SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Several of the San Francisco Bay Area’s largest tech companies, including Twitter Inc and Google, plan to keep their offices largely closed for months to come, despite the government allowing them to operate in limited capacity on Tuesday. be opened.
Taking into account declining coronavirus infections, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties relaxed guidelines that had kept most office buildings closed for the past year, except for critical security and support personnel.
From Wednesday, companies may open their offices for a maximum of a quarter of their capacity.
“San Francisco will come to life,” Mayor London Breed told reporters. “When we start to reopen, more and more people will want to go back to work and be around other people.”
But Silicon Valley companies that committed last year to allow employees to stay home until this summer or indefinitely said they were sticking to their timelines.
They cited their own analyzes of public health data, other safety considerations, and employee preferences. Adoption of vaccines, which are only accessible to the most vulnerable populations in California, is also a minor factor.
Network equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems Inc and file storage service Dropbox Inc said their mandatory work-from-home policy would remain in effect until June, while Box Inc said the reopening is still scheduled for September.
Pinterest Inc doesn’t see a major reopening until August, Alphabet Inc’s Google until September and DocuSign Inc not until October.
Twitter, Adobe Inc, PayPal Holdings Inc, Twilio Inc, Yelp Inc and Zoom Video Communications Inc also remain closed, despite what Breed and other local government officials described as a shift to the “orange layer” of the California lockdown “red layer”. restrictions.
Breed spokesman Jeff Cretan said San Francisco officials expect smaller and midsize businesses to be the first to return.
‘RENTAL ADVANTAGE’
Among the few companies that wanted to take advantage of the easing were SAP SE, which is strongly considering a partial reopening of its Bay Area offices within weeks, and Slack Technologies, which is considering a date to invite some employees.
San Francisco ecommerce software startup Fast will open its doors – and windows for security – to up to 25% of its 56 Bay Area employees on Wednesday, spokesman Jason Alderman said. He said the company expects to get applications from people who have to work remotely through their current employers.
“Companies like Fast that allow people to come to the office if they want to will have an advantage in hiring,” he said.
A study at the end of last year among 9,000 knowledge workers commissioned by software company Slack in the workplace showed that 20% want to work remotely, 17% in the office and 63% a combination of both.
Facebook Inc, whose offices would otherwise remain closed worldwide until July 2, said it will open 10% of its seats in Seattle offices this month to help workers struggling at home. It had no similar news from its San Francisco offices.
Microsoft Corp, which announced plans on Monday to partially reopen its Redmond, Washington headquarters next week, did not immediately comment on the San Francisco locations.
IBM declined to discuss Bay Area’s plans. But several senior executives at the New York headquarters have started working from their closed-door offices.
Reporting by Paresh Dave; Additional reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman