How to Make Work Fun Again

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How to Make Work Fun Again" from From the Ground Up

From the Ground Up, a podcast by Inc. Magazine, delves into the intricacies of building enjoyable and cohesive workplace cultures, especially in the evolving landscape of remote and hybrid work environments. In the episode titled "How to Make Work Fun Again," released on August 4, 2025, host Mike Hoffman moderates a panel featuring Shuman Ghosh Majander (Co-founder and CEO of AI cybersecurity startup Reckon), Ben Goodwin (Co-founder and CEO of prebiotic soda company Olipop), and Melissa Mash (Co-founder and CEO of fashion bag brand Dagne Dover). The discussion centers on fostering fun at work, maintaining company culture amidst growth, and navigating the challenges of a hybrid workforce.

1. Introduction to the Panel

The episode begins with Mike Hoffman introducing the panelists and setting the stage for a conversation about revitalizing workplace enjoyment and culture. He highlights the impact of the pandemic and the rise of remote work on organizational cohesion, emphasizing the need for strategies to keep employees engaged and connected.

[00:00] Josh Christensen: "Welcome to From the Ground Up. Today we have another panel from Inc's Founder House at South by Southwest..."

2. Building Company Culture in a Hybrid Environment

Melissa Mash kicks off the discussion by addressing how Dagne Dover maintains a strong company culture with a mix of remote and in-person employees. She emphasizes the importance of hiring for cultural fit over experience, ensuring that team members are collaborative and enjoy working together.

[02:43] Melissa Mash: "When we hire, we very much look for cultural fit almost above experience... It really helps build those relationships wherever people are based across the world."

Melissa highlights the role of leadership in fostering an environment where vulnerability and genuine interactions are encouraged, which in turn strengthens team bonds regardless of geographical locations.

3. Hiring for Culture Fit

The conversation shifts to the recruitment strategies of the panelists. Ben Goodwin shares Olipop’s impressive hiring process, noting the overwhelming interest in the company due to its clear mission and strong culture.

[03:36] Ben Goodwin: "Our people ops department tells me it's officially harder to become a professional NBA player than to get a job at Olipop..."

Ben describes Olipop's "strength-based culture," balancing high performance with treating employees as full humans. He cites research indicating that employees are most engaged when they feel they are making meaningful progress.

[04:03] Ben Goodwin: "Performance and the feeling of progress has been inherent to our growth pattern."

4. Balancing Performance and Humanity

Shuman Ghosh Majander draws from his experience at Google to discuss the significance of having a mission-driven culture. At Reckon, he ensures that every employee understands how their role contributes to the company's overarching mission of combating sophisticated cyber threats.

[06:25] Shuman Ghosh Majander: "If you pick an area where people derive meaning from the work every single day, then that's something you can build a lot of processes around."

Shuman underscores the manager's responsibility to articulate how individual roles align with the company's mission, fostering a sense of purpose and fulfillment among employees.

5. Avoiding Company Politics

The panel addresses the pitfalls of workplace politics and strategies to minimize their impact. Shuman emphasizes that "company culture is a function of the worst behavior you tolerate," advocating for public accountability to prevent the normalization of negative behaviors.

[15:36] Shuman Ghosh Majander: "Your company culture is a function of the worst behavior you tolerate."

Ben expands on this by explaining the importance of empowering employees to reject political behavior, thereby maintaining a healthy and collaborative work environment.

[20:11] Ben Goodwin: "We've built systems where our team ejects the wrong fits like an immune system response."

6. Facilitating Personal Relationships in Remote Work

Addressing the challenges of building personal relationships remotely, Shuman acknowledges that while remote work offers access to global talent, it lacks the personal interactions that foster deep connections among colleagues.

[25:18] Shuman Ghosh Majander: "There's no substitute for in-person interaction... Being able to have some type of in-person interaction is absolutely critical."

He advocates for a balanced approach, integrating remote work with purposeful in-person interactions centered around specific projects and team activities to enhance connectivity.

7. Adapting to Future Cultural Shifts in Workplaces

Looking ahead, Shuman predicts that future generations, such as Gen Alpha and Beta, will reshape workplace cultures with new communication tools like Discord. He encourages companies to anticipate these shifts and adapt proactively to stay competitive.

[28:05] Shuman Ghosh Majander: "Companies created by Generation Alpha and Beta are going to look very different from the companies of today..."

