From today’s Seattle Times:
Twilio Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lawson said the company is sticking with remote work, even as many tech peers push employees to return to the office.
“We’re going to embrace being a distributed company,” Lawson said in an interview. While periodic in-person events are important, “we can treat folks as responsible adults, focus on the work outcome and output,” he said.
The San Francisco software company announced in February it was closing some offices as part of a cost-cutting push. Some of the money saved will be used to bring employees together at events, Lawson said. About 60% of the workforce is in locations where Twilio historically hasn’t had offices, he said.
Twilio, known for its communications services such as direct-to-consumer messaging, grew quickly during its six years as a public company, and employed more than 8,150 people at the end of last year. But the software maker struggled to make a profit and its value plunged 81% in 2022. As part of the push to profitability, the company announced job cuts over the past few months amounting to about 26% of its workforce, and saw the shares jump when it projected adjusted earnings of as much as 22 cents a share in the quarter ending in March.
Many peer companies soured on remote work over the last year as the tech industry faced a tougher economic environment. Salesforce, an early advocate of remote work, is now “just short” of a return-to-office mandate, Chief Operating Officer Brian Millham said last month in an interview. Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon now require employees to work in the office a minimum number of days.
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