As hardcore work culture surges, many companies are demanding their employees return to the office for more and more days. Life360 is fine staying at home.
Much has changed for the family tracking app company since its 2024 IPO, including naming Microsoft and GoDaddy alum Lauren Antonoff as its new CEO. Antonoff was previously COO.
One thing that hasn’t changed is its remote work policy. In an interview with Business Insider, Antonoff said that the company was “remote-first” and that it wouldn’t be changing anytime soon.
“The secret of making remote work isn’t better online meetings, it’s more in-person meetings,” Antonoff said. “Life360 had taken the budget that used to be dedicated for buildings and those types of things and put it into travel.”
Antonoff called from a Deskpass coworking space, where she said some of the engineering leaders had congregated. She said that Life360’s in-person meet-ups were meant for “getting to know each other” and “working through one or two hard problems.”
“The return-to-office movements are all like, ‘Let’s just force people to sit next to each other while they all have their headsets and they’re on Zoom,'” Antonoff said. “It makes no sense.”
Life360 is one of a handful of companies leaning into remote work culture. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston compared RTO mandates to trying to get people back into malls and movie theaters.
Some companies, like Atlassian, have found that remote work is a hiring boon. Others, like Klarna, say they lost talent to companies with stronger in-person cultures.
Microsoft has also recently pushed for in-office work, moving to a three-day RTO. Microsoft EVP and CPO Amy Coleman said that the AI era requires the “kind of energy and momentum that comes from smart people working side by side.”
Antonoff said that she “grew up” at Microsoft, having spent nearly 20 years there. At Microsoft, Antonoff said that she was working with people in “different offices” around the world, even when she was in person.
Antonoff said she’s also seen how in-office culture can unfairly prize proximity.
“You bias the people who sit near you,” Antonoff said. “The eye-opener for me was when we all got forced to work remotely. It normalized very quickly that everybody was equidistant from the center of power.”
Antonoff has also worked at GoDaddy, where she served as president of the company’s US small business segment. She said that GoDaddy was “more productive during the pandemic.”
One of Antonoff’s other favorite workplace policies: synchronized vacations.
Twice a year, Life360’s about 500 employees all take one week off, save for a small slice of workers performing “critical functions,” Antonoff said.
Vacations are normally a “mixed blessing,” Antonoff said, because employees will return to a stack of work in their inbox. Some employees even check their emails while taking time off to avoid future pain, she said. Not at Life360.
“You really can take time off,” she said. “You really can unplug because you’re not missing out on meetings.”
“It’s like the best vacation you’ve ever had because a real vacation.”
