Tech startups have a new pitch for employees: write code from home, and join colleagues a few times a year on a beach in Panama or ranch in Montana.
As the world reopens, many startups are choosing to keep their workforce remote. Their employees may not want to resume tedious commutes or rigid office schedules, but many still yearn for the deeper relationships with colleagues that used to be formed in the office.
Some startup CEOs say they are crafting frequent and elaborate all-employee trips that are strictly for fun. It’s a spin on the old “off-site,” when offices gathered somewhere outside the corporate campus to hear about company goals and make plans to improve sales performance, capped off by some wining and dining.
In the new model, PowerPoint presentations in hotel conference rooms are replaced by more enjoyable endeavors: mountain biking in Colorado, swimming with dolphins in Mexico and dancing the tango in Argentina.
Oleg Rogynskyy’s business-software company, People.ai Inc., shed its headquarters in San Francisco, closed most of its satellite offices and scrapped plans for another office in London to go permanently remote during the pandemic. He is taking 85% of his 2019 real-estate lease budget and investing it in employee perks, including one trip for the full staff of more than 200 and four trips that employees will take in smaller teams.
