Productivity, interns, seniors and loss of spirit of Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg's Great Interview on Remote Work

Back in January, shortly after the first news of the coronavirus appeared, Mark Zuckerberg began to prepare for a potential pandemic. He began to rebuild his teams on projects that would be useful in case of quarantine. As a result, Facebook in the era of COVID has become almost more productive than before. The company has launched a successful competitor to Zoom called Rooms. Shops came out a week ago, allowing small businesses to trade directly on social media platforms (both on Instagram and Facebook). During the pandemic, the founder of Facebook earned more than all the other billionaires. His fortune increased by $ 31.4 billion, he moved from seventh to fourth in the list of the richest people in the world.

And the other day, Zuckerberg announced during a live stream to his employees that from now on the company will gradually move to a remote location. It opens remote hiring for most positions, and many of the 48,000 Facebook employees will be able to request a permanent transfer from home. Over the next decade, Zuckerberg expects, Facebook, the company that recently paid new employees $ 15,000 in bonuses to live near its headquarters in Menlo Park, will become largely remote.


Only a small part of the Facebook campus

On the eve of the announcement, The Verge magazine conducted an interview with Zuckerberg - about why he changed his mind about remote work, about new technologies developed by his company, and about his own ideas about working in the future after COVID- nineteen. We at Rubrain.com translated this interview, in our opinion, it is very interesting.

The decision to switch to remote work, experts say, marks a grandiose shift in the culture of one of the most influential companies in the world, and in the mentality of the Valley as a whole. And the point here is not even to save money. Zuckerberg says that new expenses, including paying for periodic flights of important employees to headquarters, “compensate” for Facebook all the savings in office space and workers' salaries. But the remote is still important, and the transition to it is inevitable.

Casey Newton: So, how are you going to run all this?

Mark Zuckerberg: The next stage - from tomorrow we will begin the remote recruitment of employees. It just makes sense: everyone already works remotely, but for some reason we are now restricting the hiring to people who live near the office (which is closed).

Then for existing employees - they will be able to submit a request to constantly work remotely. And they have time to make this decision. We have already reported that until the end of 2020, Facebook can work remotely. And if COVID does not go away, this mode will continue in 2021. Next - we will allow people to go to the remote permanently. First of all, we will focus on experienced employees. In my opinion, it’s useful for people who have just left the university to work in the office first, for training.



Previously, you paid people to live close to the office, that is, it was very important for you. What have you seen in the last couple of months to change your mind so much?

There are several reasons. First, we are currently working on many remote technologies and products. From personal communication services, to the Workplace for communication among the enterprise and Portal for remote presence at home, smart video calls. And in the longer term, we have big projects with VR and AR. Also a remote presence. And when you work on this, you believe, to some extent, that it is important that you help people. I think this is changing your worldview.

But the direct catalyst that dramatically influenced all of these processes is COVID, obviously. I think the experience of working remotely for a while, it was more likely positive than negative. Well, there is a practical element here: many people for a long time will not be able to return to offices. Even with social. distancing, we think, offices will be filled by about 25%. And since we will work remotely, it seems to me that we should become experts in this.

We approach this methodically. Someone wants us to just say, "Okay, everyone in the company can now decide that he works remotely and go buy a house where he wants." But this is not the approach. If you are an experienced employee, if you are at a certain level within the company, if you have good performance indicators, if you are in the team and in the position that supports remote work, if it is approved. Then you can become a permanent remote employee of Facebook. And gradually we will open up these opportunities for an increasing number of people. But this is a very important stage, and we can’t just say that everyone can do it now, and figure out how to arrange it along the way.



You say that half of Facebook will become remote employees. How did you come to this goal?

I would not say that this is the goal. Rather, it is a prediction. This is how I came to him. We conducted surveys and asked people what they want to do. Twenty percent of our current employees said they would really like to work remotely on an ongoing basis. And another 20% said that they have a certain interest in this. And I think it will happen that while you invite everyone back to the office, 40% will prefer not to take this step and work from home.

Maybe not all 40% want to be remote. And one of them will be in teams that must work from the office. But I take into account the fact that we will now recruit employees remotely. And in 5-10 years we’ll probably hire about another 20% of our workforce. And so, summing up with 30% of our current employees who are already working remotely and want to continue this. So it turns out about 50%.

Sundar Pichai, the head of Google , said this week that he is worried about what will happen when his team finishes working on what they started before the coronavirus. How can you brainstorm and do creative work when you don’t constantly encounter other lighter people in the elevator?

