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Musk is a huge jerk. Period.

He's doing this is a really tight labor market, which is awesomely foolish.

Applying a set hours of a workweek just doesn't fit a lot of jobs and doing it makes the jobs less efficient. I mean, I need to keep office hours because we are roughly 40 years behind in technology so there is no other way to deal with clients but phone calls. If this place was at all reasonably digital being in the office would be wildly counterproductive.

I'm so happy I never bought a Tesla, and I'm also happy that I can give my (one progressive) friend who did so a few years ago a whole truckload of **** over it.
 
I get paid the same whether I work one hour a week, forty hours a week, or a hundred hours a week. I've done all three of those with my current company. My employer doesn't care how many hours I work so long as the tasks needed to be accomplished are accomplished. Which they are, so all parties are satisfied with our arrangement.

My company also did the math and realized they save money and meet or exceed former task accomplishment rates by having us work from home. That may not be true with all companies in all fields, the only way to know is to collect the data and analyze it. Given Musk's past history of public display of his management style I find it difficult to believe he makes decisions based on actual data, or would even recognize a need to.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I get paid the same whether I work one hour a week, forty hours a week, or a hundred hours a week. I've done all three of those with my current company. My employer doesn't care how many hours I work so long as the tasks needed to be accomplished are accomplished. Which they are, so all parties are satisfied with our arrangement.

My company also did the math and realized they save money and meet or exceed former task accomplishment rates by having us work from home. That may not be true with all companies in all fields, the only way to know is to collect the data and analyze it. Given Musk's past history of public display of his management style I find it difficult to believe he makes decisions based on actual data, or would even recognize a need to.
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The bolded is very relevant.
 
3point14 said:
The bolded is very relevant.
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Yes, as is the subsequent remark: the only way to know is to collect and analyze data. I don't think Musk has done so, I don't think most management who gets quoted in newspapers does so, and I think anyone who attempts to declare authoritatively that working remotely is good or bad needs to consider backing up their assertion with data rather than declarations on the philosophy of labor.
 
angrysoba said:
Have you ever seen American History X?

The white supremacist guy is in jail and working in the laundry room with the black guy. The white guy is trying to fold all the shirts as quickly as possible. The black guy is like, "why are you doing this? They will just keep putting more shirts in. We never finish!"

So the moral is Don't be productive. Just work nice and slow until the end of your shift.

Elon Musk apparently also just wants people to work 40 hours.

If there is infinite work to do, then what is the point in being efficient?
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Building upon the earlier recommendation of ******** Jobs, I would like to recommend Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price. It goes into how our society's obsession with hyper productivity is bad for our health.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Yes, as is the subsequent remark: the only way to know is to collect and analyze data. I don't think Musk has done so, I don't think most management who gets quoted in newspapers does so, and I think anyone who attempts to declare authoritatively that working remotely is good or bad needs to consider backing up their assertion with data rather than declarations on the philosophy of labor.
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This is essentially the conversation some internal auditor/QA types are having with a lot of the 'business leader/middle manager' types in various places.

Leaving aside that The E-loon in all probability isn't doing this to increase productivity (in all likelihood this is a combination of his 'American UberBusinessTyrant' theater and wanting to avoid layoffs by making people quit), there have been several studies (some high quality Owl Labs consolidated report) that show an amazing average increase in productivity for people doing work from home, almost 50%. This includes internal company studies. One response from the Strongman Businessman people has been to demand mechanisms, essentially expressing incredulity at the possibility.

Which is the wrong response of course. Now there are many plausible mechanisms from not needing to get dressed in stupid costumes every day with the accompanying grooming, removing commutes, being able to get maximum recovery from actual breaks, lack of interruptions from coworkers, less theater to make it look like you're doing the work you're actually doing to prove to the middle manager you're doing what your output obviously shows, and a whole host of things that add up to workers being happier, healthier, with more sleep, doing their work better as a result. However, one can leave all that aside to point out that the output is still there. 'How are they doing it' is an interesting question that is in no way evidence it isn't happening.

That in turn leads to them questioning how you could even measure such a thing. The response to this is the quite obvious 'aren't you the ones who approve the metrics of work done? Isn't that, you know, one of the main functions of YOUR job?' Either you trust your metrics of work performed or you don't. There is no 'I trust it when it tells me what I want to say and I don't when it doesn't' that gets out of this argument being a handwave.

Of course there are times it doesn't work. That can be because people are doing it wrong or because the tasks aren't well suited to it. That doesn't mean one should just return everyone to offices 'just to be safe'. That cowardly demand for control doesn't actually fit their 'smart business choices are cold and lead towards advancements' image anyway. It's the desire to be a petty tyrant. Now there are other lessons to be learned about going into why work from home has worked so much better than predicted that can be applied to an office environment (stop with the stupid costumes, don't over manage, make people take effective breaks, stuff that can all be summed up as 'stop getting in your worker's way'), but that's another battle to be had once this one is accepted.
 
