Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that it may not be long before remote work becomes standard for at least half of the social networker’s employees.
Speaking during what is normally a weekly livestream solely for Facebook staff, Zuckerberg said in the next five to 10 years, 50% of company employees could be working remotely on a permanent basis. Zuckerberg said the move to more full-time remote work has been sped up by the coronavirus crisis, as Facebook has already said nearly all of its employees will work from home until the end of 2020 as part of the effort to contain the spread of the disease that has killed more than 90,000 Americans.
Facebook currently has about 45,000 employees worldwide. Zuckerberg said that the company has not made it a specific goal to have half of its workforce work remotely, but that data from a survey of employees over the last few weeks shows that remote work will be more of a reality for the company in the coming years.
“I think were going to be the most forward leaning company on remote work, on our scale,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s really important for us to take a long term approach to how we think about remote work.”
Zuckerberg said a survey of Facebook employees showed that 50% of respondents saying they believed their productivity while working at home was as least as good as it was in a company office. The survey also found that 75% of employees expressed a high level of confidence that they would move to a new city if they could work remotely.
Zuckerberg also said that Facebook would expand its remote hiring efforts because, “Being able to recruit more broadly is going to open a lot of new talent that maybe wouldn’t have considered moving to a big city. It’s also going to help us retain some important talent.”
As part of its emphasis on more remote work, Zuckerberg said Facebook would build three new remote work hubs in Atlanta, Dallas and Denver, and look to hire more people that live between a one and four-hour drive from its current offices.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Loup Ventures, said Zuckerberg’s initiative regarding remote work is likely to push the practice more into the mainstream.
“Society has long wanted this,” Munster said. “Facebook giving employees more freedom to work where they work best, along with their investment in products that enable remote work, makes me more optimistic that the company can be a force for good.”
But, Zuckerberg also said that employees who get approval to work remotely, and move from a location such as Silicon Valley, could end up having their salaries cut if they relocate to an area with a significantly lower cost of living. Zuckerberg said tax and accounting reasons would be behind any possible pay cuts.
“We’ll adjust salary to your location at that point,” Zuckerberg said, adding that there would be “severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this.”
Zuckerberg said employees will have to notify the company by Jan. 1, 2021, if they move to a new location.
Other notable Bay Area companies have begun offering employees the option to work remotely, with Twitter and Square both saying their employees may choose to continue working from home permanently.
