Which Tech Companies Are Remote Friendly?
Which Tech Companies Are Remote Friendly?
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Dear subscribers,
I live in the Bay Area, where houses are selling for $1M over the asking price. That got me to research which tech companies are more open to permanent remote work.
Post pandemic, many people expect tech companies to adopt a hybrid model - a few days in the office and at home. But a hybrid model doesn't let employees move to lower-cost locations and work from home permanently. To me:
Remote friendly = At least 10% of roles are permanent remote.
Here's what I found for:
FAANG
Unicorns
Creator economy companies
FAANG
Facebook and Netflix have a few permanent remote roles, and Google just announced that they expect 20% of employees to work from home long term. Amazon and Apple, in contrast, want employees back in the office.
Facebook (remote-friendly)
Jobs: 500 remote jobs out of 3,248 or 15% (source)
Policy: Senior employees (IC5+) can apply to be remote for a year or more. Compensation is adjusted for the remote location.
Mark Zuckerberg: "We're going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote Work at our scale...over the next five to 10 years...we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently." (source)
Netflix (partial)
Jobs: A few dozen remote jobs, mostly for engineers (source)
Reed Hastings: "I don't see any positives (to working from home). Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative." (source)
Google (partial)
Jobs: No remote jobs (source)
“We’ll also offer opportunities for you to apply for completely remote work (away from your team or office) based on your role and team needs. Taken together these changes will result in a workforce where around 60% of Googlers are coming together in the office a few days a week, another 20% are working in new office locations, and 20% are working from home.” (source)
Amazon (back to office)
Jobs: No remote jobs (source)
Amazon blog: "Our plan is to return to an office-centric culture as our baseline. We believe it enables us to invent, collaborate, and learn most effectively" (source).
Apple (back to office)
Jobs: No remote jobs (source)
"[Tim Cook] hopes that the majority of his employees can be back in their offices...by next year" (source)
Tech unicorns
Many tech unicorns have gone remote-first, with hundreds of permanent remote roles open. Surprisingly, both Airbnb and Doordash are not remote-first despite their businesses (temporary stays and food delivery) playing a role in supporting remote work.
Twitter (remote-friendly)
Jobs: 179 remote US vs. 265 San Francisco (source)
"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." (source)
Square (remote-friendly)
Jobs: 253 remote vs. 227 San Francisco (source)
"Moving forward, Squares will be able to work from home permanently, even once offices begin to reopen." (source)
Stripe (remote-friendly)
Jobs: 318 remote vs. 185 San Francisco (source)
"Over the last year, we've tripled the number of permanently remote engineers, up to 22% of our engineering population. We also hired more remote employees across all other teams and tripled the number of remote Stripes across the company." (source)
Spotify (remote-friendly)
Jobs: 167 New York, many of which are remote eligible (source)
"Our employees will be able to work full time from home, from the office, or a combination of the two. The exact mix of home and office work mode is a decision each employee and their manager make together. "(source)
Shopify (remote-friendly)
Jobs: Mix of remote and in-office roles (source)
Tobi Lutke: "We expect that majority of people will work from home and home offices in the future" (source)
Slack (remote-friendly)
Jobs: Mix of remote and in-office roles (source)
"Our hiring policies have changed dramatically and permanently—most new roles are open to remote candidates, and most Slack employees have the option to work remotely permanently." (source)
Coinbase (remote-friendly)
Jobs: 100+ remote, 6 San Francisco (source)
"Since January 2020, nearly 250 employees have relocated worldwide, and more than 150 have left San Francisco, representing about 21% of our global and 29% of our San Francisco workforce during that time." (source)
Reddit (remote-friendly)
Jobs: Mix of remote and city-specific jobs (source)
"To support employees to live where they want to and do their best work, we are eliminating geographic compensation zones in the US. It means that our US compensation will be tied to pay ranges of high-cost areas such as SF and NY, regardless of where employees live." (source)
Airbnb (back to office)
Jobs: 6 remote, 111 San Francisco (source)
"Employees have the option to temporarily relocate to states and countries where we are set-up to support them." (source)
Doordash (back to office)
Jobs: No remote jobs (source)
Microsoft (back to office)
Jobs: No remote jobs filter (source)
Full remote requires VP approval, hybrid wfh is ok as long as <50%
Creator Economy
Of course, I have to end this post with remote work policies for creator economy companies. Unfortunately, outside of Cameo, top companies in this space are largely not remote first. I haven’t looked into earlier-stage companies, but I imagine that many are more remote-friendly.
YouTube (back to office)
Jobs: No remote jobs (source)
I find this ironic since YouTube is by far the largest player in the creator economy - supporting millions of creators who make a living from home. YouTube could become more remote-friendly in the future like Google.
Twitch (back to office)
Jobs: Very few remote jobs (source)
I have a few friends at Twitch who work remotely, but this seems to be the exception and not the norm.
TikTok (back to office)
Jobs: No remote jobs (source)
Patreon (back to office)
Jobs: No remote jobs (source)
Discord (remote-friendly)
Jobs: Most roles are San Francisco based but remote option also available (source)
Cameo (remote-friendly)
Jobs: Almost all open roles are remote (source)
Overall, there’s been a clear shift in tech towards supporting remote work. Yet, this shift comes with a few caveats:
Employees might be biased towards working at a corporate HQ even if a company is remote-friendly. To discourage this, Coinbase recently announced that it’s getting rid of its HQ altogether:
No one really knows how things will play out after the pandemic.
I do believe that people will increasingly want to work from anywhere, and not offering remote roles will affect a company’s ability to attract great talent. Letting people move to lower cost of living places will also encourage more entrepreneurship and creative pursuits.
As for me, although I miss seeing my colleagues in person, I've found remote work to be net positive to my productivity. Instead of doing the soul-crushing Bay Area commute every day, I now have more time to write posts, play with my kid, and yes, make memes.