This is just one of the big questions. What pleasantly surprised everyone here was that people were much more productive when working from home than we expected. Many thought that everything would just fall apart, but it did not fall apart. And many people say that they are actually more productive right now.

But I think the more important question, in the long run, is exactly what you are talking about. Social connections, culture, creativity. What we were able to create here in Silicon Valley. Will all this disappear when working from home? This is partly why I am not saying that I want everyone to work from home. Although now COVID, of course, forces us to be more "remote" than, I think, it would be ideal.

Work from home seems to work well for people who have already moved relatively far in their careers. Which do not need to be taught, who no longer need connections. So you said newcomers to Facebook are less likely to work remotely?

They just never worked for the company, and they need to learn how to do it. Most of the remote companies I spoke with while pondering our policies - I noticed that they usually don't hire graduates. They say, "We will only hire people who have already worked a couple of years." And we had a huge part of the strategy that we hire thousands of graduates every year, and then grow them internally. And we will continue to do so.

It seems to me that this is just a new problem, this whole situation, and we intend to solve it. So far, the idea is that we will hire new graduates and train them in the office. Of course, with COVID this is still a separate complexity. We have thousands of interns who must begin their journey in the company, and they will be deleted for now. This is an interesting experiment, let's see how they work out. We always learn a lot about management by looking at our interns.


Facebook interns start at $ 7500, 2 times the average American.

What advantages do you think that thousands of Facebook employees will work in such a more fragmented format?

Access to a broader talent market. Now we limit ourselves to a fairly small number of cities. This is not so bad, but, of course, typing from anywhere - in this there are advantages. Another plus is the retention of old employees. Now if someone needs to move, he is forced to leave the company. Remote work will help us retain these important employees, and this, of course, is much better than if we had to look for a replacement. So, it seems to me, more talent will come, and less - decrease.

More importantly, our current situation will help us improve the technologies of the future that we are working on. Many of them are associated with a remote presence, in one format or another. And we ourselves are now forced to constantly use similar technologies while we work on them. Things like video chats - we now sit in them constantly. We live in the Workplace. In Now, the development of VR and AR is of great importance within the company, and, it seems to me, now employees better understand why this is important.

What else I would like to mention, in terms of advantages for the company, is the diversity of employees. It will become easier for us to recruit people from different cities, with different cultures, ideologies. It is good for the world, the distribution of opportunities more evenly. People will no longer be forced to live in cities, they will have the opportunity to find a good job, wherever they are. And, it seems to me, there is a big effect on the environment. People drive less, fly less. Today, statistics came out that CO2 emissions have fallen by 17-26% since the beginning of the COVID epidemic. With remote work, the effect will not be so strong, but it will. In 2020, it’s so much easier for us to move bits, not atoms. Therefore, I’m better “teleporting” using video chat or VR, than I’ll sit somewhere in traffic.



This is probably the longest time that you yourself worked remotely. How have your personal feelings about working from home changed?

Yes, I am sure that this is the largest stretch of my “remoteness”. And he came out more productive than I expected. But this is also a very abnormal period. It is difficult to draw any conclusions from it. I heard from people working in other remote companies during this period that they didn’t get as productive as before the pandemic. Due to the fact that there are now such distractions as children who do not need to go to kindergarten, and in general, everyone is very excited about COVID. So this is not a stable environment. Although productivity, they say, is still higher than when working in the office. It is interesting.

But I think the big question remains what we talked about earlier, about creativity. To what extent are we just drawing ideas from the culture that we have created over the past 10 years? Will it be harder to get creative, keep changing? So far, it seems, in my experience, this turned out to be not very difficult. We definitely changed direction on a number of things, and accelerated the development of a number of things, and released a number of things. So overall, I’m a little more optimistic about this issue, in terms of my ability to conduct a company like that. But we will see over time - there are many unknowns.

Let's say a vaccine for COVID -19 is coming up in the future . After how much do you personally return to the office? Or will you continue to work remotely?

That's a good question. I’m a little not normal, in terms of the restrictions that are imposed on me. I have to travel to see people. Business partners, government officials and other different people come to my office. It is simply impossible for me to work completely remotely.

But given the spirit of the times, and the desire to be on the same wavelength with employees. And for the same reasons associated with the desire to use some of our more advanced technologies that we are developing. I think I will work more and more remotely over time. But for now, I’m figuring out how this might look like for someone in my position.