'Don't Design Policies Around The Bottom 5%,' Warns Stripe President – Says Top Remote Workers Are 'Coding Up A Storm In An Idaho Cabin' - BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Don't design policies around the bottom 5%, Stripe President John Collison warned, arguing that rules built to rein in slackers risk driving star engineers elsewhere.

John delivered the jab on the Feb. 21 episode of the tech-heavy "All-In" podcast, where he and his CEO brother, Patrick Collison, dissected JPMorgan Chase's JPM plan to haul its 317,000 employees back to the office in March.

"The abuse that took place is extraordinary," JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said during a recent town hall, Barron’s reported.

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Patrick reminded listeners that roughly 40% of Stripe's 8,000 staff still log in remotely, an arrangement forged long before COVID-19 because recruiting everywhere beats settling for whoever lives near headquarters.

That strategy, he said, created "outrageously productive remote people … in a cabin in Idaho coding up a storm."

The brothers see location freedom fixing the two-body problem that traps dual-career couples. Let a surgeon match in Boise, Idaho, Collison argued, and their partner's software salary still flows, boosting total-factor productivity—a metric economists tie to U.S. growth.

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Corporate pushback remains fierce. Dimon's edict follows similar moves at BlackRock BLK and Amazon AMZN, yet backlash is rumbling. A survey conducted by Southpaw Insights on behalf of FTI Consulting FCN, published on Feb. 25, found that 70% of U.S. remote and hybrid workers would consider quitting if required to return to the office full-time. Gen Z respondents were even jumpier: three-quarters vowed to job-hunt for flexibility.

Last month, a Government Accountability Office report found that telework boosts retention, productivity, and cost savings. Roles with measurable metrics saw a 12% performance increase, and flexible work policies reduced turnover and improved employee focus.

Stripe's approach emphasizes mentorship and collaboration, which many experts agree helps new graduates ramp up faster. This has influenced their adoption of hybrid schedules and structured meetups for early-career employees.

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John Collison addressed concerns about “quiet quitting” by emphasizing the importance of focusing on top performers. He likened crafting schedules for underperformers to setting classroom rules because one student cheats. Instead, he advocates for optimizing for top contributors to retain them and their valuable contributions.

This perspective comes as Stripe remains a private company, recently valued at $91.5 billion. In a Feb. 27 interview with CNBC, Collison highlighted the company’s commitment to providing liquidity for employees and existing shareholders, stating, “We very much care about providing good liquidity for employees and existing shareholders.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics logged 3.2 million quits in April, with a 2.0% quits rate—reflecting continued worker confidence and bargaining power, though slightly below pre-pandemic highs.

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