Come to office or go home: Elon Musk threatens Tesla WFH employees with sacking
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has given a brutal ultimatum to his employees – return to the office or leave the company. In emails accessed by electric car news site Electrek, Elon Musk tells employees that they must return to work in the office for a MINIMUM of 40 hours per week (that is 8 hours for 5 days).
'Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers,' Musk wrote in the email to employees.
Elon to Tesla team: no more remote work pic.twitter.com/aSmZAAOm7G
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) June 1, 2022
He also emphasised that Tesla will assume employees have resigned if they don’t show up for work at the office. Moreover, he also made it clear under no uncertain terms that employees need to return to work at the main office, not remote branches that are unrelated to their duties.
Musk also responded to a Twitter user about those who think that work-from-office is an ‘antiquated concept’, saying that such people should ‘pretend to work somewhere else’.
They should pretend to work somewhere else
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022
“I LIVED IN THE FACTORY”
To drive home his point of view, Elon Musk also mentioned how he (famously) lived and slept in a Tesla factory during the manufacturing hell of Model 3.
With this, the eccentric billionaire has jumped into the work-from-home policy debate.
THE DEBATE
Covid-19 pandemic ushered in the era of work-from-home policy worldwide, for jobs that were feasible. Tech companies were quick to adopt the policy as many already had hybrid work cultures operating before the pandemic.
However, now as the pandemic is receding and economies are opening up again, some companies are asking their employees to return to the old model of working – to return to the office. However, many such companies, famously Apple, have faced resistance from employees on returning to the office.
TO NOTE: Elon Musk had mocked the resistance by tweeting a picture of a lazy dog with the caption: “Put on gym clothes. Watch TV.”
While most employers and bosses including Elon Musk feel that work-from-home decreases productivity, others say that it has in fact increased their productivity due to job satisfaction. Some studies have also supported the latter theory.
A survey by Stanford University professor Nicholas Bloom found that employees who worked from home reported a 9% increase in productivity.
New paper shows #WFH win-win for employees & firms
— Nick Bloom (@I_Am_NickBloom) May 3, 2022
1) 1/3 of time saved from less commuting goes on personal activities, 2/3 on work
2) WFH gives flexibility to visit the dentist, get exercise, pick up the kids etc, and work more later to make up
Paper https://t.co/kPWKUPJ9Io pic.twitter.com/pLyZN3Iwxi
That is not to say that work-from-home is without its fallacies. But it doesn’t mean that work-from-office is better than work-from-home for businesses or productivity.
However, what the current Elon Musk debacle shows is just another side of the toxic work culture at his companies.
TOXIC CULTURE
A former employee of Tesla once told the Wired that working at the company is like being in an abusive relationship with Elon Musk.
Tesla and SpaceX’s work culture is infamously toxic with a string of lawsuits filed in the past and allegations ranging from rampant sexual harassment, racial discrimination to just downright inhuman working conditions.
But Elon Musk has a lot to say about the work culture in the US and work-from-home. Musk believes that Chinese workers are more hard-working than their American counterparts, ready to not even leave the factory.
Elon Musk is very, very disappointed in how lazy American workers have become and has also spent the last two months tweeting twelve hours a day.
— John Iadarola (@johniadarola) June 1, 2022
The reality of that example is that Chinese tech workers are protesting against the ‘996’ schedule that compels them to work 72 hours per week, usually from 9 am to 9 pm for six days.
One Chinese blogger wrote: This way of working is very harmful for the human body, we've heard a lot of news about deaths from working overtime in recent years, but this deformed overtime system still prevails. We can't help but ask — is it really worth it to exchange our lives for money?
Now, at Twitter, which Elon Musk may or may buy, there is a fear of a clash in working culture if and when the billionaire takes over. Twitter, like Airbnb, famously has the ‘work-from-home forever’ work culture. That definitely wouldn’t happen if Elon Musk is to take over among several other things.
Mhm..so Elon Musk won't allow Tesla employees to work from home anymore now.
— Docm77 (@docm77) June 1, 2022
So, quick thinking: What do people use their cars for mostly? Right, commuting to work.
Would be ashame if working from home became a real culture.
Who would buy all the cars??
Elon Musk may be a self-fantasised megalomaniac with GREAT ambitions, but his treatment of his employees doesn’t seem much different from that of an 18th-century American plantation owner abusing his slaves.