According to the New York Times, the “no shoes” movement has taken hold in startups, with businesses encouraging employees to leave their kicks at the door. Ben Lang, an employee at the shameless AI coding company Cursor, launched a website called Noshoes.fun, which tracks options for potential employees who like to give their toes some fresh air. The list includes digital workspace maker Notion, payroll company Gusto, mobile games developer Supercell, and several AI-focused startups like Replicate and Rhyme Labs.
Now, whether hanging out with others shamelessly actually makes your work day more relaxed is probably a matter of personal preference. But the idea behind it, according to the Times, is to allow employees who are furloughed to return to work with the same comfort they once had while working from home. This is obviously partly because the workforce in these offices is younger, and these companies are trying to figure out what Gen Z really wants.
Elsewhere, they are moving less toward the regenerative and more toward the degenerate. According to the Wall Street Journal, some startups have started filling snack bars with zine and other nicotine pouches. Palantir – the Trump-aligned, war-pro-crime surveillance tech company run by CEO Alex Karp – has clearly been on the front lines of this push, perhaps because a hit from the pouch is the only thing that allows its employees to cool off after introducing a new update to improve the efficacy of assassination drones.
At this point, there is general confusion in corporate America about how to accommodate a younger group that typically expects more from their employers than previous generations. Executives have labeled Gen Z as things like “disciplined,” “entitled,” and “lazy” — though clearly, every generation goes through this stigma as they enter the workforce.
But the cultural divide appears to be as wide as ever. According to a report from CBS News, some companies are even moving to send their Gen Z employees to etiquette classes so they can learn how to behave in mixed company settings like the office.
Interpreted as friendly as possible, this trend is an effort to help Gen Z catch up on some of the lessons it may have missed due to the global pandemic stealing a portion of its socialization period. Taken a little less generously, these corporate entities are trying to foster a generation of people who have higher expectations of work-life balance, better boundaries around their time and effort, and demand more respect from their bosses in order to conform to an industry that elevates work over everything else. Given this, it’s hard to imagine that letting people stand at the water cooler in socks and slippers will win over people.
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