Tesla employees have to go back to the office – otherwise they risk being thrown out
Tesla boss Elon Musk announces a zero-tolerance policy in his factories: Anyone who doesn’t come to the office will be fired.
No more home office! In two leaked emails that Elon Musk sent to executives at his Tesla factories on May 31, 2022, he urges them to order office workers back into the office. If they do not comply with this request, they would be fired.
Elon Musk wants employees to be in the office 40 hours a week
In the emails leaked to news website Electrek, Musk said all employees must be in the office at least 40 hours a week from now on. If they were less present, they would be terminated. He also wrote that he would examine possible exceptions directly – but would only issue approvals for “particularly exceptional employees for whom this was impossible”.
Musk further reinforced this statement in another email, noting that the office must be a Tesla headquarters and not a field location. “If you don’t show up, we’ll assume you’ve resigned,” the internal statement said. Musk also sniffed at other companies that continue to allow working from home in the Mail: “Of course there are companies that don’t need it, but when was the last time they came out with a great new product? It’s been a while here.”
Though Musk hasn’t made an official statement about Tesla’s handling of home office and office attendance since then, he appeared to have confirmed the news on Twitter on the morning of June 1, 2022. On the tweet “Hey Elon, a lot of people are talking about this leaked email. Do you have another comment for all those people who think coming to work is an antiquated concept?” the Tesla CEO replied: “They should pretend they work somewhere else.”
It wasn’t the first time that Musk expressed his opinion on home office culture: After the Apple company announced in May 2022 that the plan to order employees to work three days a week again had been postponed, Musk criticized that company by posting a lazy dog meme under a “Bloomberg” news story.
