Here are the companies leading the work-from-home revolution:
, informed his employees at both companies that they can continue working from home “forever.” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, followed with his own announcement that his employees may also work from home.
Although, there was a dark underlying warning. People who move out of San Francisco to a lower-cost locationA recent Gallup poll revealed, “Now that some of these employees may be able to return to their workplace, it appears only a quarter are emotionally ready. Another quarter are reluctant to return specifically because of concerns about contracting COVID-19, whileKate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, said, “Seventy-seven percent of the workforce say they want to continue to work from home, at least weekly, when the pandemic is over.” Lister estimates, “multiple days a week by the end of 2021.” The consensus seems that the widespread availability and ease of use of technologies to collaborate and stay in constant contact, such as Zoom, Slack, Google Hangouts and other services, enabled people to smoothly adapt to the new work-from-home setup. Employees appreciated the chance to avoid long commutes, look after their homebound children and tend to family members who may have been impacted by the virus. Executives noticed the potential cost savings, as expensive long-term leases for office space may no longer be needed. Corporate executives are cognizant that their employees enjoy the chance to work from home, they’re able to do their part in helping the environment and their real estate costs will drop precipitously . Shopify, Coinbase, Upwork, Lambda Schools and others have also permitted their people to work from home. Shopify is a fast-growing, Canadian-based, global company that offers an e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Shopify has over one million businesses in about 175 countries with total gross merchandise volume exceeding $41.1 billion., “As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.” Lutke added, “Until recently, work happened in the office. We’ve always had some people remote, but they used the internet as a bridge to the office. This will reverse now. The future of the office is to act as an on-ramp to the same digital workplace that you can access from your #WFH setup.” Critics of the work-from-home trend contend that companies will lose their identity and culture. Employees, particularly younger ones, will miss the lack of social interactions. Part of the camaraderie at work is seeing your co-workers, going out to lunch together or having a drink after work. This will be absent from the new remote environment. Acknowledging the challenge, Lutke said in a tweet, “We haven’t figured this whole thing out. There is a lot of change ahead, but that is what we’re good at. ‘Thrive on change’ is written on our walls for a reason.”, “Building on our 20 years of experience as a remote work company, we are now permanently embracing a ‘remote-first’ model.” Brown continued, “Going forward, working remotely will be the default for everyone, while teams will also be able to come together—once it's safe—for intentional collaboration and socialization. The #futureofwork is here.”announced Wednesday that his digital currency exchange, headquartered in San Francisco, is “moving to a remote-first policy in light of COVID-19, meaning most employees will have the option to work from home.” Armstrong said he’s planning for the future to look different, in light of the coronavirus pandemic."Over the last two months, I have come to believe that not only is remote work here to stay, but that it represents a huge opportunity and strategic advantage for us." Armstrong said that employees will still be able to work in an office, but they will now have the option to work remotely or split their time between time working in and out of the office. This theme has been echoed by Jack Dorsey as well. Understanding that not everyone wants to work remotely and may want to break up their weekly schedule, there will be a home office to go to if they so desire. This seems like a reasonable approach to allow for interactions between workers and building social networks and friendships within the organization. Austen Allred, CEO of Lambda School, an online classroom that uses interactive technology to teach people the tech skills they need to launch a new career, said that the school has rolled out a permanent “ ” policy. Allred tweeted that employees are free to work from home, from an office or from anywhere within the United States. Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Capital One, Zillow, Slack, Amazon, PayPal, Salesforce and other major companiesApple is one of the lone tech giants bucking this trend. The company, according to, has requested some employees to return to work. Apple is known for its unique culture and tendency toward secrecy, which may account for the hesitancy to fully embrace remote work. There are some other companies taking the middle ground. Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, a cloud content management and file-sharing service for businesses, wrote in a blog post, “Today, we're excited to share that we're taking further steps to enable a unified digital workplace, with increased work flexibility for Boxers. As a part of that, we're announcing that all Boxers canproviding increased flexibility and peace of mind for our nearly 2,000 employees globally.” Similar to Apple, Levie recognizes,"At the same time, we know the power of having office hubs where in-person communities, mentorship, networking, and creativity can happen...That is why our future is a hybrid one."
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