Elon Musk’s battle against working from home has escalated once again. Tesla appears to keep track of how often its employees show up at the office, whoever was not present enough at the end of the month, receives an automated email. The British newspaper The Telegraph was able to see such a message in his own words.
“You are receiving this email because there has been no registration of your badge at a Tesla facility for at least 16 days in any 30-day period. As a reminder, all employees are expected to be in the office full-time.”
The recipients must then reply with an explanation of why they were absent. And that, according to the newspaper, does not go down well with many employees. For example, various complaints can be found on the online network forum Blind. “This feels wrong. I can’t quite put into words why it bothers me, it feels like it’s a step too far. It’s controlling. It’s disrespectful,” one person wrote.
That the richest man in the world is not in favor of working from home was already apparent from a leaked email that home workers exhorted ‘to leave’† Elon Musk is said to have emailed around that everyone should be in the office “at least” 40 hours. “If you don’t show up, we’ll assume you’ve resigned,” the message reads. “Of course there are companies that don’t require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? That was a while ago,” Musk wrote in a second staff email, according to American media.
Musk did not directly respond to the question of whether the email was authentic on Twitter. However, the billionaire gave strong indications that this was the case. For example, he reacted strongly to a comment about working in the office as an “outdated concept”.
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