If you want to work for Facebook from your home in Peoria, Illinois, don’t expect Palo Alto, a California-sized salary.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that half of the social networking giant’s employees can work remotely in the next five to 10 years, and that Facebook will start allowing certain employees to work from home full time.
But the remote worker must warn Facebook if they move to a new location on January 1 and may adjust their wages, he added. Given that Silicon Valley has some of the most expensive real estate in the country, that adjustment is likely to decrease.
“We will adjust salary to your location at that time,” Zuckerberg said, adding that adjustments will be needed for tax and accounting. “There will be severe consequences for people who are not honest about this.”
This shift can help rebuild the US job market in technology, because Facebook currently has more than 40,000 employees. Zuckerberg said there would be a variety of jobs that were qualified to work remotely, starting with senior engineers who had just been recruited and then developing into current employees with strong performance reviews.
“I think we will be the most advanced company in distance work on our scale, of course,” Mr. Zuckerberg told employees on a live broadcast Thursday.
Facebook’s new remote work system “will largely rely on a code of honor,” Zuckerberg said, but the company will “take some basic precautions” to ensure that employees are where they say they are. However, employees who left the Bay Area when Facebook implemented work-from-home orders in March might eventually be able to stay in place, he said.
Zuckerberg’s surprise announcement – which follows Twitter’s announcement earlier this month that employees will eventually be allowed to work from home indefinitely – will eventually become a “win win” for workers and employers, according to an expert.
“Depending on how they calculate it, workers might be far better off making a little less lifestyle but living where they want to be,” Michael Solomon, co-founder of a 10x technology recruitment company, told The Post.
Solomon, also the author of an upcoming book entitled “Game Changer,” said that middle-class candidates would likely be happy to have a choice between a higher salary in the Bay Area or a higher quality of life elsewhere, while the cream from the harvest will get their paycheck regardless.
“I think the best people, you have to pay them regardless of where they live or you will lose them to competitors,” he said.
Facebook shares closed up 0.6 percent Thursday, to $ 231.39.
