Twitter CEO Elon Musk is not a fan of remote work and is fighting hard to make Twitter profitable by slicing its staff members down to a skeleton crew. To achieve that end, he reportedly sent a notice to staff early on Wednesday morning. In it, he reminded them that working from home is not acceptable and will not be tolerated at Twitter.
News on that comes from Platformer managing editor Zoë Schiffer, who said on Twitter that Musk emailed employees at 2:30 in the morning, saying that coming to the “office is not optional” and that half the San Francisco headquarters was empty the day before. In the tweet, she said:
NEW: Apple is tracking employee attendance (via badge records) and will give employees escalating warnings if they don’t come in 3x per week.
ALSO: Elon Musk sent Twitter employees an email at 2:30am saying the “office is not optional” and noting SF was half empty yesterday.
Musk is a known hater of remote work. In November, he ended Twitter’s work-from-home accommodations and told employees that, if within driving distance of the office, they need to show up for in person work and that if they don’t, he will consider their “resignation accepted.”
He also told Tesla employees that they need to show up to work, saying in an email:
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. This is less than we ask of factory workers.
If there are particularly exceptional contributors for whom this is impossible, I will review and approve those exceptions directly.
Moreover, the “office” must be a main Tesla office, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties, for example being responsible for Fremont factory human relations, but having your office be in another state.
Entrepreneur, giving more context on that email to Tesla’s employees and Elon’s response when asked about it, said:
The email was dated on May 31 and leaked by Tesla shareholder Sam Nissim; the same screenshot was later reposted by Whole Mars Blog, which then asked Musk to comment on the validity of the message.
“Any additional comment to people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept?,” Musk was asked.
His response? “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”
Additionally, Fox Business Digital provided more details on Elon’s cost-cutting measures and rounds of layoffs at Twitter since he took over the ailing company and took dramatic action to make it profitable, saying:
Since his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform, Musk has shown no qualms about showing the door to Twitter employees who aren’t down with his vision. He’s ordered several rounds of layoffs, both as a cost-cutting measure and as a means of excising those who don’t agree with the direction he’s taking the company.
While his reforms have caused a freakout from people who think making employees show up to work is like sending children into the coal mines, his reforms have so far succeeded in making Twitter more profitable without proving too deleterious to user experience.
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