Meta Platforms is asking employees assigned to an office to come in three times a week beginning in September, according to people familiar with the matter, joining a clampdown on remote work in the tech industry.
The move is part of the company’s broader push to work more efficiently, said one of the people, who asked not to be named discussing private company policy. The company just culminated a prolonged process of laying off 10,000 employees — a process which started in March and dragged on productivity.
Employees who are already remote workers can remain distributed, one of the people said.
“We’re committed to distributed work, and we’re confident people can make a meaningful impact both from the office and at home,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We’re also committed to continuously refining our model to foster the collaboration, relationships and culture necessary for employees to do their best work” The Information earlier reported the change.
Management has been discussing the idea for some time. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in March that an internal analysis showed “engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.”
In that public post, Zuckerberg went on to encourage Meta employees to find more chances to work together in person.
Meta has been in something of a holding pattern. After making staff wait to see whether they’d be fired, many were left contemplating a life without a job at Meta, according to employees who survived the last round. Combined with the lack of a clear road map and the emotional toll of losing talented colleagues, apathy is high and morale is low, current and former workers have said.
Meta isn’t the only company where recent layoffs have hurt the mood. This week, a few hundred Amazon.com Inc. employees walked off the job, protesting job cuts, the company’s own three-day return-to-office policy, and the business’s impact on the climate.