[tempsy]

It seems like a good product, though I always get very uneasy by companies that have extreme company cultures. If you work there, you can’t wear shoes in the office (to give the feeling of being at home?) and apparently you need to change your LinkedIn headline to say you “Empower” X or Y. I feel like every blog post I’ve ever seen from this company is about their “mission-driven culture.”

Can we go back to a time where employees aren’t asked to be 100% emotionally attached to their work, in ways like this that are clearly made more extreme by the company itself?

[stevekemp]

In Finland it is common for people to remove shoes indoors - I guess walking through slush/ice/snow in winters makes that a good habit - and that often extends to company-offices.

Of course outside there it would seem a little odd to many, I'm sure. Though sliding around polished floor, in your socks? Never gets old. Maybe I'm just a child..

[filoleg]

Interesting observation.

When I lived in a city in the US that had regular snow and ice, floors inside of the buildings were never slushy/dirty, despite everyone wearing the same shoes inside and outside (businesses only, inside my house I always take them off no matter the time of the year).

However, back when I lived in Russia, we had to bring an indoor pair of shoes to get changed into, as everything would be covered in a layer of outside of dirt otherwise.

I honestly have no idea why that was happening, but I wanted to make a point that both you and OP can certainly be correct on that one at the same time.

[tempsy]

This is in SF and I assure you no other company does this.

[bennylope]

Given SF's reputation for feces-free streets this does seem rather odd.

[jamiequint]

Our company does it too and I thought it was weird at first but now I love it.

[cosmodisk]

Lithuanian here.Most people would kick you out if you wouldn't take your shoes upon entering their homes. However I'm yet to see an office where people would walk shoeless( to have more comfortable footwear for office use only is acceptable,but no slippers).. Also carpets or carpet flooring isn't something one would normally would see in an office,as opposed to, let's say Britain.Most offices have either tiles,laminate or some other, easy to clean surface. During Autumn or winter,people do clean their shoes well enough before entering premises,so no snow or water is brought to the office,as not doing so is a big no no and is frown upon in most cases.

[SilasX]

Right, but it's not weird there when everyone does it. This would be analogous to a "Change the world" company in Finland requiring everyone to walk around in the office in their full snow shoes.

[baxtr]

One of my colleagues wears only happy socks during Winter, no shoes. It’s great because there always something to talk about whenever people bump into him.

[cosmodisk]

I do have a set of black socks with weekdays written on them. I usually grab a random pair in the morning and go to work.I did have quite a few comments that I'm not wearing the right socks for the day,i.e. Friday socks on Tuesday,etc.:)

[atlasunshrugged]

Also common in Estonia apparently, although they may have stolen that from you Finns!

[airstrike]

I once almost worked at a beer company where they would literally ask you on your interview which was your favorite beer. This was a mass-produced, cheap lager like Budweiser, so clearly it could not be anyone's favorite beer... but apparently if you didn't say their product was the best you couldn't get a job there.

I straight up lied in my interview and accepted the eventual job offer, only to renege on it after getting an offer from another company literally halfway through my first day on the job...

[rootsudo]

Literally drinking the kool-aid.

[arkitaip]

Maybe what they were really testing was your willingness to lie for the sake of "culture"?

[evgenyp]

The question is fairly bad, but reneging on the offer on your first day on the job isn't all peachy either.

Perhaps it would've been better to hold off on accepting until you have had the responses from every potential employer (Source: have had people not show up on their first day of work way too often)

[DidISayTooMuch]

This is exactly my feeling. Gusto just comes across as a nauseatingly virtue-signaling company (another is Lyft which I found out when I interviewed with them).

I read an interview somewhere by Joshua Reeves, and he seemed to answer every question like he was Tony Robbins or some top-level guru. Dude, I don't want your life advice, tell me how to run a profitable company.

Silicon Valley tech is overtaken by this need to project wokeness. That's one big reason I wanna leave this place and work for a more blue-collar tech place. Don't know where that exists.

(I am non-white, and an immigrant, so don't be quick to accuse me of extremist views)

[drstewart]

>That's one big reason I wanna leave this place and work for a more blue-collar tech place

I'm guessing you'll quickly find that a "blue-collar tech place" isn't quite the panacea you expect. There's a reason no one in Silicon Valley pines for traditional corporate culture. Because it sucks really bad. Putting up with some faux-wokeness is a small price to pay to get away from it.

[tempsy]

Personally if I had to choose the tech equivalent of a "blue-collar" company I'd want to work at it'd be Costco.

Pay above average with good benefits, no uniforms (white collar equivalent of the uniform is in-your-face "culture"), no frills, no BS.

[DidISayTooMuch]

Partially agree. I have no inclination to work for IBM or corporate software. Just wanna work for a startup where I can crack non PC jokes. Where the company hires for competence and not because they wanna show off that they hire 50% women.

