Enplug is an advertising-technology company whose office is a six-bedroom, three-bathroom Ranch-style home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. Twelve of the company’s 37 employees, including the chief executive, live and work there—24 hours a day, seven days a week—without the commute and few outside distractions.
Is this a kind of secular monastic community?
Employees and managers meet, work, eat, clean, exercise and sleep in the same space. And while there are occasional uncomfortable moments, such as nudging your boss to do the dishes, companies like Enplug say it is good for professional relationships, saves on rent and travel costs and is often just plain fun. Employees who choose to live in such arrangements are generally single 20-somethings who have recently left dorm life.
“We don’t try to separate work life from our personal life,” says Nanxi Liu, the 23-year-old co-founder and CEO of Enplug, which creates digital billboards, incorporating tweets and other social-media streams. “It’s a little bit cultish,” she says. “It is also extremely efficient.”
At the Enplug house, work literally gets done around the clock. Engineers often pull all-night coding sessions and roll out of bed around midday, while account managers wake up hours earlier to attend client meetings that are typically held offsite in cafes or clients’ offices.
“We work 24/7. We code. We go to bed. We wake up. We code,” says Alex Ross, 23, the firm’s chief technology officer and one of Ms. Liu’s roommates.