Facebook Shifting Many Employees to Permanent Remote Work

[Robert C.]

Well, this could definitely be a market mover around my neck of the woods and across the country. Facebook will permanently shift up to half of its employees to remote work.

Will people choose to live in the Bay Area if they don't need to be near work? I've got to give this some thought!

[Justin Thorpe]

@Robert C.

So far FB, Twitter, Square are the big employers who have announced a permanent WFH policy. FB has put more detail on this.

First, they are stating 50% of staff over the next 5 years will be remote. They are also saying they will hire aggressively and grow headcount. So what if they double their headcount in 5 years and allow only 50% of them to work remotely. That means the number of FB employees who work locally will state flat to today’s figure.

Second, it’s not an automatic perk. Only those employees who are “eligible” can avail the remote option. So many employees may not make the cut.

Third, those who opt in, will be paid adjusted salaries based on their new city of location vs take their SF salaries in those locations.

My own take is that the remote option looks great on paper but it’s not for everyone. I mean what if you can work remotely for FB but your spouse’s employee does not support WFH. What if you have kids who are in middle or high schools. What if you are a senior exec.

All that means you stay local vs moving to the forests of Wyoming, but on the plus side you get to avoid local Bay Area commute and live a bit further out maybe.

Also remote working is not uncommon in the tech business. People work remotely often, sometimes 2 days a week or more. Many times these folks tend to get left behind in careers vs others who show more time at the office and network. So again for the ambitious, remote working may not appeal.

In the end large Bay Area employees like HP, Apple, SalesForce, Tesla, NetApp, Intel, nVidia, Google, NetFlix, Intuit, AirBnB, Uber, PayPal, eBay, VISA, Oracle and many others are only telling employees to work remotely until the next few months vs permanently.

So yes while a few companies like FB and Twitter are pushing the envelope, most others are not.

What this means is the residential market should largely remain ok and un impacted. There are concerns on commercial RE and rightly so.