Meh, Musk is often a jerk, the op is meh. He can require office workers to come in to the office just like he requires assembly line workers to come in to the office.
 
Prior to 2020, my wifes company had one really hard rule 'Thou Shalt never work from home. Ever'. Corporate culture and so forth.

During the start of the Pandemic, they tried to hold to that, to a certain extent. Half the office would work from home, half at the office. They would rotate daily. Then someone caught Covid, and spread it to multiple offices. So offices shut down for two weeks. Then the governor shut everything down.

My wife now works from home. Her job is to attend meetings. Meetings with co workers, often scattered around the world. With contractors who aren't local or in the office. She's far more productive than she was in the office. When she had work to do, people would constantly come up to her desk to ask questions. Made things difficult.

This is now a boon for the company. need to hire? Cast a wider net. People can work at home, or at the office, or a mix. Company can reduce office space. They don't need to pay for relocation costs if they find a candidate they want.

Work from home works. Of course, there are people that perform better in an office setting, and there are many jobs that cannot be done remotely.

But workers want that option now, and companies that demand a return to the office may lose people to companies that do not.
 
I'd be really concerned if he started building stables at the office
 
Shalamar said:
But workers want that option now, and companies that demand a return to the office may lose people to companies that do not.
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Which is really why Musk doing this is stupid. We can bob around all we want but other companies offering work from home gives Tesla's employees even more options to tell Elon to stuff it and less reasons for anyone else to work there when he's trying to replace them.

Musk will then react to that loss of performance with more petty demands, which will of course make this all worse. What he deserves is mass resignations. It isn't like anyone who can hurt Musk by leaving will have much problem finding something else.
 
ahhell said:
Meh, Musk is often a jerk, the op is meh. He can require office workers to come in to the office just like he requires assembly line workers to come in to the office.
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It also shows Musk ia control freak and a micromanager..two traits which generally end up badly for the company involved.
He is coming off as a petty tyrant, frankly.
I honestly think that Time Man Of The Year award went to his head and now his dark side is coming out bigtime.
I also think too many people have cut him too much slack because they support electric cars (Tesla) or are big advocates of space travel (Space X) and were willing to overlook all of Musk's flaws because of their support for these two things. But now the flaws are being shown to be pretty deep,and can't be dismissed as mere eccentrities or quirks.
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dudalb said:
It also shows Musk ia control freak and a micromanager..two traits which generally end up badly for the company involved.
He is coming off as a petty tyrant, frankly.
I honestly think that Time Man Of The Year award went to his head and now his dark side is coming out bigtime.
I also think too many people have cut him too much slack because they support electric cars (Tesla) or are big advocates of space travel (Space X) and were willing to overlook all of Musk's flaws because of their support for these two things. But now the flaws are being shown to be pretty deep,and can't be dismissed as mere eccentrities or quirks.
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rule 12 removed
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I agree with everything in that post except for this particular thing coming of as petty tyranny. Certainly, his tweet history shows him to be quite petty, most of the stories I've heard about his management style make him appear to be a micromanager, even the generally positive stories.

I just don't think this particularly thing rates highly in his list of dubious statements or actions. Its actually fairly reasonable, if he'd couched in equity language it would have been received quite differently. "White collar folks, its unfair that you get to work from home but those poor working stiffs still have to come in to work, for fairness, we're gonna make you come back tot he office!"

Time was that with a certain crowd, Musk could do no wrong, now with a certain crowd, he can do no right. He's a very polarizing figure.

I do think his antics are going to start costing him and his investors money and his notoriaty has either gone to his head or revealed his worst character.
 
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Hard to build a rocket or assemble a car while you are working in your lounge.

Working from home might be OK for shiny-arses, but when you actually have to be at the work-face, its a big fail
 
smartcooky said:
Hard to build a rocket or assemble a car while you are working in your lounge.

Working from home might be OK for shiny-arses, but when you actually have to be at the work-face, its a big fail
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I know, how are you going to make the black employees feel like subhumans if you don't have them in person at the racism factory to be belittled in person by their peckerwood bosses ;)
 
smartcooky said:
Hard to build a rocket or assemble a car while you are working in your lounge.

Working from home might be OK for shiny-arses, but when you actually have to be at the work-face, its a big fail
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That’s who the email was for. Not those in the factory. He explicitly distinguishes between those in the factory and those he is writing to. He specifically says he wants them to spend a *minimum* of 40 hours in the office, and then bragged about how he personally lived at the Tesla offices.
 
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