I saw a discussion recently (with some C-level and at the WEF) and one said: The company "needs to earn the commute" - and explained that if the office is just another place where the desk stands in a room it's not worth it for the employees to spend time to get there.
That was definitely my experience with working at a satellite office at a FAANG company. I would take the train an hour each way every day, just to dial into a remote meeting in California. It didn't bother me at first, but eventually it really bothered me once COVID hit and we were allowed to work from home.
I'm not opposed to being on the train for two hours a day if I feel like there's value in me actually being there (e.g. if I were a lecturer or something), but my job is to sit on my ass and write code, and I can do that at home, in my office, with music playing as loud as I want, being able to cook my own lunch for cheaper, and my "commute" taking about 20 seconds a day.
More importantly, optimal desk and monitor configuration and no people breathing down your neck shattering your ability to focus and go in a flow state.
I like this. I'm currently on my 1% of not working remote, first and last few days of being in the office since last year July.
I'm just as productive or maybe less than I was at home. Only reason to be here is to have a face to face chat, a beer and BBQ with colleagues. Oh, and see our hardware in person, but productivity wise, the benefit is negligible if at all.
I think of it slightly differently- I go to the office primarily to be social, but will at times to pair programming or other technical work with coworkers in the same room. However, I never try to do anything complex (https://dev.to/_bigblind/are-interruptions-really-worse-for-...) in person/in the office, just minor changes that work together if two people are in a room. Write a few lines, see that things still pass, and send for review, which is then done carefully, without distractions, out of office.
Maybe he should do some math and determine how much time he spends on Tesla vs. His other projects. I would have a hard time being told to work more and harder by a leader that spends time on flamethrowers and cave rescue submarines. In the words of the Google leadership, be thoughtful with how you use your employees time.
Those downvoting please note here why it's OK to ask people to work above 40 hours while also squandering good peoples time doing joke products. Rather than turn the screws on your employees publicly why not simple cut out the non-essential projects and publicly note so? The first approach makes it look like your employees are slacking and need to pick up the slack, the second takes responsibility on himself.
They aren't marketing. They don't sell cars. It's easy to just call everything marketing, but show me hard data on how fossil fueled flamethrowers sell more electric cars and I'll bow out immediately.
PR is marketing, and Elon Musk 100% nailed PR. Tesla doesn't do advertising. You know why? Because they 100% nail PR.
Some people claim tesla doesn't do marketing because they don't do advertising, but that is completely wrong. PR is marketing.
Shooting a Tesla into orbit was just brilliant PR. Every news outlet covered it. And for them, because they both have SpaceX and Tesla, it was both unique, and very doable.
And the flamethrower the same thing. We are talking about it now, right? Elon Musk remains at the top of the news pages. Incredible how he can pull that off. If you think PR is easy, try doing PR. I tried doing PR, and I can tell you it's fucking hard.
Previously the stunts were smart. Now, I'm not so sure. He's in the news cycle at the moment for consistently negative reasons. It's deterred me from buying a Tesla. He might get some traction with a new set of customers by playing the culture wars, but I'd guess he's alienating a number of people who would've otherwise been very interested. Creates a great opportunity for rival manufacturers as they (slowly) bring products to market.
Yes, we're talking about it, but I don't and won't own a Tesla product. I don't think it's incredible, it's easy. What's incredible is the work product of the engineers and technicians they work for him. Not a man baby making sharp pointy things that burn down the house. That doesn't take vision or knowledge, just no one to tell you "no".
I'll give you $5000 if you can get my product rpgplayground.com on top of the mainstream media. If you find it easy, I will be happy to pay you the $5k.
Getting downvoted here. Putting your money where your mouth is doesn't seem to be appreciated here on HN.
Anyway, anybody selling a product will tell you that building the product is the easy part. But of course, if you never ran a company, it's easy to think that the engineering is the hardest part.
It would be easy given his resources (publicist, etc.) I don't have those same resources.
It would be like me saying it's easy to design a 3d printed box, given I have solidworks and the skillset. It doesn't mean it's hard just because someone else may not have those resources. It's still easy.
