The CEO of Dropbox says that going to the office for work is from the past, slams-off-office commands
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston Call Office-First Work Model Old. They believe that remote work and AI-operated workflows are the future of productivity.
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In short
- Drew Houston says that the office work is old at the age of AI
- Dropbox announces permanent work for employees before epidemic
- The virtual-first model of the company allows employees to work from home for 90 percent time
While Dropbox CEO Draw Houston believes Dropbox CEO Draw Houston believes that office-based work is now an old and impractical practice in AI and distant cooperation age. On Wednesday released in a new episode of Fortune’s “Leadership Next” podcast, Houston forced employees to bring back the remains of a past era to bring back to offices.
Houston said, “The world is different.” “Forcing people back to office is probably like trying to bring people back to the mall and movie theater. Nothing is wrong with the movie theater, but it’s now a different world.”
In particular, the dropbox was one of the first technical companies to fully adopt distance work during epidemic. It announced in 2020 that the company was shifting to a “virtual-first” model. Since then, the company has doubled its trust in distributed work. Dropbox believes that when remote work is done correct, it is not only viable, but can be more productive and empowered for teams. Under their current 90/10 rule, dropbox employees work from 90 percent of the year and sometimes meet the person for team events.
In the podcast, Houston also said how office mandate often causes disabilities. He said, “We can be much less dumb than bringing people back to the car three days a week or whatever it is, literally to come back to the same zoom meeting they were at home. There is a better way to do so,” he said.
Houston also emphasizes the fact that a remote environment requires more digitally to copy the office to plan a work for a distant environment. He said that it demands reconsideration of workflows and smart use of technology.
Houston shared an example of a dash, stating how AI equipment can reduce day-to-day friction, help in recovery of knowledge and work coordination. He said, “The manual way of auditing your calendar is annoying about this because it seems that a person will have to do this? These are the most automatic things.
The CEO of Dropbox also argued that in the coming years, AI and automation would play an important role in making the distributed work more effective.
“We are going to find all kinds of methods from getting the necessary information on work, really to help you work,” he said.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time the CEO of Dropbox has spoken in favor of remote working. In an 2023 interview, Houston revealed that the company’s initial decision to adopt virtual-first transition successfully transformed into a distance work policy. In an interview in 2023, he said, “You need a separate social contract and let the control go.” “But if you rely on people and behave them like adults, they will behave like adults. Faith in monitoring.”
