By John Vibes | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com
(TMU) – This week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told his employees that they will never be required to come back to the office if they don’t want to, and will now permanently have the option of working from home, even after the current pandemic is over.
Dorsey said that he wanted to decentralize the company’s workforce anyway, which has made this shift a bit easier for them.
A spokesperson for Twitter told reporters this week that the company has canceled all in-person events for the rest of the year, and said that they did not expect to see offices open in the next few months.
“We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralization and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere,” the spokesperson said, according to NBC.
“The past few months have proven we can make that work. 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. If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return,” she added.
Other tech companies have also made a smooth transition into allowing their employees to work from home, but no one else has so enthusiastically embraced the new way of doing things as Twitter has.
Google has closed its offices through most of the rest of the year, but some employees will return to work this summer. Facebook will be following a similar plan, opening offices again this summer but allowing employees to stay home through the rest of the year.
Twitter employees, on the other hand, will be able to work from home forever as long as they get their jobs done.
“Opening offices will be our decision. When and if our employees come back, will be theirs,” the spokesperson said.
Twitter and CEO Jack Dorsey have made numerous unexpected moves in recent years, from the ban of all political advertising on Twitter to Jack Dorsey’s promise to pledge a significant portion of his entire wealth towards charity. Thus far, Twitter is one of the only major social media platforms to turn down advertising money from politicians. Despite years of controversy about inauthentic activity on Facebook influencing elections, the website still plans to allow political ads in this coming election season. Likewise, Google and YouTube will also still allow political ads on their platforms.
As The Mind Unleashed reported last month, Dorsey announced that he will be pledging $1 billion to help fund coronavirus economic relief efforts, and said that the remaining funds will be put divided amongst a variety of other charities. This donation is not only large in scale but is also a relatively large portion of Dorsey’s overall wealth—roughly 28% of his total 3.9 billion net worth. The money will come from his personal stake in Square Inc., the payment processing company that he also co-founded.
