Facebook Eyes Denver as Potential New Hub

Covid-19 has changed the way we work. Remote work might finally be catching on—

Just last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly streamed a company townhall, in his traditional and slightly awkward fashion, laid out some of the strategies the company will be rolling out in the new world of COVID-19— specifically, following in the footsteps of some other tech giants, the effort to continue growth while moving to a more remote workforce.

To summarize, an hour-long, up-(too)close-and-personal stream with Zuckerberg revealed existing offices will gradually reopen and bring back a fraction of Facebook’s 45,000+ employees. Facebook will also be expanding the recruitment processes near cities in which they already have an established presence.

Enter Denver —

Here’s where it gets interesting— The second phase of remote hiring will tap into new locations and pave the way to opening new Facebook hubs. Denver, along with Atlanta and Dallas, made the cut. We don’t know exactly when Facebook will begin hiring onto its Denver team, but Facebook already has a footing in Colorado by currently leasing 23,663 sq. feet of space on the seventh floor of 1900 16th St. in downtown Denver. The space includes 23 conference rooms, an event space, a training room, a cafe, a library, a game room, and bike storage.

Mark Zuckerberg | Photo Market Watch

Internally, some of the metrics coming from Facebook’s staff confirm that a good number of its employees are ready for a change of scenery. During an internal survey of the people who said that they wanted to work remotely, 45% of them stated that they were “pretty confident” that they would be moving to another place if they had the opportunity to do that. On top of that 45%, another 30% said that they “Might” move if the option presented itself.

That’s nearly 75% of those who are interested in remote work saying that they are ready to pack up and get out of Menlo Park. Granted, Facebook’s staff is hardly a large enough sample size to draw any wide-reaching conclusions, however, the people who work there and their leanings do reflect some fundamental truths about the tech industry and those who actually work in it.

Let’s face it— if you didn’t have to try and find an outrageously expensive apartment or house in San Francisco and could live anywhere in the world, you would at least consider it.

Menlo Park CA.

It seems from a numbers view, Colorado (and Denver) has a lot to offer the tech behemoth. Not only from the hiring perspective (while we do cultivate some high-level talent) but also from a quality-of-life standard. Based on research conducted by CommercialCafé earlier this year, Denver ranks as the most desirable U.S. Metro area for millennials. Census data showed that almost 8 percent of locals aged 25 to 39 held at least a bachelor’s degree in science and engineering in 2017, and that the number of jobs in a computer, engineering, and science occupations had increased more than 20 percent since 2013.

As Covid-19 prompts industries to think differently about employment and the potential impact of having employees work remotely, it hard to say for anything for sure. This new landscape is still settling in, and the ink is hardly dry on any aspect of this crisis.

There is a case to be made for cashing out of an expensive real-estate market (like San Fransisco or New York) and retreating to a place like Denver. The quality of life in Colorado coupled with its cheaper rents and housing prices (comparatively) would strike appeal to those wishing to run away from some of the overcrowded and overpriced coastal cities. It would certainly explain why the real estate market hasn’t dipped as drastically in the metro area as many thought it would at the beginning of Covid19.

Inside Facebook Denver

While it may be easy to draw some parallels to the Amazon HQ debate, upon further inspection, it is far less sinister. Facebook already has an office here and really expanding to a “hub” in Denver wouldn’t necessarily mean that a flood of new, affluent millennials are going to descend onto the Mile-High City.

We have had the tech to work remotely for some time now, and if there is anything positive that could come from this crisis it would be a movement of allowing people to choose where they want to work— opposing the arbitrary restrictions that serve little to aid productivity in the office. This potential shift in our cultural understanding of how and where work is done has the capacity to empower companies and workers to include those previously cast aside by their inability to work in traditional office settings … or some trendy reclaimed loft in RiNo.