Firms rethink their workplace

Many employees free to untether from city centers

Before the pandemic, software engineer Allen Dantes commuted four miles every day from his apartment to the headquarters of Chownow in Los Angeles.

The online food ordering platform sent employees home in March until further notice, leaving Dantes, 27, to work from the small two-bedroom apartment he shared with his girlfriend. A few weeks ago, they moved into a 1,500-square-foot threebedroom, two-bathroom Craftsman they bought for $415,000.

Dantes’ new commute: 390 miles or zero, depending on how you look at it.

The house is in Sacramento, Calif. Both have kept their jobs, even though neither of their companies has offices there.

Working from home was intended to be a temporary measure for millions of workers in the early days of COVID-19. With no clear end in sight eight months later, employers are offering a perk that would have been unthinkable at the start of the year: Live and work from wherever you want — permanently.

It is a monumental shift for corporate America, one that’s forcing companies to rethink the ways they conduct business, manage employees and shape their corporate cultures. And it has major implications for workers, who are now free to untether themselves from city centers and move to places better suited for their budgets and personal situations.

Tech companies are reversing years of heavy investment in lavish Silicon Valley campuses designed to lure workers and keep them there well beyond the usual 9-to-5 workday. Facebook, Twitter, Vmware, Stripe and Chownow are among those that have rolled out permanent work-from-anywhere policies and salary adjustments, and are preparing for a wave of employees to distance themselves from headquarters and other main offices. In May, Mark Zuckerberg predicted up to half of Facebook’s employees would work from home within five to 10 years.

“Opening offices will be our decision,” Jennifer Christie, Twitter’s chief human resources officer, said in a May memo, “when and if our employees come back will be theirs.”

“We’ve told everyone: If you’re not comfortable, no problem, stay put,” said Rich Lang, senior vice president of human resources at Vmware.

Tech companies have often been at the forefront of trailblazing workplace trends and when COVID hit the U.S., tech companies were among the first large employers to send their workforces home. Many found the transition surprisingly smooth.