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Facebook letting employees work remotely, but with a catch

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that it's employees can begin working from home indefinitely, but depending on where they live, their salaries might change. Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi, Alexis Christoforous, and Dan Howley discuss.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Switching gears, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced yesterday, that most employees can work from home indefinitely, but that it will come at a price, or lack thereof. Zuckerberg said that employees should not expect to receive Silicon Valley salaries if they're working remotely from a less expensive area. "Yahoo Finance" tech editor, Dan Howley, is here. Dan, why announce this in the middle of a pandemic when we're all stuck working from home?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, it's an interesting move. It was part of the call that Zuckerberg had where he originally announced this, basically saying that eventually, he expects about half the workforce to be working from home or remotely. And it's really something that Facebook is able to do, just because they don't have hardware really outside of their Facebook portal products.

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But everything that they do is online for the most part. So it makes sense for their employees to be able to work remotely as they would. It would open them up to a far larger talent pool than just those who live on the coasts or in big tech hub areas. But to say that you would have some employees working at lower rates because of their area that they may choose to settle in, that might turn off some people for working from home.

But hey, if you're making Silicon Valley money and you live in the Midwest or something like that, you're still going to be raking in a good amount of cash. And it'll really set you up for the future. So I don't see too many downsides to this outside of just the visual that it gives off of one of the biggest companies in the world saying, well, we might pay you a little bit less.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So, Dan, what does it mean, the fact that it's Facebook doing this sort of leading the charge here? Are we going to see, is it inevitable that we're just going to see more large Silicon Valley companies doing the same thing?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, you know, we have Twitter doing that. I think the companies that won't be able to do that are the ones who are more hardware-dependent. Talking about, specifically Apple. They're sending people back to work or having people come back to work sooner than the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google, those companies. Microsoft might be another one that would require people to be in.

But I think this is something that you will start to see kind of trend upwards as we kind of venture back into offices, and more employees kind of opt for wanting to work from home. But a lot of the trends that start in Silicon Valley do trickle down into the rest of the country. We're talking about better perks in the office, better health care in the office. Employee starts to request that across the board, and so we could see a lot more companies having their employees work from home that otherwise may not have considered it previously.

BRIAN SOZZI: Dan, it is interesting that it was Mark Zuckerberg that announced this. And I think if you watched Facebook over the past year, it's very clear, Zuckerberg has wrestled control back of his company from Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the executive team, and even the board of directors.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. And he's been very open about kind of stepping out and being out in front, being the face of Facebook again, if you will. I think that's kind of come at a time where he's really decided that it's time for him to push back against the criticism that the company has faced. There have been internal memos that have been circulated, reports written about how Zuckerberg really wants to reestablish himself as the head of Facebook.

And you saw there's been a good number of shakeups on the Facebook board. Obviously, he really wants to put his foot down and kind of wrestle back control, as you kind of said, from the I guess, people who were previously said to be the adults in the room. I think he wants to be the adult in the room now and really continue to guide the company in his own way.

- And Dan, if Facebook goes out to hire more people remotely, how difficult will it be or easy will it be to hire engineers, people working from different states?

DAN HOWLEY: I mean, that's, you know, that'll be simple. Because people everywhere are being told to get into computer engineering, get into software development, things along those lines. That's where the money is. So anybody who can do that who doesn't have to move and uproot themselves and move to the coasts or specifically move out west to Silicon Valley, they're going to be ecstatic about this.

And to see it move across the Valley, the Valley companies rather, have that work from home mentality become more widespread, would be really beneficial to those kinds of workers. And don't forget, living in San Francisco or Silicon Valley in general is virtually impossible for a lot of people. So for them to be able to set up shop somewhere else and not have to deal with those insane housing rates, I think that makes it all the more attractive.

BRIAN SOZZI: You know, but Dan, you could see some wide disparities in pay, which raises other question. Does Facebook risk losing talent to other companies?

DAN HOWLEY: I think only if you have the companies that are also going to have their employees work from home not reduce rates or a cost of living pay in the areas where they set up shop. And I don't think Facebook would end up doing that. I think they're going to want to poach the same kind of talent that Google would want to poach, that Microsoft would want to poach, that Twitter would want to poach, any of those kinds of companies. So I don't think it's really going to be an issue as far as pay goes. I think it's just interesting the way that he put this out there. I don't think he necessarily had to.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, let's leave it there. Dan Howley, thanks so much.