Elon Musk has unequivocally told his staff to resume working physically in Tesla’s offices

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc, is apparently fed up with the work-from-home concept. His sudden outburst against the electric-carmaker’s executive staff members who have (habitually) taken to working for the offices from remote locations surprised many, shocked a few and wowed just a handful, too. Musk waded into the now-warming-up return-to-office debate on Twitter by elaborating in an email, under the subject line “Remote work is no longer acceptable”, that “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”. Musk also strongly responded to a follower asking him to address people who think going into work is an antiquated concept: “They should pretend to work somewhere else.” But you can’t really hold his terseness against the guy. After all, he is not the world’s richest man for nothing. He is a thinker, a visionary, a performer, a doer and an achiever (though his promise in 2011 of “putting a man on Mars in the next 10 years” is still not fructified, and doesn’t seem likely any time soon!).

Also, it’s not for the first time that Musk has treated his employees with a whiplash. A Silicon Valley venture capitalist recently recorded an anecdote regarding the man’s management style belonging to the period just before Musk reached a deal to acquire Twitter Inc. According to it, Musk once noticed a gang of interns at the Space Exploration Technologies Corp hanging around a coffee machine at work. Obviously, he didn’t like it and threatened to fire all the interns if it happened again. To show he meant it, he had security cameras installed to monitor compliance. Musk’s email to Tesla’s executive staff suggests Twitter’s lenient work policy will also change once he takes over. The above-mentioned venture capitalist has already predicted that employees at Twitter, one of the most prominent companies to allow permanent remote work, are “in for a rude awakening”. Twitter employees are already worried about losing jobs once Musk takes over as their boss in the months to come. However, there are still people who think that coming physically to office is an antiquated concept. Well, not really, if Musk is your boss!