Facebook: OOO and WFH

Facebook aims to get half of its staff working remotely in the next five to ten years.

Mark Zuckerberg ©GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images
© Getty
(Image credit: Mark Zuckerberg ©GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images)

Facebook plans to “overhaul its working practices”, says Hannah Murphy in the Financial Times. CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) has told staff that the 45,000-strong company is “opening up remote hiring”, with the aim of getting half of its staff to work remotely in the next five to ten years. That would save on office costs and allow Facebook to reduce salaries for those working from lower-cost areas and help it ditch the $15,000 moving bonus it pays to new hires.

Facebook isn’t the only company enthusiastic about remote working, says Tae Kim on Bloomberg. Twitter and Shopify are fans too. But the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software predicts that “sustained strong productivity will get more difficult the longer people are forced to work from home”. Microsoft’s CEO thinks that “managing and mentoring employees” will be difficult.

Still, even if Facebook retains its offices, it hopes to profit from the boom in remote working in other ways, says Richard Speed on The Register. Zuckerberg says that paid membership of Facebook’s Workplace platform (its equivalent of Zoom) had increased from three to five million. It is even hoping that virtual reality (VR) could help people collaborate from home, which would be good news for Facebook’s VR division Oculus.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

However, for now Facebook’s efforts lag far behind both Zoom, which claims to have 300 million daily users, and Microsoft, whose collaboration tool Microsoft Teams has 75 million.

Dr Matthew Partridge

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri