Elon Musk no longer accepts it. From now on, working from home at his car company Tesla will only be allowed if employees “work at least 40 hours a week in the office,” Musk recently wrote in an email to his office staff. The message was leaked on social media on Wednesday.
“This isn’t some pseudo-office,” Musk said, emphasizing that factory workers at Tesla can’t work from home at all. “If you don’t show up, we’ll assume you left Tesla. Yes, there are companies where this is not necessary. But when was the last time they spawned a great new product?”
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Musk, who sometimes sleeps on the floor in his Tesla factories when the pressure is highest, is known as a very present micromanager. “The more senior you are, the more visible you need to be in the workplace,” Musk wrote in the letter.
little enthusiasm
Musk is not alone. Other large American tech companies such as Apple, Amazon and Google are also remarkably unenthusiastic about virtual working. “They also have nothing to gain from it,” says Gergely Orosz, author of the newsletter The Pragmatic Engineer for tech workers. “They are industry leaders, incredibly profitable and have achieved that status by building a culture together in the office.”
Can’t giving employees freedom also help to retain talent? For companies like Tesla or Apple, that really doesn’t matter, says Orosz. “They have the money and the reputation to attract and retain people. They’ll come. Whether they are allowed to work from home or not.”