- Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called work-from-home “morally wrong.”
- Musk says he works seven days a week and just takes two to three days off a year.
- He imposed a strict in-office policy at Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, but there have been exceptions.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called working from home “morally wrong.” Here’s a look at why he’s no fan of remote work.
Elon Musk has been very critical of work-from-home and starting in summer 2022, told executive staff that they needed to return to Tesla headquarters and offices or resign.
That same summer, Tesla layoffs impacted about 10% of the company.
The billionaire said exceptions to the new policy could be made in the case of “particularly exceptional contributors,” but he would have to approve it himself.
Tesla has, indeed, made exceptions. As of August 2024, Tesla’s careers page has advertised for at least one remote job: a senior project engineer. The position required a bachelor’s degree in an engineering field — or equivalent experience — as well as five to 10 years of relevant experience as an electrical or project engineer.
The listed salary for the job ranged from $79,200 to $270,000, depending on factors like experience and skills.
Still, the vast majority of the hundreds of jobs listed on Tesla’s website are for in-person positions — many of them in Tesla’s Gigafactories in Fremont, California; Sparks, Nevada; or Austin, Texas. Musk has emphasized the importance of factory workers — who have been required to come into work throughout the pandemic — being able to see senior staff working alongside them.
“It’s like really, you’re going to work from home and you’re going to make everyone else who made your car come in [to] the factory?” Musk said in a May 2023 interview. “The people who make your food that gets delivered, they can’t work from home? The people that fix your house, they can’t work from home?”
Musk said remote work was a “moral issue” as much as it was a productivity one.
The Tesla WFH challenge
Nick Gallimore, director of innovation at Advanced People Management, said Musk would need “something of a miracle if he expects people to even stick with him … let alone be more productive.”
“Musk’s comments – that remote work simply can’t be as effective or as productive as working from a physical location – put him in a small minority of business owners who are betting the future of their organizations on the organization design principles of the past,” he said.
Gallimore, who consults on HR issues, added: “The odds are stacked against him: with many different pieces of research suggesting that as few as 10% of people actually want to work from the office full-time.”
Nicole Penn, president of an advertising and marketing agency called EGC Group, told Insider: “Every employee has environments that either increase or decrease their productivity. If Tesla’s culture is built on collaboration and ideas born on the factory floor, it’s not possible for a remote team member to plug into that efficiently.”
Penn believes the inflexibility of working in the office full-time is “antiquated” and ruling out any remote or hybrid workers excludes potential high-performing candidates. “You have to wonder if Elon will retain top talent that needs and appreciates more flexibility,” she added.
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