Remote working: What the ‘tech exodus’ means for the Silicon Valley

Long before the pandemic, pundits predicted that remote work would reshape Silicon Valley. Newspaper stories about California tech workers setting up home offices in more affordable West Coast locales date back to the 1990s. In the most recent explosion of Bay Area housing prices, some startups made a splash for their remote-only policies, and at least one offered a “de-location package” to incentivise moves anywhere with lower housing costs.

Yet remote work has by no means been the industry’s default. Apple and Alphabet have long been deeply office-oriented; Yahoo, Best Buy and Reddit ended up reversing course on their flexible work arrangements in the past decade.