Remote Working Saved Zillow Money, Helped Recruiting, and Maintained Productivity (seattletimes.com) 8
Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman "recently told Entrepreneur magazine that almost five years of remote work has 'been fantastic for us,'" writes the Seattle Times.
Zillow shifted to allowing people to work fully remote during the pandemic. It's been a recruiting and retention tool for Zillow as they "now see four times the number of job applicants for every job we have versus what we did before the pandemic," Wacksman said.
While Zillow still lists its corporate headquarters as Seattle, the company bills itself as "cloud-headquartered," with remote workers and satellite offices. Wacksman's comments are backed by serious real estate moves the company has made over the past five years. An annual report detailing Zillow's financial results for 2024 shows its Seattle headquarters and offices across the country are shrinking. In 2019, Zillow had 386,275 square feet of office space in Seattle after steadily gobbling up floors of the Russell Investments Center downtown over the prior five years. The company reported it had 113,470 square feet in Seattle at the end of 2024... The company has drastically cut costs by shedding offices. Zillow's total leasing costs reached $54 million in 2022 and dropped to $34 million last year... It expects those costs to decrease even further, to $18 million by 2029. Zillow is also taking advantage of subleasing some of its office space and expects $26 million in sublease income between 2025 and 2030...
Zillow's financial results from last year suggest the workforce has been productive while logging in from home. The company reported Tuesday that it beat Wall Street expectations for the last three months of 2024 with a quarterly revenue of $554 million. Wacksman said in a news release Tuesday that 2024 was a "remarkable year for Zillow," as it reached its goal of double-digit revenue growth.
While Zillow still lists its corporate headquarters as Seattle, the company bills itself as "cloud-headquartered," with remote workers and satellite offices. Wacksman's comments are backed by serious real estate moves the company has made over the past five years. An annual report detailing Zillow's financial results for 2024 shows its Seattle headquarters and offices across the country are shrinking. In 2019, Zillow had 386,275 square feet of office space in Seattle after steadily gobbling up floors of the Russell Investments Center downtown over the prior five years. The company reported it had 113,470 square feet in Seattle at the end of 2024... The company has drastically cut costs by shedding offices. Zillow's total leasing costs reached $54 million in 2022 and dropped to $34 million last year... It expects those costs to decrease even further, to $18 million by 2029. Zillow is also taking advantage of subleasing some of its office space and expects $26 million in sublease income between 2025 and 2030...
Zillow's financial results from last year suggest the workforce has been productive while logging in from home. The company reported Tuesday that it beat Wall Street expectations for the last three months of 2024 with a quarterly revenue of $554 million. Wacksman said in a news release Tuesday that 2024 was a "remarkable year for Zillow," as it reached its goal of double-digit revenue growth.
Re: (Score:2)
Wacksman said in a news release Tuesday that 2024 was a "remarkable year for Zillow," as it reached its goal of double-digit revenue growth.
Replace all these expensive 'Muricans with hard working Indians working for pennies on the dollar from Bombay.
A race to the bottom. Everyone loses but the elite ruling class filled with orange loving, ass-kissing idiots.
Obvious Outcome (Score:2)
Water is wet, and fire is hot. This outcome was obvious from even before the pandemic. I had been preaching this to my boss for several years prior to the pandemic (and he was preaching it to our mutual bosses), but it took the risk of the workers dying before they finally caved in to what was blindingly obvious and sent us home to work. Our productivity increased, company loyalty increased, job satisfaction increased, and every possible metric improved.
Then they had to bone-headed idea to make us hybrid. E
Re: Obvious Outcome (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's more a case that a lot of managers don't really know how to evaluate workers other than "I can see that he's here 11 hours a day - obviously he's an exceptional employee!"
It's also likely that, in many companies, there are too many layers of management - and those managers know that having a remote workforce exposes that fact to the higher-ups.
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