It’s not easy; even with the resources. The Kardashians don’t have the level of resources (money) Warren Buffet or Bill Gates have; but have at least 10x the amount of coverage and top headlines. Elon Musk BUILT his PR. He has some 90M followers on Twitter, that took over a decade to build. Tesla and SpaceX have both been on the verge of complete bankruptcy SEVERAL times.
The fact that Tesla is the ONLY Fortune 100 company in the world without a Public Relations department and STILL manages to be #1 in the news—globally—nearly every single day… It’s insane for you to suggest it’s all because of “resources.”
Why doesn’t Rivian have that kind of coverage? I don’t even know who the CEO of Rivian is. Do you know who runs Intel or AMD? Can you tell me who runs Saudi Aramco or Samsung? What’s Samsung’s latest and most exciting product? What’s Tesla’s?
You probably know, even if you don’t want to admit you know. Cybertruck is one. They got solar roofs, a new Roadster… The craziest part is… You will probably make fun of how these products were already supposed to be in production; but they haven’t been for YEARS, and they are STILL among the most anticipated and highest in-demand products that barely exist. We are talking tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in revenue of anticipation. WITHOUT ADVERTISING.
The only other company to do that well without advertising is Apple. They have never advertised a new phone before its release. Ever. The iPad was the first iOS device to receive advertising before launch.
"The only other company to do well without advertising is Apple"
Apple heavily advertises. They have many iconic ads that are taught in history classes. The 1984 ad, the white iPad headphone print and ads, the "shot on a iphone" billboards all over SF. Where is this coming from? Apple spent $65 million on search ads in 2020 alone. This is not "not advertising" Apple spends billions a year on advertising. My source noted below specifically contradicts your comments about Apples advertising (or lack there of). It states that they advertise for every new product release, including all phones (which I can personally vouch for as well having personally seen many ads for the newest iPhone tablet the time).
Earlier in this discussion folks say that flamethrowers and boy rescuing submarines are PR, which is marketing, which is advertising. In this comment you note that Tesla and Apple do so well without advertising or marketing.
This has become a circular argument. It's clear that the folks backing Musk are not providing valid arguments with sources. The response is ti saybthat Apple doesn't advertise, but they do. This is all neither here nor there bit what is clear - Elon is loosing his golden boy status in the valley and in popular culture. This is the beginning of his fall from grace, and its his own fault.
It's true, I don't. But that doesn't mean he does. He clearly chooses to do PR and marketing differently than 95% of all other businesses. I'm highlighting that, and saying maybe that "good PR" doesn't always equal good for his employees, customers or community. We need to take into account the cost, not just seek PR for PR sake.
My point is that extra success you point to above and beyond his peers isn't worth what he does to get it. He could be 90% as successful and 100% less of a dick and that would be a better tradeoff for him, the people that work with and interact with him, the people he harasses, and the rest of us.
Leaving alone whether or not people pointing out definicies in Musk are doing so from a place of uninformed jealousy you seem either uninformed on Musk or in a rather out of touch priveleged position. Start at being born to an emerald mine owner (or equivalent) and use that capital for your first business is not advice that many people can follow, regardless of Musk executing the steps after that to the point that he was richest man in the world.
"We started Zip2 with ~$2k from me plus my overclocked home-built PC, ~$5k from my bro & ~$8k from Greg Kouri (such a good guy — he is greatly missed).
My Dad provided 10% of a ~$200k angel funding round much later, but by then risk was reduced & round would’ve happened anyway."
> from a place of uninformed jealousy
"Daddy provided the capital for his first business" seems both uninformed and jealous.
That's probably because your standards are different than mine. I don't call a $20K investment "capital from an emerald mine owner", I call that "pocket money".
Your consultancy firm probably earns more than that in a month. Or not?
I can connect you with people that do this. I get calls from them weekly. They offer to write an article about me, my work, my companies, and get it published in a few fairly famous places. All this in exchange for a few thousand dollars. I also know a publicist that was able get an article written about me in a local business journal. I'm not going to invest the funds up front for you, but I'd be happy to connect you with these folks and I'm sure you can get what you want, or close, within your budget. I just don't want to be the middle man.
I cannot reply to your comment/question below as it's nested too deeply.
Information about me, my company, and other companies which I'm co-founder and/or co-owner of can be found by googling my name and finding my website, looking at my profile on HN which has links, or searching the patent database for my name.
I run a consultancy (different than simply being a freelancer), among many other things.
