According to the latest report, more and more companies are beginning to bring their employees back to the office, Facebook parent company Meta is more keen than ever to work remotely. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a group of Meta executives took the model to the extreme.
Today, the company’s management teams, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are being scattered around the world far from their Silicon Valley headquarters, a test of the limits of remote work.
Naomi Gleit, Meta’s head of product and one of its longest-tenured employees, has relocated to New York. Chief marketing officer Alex Schultz plans to move to the U.K., and another vice president, Guy Rosen, will move to Israel in the near future, according to a company spokesman.
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Meanwhile, Javier Olivan, Meta’s chief business growth officer, is based in California and Europe but plans to spend more time abroad. Meta said last week that it plans to double the size of its Madrid office in Olivine’s hometown of Spain, adding 2,000 employees over the next five years.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri has been traveling or working remotely in recent months from places including Hawaii, Los Angeles, and Cape Cod, according to people familiar with the matter. A company spokesman said Mosseri had no plans to permanently relocate.
Zuckerberg also spends more time away from the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., people familiar with the matter said. Zuckerberg often spends extended periods of time at his home in Hawaii and elsewhere outside the San Francisco Bay Area, they said.
“The past few years have brought new possibilities for how we connect and how we work,” said Meta spokeswoman Tracy Clayton. “We believe how people work is far more important than where they work. ” He said Zuckerberg plans to spend more than half of his time in California and telecommute the rest.
And in the short term, Zuckerberg won’t be getting advice from longtime deputy chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg plans to take time off this spring as part of Meta’s 30-day paid vacation program every five years.
Facebook began embracing telecommuting after changing its name to Meta in October, saying at the time that virtual interactions were the future of the internet. Meta said it has invested in a range of technologies in the workplace that can improve remote work efficiency, including various videoconferencing and enterprise software tools.
However, the Meta business is facing major challenges as executives are leaving Menlo Park, Calif. The company’s stock price has fallen more than 32% since it announced its fourth-quarter 2021 results on February 2 this year.
Moreover, the slump in share prices cost Meta more than $300 billion in market value. This is primarily due to Meta’s many challenges, including increasing competition from TikTok, declining user numbers, and the ongoing impact on the company’s advertising business from changes to Apple’s iOS privacy policy. Meta also said that Metaverse-related businesses lost more than $10 billion.
David Heger, an analyst at consulting firm Edward Jones, said the recent earnings report appeared to require full participation in the company’s operations, and that so many executives in so many different time zones were worrying.
“Given the critical moment the company is in right now, this may not be the ideal time for top executives to try remote work,” he said.
While the company has been adding office space to accommodate its growing workforce, Meta said in June last year that all full-time employees could apply to work from home if possible.
Of course, this policy does not apply to all employees. Those who work in the hardware space or the company’s data center infrastructure still need to be in the office. Meta has also shifted to a hybrid office model, allowing most employees, including executives, to work where they see fit. March 28 is the company’s back-to-work day for employees who want to return to the office.
Meta is in the early stages of building a so-called metaverse. The metaverse refers to the virtual worlds in which people can interact, play or work.
Investment advisory firm Logan Capital purchased Meta shares on behalf of clients. As Meta strives to build more products for users to interact virtually online, having executives spread across geographic locations could also be an asset, according to company founder Stephen Lee.
“If you want to develop the metaverse and telecommuting systems, learning by doing might be a good way,” Li said. Peter Cappelli, a Wharton management professor, said few companies take executive remote work to such an extreme.
Having executives work together face-to-face allows them to collaborate effectively, strategize together and build trust with each other, said Bill George, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and a professor of management practice. Working together can also help create and maintain a company culture and better mentor junior employees.
“Your people want to see you,” George said. “They want to know you’re there. Yes, you can use Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever to keep in touch, but the presentation is different.”
While many executives had previously been relocated to remote locations, George said that, in most cases, he thought it would be better for the company to have executives close to team members.
“I’ve been to Hawaii, and I can tell you, you can’t do much work there,” George said. Zuckerberg may have found a way to combine work and play in Hawaii. He posts pictures of himself surfing on Instagram, showing how much he enjoys the activities in the ocean.
