Stress test

WORK • Office Life

This bit from Andreessen Horowitz general partner David Ulevitch in Feed Me last week has been taking up some space in my head:

My observation as a board member in a lot of companies is that the entirely-remote teams always seem way more stressed out. Commitment to work tends to also fall off when the only work dynamic is toiling away alone and then being on zoom for meetings — no laughing at jokes during lunch, or taking a walk around the office with coworkers to brainstorm. Offsites help, but aren’t everything. 

Mostly, I’ve decided that companies that have raised venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz are probably not the best sample set for measuring employee stress. And that the presence of board members from Andreessen Horowitz may be tipping the scales.

Secondarily, office jokes are overrated (and often better on Slack). Though at my last company, also fully remote, we did end the weekly all-hands with a joke. Everybody laughed (maybe performatively!).

That said, I do worry about the unseen, slow-burn risk of a single door separating my work from my life. So far, the studies seem mixed, which makes sense, given how early in this experiment we are and how complicated the re-imagining of the workplace is. But I’ve been fully remote for almost a decade, with less stress I think, but also probably less connection outside these work-home walls. 

For FOUND, now publishing in four markets five times a week, the results of our efforts are mostly on the page, easier to track maybe than a software business building toward a big product release. Those four markets (FOUND NY, LA, SF, Miami) also make remote infrastructure more central to the mission than a forced, physical HQ.

It also looks good in the budget and saves us those painful early discussions of whether we can commit to a 10-year lease or splurge on the good desk chairs. Maybe we’d feel differently if we had that sweet A16Z cash. –Josh Albertson