Perhaps we take this discussion offline? You now have my contact information. I'm happy to answer any further questions via email, and make the appropriate introductions to get you your PR.
Academically, it would fall under “guerrilla marketing”. It is a high risk, high reward technique. If it pays off, you can get quite a lot of attention for very little money.
No offense but it is impossible for you or I to estimate how they should run their company and whether this decision is good or bad as to their bottom line. We have almost zero knowledge about their internal workings of nearly what 100,000 people do and what projects should get cut and how hard employees are working or should be working and we can only opine on whether you or I prefer or don't prefer to work remote ourselves. If you had data that people were less productive from home, would you change your mind on your personal business? It's odd to assume that he would not have that data before making this decision.
I'm mistook that you were. You said pretty much he needs to do some math on how he spend his own time because he was wasting it in your opinion and from my read it was an implication that this was a bad decision for employees and the company. Maybe employees prefer having fun, being on the bleeding edge of tech, being part of a profitable company an d job security, and earning higher wages over the convenience of being allowed to work from home. I'm not saying every does or doesn't but this doesn't feel like an everything else be damned scenario just requiring most employees to show up.
> by a leader that spends time on flamethrowers and cave rescue submarines
You are grossly misinformed by how Elon spends his time and seem to have read a few headlines years ago and assume that’s all he does.
I suggest you listen to some of his interviews where people specifically ask how many hours he works a week, and on what, and you’ll soon realize, no one, even factory workers can match his work ethics and time spent at the company.
He takes his own medicine religiously, that you can count on.
I give people the benefit of doubt until I see a contradiction. So far, he's been genuine over the 8 years that I've been following him and his ventures.
> So far, he's been genuine over the 8 years that I've been following him and his ventures.
If that were true we'd have had fully autonomous FSD 5 years ago, to say nothing of "pedo guy". Over the last 8 years I've seen nothing to suggest Elon is a reliable source of information about anything.
> If that were true we'd have had fully autonomous FSD 5 years ago
Genuine doesn’t mean what you think it means. FSD is late because Elon underestimated it while working on it as fast as Tesla can, not because he’s a liar who’s walking his dog around the office instead of running the business and rebranding Siemens machines as his own.
If he had only said it once, sure. But Elon has repeatedly, year after year made the same claim only for it to turn out false. So either he's lying knowing full well it won't come to fruition, or he's incapable of accurately assessing progress. I strongly suspect the former, especially given his relationship with the truth on other things, but the latter makes him just as unreliable source of information.
He has admitted time and time again, on twitter and in interviews, that FSD has been a series of "local maximas" which each time given him and his team a false sense of reaching the full self driving capability. So yes, when pushing the edge of tech, it's not easy to estimate timelines and he's admitted that. What more do you want? For him to call it quits or get into magic and pull rabbits out of a hat?
A single space telescope, the James Webb's, which is far less involved than FSD (runs in controlled environment, albeit harsh, doesn't interact with anything but well known objects and is produced once with little cost optimization, since it's not sold in mass volumes and need not attract customers) has been delayed time and time again and run over budget by multiple factors, amounting to billions of dollars. No one said along the way that the project leaders were liars who knew they couldn't build the telescope but just wanted to spend tax payers money.
"pedo guy" was him overreacting to a direct attack on his employees and him work after Musk was directly requested to do the work by rescue divers and government officials on the project.
Most of the takes on that event drastically misrepresent the facts in order to make him look worse than any other normal human getting caught up in a flare of emotion after having something important attacked.
You do have to wonder about a company where the CEO says one thing about FSD to the public, and one of their executives involved daily on the regulatory side tells the regulators, in writing, something wildly different.
I don’t, but his success across now four (five?) industries and being one of the wealthiest if not the wealthiest man in the world and being self made didn’t happen by accident.
Elsewhere here, you said you've watched his interviews and yet you missed him mention, more than the dozen times over the past few years, how he split his times between his companies?
> Please do inform us then.
I've pointed you to where you can find that out yourself. If you actually care to learn something, you'll spend the time. But if you're content with your preconceptions and the media's take on Elon, whatever I say here will fall on deaf ears.
