Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a tough stance against its employees who work from home. Electrek and Bloomberg report† In an email apparently sent to the company’s executive staff with the subject line “Working remotely is no longer acceptable,” the CEO said employees must spend at least 40 hours a week in the office, or else “leave Tesla.” . He said this should be a “Tesla headquarters” and not an “external branch.”
Responding to a screenshot of the alleged email posted to Twitter, Musk did not deny its authenticity, writing that anyone who disagrees with a policy of coming to the office “should pretend to work elsewhere”. Tesla has not responded to The Verges request for comment, but it is widely reported that disbanded her news agency†
They have to pretend they work somewhere else
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022
In his email, the CEO added that he would be willing to consider requests to work remotely under certain circumstances, but indicated that such requests would need to be “exceptional” to be approved. “If there are particularly exceptional contributors for whom this is impossible, I will directly review and approve those exceptions,” he wrote. 40 hours of personal work, he said, is “less than we ask of factory workers”.
Seen in a follow-up email by Electrek, the CEO claimed his own history of nearly living in the Tesla factory was the reason behind the company’s survival. “The older you are, the more visible your presence should be,” he wrote. “Of course there are companies that don’t need this, but when was the last time they delivered a great new product? It has been a while.”
After the global pandemic forced many companies to swiftly implement remote work policies, many are now assessing how to get their employees back to the office, or if they need it at all. Some, like Apple, are testing a hybrid approach where employees are only in the office for part of the week.
Tesla’s tough stance makes it a relative outlier in the so-called “new normal.” “If you don’t show up, we’ll assume you’ve resigned,” Musk wrote. You can read both his emails in their entirety about Electrek†