Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants his employees to start coming in to work.
Driving the news: In a memo obtained by The New York Times, the billionaire told SpaceX workers to spend “a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” or be fired.
- “The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” Musk said. “That is why I spent so much time in the factory — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, SpaceX would long ago have gone bankrupt.”
In another memo to Tesla employees, posted by the blog Whole Mars Catalog, Musk repeated the minimum number of in-person hours required to stay employed.
- “This is less than we ask of factory workers,” he added.
When the Whole Mars Catalog tweeted at Musk, seeking comment regarding the memo, the Tesla CEO responded by saying, “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”
Worth noting: The billionaire added that if an employee needs an exemption from working in the office, he “will review and approve those exceptions directly.”
- He also pointed out that employees are expected to work from a main Tesla office, “not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties.” For example, he added, someone in charge of human relations for a factory in Fremont shouldn’t be going into the office in another state.
By the numbers: An estimated 30% of American office workers work from home, said Nick Bloom, a Stanford economics professor and co-founder of Working from Home Research Project, per The Guardian.
Yes, but: Twitter, the company Musk is in the process of buying, announced that employees can work from home for as long as they want, per CNN.
- “Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever,” CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted in March.
- Many companies, including Apple, Meta, Airbnb and Microsoft, have their employees working remotely.