- Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says RTO is like trying to get people back into malls and movie theaters.
- "We can be a lot less dumb than forcing people back into a car three days a week," he said on a Fortune podcast.
- "It's just a different world now," he said. Dropbox in 2020 introduced a "virtual first" work policy.
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston told Fortune that the rise of remote working has handed companies "the keys that unlock this whole future of work."Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
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Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, equated office-first working arrangements to other relics of a pre-pandemic era in an episode of Fortune's "Leadership Next" podcast released Wednesday.
"Forcing people back to the office is probably gonna be like trying to force people back into malls and movie theaters," he said. "Nothing wrong with the movie theater, but it's just a different world now."
Houston said a return to the office doesn't make sense when you're doing the same work you could do virtually.
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"It is unproductive if you just sort of try to photocopy what you're doing in the office onto Zoom," he said. "We don't have to do this—we can be a lot less dumb than forcing people back into a car three days a week or whatever, to literally be back on the same Zoom meeting they would have been at home. There's a better way to do this."
At a time when many of Dropbox's tech peers have mandated a return to office in some form, the company remains optimistic that it can accomplish just as much remotely.
Dropbox announced in 2020 it was adopting a "virtual first" approach to work, where remote work outside of the office would be employees' primary working arrangement. The next year, the company began following a 90/10 rule in which employees work remotely 90% of the year and attend a handful of off-sites in-person during the remaining 10% of the year.
Houston previously said remote work has given companies "the keys that unlock this whole future of work."
"You need a different social contract and to let go of control. But if you trust people and treat them like adults, they'll behave like adults. Trust over surveillance," he told Fortune in 2023.
