Twitter's Jack Dorsey: Employees Can Work From Home Permanently

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Twitter shuttered its San Francisco corporate headquarters back in March when shelter-in-place orders were first issued across multiple Bay Area counties. The online business told employees to work from home.

Now, there's a new message from founder and CEO Jack Dorsey: go ahead an work from home permanently.

Dorsey has been an advocate for distance work, and had planned to work from Africa for a portion of this year, before the coronavirus pandemic.

Oh, the company plans to eventually reopen its San Francisco office, but workers will have the option to permanently ditch the daily commute.

In a message reportedly emailed by Dorsey to employees and then distributed in a blog post by Twitter Vice President Jennifer Christie, employees were were said to have proven their ability to work from home, "So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen."

The post said that offices will eventually reopen, so employees who thrive in that situation can return to a humming office, but "Opening offices will be our decision, when and if our employees come back, will be theirs."

Twitter does not anticipate opening any offices before September at the earliest, and there will be "no in-person company events for the rest of 2020. We will assess 2021 events later this year."

Twitter has about 5,000 workers worldwide.

The decision by the tech giant to allow employees to permanently work from home is one that is expected to be repeated by other companies. Businesses that are reeling from the coronavirus shutdown are eyeing costly commercial real estate rents and utilities as a means to cut corners.

A decision to allow thousands of employees to permanently work from home would also have a dramatic impact on Bay Area traffic, and the pollution caused by vehicles.

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