019s working remote, 30% of the time they\u2019re getting groceries, they\u2019re running their dog to the vet, they got a kids dance recital\u2014they\u2019re not working, and you\u2019re paying them full time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The internet fired back\u2014and some of them do run their own companies<\/p>\n
Pennington captioned his video, telling people to run their own company if they weren\u2019t happy with his stance on in-office work. So naturally, founders came to his comment section to let him know they already do\u2014and that their remote-first firms are thriving.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing this while my team helps me run a successful company from their beds or the beach, in different continents,\u201d one user\u2014who says she runs her own company with an entirely remote, women-only team\u2014commented.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo clocking in. No permission slips\u2026 I give them paid leave for periods because day two under fluorescent lighting is not it,\u201d she said. \u201cDaycares for their kids are covered too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI do in fact run my own company. My employees are all remote and incredibly hardworking,\u201d another user added.<\/p>\n
Others pointed to Fund Launches\u2019 3.1-star Glassdoor rating as evidence that not everyone who works for the company is as happy as Pennington is with its in-office policy and company culture.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, remote workers took to the comments to argue how much more productive they are from home and that Pennington\u2019s take has \u201cmicromanager written all over\u201d it.<\/p>\n
But Pennington pushed back, telling Fortune that in-office working is beneficial for both workers and company culture. <\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially post-COVID, many young people want to work on something compelling, with people who work hard and build something fun together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the culture we\u2019ve built at Fund Launch, and it\u2019s a cascading effect. It\u2019s energizing, fun, and exciting to work with great people on really hard problems, especially when you know you have upside in the company you\u2019re building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Workers and their bosses have very different definitions of productivity<\/p>\n
As Pennington points out, he believes workers are less productive at home, not because of their output levels, but because he sees them having time to run errands. Whether or not his 30% figure holds up, he\u2019s put his finger on a tension that isn\u2019t going away: workers and employers genuinely cannot agree on what a productive day actually looks like.<\/p>\n
Research has shown\u00a0that only 25% of workers\u00a0measure their productivity in any formal sense\u2014meaning most people rely on something far more subjective, like ticking off a to-do list or simply feeling done for the day.<\/p>\n
A key way many workers say they measure productivity is by being able to get their stuff done \u201cwithout roadbacks\u201d\u2014something which the office is full of: The impromptu desk chats, the colleague who needs five minutes that turns into forty-five, the back-to-back meetings that could have been an email.<\/p>\n
And yet Pennington describes being able to quickly tap a colleague on the shoulder as one of the biggest draws to working in an office.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn person is such an advantage,\u201d he said, while pointing to two young hires who are sitting in an open-plan office where you can overhear every conversation. \u201cThese guys all get to learn and be like around those people,\u201d he added. \u201cWhen you work in person, you can walk around and talk to people and get stuff done and just get things moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ironically, those same spontaneous interactions are precisely what remote workers cite as their biggest productivity drain when they\u2019re in an office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because while visibility may feel more productive for a manager\u2014being able to see who\u2019s at their desk, loop someone in on the spot, get a quick update in passing\u2014for the individual contributor doing the actual work, those micro-interruptions compound, leaving them with less time to do their actual job.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s why workers and their employers may never see eye to eye on what constitutes a day well spent at work.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Remote employees may argue they\u2019re more productive because they can do their jobs two hours faster, sans distractions, than if they were in an office\u2014leaving them extra time for life admin. To them, that\u2019s proof of efficiency. But to their boss, it may look like two hours they weren\u2019t working.<\/p>\n
#CEO #works #home #grabbing #groceries #vet #time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just when you thought the dust had settled on the return-to-office wars, one startup founder…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[1995,585,961,580,13879,13880,232,6668,3921,1693,1628,5372,14,2997,967,2790,2605],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}