8. Examples of Fun at Work

To conclude, the panelists share personal anecdotes illustrating how they infuse fun into their workplaces. Shuman mentions team dinners, Ben recounts a lively end-of-year party where employees danced freely, and Melissa speaks of memorable company offsites celebrating milestones with activities that cater to diverse interests.

[29:09] Shuman Ghosh Majander: "We took the team out to a gourmet restaurant and that was fantastic."

[29:16] Ben Goodwin: "Our end of Year party last year was just top 10 life experience... a third of the company is straight up dancing on the couches and the tables."

[29:55] Melissa Mash: "Company off site... our 10-year anniversary in particular was just a huge blowout. It was beautiful. It was fun."

9. Conclusion

The episode wraps up with the panelists emphasizing that while remote work and hybrid models offer flexibility and access to broader talent pools, the essence of a vibrant and enjoyable workplace lies in intentional cultural practices, strong leadership, and fostering meaningful relationships among employees.

[30:07] Mike Hoffman: "It's interesting, right? People want to work when and how they want to work, but they also, there is a craving for us to be together for big moments."

From the Ground Up provides valuable insights for entrepreneurs and leaders aiming to cultivate workplaces where fun and productivity coexist, ensuring employee satisfaction and company success in a rapidly changing work environment.

Transcript

[Josh Christensen]

Brought to you by principal. You're the expert in what you do. Let our expertise round out yours. Retirement benefits, investments. I'm Josh Christensen, executive producer of Inc. Podcasts and welcome to from the Ground Up. Today we have another panel from inc's founder house at south by Southwest this past March, and this conversation is moderated by editor in chief Mike Hoffman. Mike spoke with Shuman gosimajunder, the co founder and CEO of AI cybersecurity startup Reckon, Ben Goodwin, co founder, CEO and formulator of the prebiotic soda Olipop, and Melissa Mash, co founder and CEO of fashion bag brand Dagny Dover. They discuss how to have fun at work again, plus how to manage building a cohesive company culture in a hybrid work schedule environment. Enjoy.

[Mike Hoffman]

So I'm Mike Hoffman Aaron, chief of inc. I'm really excited for this panel, which is sort of how to have fun at work again. You know, one of the things that we write about a lot at Inc. Is workplace culture and how to build a company where people are excited to come to work every day. And I think that we all know one of the things that's happened over the last couple of the years with the pandemic and the rise of remote work is sometimes the cultural cohesion of a company and an organization can be sort of tough to manage. And so we've got a great panel here to talk about how to do that and do that well. So on the end, I have Melissa Mesh of Dagny Dover, which is a great fashion bag brand. In the middle.

[Ben Goodwin]

Yep.

[Mike Hoffman]

Let's hear it from Melissa. In the middle we have Ben Goodwin, the founder of Olipop, the soda company. And right next to me, we have Shuman Ghosh Majander of Reckon, also a columnist at Inc. Magazine. He writes our popular Roadmap column. And Shuman's business is an AI cybersecurity company. So welcome, Shuman. So, and just like one little note, Ben, your company recently became a unicorn. Do I have that right?

[Ben Goodwin]

Yeah. Yes.

[Melissa Mash]

Yeah.

[Mike Hoffman]

Well, congratulations on that. So, Melissa, we'll start with you. You have a company. You have 200 employees. Do I have that right?

[Melissa Mash]

We have 60 employees.

[Mike Hoffman]

But that's 60 employees. And you are. Sorry, sorry. And you have many employees who are remote. So as you think about, like, building a cohes company culture with remote employees, but also creating something that's really tangible, a product. You have a store. Right. So people, like, see the brand and touch the brand. How do you think about creating a culture where everybody's sort of both on the same page? And having an enjoyable experience of work.

[Melissa Mash]

Absolutely. When we hire, we very much look for cultural fit almost above experience. And we want to make sure that people want to collaborate, that they want to get to know other members of the team and that they're down for a good time. So a lot of it really does come from in person interactions when we do gather at off sites and other company events. But honestly, it comes from leadership. Right. If you are comfortable in your own skin, if you are vulnerable, if you are putting yourself out there to get to know one another and bond over specific things, then it really helps build those relationships wherever people are based across the world.

[Ben Goodwin]

Yeah.

