Buzzy Silicon Valley tech startups have offered everything from ball pit slides to free nicotine pouches to keep workers happy – and now they’re telling staffers to leave their shoes at the door.
No-shoes policies are on the rise across offices dominated by younger workers, where employers hope fuzzy socks and slippers on carpeted floors will foster a stress-free workplace. That’s even as many of them enforce a “996” culture, where staffers can work grueling hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week.
“I’ve only worked at startups that have a no-shoes in office policy,” Ben Lang, an employee at start-up Cursor, wrote in a post on X in August.
Lang runs his own website, noshoes.fun, that lists about 20 offices with shoes-off policies, including several AI firms like Replo and Composite.
Spur CEO Sneha Sivakumar – who grew up in an Indian family in Singapore and often took her shoes off in homes and temples – said her AI firm offers Spur-branded slides for employees and guests to wear inside the Manhattan office.
The policy “makes it feel like a second home” for her 10 employees and “disarms you in a positive way,” Sivakumar told the New York Times.
Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist and work culture expert, told the Times that the shoes-off policy is partly “the pajama economy in action” as remote workers are forced back to the office – and bring some of their work-from-home tendencies with them.
But it’s also consistent with Silicon Valley’s demanding work culture. If you’re at work for 12 hours a day, “you might as well wear your slippers in the office as you’re not getting to wear them at home,” Bloom said.
The trend is also largely dominated by young workers, and is unlikely to catch on in workplaces with a wider array of staffers, he said.
“Young people have great feet,” he said. “Old people don’t.”
Yuxin Zhu, co-founder of software startup Replo, told the San Francisco Standard he was aiming for a “homey, living-room feel” at the firm’s Market Street Office.
Six oversized beanbags are arranged in a circle near the front door, and there’s a bookshelf piled high with board games and an 85-inch TV where employees can play video games, according to the report.
“We thought, ‘OK, we can treat this as a house of sorts,’” Zhu said. “You don’t walk into someone’s house with shoes on.”
Not everyone is such a fan of the shoes-off trend.
“I hope they invest in air fresheners,” one user quipped in a post on X, responding to a list of offices with such policies.
“Just saw something on tv where they said the new hot trend is ‘no shoes worn in the office,’” another user wrote online. “Hell no. You don’t want to wear shoes, don’t come into the office.”
Another user suggested that places with a no-shoes rule “must provide slippers that are regularly washed.”
“Everyone hears the horror story of the one person they worked with who has, like, smelly feet, or someone who has their bare feet up on the desk,” Zhu, who opted for white hotel slippers, told the San Francisco Standard.
“It’s just a matter of someone f—ing it up for it to go away.”
Some companies claimed they implemented a no-shoes policy to keep the office cleaner.
“At first we had shoes in the office, but when it rained, it immediately became really muddy and gross,” Brooke Hopkins, founder of Coval, which makes simulations of AI agents, told the San Francisco Standard.
“We decided on shoeless because it kept everything cleaner and nicer.”
The Silicon Valley trend has made its way overseas, though, appearing in UK start-up offices.
“Offices are, by their very nature, stressful environments,” said Natalie James, who introduced a sock-only policy at her skincare start-up helloSKIN last year, according to the Guardian.
“If a little thing like taking off your shoes makes you feel more comfortable – and thus be more creative – then that’s a no-brainer.”
James emphasized the policy has some strict rules, like no bare feet, clean socks only with no holes and that shoes must be worn in the kitchens and bathrooms.
Andy Hague, chief executive of British firm Tech West Midlands, who is neurodiverse, said going shoeless in the office makes it easier for him to focus and that “people stop noticing after a day or two.”
