On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent out an email to nearly all of the social media corporation’s employees that they could choose to work from home indefinitely, even after COVID-19 has lessened its grip on our lives. Twitter sent its employees home on March 11th, 5 days before San Francisco, where Twitter is headquartered, became the first area in the U.S. to mandate ‘shelter in place.’ Even before that, for non-COVID-19 reasons, Dorsey had been planning to move the company towards a ‘distributed workforce’ with remote employees all over the country.
The offices at Twitter HQ won’t be opening until at least September, also according to Dorsey, for all employees who don’t have hands-on positions. (Server maintenance, obviously, is a task that must be done in person.) Business travel and large in-person events will remain suspended through the rest of 2020, and 2021 will be considered later this year, when it’s clearer what course the COVID-19 crisis will continue to set.
A representative from Twitter has said that the past two months have proven that remote working is perfectly viable for the company.
“Opening offices will be our decision, when and if our employees come back, will be theirs,” the representative told Business Insider. “When we do decide to open offices, it also won’t be a snap back to the way it was before. It will be careful, intentional, office by office and gradual.”
With much less of an announcement, Dorsey also donated $15 million to San Francisco’s Give2SF COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund on Tuesday, which will support food security, housing, and small business relief in the city and prioritizes those who have been ineligible for relief under the Federal CARES Act. His donation more than doubles the fund. He also donated $10 million to help bring protective equipment for inmates to prisons around the country.
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