Report: Meta Employees Ordered Back to Office as Company Shifts to 'In-Person Focus' Some employees are reportedly being told that they must now work in-office three days a week.
By Emily Rella
Last month, a leaked memo detailed Meta's updated return to office policy, with some employees being asked to return three days a week with a mandate for accountability.
Now, those changes have reportedly gone into effect.
"We believe that distributed work will continue to be important in the future, particularly as our technology improves," a spokesperson for Meta told CNBC in a statement. "In the near term, our in-person focus is designed to support a strong, valuable experience for our people who have chosen to work from the office, and we're being thoughtful and intentional about where we invest in remote work."
A meeting space at a new Meta office space in the Farley Building in New York, which was expanded on and developed in 2021 despite most companies lessening their office space presence (Getty Images)
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Last spring, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that 10,000 workers would be laid off in an internal memo sent to the company in March while expressing his preference for in-office work.
In June, The Information reported that "a person familiar with the matter" had revealed that the change in Meta's currently flexible remote work policy was set to take place in September.
"Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely," he penned, hinting at what came later this year. "This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively."
Meta joins the ranks of companies like Amazon and Tesla, which have rolled out strict return-to-office policies in recent months.
Last week, leaked remarks at an internal company event by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy showed how serious leadership was about having employees return to the office for at least three days a week.
"It's past the time to disagree and commit," Jassy reportedly said. "And if you can't disagree and commit, I also understand that, but it's probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three days a week, and it's not right for all of our teammates to be in three days a week and for people to refuse to do so."
Meta was up just shy of 87.5% in a one-year period as of Wednesday afternoon.
