Pinterest pays $89.5 million to cancel lease for new San Francisco offices
Citing coronavirus-inspired workforce changes, Pinterest will pay $89.5 million to cancel a lease on new San Francisco offices.
“As we analyze how our workplace will change in a post-COVID world, we are specifically rethinking where future employees could be based,” said Todd Morgenfeld, head of business operations, in a company press release.
“A more distributed workforce will give us the opportunity to hire people from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences,” Morgenfeld said in the release.
Pinterest will retain its current San Francisco headquarters and offices, the release says.
The company, which operates the popular Pinterest site, had planned to lease 490,000 square feet of new office space in the 88 Bluxhome high-rise under construction, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
A Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research report recently found that 42 percent of the U.S. labor force now works remotely.
“So, by sheer numbers, the U.S. is a working-from-home economy,” said Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist. “Almost twice as many employees are working from home as at work.”
The report says that because of COVID-19, about 33 percent of the workforce isn’t working and that the “remaining 26 percent – mostly essential service workers – are working on their business premises.”
Other Bay Area tech giants, such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter, have said work-from-home policies will continue even after the coronavirus pandemic ends, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
