Facebook is 'opening up remote hiring aggressively' and expects half of its employees may be remote by 2030

• Facebook expects up to half of its workforce will be working remotely within ten years.
• On Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company is "aggressively" leaning into hiring remotely in response to COVID-19.

Facebook expects up to half of its workforce — tens of thousands of employees — may be working remotely within 10 years.

On a public livestream on Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Silicon Valley-headquarted company is "aggressively opening up remote hiring" in response to coronavirus lockdowns, and then it leaning hard into the possibilities of working from home even after the pandemic ends.

The announcement is one of the most significant remote work pledges of any technology company to date, and has the potential to help radically reshape cultural norms around remote work and transform California's San Francisco Bay Area, long the epicenter of the American technology industry.

"I think we're going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote at our scale for sure, and we're going to do this in a way that is measured and thoughtful and responsible," he said. "Over the next five to ten years, about 50% of our people could be working remotely, would be my guess. That's not a target or a goal."

Facebook has around 48,000 employees globally (and a similar number again of contract staffers). The large majority of these are based at the company's sprawling campus in Menlo Park, California — but that could now change in the coming years, as more and more hires choose to live outside of the Bay Area.

"The reality is most of us are working remotely at this point," Zuckerberg said. "It doesn't make sense for us to retrain our hiring to near offices most of us aren't going to be able to go into."

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