[Mike Hoffman]

And so, Ben, you also have a really strong culture. You have the 200 employees and you sort of pride yourself on building a culture that you describe as like a legendary culture. Can you talk about, like what that culture is and what effect it has on. On keeping people really engaged?

[Ben Goodwin]

I told you the legendary thing in confidence.

[Mike Hoffman]

It was on the record. On the record.

[Ben Goodwin]

Yeah. No, like I'm.

[Mike Hoffman]

We're.

[Ben Goodwin]

We're really, really lucky. So I mean, the proof is really in the pudding. We had almost 400,000 applications last year for something like 50 to 60 positions. And so it's officially. My people ops department tells me it's officially harder to become a professional NBA player than to get a job at Olipop, which is pretty cool. Some of that is because we are very visible about our mission. We're on the rocket ship that you described. But a lot of it does. Word has gotten out about the culture. I agree with everything Melissa said in terms of how the leader shows up is really important. I have some staff in the audience so they can tell you if they. If I show up like that, you.

[Mike Hoffman]

Guys will be up here later.

[Ben Goodwin]

Yeah, I mean, I do really try to make sure to like let the. My wall down as the most senior leader in the room at all times. But I also think it's, you know, we have a. We have something that I call a strength based culture. So you can have. Basically there's two false paths when it comes to culture, in my opinion. One is the command and control, autocratic performance only focused culture. And the other one is the kind of entitlement culture, which is ultra eq, but to the point where it's dysfunctional. We try to be right in the middle, so treat people like full humans. Just like we're trying to address the human need that society has that our product provides a solution for, but also make sure everybody understands that performance. And we like to do the right thing and to continuously grow and be super, super competitive, we have to perform like crazy. And so. And in the middle of that, actually you find that all of the workplace satisfaction and performance research shows that that's actually the sweet spot. There was a piece of research that's one of my favorite. It was something like 700 companies, 12,000 employees. They kept the journal every day for like two to three years. And they found that the meta analysis on when people were the most engaged and the most loyal to their business was when they were making progress. So they felt like they were making progress oftentimes against difficult work, but against work they found meaningful. And so, like, as humans, we're kind of wired to think, like, if I just hung out on the beach all the time, like, it'd be so sick. But like, actually the things that make people the happiest the longest are having meaningful work and then growing as people. And so we focus a lot on building the conditions for that at Olipop. And I think we have atypically high satisfaction rate, an atypically low turnover rate, and a really high connectivity to the mission of what we're doing.

[Mike Hoffman]

And so Schumann, Ben and Melissa have consumer oriented companies, and I think consumer brands, there are pros and cons to that in terms of building culture, but there is sort of an attraction to the brand that can bring someone in. Reckon has a brand, but obviously in technology it's sort of, it can be different. I'm curious, what do you think about when you think about creating a culture specifically for a technology company that again, sort of brings people in and gives people satisfaction and fulfillment at work?

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

This is something that I've thought about a lot in a few different contexts in my career. So early on, more than 20 years ago, I was part of the early days of Google. And Google had such a strong culture that was oriented around our mission that 20 years later, every Googler can pretty much still recite the mission statement to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. And I think that if you pick an area where people derive meaning from the work every single day, then that's something you can build a lot of processes around. So in the context of Reckon, in the context previously of SHAPE Security, we were fighting against the most sophisticated cybercriminals in the world. And now it's about how we can defend against AI that's being used by those cybercriminals to be able to attack our loved ones, our friends, our companies. And so even though it's not a consumer oriented company. People can feel a great deal of satisfaction associated with just how they tie into the overall mission of the company. But I think that there's an additional aspect there which is how does everyone's individual work tie into that mission? And so I think that it's a responsibility of every manager in a company to actually do a lot of talking to be able to explain to everyone how their particular job aids that mission. And if they can't articulate that, then maybe you have a different kind of problem in terms of what you have folks working on.

[Mike Hoffman]

Now, Melissa, you mentioned the importance of hiring and hiring for culture. Can you talk about how you do that at Dagne Dover?

