Posted by Have you read the email Elon Musk sent to Tesla employees?
Elon Musk does not like remote work, which, you know, is fine, but this strikes me as being less about remote work and more about a general culture of being ostentatiously intense:
Under the subject line “Remote work is no longer acceptble” [sic], Musk wrote that “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.”
The CEO went on to specify that the office “must be a main Tesla office, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties, for example being responsible for Fremont factory human relations, but having your office be in another state.”
I like the idea that you can do remote work at Tesla Inc., as long as you are also in the office more than 40 hours a week. If you put in 12-hour days in the office Monday through Thursday, you can work remotely on Friday and — I think it’s implied — Saturday and Sunday. Musk won’t like it, but he will grudgingly accept it. I guess if you put in 14-hour days in the office three days a week you can work remotely the other, let’s face it, four days. If everyone is working 100-hour weeks then “at least 40 hours a week in the office” really is a remote-work policy! I once worked at a manufacturing company that had a suits-and-ties dress code Monday through Friday, but business casual Saturdays and Sundays; that was … nice? Also:
The reference to Tesla factory workers is also interesting in light of the situation at the carmaker’s plant in Shanghai.
Thousands of staff there have been effectively locked in for months, working 12-hour shifts, six days a week. Until recently, many were sleeping on the factory floor as part of a closed-loop system meant to keep Covid out and cars rolling off the production line.
Oh, well, if my CEO makes me a partial owner of the company, I don’t mind spend 40+ hours every week working in the office, after all I partially own it. Just saying…
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