What Facebook’s Remote Work Policy Means for the Future of Tech Salaries Everywhere
‘For some kinds of jobs, it really could become a more national and less local labor market’
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For many tech workers, the ability to do the job from anywhere — or more specifically, being able to do the job without paying Bay Area rents or spending thousands of hours every year driving on 101 or 280 — is the dream.
That may become a reality for more and more tech workers, with one little adjustment: a cutback on those generous salaries.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday that the company will begin to offer remote work to new hires, beginning with senior engineers, and that current employees will soon be able to request switching to remote work. But, there will be salary adjustments: “If you live in a place where the cost of living is dramatically lower, then salaries do tend to be somewhat lower,” Zuckerberg told the Wall Street Journal.
Twitter and Square, both run by Jack Dorsey, have also said that they will allow “permanent” work from home. Many employees of large technology companies have been working from home since March, due to the coronavirus pandemic, with many extending return dates to the fall or even next year; Google for example has said that, for most employees, work will continue from home until 2021.
Zuckerberg’s announcement that he expects up to half of the company’s employees to work remotely in the next decade could radically revise how tech workers and observers think about the industry, and especially its impact on the Bay Area, whose spiraling cost of living — thanks to a combination of a lack of new housing and the riches from the tech boom — have led to tension among residents. Only five years ago, Facebook offered a $10,000 cash bonus to employees to live within 10 miles of its headquarters in Menlo Park, the Information reported.