I think the Valley was like this 10 years ago.

[ketzo]

I feel like there's a big gap between "our mission is to save the word with payroll software"-esque virtue signalling, and a "PC" culture. 99% of the time, "politically correct" === "polite and respectful of boundaries."

[DidISayTooMuch]

Sorry, I am all for basic courtesy and niceties. But PC culture means not tolerating debate, not open to challenging ideas. It's dogma.

[ketzo]

Well, okay, one example of PC culture is sensitivity towards microaggressions. Based on your previous comment, you're probably already rolling your eyes, but bear with me. Microaggressions are usually (and very broadly) defined as actions which unintentionally marginalize people. These actions are almost never noticed by the person at fault -- that's what makes them "micro." Examples include things like calling a black colleague "aggressive" when they're arguing -- that particular language has been applied to black people for a long, long time to cast them as violent or criminal, and thus comes across differently than when applied to a white person.

Anyway, I list that as an example because what you're talking about isn't actually an example of political correctness (which is, again, a shitty term for basic respect and awareness of social context). Humans like black-and-white issues. It's really nice for us to be able to put things in boxes. So when we perceive someone's action in a certain way, our gut instinct is to cast that entire person as that way. Do people sometimes take someone's rudeness (even if accidental) and brand them a racist, discarding all of their opinions? Absolutely. Do some of my family members hear that I voted for Hillary and decide that none of my opinions have value? Also certainly. Humans are dogmatic. "Political correctness" is an umbrella term for cultural sensitivity, and can (like any idea) be applied dogmatically. It is not fundamentally dogmatic.

[opportune]

>non PC jokes

Why would you want to do this at work? No well-run place will allow this because it makes for a hostile work environment.

You have roughly 128 hr/week outside of work to do those things

[DidISayTooMuch]

You are right. But I'm also spending 40 hours a week at work. It's not that I wanna make lewd jokes all the time. It's just that, I wanna feel that if I say something that isn't appropriate, I don't' wanna be excoriated. I have a darker sense of humor and so I don't wanna feel like I'm walking on eggshells.

[jagannathtech]

No place like that anymore

[mosdl]

If you think that is a valley only thing you are highly mistaken. Its actually worse in other tech areas like Austin.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Can we go back to a time where employees aren’t asked to be 100% emotionally attached to their work

When was this? Post-War corporations sported a common uniform. Industrial Era culture was demandingly monotonous and before that we’re talking about guilds and their customs.

Broadly speaking, there are benefits at multiple levels to having a cohesive company culture (including eclectic traditions). We’re just seeing more variety in those traditions.

[hollerith]

When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my dad took my brother and me to his workplace sometimes on Saturdays. There I interacted with machinists, electronics techs and at least one engineer. Also my dad was an engineering manager.

It was definitely common and acceptable for the machinists, techs, engineers and manager to say that they would rather be doing something else than working or that they would rather have a job more glamorous than working with machines and pieces of steel. In other words, back then, you had to do your job or risk getting fired, but AFAICT there was no risk to admitting that you didn't like doing your job. In fact, if you went around telling people you really liked your job, my guess is you probably would've been viewed as at least slightly socially inept for being unwilling to engage in the small rituals that lubricated social interactions -- or more precisely for getting one of the common rituals backwards.

This was at a large machine-tool manufacturer in Massachusetts. In something I read or heard IIIRC, this manufacturer was referred to as the IBM of machine tools. The owner of a motorcycle store (which employed many motorcycle mechanics) revealed in conversation with me that he considered being a machinist at this employer to be a particularly good job.

In contrast, does anyone reading this doubt that nowadays if a programmer in Silicon Valley tells his boss that he/she doesn't like his job or doesn't like working as a programmer, he/she risks getting fired unless he/she knows his/her boss at least reasonably well?

[cosmodisk]

For most of the time I really do love my job but even in the senior management meetings I'm very open about the fact that I'd drop it all at once and would do something completely different if there was no need to earn for living. Everyone is cool about it because the head of sales would rather play golf,one CEO would probably spend even more time traveling the world while the other would probably spend even more time playing FPS. Maybe I just happen to work where people don't drink their own kool-aid..

[walshemj]

I am not surprised some very skilled blue collar heavy engineering jobs could be very lucrative.

One example is "suddenly working to rule" just before a major delivery and getting paid back handers off the books for example. This is an example told to me by a hr/ir professional who came from Clydeside

[castlecrasher2]

Conversely, I've heard stories of car manufacturer workers keying cars of other employees who drove in cars of other brands. Not every company nowadays is nutty, but then again, it happened back in the day, too.

[ojeggplant]

You can wear your shoes in the Gusto office. A good number of us do; in fact I'm doing so right now. I think it's more that you have the option and encouragement to walk around freely without shoes, whereas other offices would probably frown on you for going into a meeting with just socks.

