Steal an Employee Speed Upgrades: How to Get Faster on Foot
How to get faster on foot in Steal an Employee: passive walking gains, treadmill training, trails, Flappy Run bonuses, the 2x speed gamepass, and the speed thresholds that gate steals. On-foot upgrades only.
Quick answer
Speed in Steal an Employee is not a fixed stat — every step you walk makes you faster, and every other speed source stacks on top of that passive baseline. To get quicker: walk constantly, train on the treadmill, buy trails, clear Flappy Run for bonuses, and grab the 2x speed gamepass.
- Walking: each step adds speed, and your speed number is visible in-game as it climbs — one recorded run goes from 'pretty low' to 80 speed just by moving around the map.
- Treadmill training: the neon treadmill converts time into speed at a reported 30 speed per second, and the treadmill itself levels up into a sci-fi model.
- Trails: purchasable tiers (blue, great, best) plus an upgradable per-step bonus.
- Flappy Run: strong minigame runs pay percentage speed bonuses — 50% and 10% bonuses are shown in the footage.
- Shop and rewards: a 2x speed gamepass plus free index rewards; there is no rebirthing to multiply gains.
Everything on this page is on-foot mobility. Vehicles are a separate acquisition system, not a speed-upgrade tier, so they are not part of this progression.
Treadmill training converts time into speed
The treadmill is the active training method: stand on it and time converts into speed. After buying the neon treadmill, one recorded run reports a training rate of 30 speed per second. The treadmill itself is upgradable — "How about we level up the treadmill?" — and the next tier shown is a sci-fi treadmill. Training is positioned as the gate to better targets: "Let me go train a little bit. I need to be quicker."
Trails and the upgradable per-step bonus
Trails are the main purchasable on-foot speed upgrade. How much a trail adds is described inconsistently in the footage — one purchase was expected to "boost our speed up a bit" and instead "boosts our speed by a lot" — so treat trail strength as something to check per purchase in game. Tiers shown include a blue trail bought for "a little bit of extra speed," a "great trail," and "the best trail in the game," which one player expected to carry him to the 10 million speed he needed.
Speed also arrives as a per-step bonus shown on screen — "Plus 10 per step" early on, later in the hundreds — and that bonus can be leveled ("let's upgrade our step thing"), visibly changing color when upgraded. One detail stays ambiguous: the footage never shows a menu confirming whether the per-step number belongs to the trail itself or to a separate step upgrade.
Flappy Run pays percentage bonuses
The Flappy Run minigame adds speed on top of training and trails. A strong run earned a "50% extra" bonus, and stacking "Flappy Birds on top" of treadmill training added a 10% bonus that visibly sped up the number climbing. The minigame can carry progression on its own — after a rough session, its payout alone covered "enough speed for the second round" of stealing.
Gamepass and reward speed
Two more speed sources sit outside training and trails, and one familiar idle-game system is missing entirely:
Checklist
- 2x speed gamepass
The shop's gamepass list is 'two times money, two times speed, starter pack, money, speed' — the two-times-speed pass is a direct speed multiplier sold in the shop.
- Index rewards
Free rewards can add speed as well: 'We have an index. Give us more money and more speed.'
- No rebirthing
There is no prestige reset — 'No, there's no rebirthing' — so speed comes only from the systems above, not from reset multipliers.
What speed gates: steals, PvP, and escapes
Speed decides who you can steal from and whether you get away with it. Targets carry speed requirements — "We need 2,000 speed" for an early steal, and "10,000 speed recommended" ahead of the Nova Corp attempt. The same rule applies to other players: an attempt on a faster neighbor failed outright ("Oh my god, this dude is fast. Okay, I can't steal from you. I could steal your last worker, though."), and it only worked once the player was "barely faster" than them. Against NPC companies, being under-geared blocks the steal before it starts ("I don't have enough speed to get them"), and once you are fast enough, the escape succeeds because defenders cannot keep up ("Is he fast? He's not fast. He can't make it."). Being faster also protects your own staff from being poached: "Too fast for you. Not going to happen."
Reported speed requirements by target
These thresholds were read from gameplay commentary, not official documentation — treat them as source-reported figures that balance updates can change, and check the requirement displayed at each target in game. They are entry requirements for specific steal targets, not speed caps.
Comparison
| Steal Target | Reported Speed Required |
|---|---|
| Early-game steal target | 2,000 |
| Nova Corp Global Trade attempt | 10,000 (recommended) |
| Gold Storm (company target) | 270,000 |
| Crypto Bros | 36,000,000 |
| Victorian Labs | 120,000,000 |
| Axiom Robotics Division | 350,000,000 |
For scale, the same recorded run reports the player reaching 700,000 speed, then 11 million, then 55 million.
Costs and caps: what is not pinned down
- No purchase prices for trails, treadmill levels, the step upgrade, or the 2x speed gamepass appear in the gameplay footage, so there is no reliable cost table here — check current prices in the in-game shop before buying.
- No verified speed cap exists. The highest figure shown, 350 million, is the entry requirement for the Axiom Robotics Division, not a cap — the milestones seen in the footage top out at 55 million.
- Every rate and threshold above (30 speed per second, per-step gains, target requirements) is reported from gameplay commentary rather than official patch notes, so recheck the values after any balance update.