Ok, let's take 168 hours in a week. He's got SpaceX, Twitter, Tesla and Boring company. So he's at best working 42 hours a week on each, or there is atleast one company there where he's working less than 42 hours. Oh, and that's assuming he doesn't sleep, and ignores the fact that we can publicly see it's probably 20 hours sleeping 118 hours on twitter and about 10 hours on each of the others right now.
I'm seriously amazed people even discuss this. When the employer and the owner of a business hires someone, the employer sets the terms of employment, not the other way around. If the hired person doesn't like the terms, he/she can just walk away and find a more suitable job.
Imagine hiring a house cleaner, who would insist you be present in the house when the house is being cleaned?
This is of course true, but hiring strong engineers is a very competitive market these days. Especially in hot fields like ML for self-driving cars.
That's really the root of this discussion - can you offer worse terms than other employers you're competing with for talent, while also being kind of a dick about it, without hurting the success of your company?
> can you offer worse terms than other employers you're competing with for talent, while also being kind of a dick about it, without hurting the success of your company?
Yes! When you have leverage, you can. What's the leverage? The amazing opportunity to work on tech that will power the future and all the challenges that come with it. Furthermore, ability to work in an environment where you are not restricted by traditional business hierarchy and practices that inhibit innovation. I know dozens of Tesla employees who've echoed the same sentiment, saying how much of more freedom and autonomy they have at Tesla, compared to their previous employers.
Also what's viewed as "being a dick" is clearly relative. I see a frank and no BS memo which is closed to interpretation and doesn't waste anyone's time. As The Wolf puts it:
> if I'm curt with you it's because time is a factor ... so pretty please with sugar on top, clean the fucking car
Same. I am just not good with remote work. Slack (our org is massive) and staying up to date with so many things async is stressing, and I honestly miss having my coworkers around. As a single 20s guy, I had fun in the office and was able to create strong connections with my team.
Now everything is just boring, dull and disconnected. I feel like a worker drone just going from task to task, trying to balance slack in the mix to not get left behind. There are other people in the company or my team, but I don't connect with them. They could equally be NPCs.
Same as you, I am also very worried about not being able to advance in my career any further if things continue the way they do
The company you work for is not your family, you are just an NPC to them, they will get rid of you in a heartbeat as soon as it suits their interest, because the single purpose of a company is to make money, everything else is bullshit, you work for the company to make money as well, as soon as they would stop paying you, you would stop working.
You should build your life outside of any company:
- mixing friendship with work rarely ends well, you might end up competing with your best friend for the same promotion, he might not even be your best friend, just making you think that he is
- dating in the workplace is a minefield, you can easily get into trouble
Don't be attached to a company, you can find another role in seconds.
You don't need to keep up with everything in the company, you just need to be good at what you are doing.
You don't need to be promoted at the company, you just need to improve your skills, it might be easier to leave and join another company, or even rejoin the same one in a more senior role than to go through the promotion process.
I see this sentiment often on HN, but I think it's too reductive. For better or worse, we don't just work for a "company". We work with a group of other real whole humans. And if I'm going to spend 8hrs a day with these folks, I expect our relationships to be on a deeper level than "NPC." I don't think we should be "family." But NPC is way too impersonal for me.
The company is an abstraction layer that allows for very convenience-based relationships.
The point is that at a company you are a line item in the budget and you will be forced out the moment it’s not financially beneficial to keep you around.
That generalization definitely doesn't hold for everyone. I've made so many great and lasting friendships from work over the years - even picked up some new hobbies and gone on trips together. If I'd come in with the attitude that it's a bad idea to make friends or socialize with coworkers, I would have missed out on a whole lot of life-enriching experiences.
This sentiment confuses me. Maybe it depends on the kind of company you work at, or maybe it's a cultural thing (I'm in the UK), but I've met many of my best friends through work, as have most people I know. It seems like one of the main ways to make new friends as an adult, and to be honest I've never experienced any downsides to it.
Same here. I have felt completely left behind and burnt out by the WFH shift. I simply don’t care enough to hustle and grind from home to achieve career advancement. Networking has to happen naturally in-person for me; everything on Zoom feels forced and fake.
I truly believe a hybrid schedule is best. 5 days per week in the office is overkill, but 2-3 days a week would help me tremendously. I’m gearing my career towards finding that balance now.
