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Marc Andreessen doesn't need to know everything about you.
The famous VC 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," the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz wrote in a recent post on X.
Andreessen isn't the first to reject the idea. Yet his remarks come as workplace norms appear to be drifting further from pandemic-era mores around everything from office attire to remote work to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Megan Reitz, coauthor of the book "Speak Out, Listen Up," previously told Business Insider 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. Yet the advice often comes with limits, she said.
"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 over two dozen employees who staged sit-ins at the company's California and New York offices.
At the time, CEO Sundar Pichai warned in a memo to employees 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 A16z cofounder Ben Horowitz celebrated Donald Trump's reelection. Andreessen said Trump's win was an antidote to the "repression" that he and other crypto industry founders had experienced under President Joe Biden's White House.
The idea of showing up at work with all of your flags flying grew in popularity in the 2010s, Ella Washington, a professor of practice at Georgetown University, has told BI. However, she said, 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. You can likely bring your whole professional self," Washington said.
She said that those in charge at work need to define what's acceptable, and then workers can determine whether the organization's stated values comport with their own.
"When it comes to business, it shouldn't be just based on our personal politics. 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,'" she said.
Jake Telkamp, an assistant professor at the Hull College of Business at Augusta University in Georgia, previously told BI that fraught discussions over politics at work tend to leave people feeling depleted.
That, in turn, can leave them feeling less inclined to help their coworkers, he said. Besides, Telkamp said, the fights aren't likely to change someone's mind.
He said 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.
