Bulletins

Salesforce is "very close" to reopening its HQ

Salesforce COO Bret Taylor said Thursday the company is "very close to reopening our San Francisco offices" and planned to make an announcement next week.

Taylor made the remarks in a chat on the audio-chat app Clubhouse hosted by startup investor Josh Constine.

Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco and is the city's largest private employer. Some 10,000 employees worked out of a high-rise campus in and around Salesforce Tower before the pandemic. San Francisco allowed nonessential workplaces to reopen Wednesday at 25% capacity after the city's health metrics allowed it to move into California's orange tier, a status that indicates the spread of COVID is considered moderate and many business activities can resume.

Salesforce is encouraging employees to get vaccinated but would not require vaccination as a condition of returning to the office, Taylor said, noting that local health rules and legal restrictions on employers varied. The company developed software called Work.com in the early days of the pandemic to help schedule workers and ensure their safety.

Owen Thomas

Owen Thomas is a senior editor at Protocol overseeing venture capital and financial technology coverage. He was previously business editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and before that editor-in-chief at ReadWrite, a technology news site. You're probably going to remind him that he was managing editor at Valleywag, Gawker Media's Silicon Valley gossip rag. He lives in San Francisco with his husband and Ramona the Love Terrier, whom you should follow on Instagram.

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