Late Wednesday, Jack Dorsey led Twitter announced that it was shuttering two of its largest offices indefinitely, two weeks after they reopened. The offices are in New York City and San Francisco and the reopening of other offices around the nation has been paused. Although the reason for the closure is the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19, Dorsey has been a firm advocate of remote working and had endorsed it right from 2018.
The company said that they had considered the updated guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and had also considered the prevailing situation and had taken the decision to close these offices and pause future re-openings.
Twitter also said that they would continue to monitor local condition and would make the required changes that prioritize the “health and safety of our Tweeps.” It was the first company to allow remote working in May 2020 and had also let its workers continue to work from home, even after offices opened.
Jennifer Christie, human resources chief of the media platform had said that Twitter would never be the same in its work culture, post pandemic, in March 2020. She said that managers and staff at other levels, who had never considered remote work, would now thrive as they work remotely.
Adrian Zamora, a Twitter spokesperson had said that the company had previously required its staff to produce proof of vaccination before returning to work in office. About 1000 Twitter employees used to work at the San Francisco headquarters in the Civic Center neighborhood, which was opened in 2012.
In 2015, Twitter opened its New York City office in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. It has a smaller workforce of about 400. Many celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have visited the office. Many years before he was permanently suspended from Twitter, former president Donald Trump had also been a visitor to the NYC Twitter office. Twitter has said that it will maintain its office space, as of now.
Twitter is not the only social media and tech company to shutter or pause reopening its offices. Other tech companies including Google, Facebook and Apple are either postponing or pausing the reopening of their offices