[philsnow]

Some employees wear their SF street shoes in the office, and they still encourage other employees to not wear them?

One of the reasons I never applied at Gusto is that I didn't want to take off my shoes. The floor is a commons, and it only takes one person walking around with shoes on to turn it from a "no shoes floor" to a "shoes floor".

[ojeggplant]

Of the people who take off their shoes, 99% of them wear slippers or indoor shoes of some sort. The rest who wear socks don't seem to care about the floor either way. As a sidenote, shoe policy is a really terrible barometer for whether or not to apply to a company, regardless of how little it may have influenced your decision. I can't imagine you actually took it into consideration.

[philsnow]

> shoe policy is a really terrible barometer for whether or not to apply to a company

Any kind of behavior that gives me the feeling of kool-aid drinking or brainwashing is absolutely a red flag.

The way you describe it (not enforced in any way, not even through peer pressure) is very different from the way I had always read about it (fairly absolutist and you won't be allowed in the building if you don't remove your shoes). If I had heard about it that way, you're right, I would not take it into consideration.

Unfortunately I don't have citations handy for the absolutist version of the policy that I had read about.

[ojeggplant]

I'd say every company does kool-aid drinking or "brainwashing" (kind of a strong way of putting it IMO) of some sort. I think most rational people don't take it too seriously, and engage at a minimal level when necessary. Do you have companies in mind that, in your opinion, don't raise any red flags for you in terms of kool-aid drinking?

And if you're still looking for a new job, feel free to consider us again! We promise you can keep your shoes on :)

[jmondi]

I know someone who works there for 3.5 years and going strong. I was curious about this, so I just went to look on LinkedIn, and they did not have the word "Empower" on their profile a single time. FWIW

[EVdotIO]

It's what cults do. I know this as being raised in scientology. You control their actions and thoughts.

[whalesalad]

Yikes. I hear ya brother. Was not raised in it, but my aunt owned a private 'applied scholastics' school and I was a student there for a few years. What a trip that was.

[tyre]

To be clear, no shoes in the office thing was started because the streets of SF are super dirty.

I hear you on the empower language. It’s always sounded a bit forced to me but I see what they’re going for. Managers should focus on helping their reports be successful rather than getting into management because they want power or status or whatever. Which isn’t to say that renaming titles with fix that, but it is one small communication of what’s important to leadership.

[paulddraper]

Dirty?

How are the streets so dirty you can't wear shoes inside commercial building?

[tuxxy]

They're not. People in SF act like SF streets are literally shit stained all over. In all likelihood, it's probably pretty comfortable to not wear shoes in an office haha.

[tyre]

I'm not sure if you're in SF or, if so, where you live/work but having lived in SOMA and the Mission, I regularly see people peeing and defecating on the street. Happened last week on the same block as Tartine, so this isn't some "bad part of town" thing either. Whole blocks regularly smell like urine. Actually this happened yesterday, I was walking right near the Asian Art Museum.

SF is not a clean city. Streets don't have to be 100% shit stained to think that maybe taking off your shoes before coming into the office is a not-so-bad idea.

[nosequel]

They kind of are though, https://www.openthebooks.com/map/?Map=32504&MapType=Pin&Zip=...

[markkanof]

Well for one the city has become known for the volume of human feces found on the streets.

[Sodman]

I'm fine with this as long as they're clear about it up-front.

If every employee is emotionally invested in the company you can imagine that they don't want to hire new folks that aren't - there would be huge culture clashes. Some people live to work, even if it's not for their own company. Why not let them all work with each other?

I've found it's only a problem when companies promise "Work-life balance is a priority" then on the first day you notice everyone's there at 8pm. At least if they're up-front about it you know what you're getting in to and can adjust expectations in terms of both time commitment and salary accordingly.

[eeeeeeeeeeeee]

Wait, the “no shoes” thing is mandatory? I remember reading about it, but thought it was optional. Still creepy.

Either way, like you said, I wouldn’t work for them for the same reason — obsessive company culture, which indicates a poor work/life balance. They clearly want the kool-aid drinkers.

[bberenberg]

Source?

[eshyong]

https://www.businessinsider.com/gusto-headquarters-office-to...

https://www.businessinsider.com/gusto-ceo-joshua-reeves-

[joegahona]

Do they expect you to use the office bathroom shoeless too? Gross.

[throwaway082729]

In the Bay Area where opportunities abound and switching jobs is easy, companies need a way to brainwash you and help you settle into a nice cocoon so that employees don't consider leaving. If it feels like a job, any job is fine. If it feels like home or like a family, you wouldn't want to leave, would you? Companies without a strong culture or with a traditional culture experience a high rate of attrition at the hint of the slightest bad news.