Tech companies extend WFH policies as businesses reopen

As the coronavirus continues to spread globally, more companies extend work from home policies. Yahoo Finance's Dan Roberts weighs in.

Video Transcript

- I wanted to reiterate a headline that we got just a moment ago, because it may presage what this post-coronavirus pandemic world is going to look like. According to Buzzfeed, Twitter is going to allow employees to work from home permanently even after a coronavirus lockdowns are lifted. BuzzFeed is citing an email sent from the Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, today. Some jobs that require physical presence will still require employees to come in, but it sounds like a lot of folks will be able to stay home and work, which obviously, could work perhaps more broadly within the tech world. Dan, there has been a lot of examination of what office looks like coming out of this.

DAN ROBERTS: Yeah, it has. And Twitter here kind of one upping Google and Facebook, which I believe had already come out and basically said, we're going to keep working him from home till the end of 2020. That seemed so extreme when that story came out. But now Twitter is saying, I guess, indefinitely-- not permanently, that headline can be a little misleading-- the key here is the company will let employees to do that. It's optional. It's not mandating, no one come in ever again, unless your job requires being in person.

The idea is comfort. I think that a lot of companies are going to try to make clear-- it's a little bit of a leadership and optics issue. They're going to try to make clear that we don't want to make any of our employees feel uncomfortable, we don't want anyone to feel that they're expected to come in sooner than is safe. That's all. So I don't really think this means that, you know, two years from now, Twitter offices will still be empty. I think it just means that we're not going to put a date at this time on when we expect ever to come back in.

Now there's been a lot of talk about whether this time will hasten pre-existing trends. You know, there's kind of a viral tweet from Balaji Srinivasan, who is a former Andreessen partner and crypto guy. We've had him on our shows before. That tweet now looks very prescient, and he said, you know, what if coronavirus-- and this was way back, I think, December or early January-- it turns out to be the great pandemic ever expected that increases and hastens pre-existing trends. Trends like going from in-person college and universities to MOOCs-- M-O-O-Cs-- and online courses? And another one being remote working.

And I do think that that is plausible here. Maybe a lot business that we're already sort of heading that way-- the decentralized workplace. And depending on the companies and whether they can handle that-- obviously, live TV, that does not work-- but some tech businesses that can handle that might go that route now.

- And Dan, I think the coronavirus was catalytic in many ways, as you kind of are suggesting. It's interesting to think about the likes of Google and Facebook, but also, being self-aware here, Yahoo, when Marissa Mayer was at the helm, she had a very strict no work from home policy. And this was back in 2012, 2013. So we're talking about seven years ago, when counterparts in the tech space were already working from home, right, that became commonplace.

And then we saw sort of a check on productivity where Amazon's Jeff bezos came down on working from home, as well. We saw that with the investigative piece from "The New York Times" saying that corporate-- workers in the corporate space, they were very disgruntled. They were being worked to the bone. They weren't allowed to work from home on Fridays. And then I think you and I both have friends and colleagues who work at Amazon-- they had a lot of flexibility even getting into the coronavirus. So I think this will be another recruitment tool, right, for people who are highly desirable employees and candidates, even in this kind of a tough labor market, they'll look for those sorts of flexible options moving forward.

- And well, also on a macro basis, I'm curious to hear what all of this is going to do to productivity numbers, as well.