Elon Musk tells Tesla and SpaceX workers to go back to the office 40 hours a week

Tesla, which had more than 99,000 employees at the end of last year, has moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas, from Palo Alto, California, although it still has a large manufacturing and operating presence in California. Musk said SpaceX employs about 12,000 people recent interview.

Nick Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University, said Musk’s guidance to employees at SpaceX and Tesla was among the strictest of tech companies. He said many tech companies have instead looked at hybrid models in which employees can work from home part-time.

Mr. Bloom said he expects SpaceX and Tesla to lose about 10 to 20 percent of their current workforce and that recruiters will try to lure employees by offering jobs with more flexible work options.

Mr. Bloom said that many of the Tesla and SpaceX employees who work on the latest technology may believe in Mr. Musk, but there are also people who “do more mainstream activities such as information technology, finance, human resources, and payroll”. They might say: I don’t design cars. I’m doing employee payroll, and I can do it somewhere else.”

Annie Dean, head of distributed business for Atlassian, an Australian software company, called Mr Musk’s view “outdated”.

“This mindset is backwards and discounts the past two years of digital collaborative work first,” Ms Dean, who was a former head of remote work at Meta, owner of Facebook, said in an email.

Mr. Musk has long been known as a demanding president. Sometimes, try to set an example for working hard, holding late-night meetings, sending emails at all times and Even sleeping in a Tesla factory To help increase production in 2018.