Jeffrey Wang got his first tech job after college in 2019 and moved to San Francisco, hoping to network with people at the cutting edge of the industry.
Wang was working as a software engineer for Plaid, a fintech platform he’d had a summer internship at the previous year while studying computer science at Harvard.
He told Business Insider he took the job because he enjoyed the office culture during his internship. After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang, like many, was working entirely remotely.
In 2022, Wang quit because he wanted a work culture of in-person collaboration. He founded an AI startup in 2023 and told BI the majority of his 14 employees come in five days a week.
He said remote work is bad for junior staff
While working at Plaid, Wang said he liked the flexibility of managing his own time. But nine months into the pandemic, he was frustrated that he couldn’t network with others in tech.
He told BI that, as someone early in his tech career, he didn’t want to spend all his time on Zoom calls.
When he was allowed to return to the office in 2022, many of his colleagues were still working remotely. “Tech never fully returned to a state where most companies have an in-office five days a week culture,” he said.
Networking and building new skills remotely takes longer than it would in an office. “Remote work benefits people who are more stable in their career at the expense of people who are junior,” he said. BI has reported on multiple Gen Z employees who feel isolated and restricted by their remote working environment.
“If you’re a new grad and you’re starting a job and you just work a remote job, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot,” he said.
He said the pandemic work-life balance has gone too far
Wang told BI that he was pleased the pandemic had triggered a rethink about the role of work in people’s lives but thought that many of his millennial and Gen Z peers had taken it too far.
He said remote work was a big part of why fewer people view work as a meaningful source of purpose, “I think this factor of caring is really important and feeling a duty to what you work on.” It’s hard to buy into a company’s mission and feel connected to co-workers when it’s all on Zoom, he added.
While still remote working for Plaid, Wang traveled to Hawaii for four months. He enjoyed his lifestyle there but said he wasn’t prioritizing work.
Wang said people shouldn’t approach work like a check-box, “It’s a little sad to me for so many people to treat work like it’s something to get over with,” he said.
“What better thing can you do for yourself and for your own happiness and for your own life than to find work that you enjoy,” he said.
He quit his job and built his own in-office culture
Wang told BI he quit his job in March 2022 because he wanted to work with colleagues in person.
“People started companies in their garages, and they slept on their couches and grew things from there,” he said.
He said he realized the only way to build a culture where he could get what he wanted from his day-to-day was to start his own company. “Otherwise, even to this day, you’re basically stuck working a weird remote job.”
He co-founded Exa, an AI search engine, in January 2023. From the beginning, the company had a tight-knit culture that valued in-office work at its SF’s Mission neighborhood offices.
“We’re an AI research lab essentially,” he said. “There’s a lot to gain from collaborating and bouncing ideas.”
Wang said he doesn’t force his employees to RTO five days a week and supports people having a hybrid work pattern if they choose. But most of Exa’s 14 employees come into the office every day. He said they eat lunch and dinner together and regularly play soccer and other sports together in the nearby park.
“You should really love your coworkers,” he added.
Wang said half the office used to live together in a hacker house, and they’re good friends. “We all enjoy it,” he said. “We’re super loud at lunch. Everyone’s just having a good time and having very dynamic conversations.”
They regularly network with other AI startups who have their HQs nearby, including OpenAI, he said.
He said Amazon’s 5-day mandate makes sense
Wang said he thought Amazon’s mandate to require its corporate employees to come into the office five days a week was the right decision for most teams working at Amazon.
He acknowledged that some teams might work better in a remote environment, “But I think probably for most of the teams that exist out there at Amazon, I bet it’s the right decision. I think you need someone to just be hardo about that decision.”
“More companies need to do things like what Amazon is doing because frankly, most people who are working remotely in tech are not really, they’re mostly chilling out,” he added.
He told BI startups like Exa benefit from in-office work because they need to respond to quickly changing priorities and decisions. “We could have decided something in the morning, and then in the afternoon it’s changed,” he said.
The Gen Z founder said the debate over RTO mandates was surprising. He told BI, “Four or five years ago, this was the norm,” adding, “Why are we even thinking remote work is normal?” Sitting in your bedroom on Zoom for 30 hours a week is not normal, he said.
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