OAKLAND, Calif. — Facebook will allow many employees to work from home permanently. But there’s a catch: they will not keep their big Silicon Valley salaries in more affordable parts of the country.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, told workers during a staff meeting that was livestreamed on his Facebook page that within a decade as many as half of the company’s more than 48,000 employees will work from home.
“It’s clear that Covid has changed a lot about our lives, and that certainly includes the way that most of us work,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.
Facebook’s decision, the first among tech’s biggest companies, is a big change for a business culture built around getting workers into giant offices and keeping them there, using free shuttle buses, free cafeterias and personal services like dry cleaning.
If other giant companies follow Facebook, tech employment will probably move away from expensive hubs like Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York, where salaries aren’t enough to buy a home.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcement followed similar decisions at Twitter, where employees will be allowed to work from home indefinitely.
Aaron Levie, the chief executive of the business technology company Box, wrote on Twitter that “the push happening around remote work is as game-changing for the future of tech as the launch of the iPhone” more than a decade ago.
In March, the coronavirus lockdown forced companies to send employees home. Many tech companies, including Facebook, emptied their offices before local shelter-in-place orders.
Now, more than two months later, executives are discovering that their remote workers performed better than expected.
Facebook will begin by allowing new hires who are senior engineers to work remotely, and then allow current employees to apply for permission to work from home if they have positive performance reviews.
Starting in January, Facebook’s employee compensation will be adjusted based on the cost of living in the locations where workers choose to live.
Mr. Zuckerberg said the shift will offer more benefits than inconveniences for the company. Allowing remote work will allow Facebook to broaden its recruitment, retain valuable employees, reduce the climate impact caused by commutes and expand the diversity of its work force.
