Meta opens Chicago office after more than two years of pandemic delays. Is it already obsolete?
When Meta, the social media giant formerly known as Facebook, hosted the grand opening for its headquarters in Chicago's Fulton Market district last week, it was a celebration delayed more than two years by the pandemic.
Despite welcoming hundreds of cheering employees with free pie, confetti bursts and a rousing performance by the Chicago Bucket Boys, the celebration, which also marked Meta’s 15th anniversary in Chicago, was muted by a hybrid return to office that could make the expansive new workplace a monument to the past.
“We’d love to see people in the office two to three times a week,” said Judy Toland, 50, who heads up the Meta Chicago office. “But that is an option, that is not a mandate.”
Companies across Chicago are beginning to herd employees back into the office, but after two years of remote working and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, it is a tentative process at best. Employees used to the flexibility of
