2020 Recap Part 1: The start of pandemic and Working from Home

Blind is excited to bring you our new 2020 rewind series. Our 2020 rewind ranges in general topics that were prevalent in the past year. We explore each chapter with our data aggregated and collected over the past year.

COVID-19 breaks out and Working From Home starts.

How can we speak of 2020 without mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic? November 17, 2019, is the date on which the first known case of the COVID-19 can be traced, and in January 2020, many companies in the US started to acknowledge the virus and institute new policies. Blind surveyed 5,685 verified employees and 5% answered their companies started imposing Mandatory working from home. Another 35% of employees answered their companies required working from home for 14 days after returning from China. 

In another survey that ran between 2/01-2/25, out of 7,311 participants, 20% had witnessed the backlash towards employees of Chinese descent at their company after the coronavirus outbreak.

Working From Home

As COVID-19 breaks out, many companies asked their employees to start working from home. In the first week of March (3/04/2020), we asked the professionals on Blind if they are working from home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and 56% of 14,175 respondents replied yes. While 76.1% of Amazon employees were working from home, only 30% of Google employees answered they were working from home. 

In late April, we had already seen a wave of layoffs and learned that 64% of 4,467 professionals who’ve participated in another survey preferred to continue working from home after the coronavirus restrictions lifted. On the same survey, 64% of professionals were less likely to use shared/common spaces and 90% of professionals expected a flexible WFH policy to persist.

As work from home (remote work) policy persisted through May, the talk of a “tech exodus” was booming. We asked the professionals on Blind, if given a choice to work from home permanently, would consider relocating out of San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and Seattle Area.  66% of professionals who answered would have considered relocating according to results.

4,400 professionals across these three major cities showed intentions of limiting their time physically going to the office. 15% anticipated never returning to the office. Interestingly, even after Twitter’s permanent work from home announcement, 66% of Twitter employees in the Bay Area said they do not anticipate relocating.

As Facebook announced future remote work and pay cut, we followed up with another survey asking our users “If you could WFH permanently, would you consider relocating out of the Bay Area with a pay cut?” 32% of working professionals would consider relocating with a pay cut. 

• • 38% of Facebook professionals would consider relocating with a pay cut. 
  • 20% of Bay Area professionals would you be willing to accept a 10-20% pay cut. 
  • New York (75%) has the highest proportion of those wanting to leave the Metropolitan Area.

Metropolitan Exodus and Future of the Office

Many were indeed moving out of big cities. By the end of May, 14% of surveyed working professionals in the NYC and Bay Area were negotiating for a lower rent. The Bay Area (54%) and New York (56%)  showed similar proportions of anticipating the housing rent prices to decrease. When we surveyed again in late July, we learned that 15% of Bay Area professionals had already relocated out of the city, according to results.

Creative clustering has been the Bay Area’s secret to success for innovation. What happens when technology workers go remote, permanently? Blind, the anonymous professional network, partnered with ROOM8, a popular app optimizing co-living through roommate-matching and apartment-search services, to run a survey to gauge “Tech Exodus” in 6 major US cities. The survey ran in the Bay Area, NYC, and Seattle, LA, Chicago, and Austin on 9/13-10/22. 30% of the respondents have moved outside their  metropolitan area where they had resided prior to the pandemic:

• • 43% of Chicago survey respondents have recently moved outside the metropolitan area
  • 40% of NYC survey respondents have recently moved outside the metropolitan area
  • 29% of Seattle survey respondents have recently moved outside the metropolitan area
  • 29% of Austin survey respondents have recently moved outside the metropolitan area
  • 29% of LA survey respondents have recently moved outside the metropolitan area
  • 21% of Bay Area survey respondents have recently moved outside the metropolitan area

In September, Google’s CEO said the future of work involves a ‘hybrid model,’ and the company was already reconfiguring its offices for employee ‘on-sites.’ 

In Sept, Blind surveyed 3,202 professionals on its platform and 80% of users agreed with this approach to the future of work. Only 10% of professionals believe the future of work will be “fully remote.” 

A Facebook employee posted on Blind, “Sundar gets it – Hybrid WFH. I don’t know a single person on my team who wants to work from home full time, and yet the majority of my team would like to work from home some of the time. Facebook (and other tech companies) only seem open to an all or nothing approach currently, but it looks like Google might move forward with the model most employees actually want.”

There are definitely downsides to the new hybrid work. As one Lyft employee says, “brainstorms/ fruitful chance encounters don’t happen” during WFH.  When asked “Does not being able to get together in person with your team negatively affect your work?” 64% of Facebook employees and 56% of Uber employees say that not being able to get together in person with their team does negatively affect their work. Per a survey on Blind that had 2,700 responses, only 6% of professionals say they had been able to virtually recreate the encounters that happen every day in office settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the biggest challenges many companies and employees have had to face in their corporate lifetime, forcing many to adapt to the new norm. No one knows for sure how the future of work will be beyond working from home. But one thing is for sure: The coronavirus has changed the way we work — and some of those changes maybe forever.

Covid-19 Vaccine and Returning to Work

For U.S. companies that have been WFH since March, the recent positive developments around vaccine trials landed as an opportunity to get back into the office. On Blind, we asked our users if they believe their employers could simply ask them to get vaccinated to return to the office. (3,273 responded)

• 69% of professionals think employers have the right to ask their employees to get vaccinated before returning to the office. That number is even higher for FAANG employees (72%). 
• 72% of professionals said they would get vaccinated if their employer asked them to
• Only 36% of professionals said they would go back to the in-person office if vaccines were not mandatory

With many missing the office (and of course the normalcy) and some not wanting to ever return to the office, it will definitely be interesting to see how some of the big tech companies play out. Be sure to sign up with Blind for free and stay in the loop!

About Blind and Blind Hub

“Ally to the employees, advisor to the company.”

Blind is a platform where 4.1M verified employees from 83k+ companies discuss workplace matters anonymously, encouraging transparency in corporate culture, and empowering employees to provide honest feedback about their workplace experiences anonymously actively. The daily dialogues and surveys on Blind provide unbiased, accurate insights on workplace matters.

Recently launched, Blind Hub is a provider of workplace intelligence and insights, helping companies drive their culture and improve employer branding.

Together with Blind Hub data analysis tool, Blind will release monthly rankings, focusing on different aspects that attract and retain employees.

To learn more about Blind Hub, please visit www.blindhub.net.