[Melissa Mash]

Yeah, I mean, everyone has to like who they work with in order to build rapport and in order to do a good job together. You know, we hire people specifically who are not looking to be independent performers who might be competitive with one another or defending their own part of the business. We look for people who have had collaborative experiences in the past and that very much value that. Another thing is that our company really attracts people who love the fact that I have two other co founders. We're all, you know, it's a women founded brands, they love that. If you look at our marketing, it's extremely diverse. We show exactly what we stand for. We show our values and the events that we host at our store for consumers as well as for others, et cetera. So so many of them are driven by those values and feel so intrinsically motivated by them and really bonding with them through the interviewing process. Not only of course about their backgrounds and about why they would be a good fit for our company, but really about the why, why, why us? You can work at a lot of different other fashion companies, cpg, but like why specifically are you attracted to Dagny and why are you going to feel particularly compelled with this group of people? So there's a lot, it's honestly extremely qualitative in addition to of course, do we feel that they can do the job. But we've taken many people who are switching industries but we feel have very transferable skills and have developed them and they've literally become our senior leaders at this point. And that's something that we also think is really important versus just hiring a gun from another company that's going to come in and do things their way. And what's that going to be like for the rest of the company to absorb? It's not going to go great. So that's how we hire as well.

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

Yeah.

[Mike Hoffman]

And Ben, you mentioned the importance of feeling about like progress.

[Ben Goodwin]

Right.

[Mike Hoffman]

And like winning on some level is something that people can feel really positive about. How do you sort of, you know, before getting that unicorn valuation or before like a major milestone like that, how do you, especially in the early days of a startup, get people to feel like, oh, I'm part of a team that's going to be a winning team and that's why I'm here. And that's enjoyable.

[Ben Goodwin]

Yeah, I mean this is going to sound like just an a la carte of humble bragging. I apologize in advance. I mean one of the things that we have did experience. So this is my second beverage startup that I built from scratch and I took a lot of plenty of hard knocks and hard lessons in my first run through that were really useful for how I approached this company, from how I dealt with investors to how I built the product and the brand and all those other things. So we've had triple digit growth from basically the year we kicked off, which sounds, it is a dream come true. It is the thing that everybody's hoping to accomplish. It does have a real first world problem though. So that is where the kind of the winning people come in the business and they're just like, oh fuck, like their faces melt off. Right. Like that's the growth is great.

[Mike Hoffman]

But also growth can cause unhappiness within an organization.

[Ben Goodwin]

So one of the things that really purposefully I leaned into and I'm lucky actually to have one of the, like an incredible executive coach who has a PhD in organizational psychology and an MFT. She's been absolutely instrumental in my growth and development as a leader and in terms of how I think about businesses. But it's building the trust mission is a great anchor to do that. Making sure that your employees are able to connect as real human beings. They don't feel like they have to put on some weird political mask just to operate in your organization. That is the thing that when you combine the performance and the progress and the challenges that come inherent to something that's growing quickly and you ensure that you are creating the conditions where you're inserting trust in the equation. Because there were a handful of years where we were a kid in a growth spurt, growing out of their clothes. And so our processes, our structures definitely were not adequate for the scale, but it's still not in certain places of the business, to be frank. But that extra layer of trust allowed people to still work together in a fairly high functioning way and nothing blew up as we were way over our skis for the size of business we were versus the systems that we had. So, yeah, the perform. The feeling of progress has been a bit inherent to the. Just to the nature of our growth pattern. But that trust factor has allowed us to actually have the grace and the space to professionalize and not expand. Because rapid growth can kill you as quickly as anything else.

[Mike Hoffman]

Yeah. So speaking of rapid growth, Truman, you mentioned being an early employee of Google. You were part of the team that launched Gmail, which was like a pretty big deal, right? Yeah, it's like definitely used that one or two times. And I'm sort of curious, Like, Google in many ways was the template for the sort of Silicon Valley work culture when it was first becoming sort of the huge company it is today. And I'm curious, what did you take from your experience at Google that you've apply to subsequent companies? And also what do people get wrong about the Google culture of that time?

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

So one of the things that people would see us doing at Google was engage in what a lot of folks thought were excessive expenses and excessive indulgences, like having free gourmet meals that were available for all meals of the day eventually and, you know, then specializing into different kinds of restaurants. At one point, I started tracking the growth of Silicon Valley companies based on how they were providing their kitchen facilities. So they initially would start off with micro kitchens, and then it would turn into like full gourmet kitchens, and then it would turn into multiple restaurants. And that's how you knew that they'd made it through several rounds of funding.

[Mike Hoffman]

Amazing.

