The Covid-19 pandemic has made the trend of remote work, be it work from home ( WFH ) or remote working, which is widely applied in companies, such as Tesla and SpaceX, for example.
However, in June 2022, the remote working policy for Tesla and SpaceX employees seems to be officially abolished.
At least that's the order of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk .
In an internal company e-mail that was leaked to the public, Elon Musk ordered all Tesla employees to work in the office for at least 40 hours a week.
If he can't, Musk asks his employees to leave the company, aka resign.
"Anyone who wants to do remote work must be in the office at least (and I mean *minimum* is) 40 hours per week, or leave Tesla," Musk wrote in an e-mail.
This internal Musk e-mail was first shared by Sam Nissim on Twitter.
He is a beta tester of the Full Self-Driving system and a shareholder of Tesla.
From the screenshot shared by Nissim, the e-mail that Elon Musk sent had the subject/title "remote work is no longer allowed".
The e-mail was sent by Musk to "ExecStaff" or executive staff on Tuesday, (1/6/2022).
At the end of his memo, Musk emphasized that the work from the office he meant was staff actually working from Tesla's main office.
"Not a remote branch office unrelated to your work," Musk wrote.
A Twitter user with the handle @WholeMarsBlog had mentioned Elon Musk to ask for a response about Musk's internal e-mail that was leaked on the internet.
"Hey Elon, a lot of people are talking about this leaked e-mail, any additional comments for people who think going to work is an ancient concept?" tweet @WholeMarsBlog.
Without confirming the source of the e-mail, Musk simply tweeted "they have to pretend they work somewhere else".
If you look at the contents of the previous memo, Musk's reply to the tweet seems to indicate that Musk does not recognize Tesla employees who don't work in the office, and orders employees who don't want to come to work to work elsewhere.
Not working is considered a resignation. In addition to executive staff, Musk also sent a similar e-mail to all Tesla and SpaceX employees on the same Tuesday.
However, the title of the e-mail was changed to "to be very clear" (for better understanding).
In it, Musk detailed that employees must enter the "office" where their colleagues are.
"If you don't show up, we'll assume you've resigned," Musk wrote.
In an e-mail to employees, Elon Musk also mentioned that the more senior an employee is, the more often he should be seen in his office.
According to Musk, a useful product can't be built just by making a teleconference call, for example.
That's why Musk wants his employees to come into the office.
The following is a follow-up to Elon Musk's memo for Tesla employees, as compiled from ArsTechnica, Friday (3/6/2022):
"That's why I often stay in the factory, so those in the office can see me working with them too."
"If I hadn't done that, Tesla would have been bankrupt a long time ago. Of course there are companies that don't need to work from the office, but when was the last time they made a great new product? It's been a while."
"Tesla has created and will create products that are truly the most exciting and meaningful of any company on Earth."
"(But) this won't happen by just calling (referring to remote work that relies on the phone to coordinate). Thank you, Elon."
According to a report by media outlet The New York Times, Musk used a similar e-mail template when sending memos to employees at his rocket company, SpaceX.
It's just that the word "Tesla" in an e-mail to SpaceX officials was replaced with the word "SpaceX".
By 2021, Tesla alone will reportedly have more than 99,000 employees.
Musk recently said that SpaceX has about 12,000 employees.