Ditto. Working remotely makes even a simple communication into another ordeal and a quick chat into a meeting scheduled for next week etc. I feel like much more energy and resource is spent just on communication when working from home, both at the personal level and for the organization.
Why is your 3rd order of preference something where most are unhappy? Are you saying your happiness is preferable over the unhappiness of most others or am I misunderstanding
Because I think in that situation the people who are unhappy either quit or get fired. Plus that was generally the default pre-COVID and people dealt with it more or less OK.
And yes, where I choose to work I do value my happiness more than the happiness of others.
Ah okay. That makes sense. That was my only wondering. We are in a post pandemic world now. So the pre Covid default isn’t the same any more. But yeah I agree overall
Never thought I would agree, but recently started a new job in a fully remote company. I was super excited. I thought it would be a dream.
Instead, I have found that it's basically impossible to stand out in the ways I have in the past, via charisma, camaraderie, being inquisitive, etc. Remote work has basically devolved aptitude into a series of scores & metrics. It feels like working at an Amazon factory. Slack is a nightmare to keep up with.
On the other hand remote work is a godsend for people who do most of the work on the team but get skipped over for promotions because they lack "charisma" and don't participate in gossip/politics and don't spend hours after work every day at the bar with coworkers.
My hypothesis is that the shift to more WFH has not reduced opportunities for advancement at all but has drastically shifted from one population, who knew how to maximize output from office interactions, to a population that knows how to maximize output from more virtual settings.
People who shine at the coffee machine, at business lunches, who are good at putting pressure on employees who arrive late at their desk, or know how to look efficient in front of a superior during in-presence meetings are completely clueless in how to operate virtual teams efficiently today. There are two possible responses to this: adapt or fight for the mythical "return to normal".
I am actually quite happy that this shift occurred at my company. New managers we didn't expect to be in 2019 have risen from nowhere amongst our ranks and are driving their teams surprisingly well. They are showing great initiative in establishing new processes and finding tools to support their operations, their team morale is generally good, I sincerely believe they are making us better in the long term.
Other managers, mostly late boomers I have to say it, are taking a huge hit to morale. We regularly receive complaints that we don't allow firing employees just because they don't want to come to the office. I actually had a senior manager telling me to f.off because I told him "you are a leader, it's your job to motivate her to come work with you at the office, not ours." I have recommended letting him go since...
One thing is for sure: moving to virtual settings, even partially, is requiring new management skills. I am still thinking this over but I believe managers' self-esteem plays a big role in the transition to virtual settings: many old school managers tend to assume they are successfully managing as long as they can see their employees physically at work during office hours. Whoever comes earlier and stays later is automatically ranked a better employee, even assured promotion, and whoever comes to the office for a meeting is immediately perceived as a better employee than those who joined online. Many managers who don't feel they have physical power over their teams anymore are struggling to regain control.
This approach doesn't work anymore in office settings, especially with qualified workforce. With WFH, there are people who start later, who disconnect earlier, who come back online after dinner, during weekends, who go on long lunches during work days or interrupt their morning for a 9.30am-10.30am workout. From what I see in our books, this doesn't affect our numbers negatively but stresses the hell out some of our managers. I am seeing a lot more flexibility in my employees than in my managers, which is somehow ironic!
To conclude my point, I think the issue with adopting a more remote/hybrid approach in the company stems from a lack of self-confidence amongst entry-level and middle-level managers in their ability to use "modern" tools to both interact more efficiently with their teams and to acquire the data they need.
Any manager who still struggles to share me his or her screen during a virtual session and can't refrain from complaining orally that "these tools suck" in 2022 has become a red flag to me.
I agree with all your points. However, Google Meet screen sharing regularly stops working on Chrome for Mac, so some widely used tools do suck in 2022.
Indeed, fully agree with you, there are collaboration tools that are and will likely remain untrustworthy under particular settings.
I like to think that some "collective intelligence" emerges in all organizations where users progressively become aware that some tools do not cope well with others. I have heard about these screen sharing issues with Chrome on Mac, but I expect from my managers that they switch to more stable "combinations" after a few weeks max, and stop complaining after two years.
I totally get you and have experienced this at my current and previous job but I had totally opposite experiences at three jobs before that. It highly depends on the culture. Going remote first is not simply allowing remote work and calling it a day. It takes a lot of time and effort to cultivate a good "remote culture".