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

I think that what folks didn't understand from the outside was the fact that that was a very specific decision by Larry and Sergey to improve not only morale in the company, but to be able to improve our efficiency because it costs so much more if people were leaving the office to go off and find lunch and figure out lunch every single day, versus having something that was reliable and high quality and by the way, could also be nutritious. And so we did the same thing at Shape Security. We started to provide food right away from the very beginning. And I think that there are a number of different things that we did at Google that fall along similar kinds of lines in terms of how the work environment is set up, in terms of flexibility for how you're able to work. And now I think that the most important thing is something that reminds me of what Ben was mentioning about being able to have a culture that does not have a lot of politics. It's really, really difficult Maybe impossible to take a culture that's highly political and get the politics out of it, but you can build a culture from scratch. And that's what we had the opportunity to do now with reckon, where you create certain principles that help you minimize those politics over time. And I think that the single most important factor there is having a high hiring bar. If you ensure that everybody in the company is very carefully selected for being outstanding at their job, then criticism of an idea is not taken as criticism of that person. And so you can have much higher bandwidth conversations where you get to the actual answer much quicker.

[Mike Hoffman]

When this is for all of you, when you see sort of a hint of political behavior, right. Or you see, you know, turf, how do you as a leader step in and manage that or ameliorate that? Or do you like, how do you sort of respond to politics at work?

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

Well, I was just going to observe that. I forget who it was that said it, but your company culture is a function of the worst behavior you tolerate. And so I think when you see something that is absolutely unacceptable, you have to do something about it and you have to do it publicly. So you have to say, it's not okay to talk to somebody like that. It's not okay to make a decision like that because if you tolerate it, it's going to get scaled over time. You're going to start to see it dozens of times, maybe hundreds of times.

[Josh Christensen]

We're going to take a quick break, but when we're back, Mike will ask the panelists how they instill company culture.

[Melissa Mash]

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[Mike Hoffman]

And I'm curious, like that's. As a leader, you kind of have the authority to do that, right? As a founder or co founder. Right. But I'm curious, how do you instill that? Or do you instill that, like with the rank and file managers and department heads and things like that?

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

Well, I think that the most important function of any manager is to build culture. So organizational theorist Ed Schein said that perhaps the only thing of any importance that leaders do is, is build culture. And so as a CEO, the most important job that I have is to speak with my senior managers and I used to spend a lot of time with senior managers at my previous companies, just talking about how do they manage their teams, what are the ways that we can all learn as a company in order to be able to scale that culture and in order to be able to do that, you need to be able to articulate what that culture is. So having something written helps.

[Ben Goodwin]

Yeah. I just want to add on because I thought you made a really, really good point when you talked about once the political dynamics are entrenched, extracting that is almost impossible because your politically focused people make hiring decisions because they want to replicate that behavior. And most of the human population is always trying to learn how to survive and learn what norms are through. It's being set in the space that they're in. And so if they come to find that, that's the strategy I have to take on to raise in my career or whatever. So I think it's an extremely good point. And if you're starting from the ground floor and you're like, oh, I have so much work to do, at least you get to be mindful of how you build your culture. I'm an interesting case because as an entre, I'm a college dropout entrepreneur. I'm basically unemployable. And so I have no. I have no corporate experience or baggage. I employ people, plenty of folks who have long track records in corporate life. Most of them are somewhat folks who, like, decided to get the fuck out. But so I have this extreme, deep allergy to political behavior, and I see it, and I just, like, fucking blood starts to boil. I try to keep it under wraps because carpet bombing, folks, is not healthy. But one of the things I'm really proud of is that whatever we've done, we've built a lot of autonomy and defense of the culture into the team. So I've even seen instances because one of the problems you get with political operators is they kiss up and kick down. So they're really good at managing up. So it takes a little. So you've got to have systems underneath where you've got folks who feel empowered just not to accept that people who aren't who. People who can recognize this breaks the pattern of this culture. I know this is a problem. And then you've got ways for them to pipe it up or pipe it to this laterally or whatever. But we've had many instances where basically our team has ejected the wrong fits, like an immune system response. Right. And they just, like, they don't last very long. Everybody kind of gets the track of it, you know, and then you have to go through whatever process is appropriate. But I'm actually extremely proud that we've built that. And every time the team bucks somebody off, I'm like, you go. I can't say too much. I got to say yes, right decision. But I'm really excited about it.

