It’s no secret that Elon Musk is opposed to working from home. But on Tuesday, the Tesla CEO escalated his criticism, calling remote work morally wrong.
“It’s a productivity issue, but it’s also a moral issue,” Musk said in an interview(Opens in a new window) with CNBC. “People should get off their damn moral high horse with their home office bullshit.”
Musk pointed out that work-from-home regulations are fundamentally unfair because not every worker can work from home, citing factory workers and food delivery workers.
“It’s like you really work from home? And you’re going to get everyone else who built your car to work at the factory? Don’t want the people who prepare and get your food delivered to be able to work from home? The people who come fix your house, they can’t work from home, but you can?”
“Does that seem morally right? It’s messed up,” he then said, later adding, “Because they’re asking everyone else not to work from home while they’re doing it.” It’s wrong.”
He commented on other tech companies, including Amazon and Apple(Opens in a new window), their employees want to go back to the office. Musk himself ended Twitter’s work-from policy when he took over the social media platform, which has since lost 80% of its employees to layoffs, resignations and layoffs amid the company’s cost-cutting efforts.
In that regard, Musk acknowledged to CNBC that some of the people Twitter fired “probably shouldn’t have been fired” in a rush to get costs under control. “If they’re not too mad at us, we’ll probably rehire some of the people who were laid off in the future,” he said.
Recommended by our editors
For employees, remote work has obvious benefits. For example, employees don’t have to waste hours of their day commuting and can spend more time with family, which can reduce stress and lead to higher job satisfaction. Musk didn’t mention any of the benefits in his interview. Instead, he said, “The laptop class lives in la-la land.”
“Look, there are some exceptions, but I think the whole idea of working from home is a bit like Marie Antoinette’s misquote: ‘Let them eat cake.’(Opens in a new window),'” he added.
The last queen of France reportedly uttered a variation on the quote after learning that her peasants were starving because they had no bread. However, cake would have been far more expensive than bread, making it impossible for farmers to afford the food.
Get our best stories!
Sign up for What’s new now? to get our top stories delivered to your inbox every morning.
This newsletter may contain advertisements, offers or affiliate links. By subscribing to a newsletter, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Post a Comment