Remote Working Saved Zillow Money, Helped Recruiting, and Maintained Productivity

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.

Re:Next up.

[Tony Isaac]

Maybe you didn't red the summary. Zillow is doing what employees want: allowing them to work from home. How is that not a good thing, in the face of the torrent of news about forced return-to-office policies! We need more stories like this, highlighting that treating people like people, makes them want to work for you. This story certainly makes me more inclined to want to work for Zillow!

Obvious Outcome

[StormReaver]

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

[zawarski]

Cannot understand a word you are saying with that cock in your mouth, AC.

Re:Obvious Outcome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, unfortunately there is a minority of workers who are not self-motivated and the only way to get shit you need from them is to walk over and hover by their desks. But working remote makes it more likely these jerks get fired making life better for everyone.

If, on the other hand, you are presuming that EVERYONE secretly prefers to be at home because they like to screw around and not work, stupidity is not enough of an explanation because you are being clearly told the reasons people don't like to go in. You are intentionally disregarding what people say. That goes beyond stupidity to bad faith my dude.

My reasons for wanting to go in are: hot chicks and cool dudes to talk with, and since 90% of jobs have neither I have no reason to go in. Food trucks can be a good reason as well I guess. Oh yeah and a nice 11x17 color laser printer/scanner on the occasions that I need that.

There's also a valid reason for certain types of companies (law firms, investment banks etc.) which are oriented around constant on the job training AND the need for juniors to be instantly available when they are in the office, but that doesn't apply to me or to 99% of all workers.

Re:

[higuita]

while most do the job and use the time wasted traveling to play with their kids
it is called live balance, but i understand that idea may be totally unknown to many USA citizens, as rat race is not live balance

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

If your company is paying attention to its people, you know, by offering them remote work and such, it's likely that they also can figure out if you're not doing, you know, work. I currently manage a team of remote software developers, and I know exactly who is producing how much. It's not because I'm nosy, they *love* what they do, and appreciate the respect I give them. Guys like you, I'd spot in half a minute.

Re: Obvious Outcome

[_7anner]

Itâ(TM)s almost like traditional managers that spy on you to determine your output (as opposed to understanding and appreciating your work) canâ(TM)t function without making assumptions based on your physical appearance in the office.

Re: Obvious Outcome

[93 Escort Wagon]

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.

Re:

[Ostracus]

Well programmers have LOCs so there's that.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm not sure how Libraries of Congress fits into this discussion, but I'm willing to learn.

Re:

[backslashdot]

Come on, you've been here and presumably in the tech industry for years, how can you not know that it stands for Lines Of Coke? It's how many lines of coke one has to do to tolerate the job.

Re:

[evil_aaronm]

I try to limit it to 1 after 3:00. Otherwise, I'm too wound up to go to sleep on time. Sleep's critical for good health and productivity, you know.

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

Funny?
Or insightful?
Or just depressing?

Probably at least: it is the truth.

Re: Obvious Outcome

[larryjoe]

I think it's more a case that a lot of managers don't really know how to evaluate workers

This is the problem. Some, perhaps even most workers, are more productive or at least as productive working from home, but it would be shocking if all workers were so. So, managers have two challenges: (1) Determining which workers are productive at home and which are not. (2) Deciding whether to roll out selective WFH or enforcing the same policy for all workers. For a selective policy, the manager has to decide which workers are productive at home, and in many situations, this is not easy. If enforcing a uniform policy, then does the manager go towards trusting the productive at home workers and allowing the others to be less productive or instead crack down on the less productive and hope that the drop-off for the productive workers is minimal?

Re: Obvious Outcome

[alvinrod]

I could see this for some jobs, but for programmers if your manager can't even figure out how to look at or understand commit history for the project repository they shouldn't even be in charge of an ant farm. If they haven't figured out that employees in the office have dozens of ways to appear busy while accomplishing nothing I wouldn't trust them with a pet rock.

Re:

[hdyoung]

Some companies have shown reduced productivity from remote working. Not my field of expertise, but it seems pretty clear that it doesn’t always work out better, so some other variables are likely at play. Not surprising to me.

Re:Obvious Outcome

[Bert64]

And a lot of that was down to people who were suddenly forced to work remote without having prepared for it.

Having to work in a cramped apartment while your kids are also not allowed to attend school is not going to work out well.
Outside of pandemic times those kids would be at school, and chances are the whole reason you have a cramped apartment is because it's all you could afford within commuting distance of your workplace. If you actually plan for a fully remote position chances are you could get a bigger place further away for the same cost with a dedicated room set aside for work.

Other variables come down to the individual employees and type of work, but those you can account for by making appropriate hiring decisions.

While some companies are doubling down on RTO

[Tony Isaac]

Others are scooping up the good ones who want or need to work remotely. Microsoft is another company that has gone public embracing remote work. https://careers.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com] It will be interesting to see who is left standing after a few years.