Musk tells employees to return to the office or 'depart Tesla'

Tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday night sent an email to his employees, asking them to return to the office or find work elsewhere.

Elon Musk on remote work

May 31, 2022 pic.twitter.com/gTw1Bdh18h

— Internal Tech Emails (@TechEmails) June 1, 2022

"Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week," Musk said in the email. "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned."

Although major tech firms across the country – including in Silicon Valley – have been reluctant to call their employees back to the office full-time, Tesla has moved its HQ to Austin, Texas and has called its workers back in order to boost productivity, Retuers reported.

"There are of course companies that don't require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It's been a while," Musk said in the email.

"Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in."

In a separate email, Musk allegedly asked executives to work in the office for at least 40 hours per week or “depart Tesla.”

“They should pretend to work somewhere else,” he later said in a subsequent tweet.

They should pretend to work somewhere else

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022

Musk has been a vocal critic of pandemic mandates since the earliest days of COVID-19 and went as far as defying Alameda County’s lockdown measures in May 2020, reopening a Tesla factory in Fremont, California.

Although many large employers have embraced permanent work-from-home status for employees, many companies – including Alphabet Inc’s Google – have started to move towards a return to the office.

In March, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal posted that the company’s offices would be reopening but employees could continue to work remotely if they so choose.