“Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed,” Nothing CEO Carl Pei said in an email to staff.
Nothing, a British startup seeking to challenge Apple’s smartphone dominance, is hauling its employees back to the office full-time in the quest for growth.
In a lengthy email disparaging remote work, which had been a tenet of Nothing CEO Carl Pei’s workplace policy since its creation four years ago, Pei explained why his 450 employees needed to come to the office five days a week.
“Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed,” Pei said in an email to staff, which he shared on LinkedIn.
Pei gave three reasons for the strict return-to-office mandate. First, he said, the logistics of developing a smartphone, where design, engineering, and manufacturing departments collaborate, weren’t conducive to remote working.
He added that creativity and innovation worked better in person, allowing the company to do more with fewer resources.
Third, Pei said Nothing’s ambitions to scale to become a “generation-defining company” wouldn’t be achievable with remote work.
According to Pei’s email, the new mandate will take effect in two months, and he intends to hold a town hall in London to answer employees’ questions.
In his email, the Nothing CEO also suggested that employees who could not commit to five days in the office look for other employment.
“We know it’s not the right type of setup for everybody, and that’s okay. We should look for a mutual fit. You should find an environment where you thrive, and we need to find people who want to go the full mile with us in the decades ahead.”
Pei’s move reflects a growing trend in the tech sector of bosses opting to force their employees back into the office in search of growth as the market tightens.
Nothing’s competitor, Apple, has a strict three-days-per-week in-office mandate. Last year, tech newsletter Platformer reported that Apple was disciplining employees who didn’t follow the rule, identified through badge tapping.
Some departments reportedly threatened their employees with termination if they didn’t make it in three days a week.
Meanwhile, tech giant Nvidia has skipped the return-to-office craze, indicating it is satisfied with a remote-work setup at a time when its market valuation has soared to more than $3 trillion.
Founded at the height of the pandemic in 2020, Nothing was effectively remote when the company started operations before switching to hybrid in its main London office. While other offices have gone back to full-time office work, London has stayed hybrid until now.
Pei’s company had early solid success, securing $96 million in funding last year and selling 2.7 million units for nearly a billion dollars in revenue since its launch.
Many workers who signed for other companies during the pandemic have had their contracts guarantee they won’t be required to be in the office. However that is not an issue at Nothing, CEO Pei confirmed to Fortune.
”There are no contractual issues with enforcing 5 days in the office. Employees signed contracts stating their primary workplace is at Nothing’s office,” he said.
It’s also unknown how many of Nothing’s 450 employees live close to the office. Many professional workers bought homes outside London during the pandemic.
Opponents of a return to full-time in-office work argue it disadvantages working mothers, who are more likely to sacrifice their careers to carry out childcare responsibilities. Remote work has helped increase flexibility for this cohort.
Pei said there would be flexibility with the policy, though only for employees to leave the office to engage in face-to-face meetings.
“Some may be worried about flexibility, but this is no different from pre-COVID. This is a company for grownups, so if you need to be out of office to deal with some issues, we trust you to make the right decision. In fact, some roles like sales and PR need to be out of the office meeting with customers and press regularly.”
In his comment to Fortune, Pei said: “Flexibility accommodations will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.”
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Comments
> This is no different from pre-COVID.
There was no hybrid or remote work pre-COVID? On what planet was that?
I respect the desire to have an in-office company. He’s right, there’s nothing wrong with that. I have much less respect for hiring hundreds of people and then suddenly changing the rules, or for implying remote workers won’t “go the full mile” (whatever that is).
Pre-Covid, a quarter of my team was phoning in via zoom everyday. There was always someone that was sick, kid was sick, waiting for a plumber, didn’t want to deal with commute etc. There was always something. No one batted an eye.
Post-Covid, people act like remote work is some strange new thing.
Only thing that really brought people into the office was the free food. But I know that has been scaled back dramatically post Covid.
Companies have always picked the venue where their employees work. It’s really only in the last couple of years that certain employees have adopted the attitude that their company cannot tell them where to work for their company. You can certainly exercise your right to quit (at least in the US which is at will…even in Montana for the employees)
At the start of my career nearly 4 decades ago, I worked for a company that was 10 mins from my home. A year in they moved the location to a building almost 50 mins away. They literally asked no one in the company if this was ok by them…they basically said “The office is here now” and expected you to show up there. Reality is for some it was probably closer, but for others like me it was a worse commute.
By rand846633 2024-08-217:291 reply “Companies have always had this and that power therefore it’s justified” is a poor argument and has absolutely no justification power for the present. Picture this, a bit further in the past, during feudalism, workers aka serfs were bound to the land owned by a lord. They were required to work the land, pay rents, and provide other services to their lord. Serfs needed permission to marry, could not leave the land without consent, and had to submit to the lord’s court for any legal disputes.
