In tech hubs like San Francisco, it’s increasingly rare to find a job that allows you to work from home most of the week. But at $12 billion Docusign, that’s still the case — in fact, no one is required to come into the office on Friday.
Allan Thygesen, CEO of Protocol Management Platform, was interviewed wealth from the company’s London office as part of a global tour.
The company has grown exponentially during the pandemic—up 60% when the business world went remote and contracts had to be signed virtually.
But when the world returns to “normal,” Thygesen, a father of four who was born and raised in Denmark, hopes to retain some of the benefits of the pandemic, namely more flexible working patterns.
As a result, the company laid off most of its office buildings — half a floor in San Francisco and Seattle — and asked its nearly 7,000 employees to Switch to two days a week: Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday.
Although the office was open, no one was asked to come in Friday.
“I would say we are very lax in our enforcement,” he added.
“I don’t think we’re going to introduce any draconian measures, and I think even relative to the Bay Area and the Seattle area, which are both very tech-heavy areas and the last bastions of fully flexible work rules, We’re being very flexible and very light on requirements.
Thygeson’s laid-back attitude differs from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who despite saying in 2020 that half his staff would be remote by 2030, is now enforcing a three-day-a-week office policy or risk discipline .
Amazon has made similar demands, sparking a degree of backlash within the company, while Google’s plan to combine office attendance with performance reviews has been met with anger from unions.
“Any time you change these types of rules, people are going to hate it because, of course, employees want maximum flexibility. It’s good for their personal lives,” he said.
“So there’s a balance between what the company needs and what employees think is good for them. I do think people are starting to understand that fully remote working is a good thing right now, but it can be detrimental to your long-term career, especially It’s early in your career.
Thygeson said he sometimes went to the office on the weekends, but joked it was a “lonely” experience.
However, the tech boss’s most “intense” meeting of the week – the product strategy review – always takes place online, with every contributor participating virtually.
“These were very intense, very good meetings, and there was no particular reason why we needed to be in the same place,” Thygeson said.
Thygeson’s meetings have become more intense this year after Docusign launched its new Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM), which will use artificial intelligence to more seamlessly create, integrate and analyze agreements and documents.
European and American ambitions
Nikolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, noted that Americans work harder than their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic.
Tangen told reporters there was a difference in “the overall level of ambition.” Financial Times. “us [Europeans] Not very ambitious. I should be cautious about talking about work-life balance, but Americans just work harder.
Docusign’s Thygeson, an alumnus of Stanford University and the University of Copenhagen who now runs teams in offices including India, Australia, the United States, France, Germany and Japan, has seen firsthand how different regions operate.
He agrees that Tangen’s view is “objectively correct”, but there are certain limitations: “The meaning of work is not how many hours you work. I think my European team works very smartly, they are very efficient, and the work is often More organized.
Based on the data, Thygeson and Tangen are right.
According to EU data, by 2022, people aged 22 to 65 will work an average of 37.5 hours per week.
The longest working weeks were recorded in Greece – 41 hours per week – and Poland – 40.4 hours per week.
In comparison, the Netherlands has the shortest working week at 33.2 hours, followed by Germany at 35.3 hours.
Meanwhile, the latest updated data from the International Labor Organization in January shows that the average working hours of American workers is 38 hours per week.
However, 13% of these employees work 49 hours or more per week, more than in most European countries.
Countries such as the UK also have a statutory requirement that if you are a full-time employee, employees are entitled to 28 days of paid leave per year.
In the United States, employees are not legally required to take paid time off; however, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employees in their first year of work take an average of 8 PTO days.
Thygeson is also quick to point out that neither country is taking the wrong approach, they just have different priorities.
“These are conscious choices society makes when it comes to trade-offs between work and leisure time—and maybe Americans are not necessarily happier,” he explains.
“They’re certainly wealthier, and the gap has probably widened further over the past decade, but life is the overall sum of all those things, so having spent time on both sides, I see the merits of both.”
Thygeson has a point, too. The “World Happiness Report 2024” released in March found that 4 of the top 5 happiest countries in the world are European countries, and 14 of the top 20 are from the European continent.
Meanwhile, the United States fell to its lowest point since the report began in 2012, ranking 23rd.
Is Elon right about San Francisco?
Docusign is based in San Francisco, and its employees are likely to be part of a community of tech employees railing against the city’s rising crime and homelessness.
But criticism from Musk and others may distort the reality in which Thygeson, his family and employees live.
Tesla CEO said last year the city was in a “doom spiral” put on label Downtown San Francisco is a “disaster” and likens it to an “abandoned zombie apocalypse.”
Three of Thygeson’s four children live in the Bay Area, and the former Google president added a milder assessment than Musk: “San Francisco has always had pockets of poverty and homelessness — I do think the area is significantly bigger now and unfortunately the people there are worse off.
“It’s not a good situation, it’s not good for the city, it’s not good for the people who live there, it’s not good for the people who live on the streets.”
This is a West Coast problem, although San Francisco has become the “poster child” for the problem.
“Our offices are far away from these areas,” Thygeson said. [in San Francisco]so I don’t think anyone has any concerns about entering or using public or private transport.
“We’re actually closer to the problem areas in Seattle where there are some issues because there are minor safety issues and the discomfort there is worse. It’s an epidemic in a lot of cities.
