Snap mandates office work four days a week

When the pandemic first hit, tech companies were among the first to embrace remote working. As a result of this forced experiment, many tech giants decided to embrace remote work long-term.

For instance, Dropbox declared itself as a remote-first company, and transformed its offices into areas solely for collaboration and social connection. While AirBnb announced its employees could work anywhere in the world for 90 days of the year, and permanently anywhere in their country of residence.

Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy shared in September: “We don’t have a plan to require people to come back. We don’t right now. But we’re going to proceed adaptively as we learn.”

However, other tech giants have taken a different approach; moving away from fully-remote work, they are instead demanding employees return to the office for part of the week.

Although former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told employees they would be able to work from home permanently, 2022 has been a disruptive year for the social media giant.

After months of speculation, Elon Musk, a big fan of in-person work, finally bought Twitter for $44 billion in October. After becoming its CEO, he declared that employees must be in the office for at least 40 hours a week, and that only “exceptional” workers would be granted special dispensation to work remotely more often.

In the context of mass layoffs at Twitter (and remaining employees being asked to commit to a new “hardcore” culture), it seems that what Musk means by “exceptional” is simply “that your manager takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution”.

Uber, Google and Apple have also called employees back into the office part of the week. The latest tech giant to join them is Snap, which owns social media app Snapchat.

Inside Snap’s new ‘default together’ model

According to a memo seen by Bloomberg, from the end of February 2023, Snap workers will be expected to spend 80% of their time in the office.

The model, which is called ‘default together’, applies to all 30 of Snap’s global offices, but there will be some flexibility around in-person work outside of the office, such as client meetings.

The aim of Snap’s new 80/20 hybrid policy, which it has named ‘default together’, seems to be achieve the company’s “full potential”. Fortune reported that individuals may have to give up some “convenience” to achieve “collective success”.

A Snap spokesperson told Fortune: “After working remotely for so long we’re excited to get everyone back together next year with our new 80/20 hybrid model.

“We believe that being together in person, while retaining flexibility for our team members, will enhance our ability to deliver on our strategic priorities.”

UNLEASH reached out to Snap for comment, but is yet to receive a reply.

Snap’s decision to call employees back to the office comes amid a challenging time for the tech sector. Almost 140,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2022, according to aggregator layoffs.fyi – Snap cut 20% of its workforce in the summer, and reported its slowest quarterly sales growth ever in October.

What impact could this mandate have on attrition at Snap? Will it lose employees to its more lenient competitors, or, given that hybrid work is the preferred working model, will employees appreciate the structure and clarity that Snap has provided?

Only time will tell. Stay tuned.

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