So why arbitrarily draw the line 20 years in the past and not 400 years? Only. Because something used to be in a certainty way gives us no guidance if it should be in such a way.
By kcplate 2024-08-2114:28 Who arbitrarily drew the line at 20 years?
By dividedcomet 2024-08-2110:512 reply That’s plain false. For the last 10 years of my dads career he was remote full time because the technology was finally available. Your experience wasn’t universal and some people have grown up where it’s normal and expected for a parents office to be at home.
By notyourwork 2024-08-2113:591 reply I’d disagree and tell you that you fall into a minority. I’m fully supportive of remote but to suggest it’s normal implies some majority, or close to. That’s not been the case.
By AlotOfReading 2024-08-2114:502 reply According to this pre-covid article, up to 25% of US workers did "some or all" of their work from home [1]. That matches with my memories.
By kcplate 2024-08-2120:38 “Some or all” in that article is really “at least 1 day a week”. I would offer that in 2024, people would not consider 1 day a week at home (or even 2-3 days a week) a “remote work” position. We call that hybrid work nowadays.
So while this article says remote work was increasing, and I am sure it was incrementally in certain tech, marketing, and sales positions, I don’t think its a good example of remote work (as it is defined today) becoming a norm then.
Pre-covid, I worked around 1 day a week remote, but was in the office the other 4 or traveling for work. I believe I knew maybe 2 people in my social and business circles back then that I would define as having a “remote work” job (by our present definition).
By notyourwork 2024-08-2121:09 And that doesn't indicate its normal, it just suggests that at times people have lives outside of work.
By kcplate 2024-08-2114:27 Plain false? You are thinking that it might be normalizing for a certain class/type of work, but “plain false”, please.
By eVeechu7 2024-08-217:16 No. For me, since 2010 at least, it's been a negotiation in practice, if not in the written contract terms.
By mass_and_energy 2024-08-2113:271 reply This reeks of "I went through struggle xyz so your generation should have to as well."
What if WFH is the best way for a company to operate?
By kcplate 2024-08-2114:25 > What if WFH is the best way for a company to operate?
ok. What if the company’s leadership disagrees?
Also, this has nothing to do with any struggle. It’s about who gets to make the decision.
If you don’t want to work in an office, but the company leadership does…quit.
> allowing the company to do more with fewer resources
The "Do more with less" thing is usually an indicator a company is on track to become Nothing.
By srockets 2024-08-217:43 "Do more with less" is an admission that the current costs aren't sustained by the income generated, and that the executives have no idea how to fix that.
I wish that this simple truth would be mentioned more often, so less executives would make fools of themselves by saying such nonsense in public.
By mysterydip 2024-08-2111:40 Reminds me of an old quote:
We have done so much with so little for so long, that now we can do anything with nothing.
Completely disagree. There have been plenty of orgs achieving things looking somewhat impossible, and they're called startups.
By xingped 2024-08-214:22 The difference being startups start that way. The parent appears to be talking about established companies downsizing and expecting the remaining employees to shoulder extra work. The stock market may tend to temporarily love it, but more realistically it's usually an indicator of bad leadership or a downward turn or both for a company.
> Nothing was effectively remote when the company started operations
> It’s also unknown how many of Nothing’s 450 employees live close to the office. Many professional workers bought homes outside London during the pandemic.
Wow, harsh. I hope they pay well enough to compensate for that crazy policy.
By sunaookami 2024-08-2110:001 reply It's a way to do layoffs without announcing you are doing it.
By SebFender 2024-08-2112:06 100%
By guywithahat 2024-08-211:401 reply Do you mean you hope Nothing compensates the employees being let go for houses they bought?
If so, that’s not how any job has ever worked; they don’t pay for your house if you get let go
Well in a way yes. In most countries in Europe you're entitled to a significant lump sum when let go unless it's your fault e.g. negligence. Based on years worked.
The significant lump sump is often expressed in months of salary per years worked, which is not that much, compared to how much a house costs.
By Yeul 2024-08-2114:14 It's actually worse if you moved to the middle of nowhere for your job. But if you live in a city there are plenty of employment opportunities. Its what enabled them to become economic hubs.
The government in my country once tried to get companies to move to undeveloped regions. It was an unmitigated disaster. No homes, no infrastructure and if your employer goes bankrupt you're stuck in the boonies.
By wkat4242 2024-08-219:34 Well if one has worked there for 10 years or so, a year's salary in one go certainly helps a lot with a downpayment on a house!
Where I live in Spain we have to downpay 30% and a mortgage would generally be granted to about 3x the annual salary. So to get a third of that would be quite significant.