[Mike Hoffman]

Melissa, I'm curious for you. How do you see expectations from employees changing? Or do you. And especially with a younger cohort of workers coming into the workforce, do they have different wants and needs? And how do you build a culture that accommodates or addresses that?

[Melissa Mash]

That's a good question. Honestly, for many years at this point, we've had a work from anywhere policy. And it's not something that you get to do, you know, in your first year, but once you prove yourself that you understand what the expectations are from this and that you are responsible if you need to. If you want to go work from Australia for a month or two, it's totally fine as long as you're on during the hours that everyone knows that you can do that, you know.

[Mike Hoffman]

So I'm going to Australia tomorrow. That sounds great.

[Melissa Mash]

It hasn't really evolved in that way. Same thing with like parental leave that's been, you know, everyone gets three months of full paid leave. Everyone gets an additional three months of you're on part time, but you're paid full time for integrating, integrating a new child into your home. Whether you gave birth or not does not matter how you got the kid. Like, these are things that have been in place for, I don't know, five to plus years at this point. So we just try to do what we feel is important for our society and what we would want and how we want to be treated. But it hasn't really evolved, I'd say in terms of just like, you know, Gen Z and their wants. We have a lot of Gen Z employees, but it's a matter of are you willing to work hard, are you willing to be a culture creator, protector, all of that, are you a good team member regardless of your age or experience and do you appreciate what we're able to offer? Because we feel that what we offer is very unique and the first person who doesn't follow the rules, they're going to go away for everyone. So it's sort of a nice system.

[Mike Hoffman]

You and Ben both sort of talked about the notion of being a culture protector. What is that and how does that function?

[Melissa Mash]

So, I mean, I think Ben did a great job of explaining like, you know, you should understand what the culture is we are collaborative. We don't tear people down. There's a way to give feedback, et cetera. And are you protecting that? Furthermore, are you adding to that and are you actually a catalyst for making sure that new people understand that very quickly as well? So I don't know if that was helpful.

[Ben Goodwin]

Yeah, I mean one of the ways that so from the beginning and they've morphed over time as like the sophistication and the scale of the business has changed. But we've always had values that we've been really clear about articulating. We don't, we ensure that they don't just become wallpaper through a couple means. So one, we actually have staff members present on their inter. Their personal interpretation of the values, how they have shown up or not shown up at points in their life and lessons they've learned about that. So the staff members actually get an opportunity to integrate and express, which is a great learning for everybody. The other way that, does that ever.

[Mike Hoffman]

Go weird though where you're like, that interpretation's a little off, to be honest with you.

[Ben Goodwin]

Sometimes the thing that annoys me about it is people like take as an opportunity to like show their baby pictures to the team is like, it's more like a social like look. And it was like, ah. And I'm like, all right, Ed. That's not really what that was for Ed. He's. He's local in Austin. So the other thing that we've done that I'm really. But generally speaking, to be fair, I actually been deeply, deeply touched by things have. It's gone so much more well than it's ever gone, quote, poorly. Another thing that we do is so our performance review system, there's two sections. One is performance, which is your KPIs for the year and your baseline job performance. And then one is ways of working. And the ways of working are tied to our values. So 2/3 of your score is your performance, one third of your score is how you showed up. And so there's a. The bulk of this scoring is against your performance. But it's basically it's meant to design against the high performing asshole. Because if you showed up, well, but you kind of sucked, you're going to probably stay in the business, but you're going to not be able to progress. And the high performing asshole hates nothing more than not being able to progress. So they're probably going to get frustrated and leave. Inversely, if you've got like a mediocre performer, but they're an amazing culture Contributor, they're also not progressing. They have to fix their performance, but we're giving them enough extra breathing room so that they can stick around and have that opportunity to close the gap. So how you reward and incentivize is one of the biggest structural ways that you can facilitate. This is actually important. And you're like, check and your promotion are tied to who you are being in the business.

[Mike Hoffman]

That's really interesting. So, Schumann, one thing that one hears and one sort of theory of the case of remote work is that it's good for being able to get work done. It's good for being able to source talent geographically from lots of different places. But some of the cultural problems that come from it are it's hard for a new remote employee to create a friendship, to have a best friend at work, and that historically, having a friend at work is one of the things that keeps people engaged in the workplace. I'm curious, as you have seen, companies scale and scale remotely. How do you think about that? How do you think about the personal relationships that can develop between colleagues and coworkers?

