Opinion: Why is Facebook for remote work? It wants pay cuts

An empty shuttle bus pulls into a mostly deserted Facebook campus in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park, as tech titans ask employees to work from home to fight the spread of novel coronavirus. With Facebook now among the most dominant employers in the San Francisco Bay Area labour market, the company is using its lessons from the past few months of work from home to hire remotely all across the country in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. In doing so, it’s telling both its own employees and tech employers across the country that competition is coming. — AFP

One constant in Facebook’s corporate culture is the ruthless aggression when it comes to growth and competition. To take just one example: More than a decade ago, a young, upstart Facebook smashed a wage-fixing cartel that then had been imposed by older, more established tech companies and it tried to hire the best tech talent.

With Facebook now among the most dominant employers in the San Francisco Bay Area labour market, the company is using its lessons from the past few months of work from home to hire remotely all across the country in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. In doing so, it’s telling both its own employees and tech employers across the country that competition is coming. What remains to be seen is what effect this will have on wages both in and beyond the San Francisco area, where terms are ultimately set when it comes to the compensation of tech employees.