Keep your salary and move someplace cheaper

Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Airbnb employees are now permanently allowed to live and work from anywhere. But first… Today’s must- [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Airbnb employees are now permanently allowed to live and work from anywhere. But first… Today’s must-reads: • Amazon has [more than one kind of labor problem]( • Elon Musk is still [doing other things]( besides Twitter • SPACs are [once again plunging]( Letting go of the office Thousands of Airbnb Inc. employees will start the week with an option they will now have to consider every single day: Go into the office or work from home? Last Thursday, Airbnb [said most staff]( will be able to work remotely for good, reversing its earlier guidance that workers would need to be [back at the office]( by September. It appears the gravitational pull of the work-from-home lifestyle was too hard to resist. Since the Covid-19 pandemic has become more manageable, businesses have been grappling with how (or whether) to revert to the old way of doing things. Some employers have [pushed for a faster return to the office](, while others are hoping hybrid work will [appeal to those]( who have grown accustomed to typing in their pajamas. But Airbnb Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky believes there’s no going back — and that all companies will inevitably follow suit. “I think this will become the predominant way companies work 10 years from now,” he [tweeted last week](. It marks a dramatic change from how the tech world used to think about the workplace. Startup founders, especially, saw the old-school office as an environment to disrupt. Airy open spaces with stocked fridges and playground perks replaced depressing cubicles. They talked up the serendipitous collaboration that can come from bumping into a coworker at the kombucha tap. A decade ago at Airbnb’s old offices, I remember Chesky taking me [around to meeting rooms modeled after Airbnb listings](, which he said influenced their culture and design ethos. With attendance now voluntary, were offices ever really breeding grounds of corporate values? Airbnb believes it can capture the same je ne sais quoi from occasional team off-sites and social events. Perhaps it’s not surprising that a travel company would want its workers, well, traveling, particularly given that remote work has become a driver for the business. Why maintain conference room replicas at the office when employees can act as real hosts at their own home or as guests while [working at other people’s apartments](? It’s a way to encourage Airbnb employees to more frequently test the service they’re building. So far, there has been a mess of approaches to work in the post-lockdown era, even among companies whose devices and services foster remote productivity. Apple Inc., which takes prides in its culture of secrecy, [is trying to figure out]( whether hush-hush development is feasible with decentralized employees. Microsoft Corp. is opting for a hybrid strategy, yet schedules with [more than 50% remote time must be approved by managers](For%20Microsoft,%20the%20guideline%20is%20that%20schedules%20more%20than%2050%25%20remote%20must%20be%20approved%20by%20managers.). Salesforce Inc.’s Slack, meanwhile, is taking a “[digital-first approach](” and wants its executives to spend [fewer than three days a week in the office]( — not the other way around. Ultimately, whether one of these strategies takes off may come down to a huge source of competition among tech giants: talent. The idea of commuting long hours, of not having access to the creature comforts of home, of not being able to live too far from a select set of massive (and expensive) cities — it’s all increasingly getting in the way of recruiting and retention. Stripe Inc. recently offered staff an option to leave New York and San Francisco — so long as [they take a pay cut](. Airbnb made a point of saying moving to another part of the country won’t affect compensation. If you’re a Stripe employee who wants to live in Nashville, Tennessee, you might suddenly be willing to trade your obsession with reinventing finance for improving home rentals. “Companies will be at a significant disadvantage if they limit their talent pool to a commuting radius around their offices,” Chesky [said](. “The best people live everywhere.” —[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) The big story The FBI searched emails, texts and other electronic communications of as many as 3.4 million U.S. residents [without a warrant]( in late 2020 and 2021, according to a government report. What else you need to know Amazon suffered its biggest stock drop since 2006. “Things are so weak [you want to hide under your desk](,” one stock trader said. Meanwhile, the maker of Angry Birds [soared on a rosy outlook](. The guy who says he created a political meme shared by Elon Musk is now [selling that image]( as a nonfungible token. Intel said it will retool factories and restore its technological leadership by 2023, [a year ahead of schedule](. Follow Us More from Bloomberg Dig gadgets or video games? [Sign up for Power On]( to get Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more in your inbox on Sundays. [Sign up for Game On]( to go deep inside the video game business, delivered on Fridays. Why not try both? Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights.​​​​​​​ You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Fully Charged newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. 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