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

There's no substitute for in person interaction. Imagine what this would be like right now. As a webinar, this is completely a different experience. But working from home and working remotely is also awesome. And it enables you to do things that you would never be able to do if you mandated that you have to work in person. So when we started expanding around the world at Google and building offices in different countries, one of the questions that we frequently got asked was, are you doing this because labor is cheaper in other countries? And in fact, the answer was, there is amazing talent around the world that has no interest in moving. And so remote work allows you to be able to tap into talent that you would never be able to bring into your company otherwise. At the same time, as you mentioned, it is difficult to be able to get a sense of what someone really means in terms of their body language, in terms of being able to fully express themselves. When you only communicate over zoom, being able to have some type of in person interaction is absolutely critical in terms of being able to build relationships that are so important for your company culture to be able to function. And so I think that this is something post pandemic most companies are trying to figure out. And most of them appear to be doing it kind of badly. I think. I think. And a big part of this is again, because of the fact that they had one culture prior to the pandemic. During the pandemic, they were forced to work remotely and now they have a whole bunch of folks that are saying, you know what, working remotely was awesome, I would love to continue to do that. But in many cases they have leaders who ascended through the ranks prior to the pandemic and they'd like to move back to that world. They'd like to delete the pandemic and just say, well, we can go back to the world that I'm comfortable in, that I became a senior executive in. And so I think that again, the best answer is to just think from a blank sheet of paper and say, in 2025 and onwards, what's the best structure for a company? Because there are going to be your competitors who figure that out. And I think that it is actually a thoughtful combination of the two. So one of the things that we're doing is we're combining the ability to work from home with in person interaction that isn't done on an arbitrary kind of basis, but it's done on the basis of specific projects and individuals and teams.

[Mike Hoffman]

I think it's interesting. I think not only are competitors going to catch up with companies that don't change, but startups, right, you know, companies that don't exist today will build a culture that's more, I don't know, more accommodating or more forward looking.

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

Oh yeah. Like one of the things I think about is, you know, a lot of folks talk about how Gen Z is going to be one third of the global workforce in two years time and if you project out another 20 years, those are going to be the folks that are running all of corporate America. And the startups are going to be created by generation Alpha and generation Beta. Those companies are going to look very different from the companies of today. In fact, some of us might even recoil in horror at some of the practices that they start to adopt at that point. Like, for example, most folks that are in the workforce right now have no idea how discord works. And so that's the primary communication system that's being used by Gen Alpha and even a lot of Gen Z. And so I think if you can figure out what those companies of the future are going to look like earlier on and start to adopt those practices, then you can be a lot more successful.

[Mike Hoffman]

Got it. So we're at time, but I'm going to do one speed round question for the whole group. What is the most fun you had at work recently and what? Why was it fun? Schumann.

[Shuman Ghosh Majander]

We took the team out to a gourmet restaurant and that was fantastic.

[Mike Hoffman]

Cool. Ben.

[Ben Goodwin]

I mean, our end of Year party last year was just top 10 life experience. So I called it my benevolent Wolf of Wall street moment. Because it was just great presentation, amazing dinner. I DJed for two hours. And then the moment when I knew it was really peak is I went upstairs to my room for a minute. One of my employees was like, dude, you have to come downstairs. And I go downstairs and just like a third of the company is straight up dancing on the couches and the tables, like ripping it. And I'm just like, this is the energy I am talking about. Yeah.

[Mike Hoffman]

And Melissa, for you, same thing.

[Melissa Mash]

Company off site. Last year, the year prior, just like our 10 year anniversary in particular was just a huge blowout. It was beautiful. It was fun. There was something for everyone. Everyone just honestly just like loved each other so much. It was wonderful.

[Mike Hoffman]

It's interesting, right? People want to work when and how they want to work, but they also, there is a craving for us to be together for big moments. It's great. Well, thank you so much, Melissa, Ben and Schumann. We really appreciate this panel. Thank you everybody.

[Josh Christensen]

That's all for this episode of from the Ground Up. Our producers are Blake Odom and Avery Miles, with help from Sam Gabauer and Hawa Ottori. Editing by Matt Toder. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. If you haven't already, subscribe to all Ink podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.