- In a poll of 3,300 San Francisco Bay Area tech workers by anonymous employee chat app Blind, 15% said they have already relocated thanks to pandemic-related work-from-home policies.
- Another nearly 60% said they would like to leave if their companies were to allow them to work-from-home permanently.
- Tech companies have been talking about becoming "remote first," meaning adopting hiring/office policies that would allow most employees to work from home.
- This survey indicates employees in expensive, commute-intensive areas like San Francisco would love such a choice.
- Even though Bay Area is famous for luxurious perks for employees, even workers at Google say they'd rather live elsewhere if they were given the choice.
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Given the San Francisco Bay Area's famously high housing prices, traffic and long commutes, many tech employees in and around the city say that they would be happy to relocate elsewhere if their company's permanently allowed them to work-from-home, a survey of 3,300 employees by anonymous employee chat app Blind has found.
In fact, 15% of respondents said they've already relocated. Another 16% said they think they will never work full-time in an office again. Of those who have not already left, 59% said they would consider relocating if they had a choice to work from home on a regular basis.
Employees from Uber and Cisco were the most likely to have already moved away, according to the survey.
But employees at Google were most likely to say that they would want to live elsewhere if they were free to work from home, clocking in at nearly 70%. That's fairly surprising, given that the search giant's Silicon Valley Googleplex headquarters pioneered the concept of the luxurious tech campus, with its free gourmet food, private outdoor sports complex, workout facilities, and all sorts of entertainment and lectures for employees.
It's too early to tell if the pandemic will turn every company — particularly every tech company into a "remote first" company, or if the work-from-home culture will fade away soon after people can safely congregate again.
But this survey shows that if companies want to rethink their real estate needs and allow all employees to choose office life, WFH life or some combination, the tech workforce in the Bay Area would be receptive.
Are you a Bay Area tech employee with insight to share? Contact Julie Bort via email at jbort@businessinsider.com or on encrypted chat app Signal at (970) 430-6112 (no PR inquiries, please). Open DMs on Twitter @Julie188.
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