Tesla CEO (and prospective Twitter buyer) Elon Musk has issued a vexing ultimatum to his office employees: work 40 hours a week in-office or quit.
The mandate was first sent in an email, which was leaked by Tesla investor Sam Nissim, Tuesday afternoon to the company’s “ExecStaff” listserv.
“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” Musk said in the email. “This is less than we ask of factory workers.”
He does leave the smallest amount of wiggle room for “exceptional contributors for whom this is impossible” — noting that he has to “review and approve” any remote employees himself.
In a follow-up email to all employees, Reuters reported, he reiterated this demand — and made his warning even more explicit. “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned,” the email obtained by Reuters reads.
That email continues, “Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in.”
Musk did not confirm the authenticity of either letter. But in response to what one Twitter user dubbed “people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept,” Musk tweeted, “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”
The divisive billionaire did not mince words about how employees should work in-office.
“Moreover, the ‘office’ must be a main Tesla office, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties, for example being responsible for Fremont factory human relations, but having your office be in another state,” he said in the letter leaked by Nissim.
With these internal salvos, Musk has bucked the growing trend of remote work. Salesforce, Meta and other large tech companies have fostered a culture of remote work across the Silicon Valley — with the key exception of Apple, which has pushed employees to come in despite high-profile resignations and murmurs of discontent.
That said, this news may not bode well for Twitter’s employees — who have been granted permission to work remotely — if Musk’s takeover is successful.