Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is joining the ranks of CEOs rethinking the value of remote work.
In a memo sent Tuesday, Zuckerberg claimed that “initial analysis of performance data” found that engineers who had personal work time (even if they later switched to remote work) “did better on average than people who joined remotely.” Meta’s CEO also suggests that new engineers work better “on average” with three days of personal work with colleagues per week.
“Our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that relationship helps us to be more effective,” he wrote.
Like many other tech companies, Meta was an early adopter of remote work during the COVID pandemic. Meta’s friends, like Alphabet and Amazon, are now starting to require some level of personal work during the week.
While Zuckerberg on Tuesday said the company is “committed to distributed work,” he also encouraged employees to “look for more opportunities to work with your colleagues.”
Better for new hires?
Zuckerberg CEO Marc Benioff is also rethinking the value of remote work for new hires.
Last week, the CEO of Salesforce said that employees who recently joined should spend some time in the office. “We know empirically that they do better when they’re in the office, meeting people, training, training,” Benioff said in an interview for On With Kara Swisher podcast. Workers who stay at home after starting at Salesforce aren’t as successful, he said.
But Benioff refused to enforce the office’s mandate, fearing that pushing too hard on the issue could drive away the company’s top talent.
Other CEOs, like JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, have complained that their company culture is being hurt by workers staying at home. Schultz, in a January memo demanding workers come to the office three days a week, said he feared Starbucks employees would lose the “art of collaboration” and “connection to a shared mission.”
Surveys generally report that managers do not believe in remote work, fearing that employees are less productive when they are at home. Workers, on the other hand, report greater productivity from working at home.
Years of efficiency
Zuckerberg’s memo was intended to update the company’s employees on a “year of efficiency,” a concept CEO Meta first coined during an earnings call in February.
As part of the memo, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would cut 10,000 jobs, as well as close 5,000 open positions. This is the second round of layoffs for the social media company, following the company’s decision to cut around 11,000 jobs last November.
Meta’s CEO has also promised to cut underperforming jobs as part of a plan to streamline the company. On Monday, the company said it would suspend support for NFT, just six months after trying to integrate it into Facebook and Instagram.
Meta shares jumped 7.3% on Tuesday after the announcement of job cuts.
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