Elon Musk has stated that distant employment as a remote work is "morally wrong" and that the "laptop classes are living in la-la-land."
On May 16, 2023, Elon Musk had harsh words for remote employees, wondering why it was fair for them to work remotely while the people cooking and delivering their meals couldn't.
"It's messed up to assume that they have to go to work when you don't," Musk explained to David Faber from CNBC during an interview. "It's not just a productivity thing. I think it's morally wrong."
Musk equated remote work to a "let them eat a cake" scenario, and he think the "laptop classes are living in la-la-land."
"You're going to make the people who make your food that gets delivered that they can't work from home? You know, the people that fix your home, they can't work from home, but you can? Does that seem morally right? That's messed up" Elon said. "It's like, really, you're going to work from home and you are going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory?"
During the COVID-19 epidemic, Tesla implemented a remote work policy for office personnel, but factory workers were still compelled to go to the factory.
Musk believes that remote workers should "get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work from home bullshit because they are asking everyone else to not work from home while they do."
Last summer, Musk ordered Tesla employees to get back to the office and even given an ultimatum: work at least 40 hours per week or leave. "Going my way or the highway" style... After only a few weeks, the electro-car business started monitoring when employees come into their workplaces. Musk also asked Twitter staff back to the offline workplaces immediately after taking control of the company.
However, Musk feels that there are certain exceptions to the requirement for office work, and he is not expecting employees to put in the same amount of work that he does, only "put 40 hours in" at the office - even if you do that in fewer than five in-office days.