Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a hard line against his employees working from home, according to a report by Electrek and Bloomberg cited by The Verge.
In an email apparently sent to company executives, it was noted that “remote work is no longer acceptable”.
According to reports, the CEO said employees must spend at least 40 hours a week in the office, or else they “leave Tesla.”
He said this should be a “Tesla head office,” not a “remote branch office.” In response to a screenshot of the alleged email posted on Twitter, Musk did not deny its authenticity, writing that anyone who disagrees with the office’s policy “should pretend to work elsewhere.”
The CEO added in his email that he would be willing to consider requests to work remotely under some circumstances,
but noted that such requests would have to be
“exceptional” to be approved. “If there are shareholders that are particularly exceptional for whom it is impossible to do so,
I will review and approve those exceptions directly,” he wrote.
He said that working 40 hours personally is “less than what we’re asking of factory workers.”
And in a follow-up email seen by Electrek,
the CEO claimed that his own history of almost living in a Tesla plant was the reason for the company’s survival. “The older you are,” he wrote, “the more visible your presence should be.”
“There are of course companies that don’t ask for it, but when was the last time you shipped a great new product? It’s been a long time.”
As a reminder, after the global pandemic has forced many companies to quickly introduce remote work policies,
many are now evaluating how to bring their employees back to the office, or whether they need to in the first place.
