Brutal all-staff email Elon Musk sent to Tesla employees about working from home
Yasmeen Hamadeh
Featured Image Credit: Chesnot / Contributor/Public archive
A lot of things p**s Elon Musk off, and working from home is apparently one of them.
The Tesla CEO has never kept his frustrations with COVID-19 protocols quiet to say the least, even going so far as to call health restrictions 'fascist' during a company earnings call in April 2020.
And during that weird, liminal phase in 2022 when it felt like the pandemic was 'past' us but 'normal' life still wasn't fully quite there, Musk had finally had it with working remotely.
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In a company-wide email that was leaked to Twitter on June 1, 2022, Musk told all Tesla employees that they were required to spend a 'minimum of forty hours in the office per week,' and that if they didn't show up he was just going to assume that they've resigned.
Elon Musk on remote work
— Internal Tech Emails (@TechEmails) June 1, 2022
May 31, 2022 pic.twitter.com/gTw1Bdh18h
"Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of forty hours in the office per week. Moreover, the office must be where your actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo-office," Musk wrote in an email sent on May 31, 2022.
"If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned.
"The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. 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.
"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.
"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," he concluded.
The email was one of two emails that Musk sent that evening. In another email sent to executive staff, that was also leaked on Twitter, Musk wrote "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."
When asked about the leaked email by a Twitter user, Musk simply replied: "They should pretend to work somewhere else."
The outspoken CEO reportedly echoed similar sentiments in an email sent to Twitter employees when he first acquired the company. "Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company but there is no way to sugarcoat the message," Musk wrote in an email sent on Nov. 9, 2022.
"Starting tomorrow (Thursday), everyone is required to be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week. Obviously, if you are physically unable to travel to an office or have a critical personal obligation, then your absence is understandable," he signed off.