So basically you stood out not because of the work you did but because of social skills. Gotcha. Yet another reason why WFH is better. Rewards people who actually stand out due to quality of work and not unrelated unproductive skills that affect human psyche and make it seem like the person is contributing more than they are.
I disagree but have no idea why you're getting downvoted. You stated your point clearly and without malice.
That said, I think the ability to advance is highly dependent on (1) what type of work you're in, and (2) the culture of the company. If the type of work you're in is genuinely remote-compatible, the prevalence of remote work will actually help solve the problem you're concerned about. I know many who work full-time remote positions in big corps and have not had trouble advancing.
The topic has become highly political because other people going to the office or speaking positively about offices threatens remote work for the rest.
Same thing that happened with masks, no one was ok with someone else choosing differently because the bigger group would force their way over the smaller group.
What you're saying about masks isn't true. Unless they're N95 or similar masks, people with masks on were doing more to protect others than themselves. Cloth masks don't really impede the virus from floating in, but they do massively reduce how far expelled aerosols fly.
If that were true it'd be visible in the data but it's not. Masks did nothing yet a vocal minority forced everyone else to wear them and refused to accept the evidence it was pointless and harmful.
> With masks though people wearing masks didn't at all affect the people not wearing them.
People didn't just choose to peacefully wear masks though. There was a large militant group that pushed for mandates to force everybody else to also wear masks.
No people most certainly did. I live in an area where covid vaccine fears, ivermectin, all sorts of crazy stuff was routine convo but all businesses were okay with me wearing a mask. They rolled their eyes but accommodated me. the “militant” group was definitely not pro-mask. Also, it’s a facemask. Decent people would take a small hit to not get others sick. But it was more profitable to deny, sow doubt and stomp around screaming freedom.
In democracy it depends which side can found a louder expert. Either it's human right to work from home and everybody must adhere. Or human right to see coworkers and everybody must go to offices.
Didn’t see a referendum for appending human rights. Recently it seems like fringe organizations declaring something a human right is a way to try to override democratical process.
This is another hidden downside to remote work; the sycophants and ladder climbers (not accusing you of being one) didn't go away, they simply had to adapt to the environment and find new means of doing so. In my experience this entailed being invited to endless clearly-unnecessary-but-mandatory Zoom meetings, the value of which was at best questionable. Only to find out said meeting was really a scheme for management visibility, filmed before a live studio audience of senior engineers.
I wish there was a better middle ground. Your enjoyment of in office work and related career advancement seems to require others to work in a way that they don't feel is necessary or productive. If only part of the company decides to work from the office, you might not get the same benefit that you had before.
You shouldn't have to work from home because others want to do so. Other people shouldn't have to work from the office because that's what's best for you. Ultimately I see this working itself out with people changing jobs, perhaps for a period of years, until things have sorted into a "work from where is best for you" equilibrium. That could be a chaotic and disruptive time for many people and businesses :(
Just wanted to throw another voice in the camp of disliking WFH and reassuring you you are not in the minority. We'll maybe we are now, but the tide will turn once promotions start going to those showing their face around the office.
I wouldn't go back to remote working if you doubled my salary
I wonder if this is an American thing where bosses are still seen as the authority figure? In my country a company is seen as a team effort. Treat your employees as adults not school children.
All of the pivotal points in my career came from serendipitous moments that happened with coworkers outside of my core team at the office/at lunch/at holiday parties. That kind of natural cross pollination is near dead when working
fully remote.
I don't work a typical job but I do operate in a space where in-person interactions can create opportunities. I think you can emulate a bit of that aspect by being proactive with incidental communications. Obviously nothing forceful, but just staying friendly with people - asking questions, offering help, showing interest, building general rapport.
Email them after something has been launched: "Hey - design of that new contact form looks great!" Find little excuses to be complimentary. Or if there's slim, existing rapport, ask a couple of people for feedback. If you don't get much in return, try others.
Thanks for the response! Kneejerkingly that feels weird, but that's surely because I've never been apart of cold emails/messages like that. I guess I just have to make that part of my new normal.
