Mark Zuckerberg predicts remote work for up to 50% Facebook employees over next 5-10 years

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he predicts that over the next five to 10 years, his social network will be able to get as much as 50% of the company working remotely.

Zuckerberg was speaking with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on the show “Squawk Box” Thursday.

The Facebook CEO, who is also the company’s chairman and controlling shareholder, said that it will be a very measured process.

“Well, I think it’s going to be a very measured process for getting there,” said Zuckerberg, according to the unofficial transcript of the interview US and Global News received from NBCUniversal, the owner of CNBC. “So, I do predict that over the next five to 10 years, we’ll be able to get as many as, that as much as 50% of the company working remotely.”

The chairman clarified that it is not a goal, but a prediction.

“But that’s not a goal,” he said. “It’s not like I feel like it’s critical that we get to half.”

Zuckerberg added, “But it’s a prediction about how much I think we will get, based on the talent pools that we’ll be able to have access to through recruiting outside of just the big cities, and what percent of our employees from studies and surveys that we’ve done have shown an interest in working remotely, if given that option.”

Sorkin asked whether Zuckerberg thought it was going to advantage people.

Mentioning that remote work has some advantages – “access to large pools of talent, who don’t live around the big cities and aren’t willing to move there” and retaining more of the employees who relocate “because they want to move to a place, maybe to be with their family,” Zuckerberg said that this will overall “help spread economic opportunity more broadly across the country” as people living outside of metropolitan areas will also get to avail these opportunities and “people are going to spend a lot less time commuting.”

Watch the full Mark Zuckerberg interview on CNBC’s website, here.

Image credit - Anthony Quintano from Honolulu, HI, United States (Source) (CC BY 2.0)