Facebook has set a reopening date for the Bay Area office: May 10.
The social media giant will open with a capacity of 10% from its Menlo Park headquarters, as long as health data continues to improve. The offices in Fremont will reopen on May 17, Sunnyvale on May 24, and the two towers in downtown San Francisco on June 7.
Employees were allowed to work from home until July 2 and can now remain remote up to a month after the offices reach 50% capacity. That will likely be after Sept. 7 for major sites, Facebook said.
Facebook is also reopening offices in Seattle in April and is in the process of reopening offices in Asia.
The company is scrapping some of its main benefits for health reasons: There will be no free food and no buses taking employees to campus. There is no timeline for when they will return.
“When we got back to the office, we set up a number of protocols, including testing, taking physical distance, wearing masks and other best practices. We will continue to work with experts to ensure that our return to office plans prioritize everyone’s health and safety, ”said Chloe Meyere, a Facebook spokeswoman.
The company does not require employees to be vaccinated to return to offices.
The lack of meals in the office can help local restaurants and shops recover. In San Francisco, Facebook leases all office space at 181 Fremont, a key hub for its Instagram division, and the nearby Park Tower in the Transbay neighborhood. It has 1.2 million square feet, enough space in pre-pandemic times for more than 5,000 employees.
The area, along with the rest of the downtown area, was devastated in the pandemic.
Facebook is also hiring some completely remote workers as some of the disruptions from the pandemic become permanent. The broader recruitment area will also help fuel its gluttonous growth: the company had 58,604 employees worldwide at the end of 2020, up 30% in one year.
“I think Facebook will be the most progressive company on our scale in remote working, and we have been working on a thoughtful and responsible plan to do this,” Zuckerberg wrote in May. “It gives us access to talent pools outside of the traditional tech hubs in big cities – and that should help spread economic opportunity much more widely across the country and the world, as well as help us build a more diverse business.”
He said half of the company’s employees could be remote within ten years.
Facebook is one of the first major Bay Area companies to announce reopening plans after San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties have been upgraded to the state’s orange level, allowing nonessential offices to be reopened. San Francisco limits office occupancy to 25% of capacity.
SAP, the German software company, plans to reopen offices in the coming weeks, Silicon Valley Business Journal reports.
Bret Taylor, Salesforce’s president, said the company would “soon” reopen offices during a call on the Clubhouse app on Thursday. A spokeswoman for Salesforce, San Francisco’s largest private employer, said there is currently no timetable.
Wells Fargo said most workers would stay home until at least May 1.
Facebook was one of the technology’s biggest winners during the pandemic, with net income rising to $ 29.1 billion in 2020, up 58% from the previous year. Unlike smaller tech companies that have cut office space and marketed sublease space, Facebook hasn’t cut any of its Bay Area real estate despite expansion plans for remote work.
The company opened new offices this year in Burlingame for its Oculus virtual reality division and in Sunnyvale. It expanded in Fremont last year. Last August, Facebook rented 730,000 square feet in Manhattan near Penn Station.
Fellow tech giants Google and Amazon have also continued to expand relentlessly as the company boomed during the pandemic. Google said it plans to spend more than $ 1 billion on California real estate this year as part of its $ 7 billion growth in the US. Google said employees can remain remote until September and have no scheduled reopening dates. Amazon bought a site in San Francisco for $ 200 million, where it is proposing a new last mile delivery station.
The industry faces obstacles to maintaining continued dominance. Congress, states, and regulators are cracking down on major technology, filing numerous lawsuits for antitrust and other abuses, which the companies have denied.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg and the CEOs of Google and Twitter testified remotely before Congress about disinformation and the technology’s role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The independent Facebook Oversight Board will decide whether or not former President Donald Trump will be permanently banned.
Roland Li is a staff writer at San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @RTLNews