Company Where Workers Never Leave The Office
It's past midnight, but many staffers at
Enplug, an advertising-technology
company, are milling about the office in
their T-shirts and boxers, writing code and
talking strategy. Others are already in bed,
sound asleep.
Enplug's office is a six-bedroom, three-
bathroom Ranch-style home in the ritzy Bel
Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. Twelve of the
company's 37 employees, including the chief
executive, live and work there.
The idea is to live and breathe work-24 hours
a day, seven days a week-without the
commute and few outside distractions.
Employees and managers meet, work, eat,
clean, exercise and sleep in the same space.
And while there are occasional uncomfortable
moments, such as nudging your boss to do the
dishes, companies like Enplug say it is good
for professional relationships, saves on rent
and travel costs and is often just plain fun.
Employees who choose to live in such
arrangements are generally single 20-
somethings who have recently left dorm life.
"We don't try to separate work life from our
personal life," says Nanxi Liu, the 23-year-old
co-founder and CEO of Enplug, which creates
digital billboards, incorporating tweets and
other social-media streams. "It's a little bit
cultish," she says. "It is also extremely
efficient."
At the Enplug house, work literally gets done
around the clock. Engineers often pull all-night
coding sessions and roll out of bed around
midday, while account managers wake up
hours earlier to attend client meetings that are
typically held offsite in cafes or clients'
offices.
"We work 24/7. We code. We go to bed. We
wake up. We code," says Alex Ross, 23, the
firm's chief technology officer and one of Ms.
Liu's roommates.
Enplug's five co-founders, most of them
recently out of college, started rooming
together last year to save money, working out
of their small apartment-a familiar scenario
for many startups.
But as the company grew, they maintained
their live-work arrangement. Instead of renting
a separate office space, the Enplug staff
simply moved into a bigger house.
Most of the staffers living in the house get
paid a modest stipend in lieu of salary, while
the founders forgo salaries altogether,
funneling company earnings back into rent,
utilities and large boxes of Cheerios. Chores
such as housecleaning and dishes are shared
among the roommates and a maid comes in
once a month to clean, but there are basically
no formal house rules.
Two Enplug employees got married to each
other just weeks before moving into the house
in November.
"We were a little skeptical living together with
lots of people in the house," says Bruno
Denuit-Wojcik, who moved in with his wife
Justyna. The couple, both Enplug software
developers in their 30s, say the practical
perks, such as free food and rent, make up for
the lack of privacy.
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