SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Several of the largest technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Twitter Inc and Google, plan to close their offices for months for the most part, despite the government opening them in a limited capacity on Tuesday has.
Taking into account declining coronavirus infections, the provinces of San Francisco and Santa Clara have facilitated guidelines that have kept most office buildings closed for the past year, except for key security and support personnel.
As of Wednesday, companies are allowed to open their offices up to a quarter of their capacity.
“San Francisco is going to come alive,” Mayor London Breed told reporters. “When we start reopening, more and more people will want to return to work and be with other people.”
But Silicon Valley businesses that committed themselves last year to allowing workers to stay home until this summer or indefinitely have said they stand by their timelines.
They cited their own analyzes of public health data, other safety considerations, and workers’ preferences. Vaccine adoption, which in California is only accessible to the most vulnerable population, is also a factor, but a smaller factor.
Network device maker Cisco Systems Inc and file storage service Dropbox Inc. said their mandatory work from home will remain in effect until June, while Box Inc said the reopening is still planned for September.
Pinterest Inc will only hold a significant reopening before August, Alphabet Inc’s Google until September and DocuSign Inc not before October.
Twitter, Adobe Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., Twilio Inc., Yelp Inc. and Zoom Video Communications Inc. will also remain closed despite what Breed and other local government officials described as a move to the “orange level” of the “red level” of California. restrictions.
Breed spokesman Jeff Cretan said San Francisco officials expect smaller and medium-sized companies to be the first.
‘RENTAL BENEFIT’
Among the few companies that wanted to take advantage of the relaxation were SAP SE, which said it was strongly considering reopening its Bay Area offices within a few weeks, and Slack Technologies, which is considering a date to invite workers back.
The set-up of San Francisco’s e-commerce software, Fast, will open its doors and windows to security for up to 25% of its 56 Bay Area employees on Wednesday, spokesman Jason Alderman said. He said the company expects to get job applications from people who are being forced by their current employers to work remotely.
“Companies like Fast that allow people to go to the office if they want to will be a rental benefit,” he said.
A survey at the end of last year among 9,000 knowledge workers compiled by the software company Slack in the workplace found that 20% wanted to work remotely, 17% in the office and 63% a mixture of the two. .
Facebook Inc, whose offices would otherwise be closed worldwide until July 2, said this month that it is opening 10% of the seats in the Seattle offices to help workers struggling at home. It did not disclose similar news about its offices in San Francisco.
Microsoft Corp., which on Monday announced plans to partially reopen its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, did not immediately comment on San Francisco locations.
IBM did not want to discuss the Bay Area plans. But several senior executives at New York headquarters began working from their offices with doors locked.
Reporting by Paresh Dave; Additional reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee; Edited by Muralikumar Anantharaman