Startups can often have work policies that can seem quite odd to those who aren’t used to them.
Notion, Lovable, Cursor and a host of other startups have a “no shoes at work policy”. Employees working at these startups take their shoes off before entering the office, and wear optional slip-ons or slippers. This revelation has led to mixed reactions online, with many expressing amazement that such a policy could exist, while others chiming in to say that their own company does it too.
The whole discussion was set off by Ben Lang, who works at Cursor. “I’ve only worked at startups that have a no-shoes in office policy • Cursor • Notion. Curious which other companies do this,” he posted on X. He added that when visitors come into office, there were shoe covers/slippers available for them at the entrance.
While many responded with incredulity that such a no shoes at work policy could exist, others began to talk about how their company also did things the same way. The CEO of Lovable — which recently became a unicorn 8 months after being founded — said that their company too had a similar policy. “Lovable has this thanks to (co-founder) Fabian Hedin,” wrote Lovable CEO Anton Osika.
Sudarshan Kamath, the CEO of smallest.ai which builds AI voice models, said that smallest.ai too had a no shoes at work policy.
Andrew Hsu, the co-founder and CTO of Speak, which uses AI to teach languages, said that they’d had a similar policy for years.
And Lily Clifford, the founder of AI voice startup Rime Labs, said that they didn’t have shoes at work either.
Ani Emmadi, who works in engineering at agentic QA system Spur, said they had a similar policy.
A user said that Replicate also had a similar no shoes at work policy.
And someone else said that HR and payroll company Gusto too didn’t have shoes at work.
The reactions to these were fairly extreme. While some said that such a policy would be a dealbreaker, and couldn’t fathom why people wouldn’t want to wear shoes in office, others said that it seemed pretty normal for them, and would welcome such a policy at their own companies. There seemed to be some cultural differences too — Scandinavian and Asian companies seemed to be okay with not having shoes on at work, but the trend seemed less prevalent in the rest of the world.
There could be some benefits to having a no shoes at work policy — it could give an impression of a relaxed and informal workplace, which could help with productivity. Also, it likely more closely mirrors the experience of working from home, which many have gotten used to over the last few years. On the other hand, some cultures find it unusual to show off feet in formal settings, and some people can have a hard time getting their heads around a no shoes at work policy. But it appears that such a policy isn’t only more common than one would expect, but is also being used at some big billion-dollar companies like Cursor, Notion and Lovable.