With the dust kicked up by the COVID-19 pandemic finally beginning to clear for many, it’s a new frontier of working we see before us in the still-hazy aftermath. Remote work, long a possibility, became a necessity after the virus shook our lives and businesses up. Now that a return to office working is potentially a realistic and safe move for many companies, three out of five employees would prefer to continue working remotely. And the companies that are willing to shift their workforces to all-remote or remote first plans are quickly seeing the same kind of huzzahs from North American workers that companies got five or ten years ago for installing cold brew taps and clatches of comfy chairs. Here are 20 companies that have moved to a remote-first or fully remote plan.
In January of 2021, CEO David Cancel announced all employees would be long-term remote. Officers have been kept open as “conversation spaces.”
VistaPrint announced in February of 2021 that most team members would move to a remote work plan. “Remote working is a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of the workplace, the largest since the industrial revolution, and we want to embrace it,” said the company in a blog post.
Nationwide has shrunk its number of physical offices from 20 down to just four post-pandemic.
“We’ll have office hubs in major cities where employees can work from if they want to, but the vast majority of our team won’t be expected to be in an office,” said Brex founder Pedro Franceschi.
Basecamp was 90% remote before the pandemic and has now committed to a fully remote work plan.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has said that the company will remain a “remote-first” organization after pandemic restrictions are lifted, offering remote work across a large number of roles.
Tobi Lutke, CEO of Shopify, tweeted that “most (employees) will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.”
“Before the pandemic hit, less than 15% of Box’s workforce already worked remotely, and this number will surely increase over time,” wrote CEO Aaron Levie in a blog post.
Pinterest spent nearly $90 million dollars last year to terminate its San Francisco office lease. “A more distributed workforce will give us the opportunity to hire people from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences,” said CEO Todd Morgenfeld.
Okta announced in August of 2020 that it would be allowing most of its 2,600 person staff to work remotely on a permanent basis.
Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo revealed in a tweet that “We are going fully remote-first at Quora. Most of our employees have opted not to return to the office post-covid, I will not work out of the office, our leadership teams will not be located in the office, and all policies will orient around remote work.”
VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger told CNBC that VMWare would end up with about a 60% remote workforce.
Upwork has permanently adopted a “remote-first” policy in May of 2020.
Snowflake announced during a May 2021 earnings release that it no longer had a corporate headquarters, depending instead on a globally distributed workforce.
Dropbox announced it would become a virtual first company in October of 2020. “Remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work,” read a Dropbox press release.
In an October 2022 blog post, LogMeIn President & CEO Willam Wagner wrote that “LogMeIn is in a position to lead from the front, be an example and live our mission as the work from anywhere company in front of our customers and employees. It is because of this that we have made the decision to transition our business to a permanent remote-centric company.”
Square Enix announced in late 2020 that 80% of its employees would be designated as permanently remote, with some employees sticking with office roles due to the nature of their jobs.
Aquent, based in Boston, announced in March of 2021 that it would be closing down the majority of its offices and instead use the lease money for employee engagement programs meant to bridge the divide between workers no longer gathering in an office together.