A viral photograph from San Francisco has set social media abuzz — and no, it’s not AI generated. The picture exhibits a number of pairs of footwear neatly lined up exterior an workplace door. The situation? Cursor, the AI startup based in 2022 by 4 MIT alumni — Aman Sanger, Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif and Arvid Lunnemark.Sure, you learn that proper. Workers are being requested to depart their footwear exterior earlier than getting into the workplace. And Cursor isn’t alone. Startups corresponding to Replo, Spur, Converse, Flowhub and Composite are additionally encouraging employees to ditch their Vans and Uggs on the door. What appears like a web page out of an Indian family rulebook — “chappals bahar rakho” — is quietly changing into a development in America’s tech capital.In accordance with an NYT report, staff at Spur, which makes use of AI to examine web sites for bugs, are given slides to put on inside their workplace in Manhattan, and company are requested to do the identical. Sneha Sivakumar, a co-founder and the chief government, informed NYT the no-shoes coverage “makes it really feel like a second house” for her 10 workers and “disarms you in a optimistic method”. Rising up in an Indian household in Singapore, she usually eliminated footwear in properties and temples to “present respect for an area.” That slippered workers don’t drag in dust and dirt from the road is a “plus level,” she stated.Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist who research work tradition, stated the shoes-off development was partly “the pajama financial system in motion”. That’s, now that individuals who labored from house through the pandemic are again within the workplace, they’re bringing their house habits with them. Right here’s the irony: whereas eradicating footwear is customary in Indian properties and temples, it’s uncommon — nearly unparalleled — in company places of work. Even in Bengaluru’s startup corridors, nobody expects you to park your sneakers exterior the glass door.