Elon Musk Orders Tesla Employees to Work In-Person or Leave Company

Elon Musk has told his employees at Tesla to return to work in-person or leave the company.

In a company-wide email to workers on Tuesday, leaked by pro-Tesla Twitter accounts, Musk wrote that “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 added that, “This is less than we ask of factory workers.”

The IRS defines a “full-time employee” as someone employed for “at least 30 hours of service per week.” Musk’s threshold would mean that all of Tesla’s non-factory employees would be working full-time in-person.

Along with the email, Musk sent a memo to senior Tesla employees, obtained by the New York Times, ordering them to fire employees who refused to work in-person.

“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” Musk wrote.

“That is why I spent so much time in the factory,” he added, “so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, SpaceX would long ago have gone bankrupt.”

Many of Tesla’s employees at locations across the U.S. and Canada have been working remotely since the onset of Covid-19. While factory workers were required to work in-person, in order to manufacture vehicles, executives as well as engineering and design staff used video conferencing apps (e.g., Zoom and WebEx) and online workflow systems (e.g., Slack) to continue working.

The decision to let employees work remotely or under a “hybrid” model — i.e., partially remote and in-person — especially after pandemic lockdowns and capacity restrictions were lifted, has been controversial in business circles. The decision to prolong remote work has been criticized for reducing productivity, social connectivity, and having negative psychological effects of confinement.

Supporters of remote working, meanwhile, have argued that it reduces costs for businesses and employees, while enabling workers to attend to other important matters while working (e.g., care of young children).

In a Tweet following the decision, Musk suggested that remote working was a façade, writing that remote employees should “pretend to work somewhere else”.

Musk’s new policy has a caveat, however. He wrote “if there are particularly exceptional contributors for whom this is impossible, I will review and approve those exceptions directly.” No system for sending requests to Musk has been established, nor has a definition for “exceptional contributors.”

It is, further, unclear whether Tesla would need to renegotiate its contracts with employees hired as remote workers. As of writing, Tesla has not responded to a press inquiry from National Review regarding the policy.

Musk further noted that the definition of a “Tesla office” would be restricted — to the main company location where an employee’s functions are carried out. He said it “could not be a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties” or “be in another state.” This may have the effect of requiring some Tesla employees to move from one state to another.

Musk’s decision follows other executives who have recently ordered employees to return to work or face termination. On Wednesday, Frank Carone, Chief of Staff to New York City Mayor Eric Adams wrote to all city employees that “you are required to report to work in person for every scheduled workday and hybrid schedules of any kind are not permitted.”