Marc Andreessen says you shouldn’t bring your whole self to work

Marc Andreessen says not everything is appropriate for the workplace.

Marc Andreessen doesn’t need to know everything about you.

In a post on X over the weekend, the famous venture capitalist dismissed the notion of “bringing your whole self to work,” arguing that certain things aren’t appropriate to share in the office and beyond.

“Leave your full self at home where it belongs and act like a professional and a grownup at work and in public,” Andreessen, a cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, wrote.

Andreessen isn’t the first to reject the idea. But workplace norms about things like office attire, remote work, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts appear to be drifting further from pandemic-era mores.

Megan Reitz, a coauthor of the book “Speak Out, Listen Up,” previously told B-17 that bringing your whole self to work might sound good — or at least make some workers feel like their bosses care about their people as, well, people — but often has limits.

“When managers and leaders say, ‘Bring your whole self to work,’ they’re leaving out the terms and conditions,” Reitz said.

Those terms might involve sensitive topics like politics. In April, Google fired more than two dozen employees who staged sit-ins at the company’s offices in California and New York.

CEO Sundar Pichai said in a memo to employees at the time that some actions weren’t appropriate for the office.

“This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” he wrote.

Andreessen’s comments follow a contentious US election. On an episode of their podcast, “The Ben and Marc Show,” Andreessen and his A16z cofounder, Ben Horowitz, celebrated Donald Trump’s reelection. Andreessen described Trump’s win as an antidote to the “repression” that he and other crypto-industry founders experienced under the Biden administration.

An effort to encourage authenticity

Ella Washington, a professor of practice at Georgetown University, previously told B-17 that the idea of showing up at work with all your flags flying became more popular in the 2010s. But she added that it has to be within reason and in accordance with what’s acceptable at an organization.

“It is said in a way that is supposed to encourage authenticity, but the reality is in most workplaces you can’t bring your whole self,” Washington said. “You can likely bring your whole professional self.”

She said people in charge at work need to define what’s acceptable, and then workers can determine whether the organization’s values comport with their own.

“When it comes to business, it shouldn’t be just based on our personal politics,” she said. “And I know that’s difficult for people to say, because it’s like, ‘OK, wait. I can bring my whole self to work, but I can’t talk about politics.'”

Jake Telkamp, an assistant professor in the Hull College of Business at Augusta University in Georgia, previously told B-17 that fraught discussions about politics at work tended to leave people feeling depleted and less inclined to help their coworkers. Besides, Telkamp said, a fight isn’t likely to change someone’s mind.

He argued that leaders and workers should instead focus on making people feel valued regardless of their background.

“When there was a high level of that, it reduced that negative effect of having liberals and conservatives on a team together,” Telkamp said.