Facebook Starts a Water Taxi Service for Workers

Facebook says water taxi is in a 90-day eval period

The competition for highly skilled workers in areas with lots of tech firms needing the same sort of expertise is fierce. This is certainly the case in California with a glut of the largest tech firms out there in one state, often in the same city. Facebook has announced an interesting new way that it is trying to get workers to its office in Redwood City.

Facebook has started a new service that it calls a water taxi reports Mashable. The idea is that workers in the San Francisco area can drive to the dock, hop on the boat and be dropped off only a few miles from the office in Redwood City. Presumably, there is some sort of shuttle on the Redwood City side to get the workers the final miles to the office.

The boat is said to offer workers WiFi and have coffee and snacks. The move not only makes it more attractive for skilled workers that live in San Francisco to work for Facebook, it also helps the company up its green cred by getting workers to use mass transit.

The boat that Facebook is using is a catamaran that holds 30 people. Google also operates a water taxi service, but uses a much larger ship that can hold 150 workers. As notoriously busy as the highways in California are, I would bet that the water taxi will make for a faster trip to the office for most workers.

Facebook says that for right now the water taxi service is in a 90-day trial period. After those 90-days, the service will be re-evaluated. Presumably, the trial period is to see if employees take advantage of the water taxi service.