Tesla’s remote work policy is no longer favorable to employees, who now have to spend at least 40 hours per week working in the office. Unperturbed by employee attrition, CEO Elon Musk has effectively ended remote work at Tesla.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has effectively ended the company’s flirtations with remote work. According to emails sent by Musk, which were leaked on social media, Tesla employees necessarily have to work “a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla.â€
Anyone who doesn’t comply with the demand is free to find a new job.
Workers at the EV-maker have been working remotely, like employees of other companies, since the COVID-19 crisis was declared a pandemic in March 2020. Waning cases and the possibility of COVID-19 being declared an endemic are rising, so organizations are reconsidering their future working strategies.
However, attrition is a genuine concern for companies that aren’t involved in manufacturing. For instance, Apple’s director for machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, quit over the company’s hybrid work-from-home mandate that requires employees to work in offices for three days a week starting May 23rd.
A group of Apple employees even penned a letter to the company’s management requesting them to “let go of the rigid policies of the Hybrid Working Pilot.†It has 3184 signatures today, 1445 of which are from current and former Apple employees.
But that doesn’t seem to be a problem for Musk. When questioned by a user on Twitter, here is what he said:
They should pretend to work somewhere else
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022Opens a new window
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“There are of course companies that don’t require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while.†Twitter, a company that Musk may buy, is one of the prominent companies offering flexible work options.
“Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever,†said Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in March. “Office every day? That works too. Some days in office, some days from home? Of course. That’s actually how most of you feel.â€
And they have a strong case for it. Since the shift to remote work, 71% of employees are more productive, according to Workspot. More importantly, Pew Research Center foundOpens a new window that 60% of workers with jobs that can be done from home said they would like to work from home all or most of the time.
Of those working from home all or most of the time in February 2022, 78% said they would like to continue doing so after the pandemic.
However, Musk’s argument for in-office work is based on the need for in-person collaboration, which he thinks is necessary to develop era-defining products. “Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in.â€
Musk cited his own example from a few years ago when he slept in Tesla’s Fremont factory. “The more senior you are, the more visible your presence must be,†Musk wrote in another email. “That is why I lived in the factory so much – so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt.â€
Musk pointed out that Tesla factory workers work more than 40 hours per week at the workplace. Tesla’s policy on remote work for non-factory workers now mandates employees to work where their colleagues are located, “not some remote pseudo office,†which is unrelated to their day-to-day functions.
“If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.â€
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