(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] This is what Facebook's offices
normally look like, expansive spaces
with plenty of areas to meet,
and rows of desks, open office style,
something CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off
after the new Silicon Valley headquarters opened in 2015.
- We've worked like this for a long time
and it's been a pretty core way
for how we do what we do here at Facebook.
- [Narrator] Facebook's new New York offices
should look just as bustling.
Instead, they're full of empty chairs
and vacant conference rooms.
The only workers around are the ones
building out the company's more than 2 million square feet
of leased office space on the West side of Manhattan.
But employees have yet to move in.
- I think that it's quite possible
that over the next five to 10 years
about 50% of our people could be working remotely.
- [Narrator] Facebook shifted to remote work
early in the pandemic,
and was one of the first to lay out a plan
for some employees to work from home indefinitely.
- We are seeing that productivity
has actually been really solid working remotely,
but I think there, no matter what,
is going to be some type of future,
where we are seeing the value
in both remote and in office work.
- [Narrator] Even as Facebook has been preparing
for a more flexible future,
it has been expanding physical space in New York,
signing a major lease during the pandemic
to become one of the city's largest corporate tenants.
So why is Facebook doubling down
on in-person work in New York?
And what impact could its growing presence
have on the future of tech in the city?
(playful music)
Facebook first came to New York in 2007,
opening its office with a handful
of people focused on marketing and advertising.
Becca Foy, who now heads Facebook's business teams
in New York was one of the office's earliest employees.
- I joined the company when we were less
than 500 people globally,
less than 20 or so here in New York.
And now we are over 4,000 employees,
half of which are tech and engineering.
- [Narrator] Then in 2019, Facebook signed
a lease in Hudson Yards,
a new development in the city.
That deal roughly tripled Facebook's
square footage in New York.
In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic,
Facebook again expanded its footprint in the city,
adding an additional 730,000 square feet of space
in the former Farley Post Office building,
the largest single lease signed in Manhattan last year.
- The companies go where the people
they want to hire are.
Facebook doubling down in New York
sends a really loud message
that the people they want to hire are in New York.
- [Narrator] Located just down the street from Hudson Yards,
the space at Farley Post gives Facebook something
that's a little bit more Silicon Valley
than New York City, a kind of campus.
- As we think about this urban campus
and really growing the footprint is absolutely vital
to the future for a few reasons.
Not only do we need to accommodate
our growing number of employees,
but really accommodate the needs and the preferences
of how they're gonna work most effectively.
- [Narrator] The completed spaces
look like many of Facebook's other offices,
with open office seating
and a variety of meeting rooms,
and for the floor is still under construction.
- You can imagine spaces that are right for events,
having collaboration areas,
with creative agencies, et cetera.
And so our business scenes are really gonna look
to Hudson Yards as their hub as we reopen those offices.
And then on the flip side,
the Farley Post building, that is really gonna become
more of a dedicated tech hub
for our tech and engineering teams.
- [Narrator] Despite the pandemic,
Foy says Facebook didn't make any major
structural changes to its office designs.
Facebook doesn't plan to reopen
until it sees it as safe to do so.
But that's a matter of when, not if.
- When we do open our offices,
the health and safety piece
is going to be our number one priority.
And so if you imagine walking into the offices,
I can't predict exactly what that will look like,
but I know that we will take those protocols,
and just the experience of coming
into the building really seriously.
- There's been plenty of beans spilled
in all kinds of newspapers and magazines
about how people are just leaving New York City in droves.
But actually we're not really seeing that in tech.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Julie Samuels is the executive director
at Tech:NYC, a coalition of about 800 tech companies
and investors working on behalf
of the industry at the city and state level.
She says the industry has fared well during the pandemic
as it was already more set up for working from home.
She doesn't think that shift
will push firms out of New York.
- I think that the tech sector
is fundamentally committed to the city.
I think, however, the tech sector,
generally speaking, is much more kind of open-minded
about where it works and how it works.
- [Narrator] Those smaller tech firms
aren't taking direction from Facebook.
The major leases it and other big tech firms
signed in 2020 could influence tech's future in the city.
- What's gonna happen is people
are gonna go work at Facebook.
They're gonna learn about tech,
and honestly, I mean, I love Facebook,
but I hope a bunch of them leave
and I hope that they start their own companies.
Because that, that's the magic.
- [Narrator] For Facebook, when exactly workers
will return to work is unclear.
But Foy says a majority of employees
have expressed the desire to come back.
- Mark Zuckerberg will say some of our products
and things that we're building,
they can happen in a matter of months.
But building a culture happens day by day,
over years, over decades,
and having our offices and our physical locations
are gonna continue to be such a contributor
to our culture.