Duolingo's CEO explains the move to bring employees back to the office — and why he thinks he avoided backlash

• Duolingo's CEO said being in the office is key for brainstorming.
• Toward the end of the pandemic, "we had run out of new ideas," he said.
• The transition for staff was smooth because Duolingo consistently managed expectations, he said.

For Duolingo's chief executive, a return-to-office mandate was key to translating fresh ideas at the language-learning app.

In an interview on The Verge's "Decoder" podcast, Luis von Ahn said that employees must come into the office three days a week.

"Most of what we do is creative stuff," von Ahn told "Decoder." Toward the end of the pandemic, "we had run out of new ideas," he said, adding that within three months of the return to the office, "you would see all these ideas popping up."

Duolingo has roughly 400 employees at its Pittsburgh headquarters and 200 in New York City, with smaller outposts in Detroit, Seattle, Berlin, and Beijing, von Ahn said.

Cultivating a unique brand voice — known for negging users into spending more time on the app — has been a key to Duolingo's success. In August, the company reported its fifth-straight profitable quarter, and its stock has been surging in recent months, up 32% year to date.

While RTO mandates have proved massively unpopular elsewhere, von Ahn said the transition at Duolingo was smooth because the company consistently managed expectations.

When it first went remote, von Ahn said he told employees — and new hires — that they would eventually be going back to the office.

"This was not a surprise for anybody," he told "Decoder." "I don't think we lost a single employee from that."

Still, there's some flexibility. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are mandatory, but von Ahn said he didn't feel like he had the "political power" to ask employees to come in five days a week.

"I feel like that would not go over well," he said.

Duolingo did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.