Silicon Valley companies cite collaboration, AI competition to reverse remote work policies
"We are requiring employees to work in the office two days a week. This is because we need to understand customers who work in a hybrid or office environment," said Belchami Shankarlingam, Zoom's head of product engineering, during a meeting at the company's headquarters in San Jose, California, on the 30th of last month (local time). Zoom, a video conferencing platform, grew explosively during the COVID-19 pandemic as remote work spread. The company has also introduced numerous AI features to enhance productivity, such as AI attending meetings on behalf of humans and summarizing discussions. However, the same company has mandated that employees return to the office twice a week. Shankarlingam explained, "If our clients are returning to the office, it is our job to create products that help them work well. We have increased the office attendance requirement from once a week to twice a week."
Video conferencing platforms like Zoom and various AI tools and features that assist with work are flooding the market. This has made it easier for employees to work from anywhere, regardless of location. However, in Silicon Valley, where big tech companies are concentrated, the trend is reversing: "returning to the office" is now in vogue. The main reason cited is the need for better collaboration and agile responses to changes amid fierce AI competition. Some critics argue that office return policies are being used as a catalyst for AI-driven restructuring.
Remote work was introduced during the pandemic to continue operations even when cities and companies were locked down. After the pandemic, tech companies maintained remote work policies as a means to attract talent, allowing them to hire people from different regions by enabling remote work.
However, this year, big tech companies are calling employees back to the office. According to a CNBC report last month, Google recently informed employees that "even if an employee works remotely for just one day a week, it will be counted as a 'full week of use.'" This effectively scales back the "work from anywhere" policy introduced during the pandemic, which allowed employees to work from any location within a limit of four weeks per year.
Apple mandates three days of office attendance per week and tracks employee entry records to monitor compliance. Amazon began expanding its five-day-a-week office attendance policy from January. Microsoft will require employees living within 80 km of its headquarters in Puget Sound, Washington, to attend the office three days a week starting next February. According to foreign media, the proportion of Fortune 100 companies in the U.S. requiring full-time office attendance is expected to rise from 5% in 2023 to over 50% by 2025, with 30% implementing a five-day-a-week policy by the end of this year.
Companies report that office work yields higher performance than remote work, citing faster problem-solving and idea-sharing through face-to-face collaboration. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated, "Engineers who work in the office or maintain in-person work tend to perform better than remote workers." Apple CEO Tim Cook added, "Collaboration and creativity are revitalized through in-person work." Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also noted, "Serendipitous conversations in the office are the core of innovation."
However, some analyses suggest that certain companies are intentionally using office return policies to downsize. According to Reuters, Amazon recently announced plans to cut 14,000 employees, partly because voluntary resignations were insufficient under its office return policy. A report published in August by the U.S. Federal Reserve stated, "(Downsizing) has sometimes been accelerated by office return policies and the expansion of automation, including new AI tools."