I think a key is not to try or push too hard. It's lighthearted and casual. You're not measuring any attempt for success or getting despondent if no one cares - you're just being sociable and ultimately should eventually make connections or develop rapport. Unless you are seriously unlikeable, people will remember those that give them feedback or are nice to them without being transparent in trying to get something for themselves.
And if you're not naturally sociable, convince yourself that this is the type of person you have chosen to be. "I'm the type of person that makes these small efforts."
I always think of it in basketball/coaching terms. If there's a non-shooter at the top of the key and the coaching instruction is to sag off them, don't react instinctively and rush out to defend. Just stick to the process and the odds are that over time the smart method plays to your advantage. Don't get upset if people don't reply (they might be busy, for one thing) and don't overwhelm them with replies if they do.
I'm very social in person, it's just the "cold email" part of it that is off putting for me. There's no observable social norm around this from my perspective. You can be a wallfly at an event and pick up norms, but you can't do that will chat/email. Maybe it's a generational gap thing, but the only times I get that type of interaction is from vendors who want something, group emails, or it's from someone I already know quite well.
All of the pivotal points in my career came from delivering quality software, on time and under budget. That kind of work cannot happen with the constant distraction of in-office work.
It's not inherently bad to want people in the office (he's free to run his company how he'd like), but that email (and especially the one sent to more general workers) read like a post on /r/im14andthisisdeep with some guy who thinks he's superior to everyone else.
I do think there's value in a CEO working along the factory workers, if only so that it's easier to empathize with their frustrations, but acting like he and he alone is the reason for Tesla's success because he was brave enough to lower himself to the factory-worker-level is just a delusion of grandeur that I have trouble even comprehending.
Not long ago I worked with a similar CEO (minus the success that Tesla had): He was adamant that everybody had return to the office (in the middle of COVID!) because he argued he "didn't know how to guide the startup to be a multi billion dollar company with a remote team", and that he "didn't do remoting".
The funny thing is that, there I was, working from an office in another country, and I reported directly to him... remotely. But he wanted to force me to get all the people in my country's office to go back to the office, even if I knew how to work with a remote team.
/u/henrysun1313 tried writing a corp-speak version of this email, I prefer the original! :
Dear colleagues - as we get back to working from the office, it is important that all of us do our part to spend time together face to face to enable communication and group alignment. Remote work is not able to help Tesla advance production and innovation at the pace required to meet our goals and fully serve our shareholders. As such, myself and the leadership team are committing to at least 40 hours a week in person and need all employees to do the same. Appreciate everyone's compliance with this policy, where your manager cannot make an exception without my direct approval.
Let's charge forward with the Tesla mission and drive results.
I disagree; at least the corp-speak version would have a minimal level of respect instead of coming off like a manchild unwilling to live in the 21st century.
Having been in many managerial discussions where we try to figure out how to sugarcoat the real message, I'd much rather prefer the Elon version. I do agree that some level of empathy in the email would be nice but still hate th corp version. Atleast this way, there is no ambiguity about the seriousness of his ask.
> some guy who thinks he's superior to everyone else
I’d say that the fact he is a self made wealthiest man in the world (at least occasionally), might demonstrate that he is superior at least in some way to a good portion of the humans walking this earth.
Every time this guy tweets, I regret my purchase more and more. Can't he just keep it focused on the cars and the share price? Instead it always has to be some ego trip about how he is smarter and harder worker than everyone else.
I hope this pushes folks at Tesla to unionize. The NLRB has ruled health and safety are subjects of mandatory bargaining. If your employer is making you return to an unsafe office during a global pandemic, this is in violation of that.
>Every time this guy tweets, I regret my purchase more and more.
You are certainly free to feel however you like about your own purchases, but I have to say, I don't understand it. Either you like the car or you don't. If you do -- great! Drive away. If you don't -- sell it. Don't see what the WFH policy of Tesla has to do with anything.
Tesla employees are adults. They are not trapped by poverty wages. They are professionals. They can leave if they don't like it.
I'm a die-hard WFH'er and also not a CEO. Musk should run his company how he feels best.
You don’t care anything about who the money from your purchases flow too? In most cases I don’t, because I don’t have much insight into it. But to the extent that I can keep my money from going to people I despise, I think it makes sense to do so.
many people buy teslas for the statment it makes about their views and priorities. so its not surprising those same people dislike when its not just about the environment amd now tangled up with musks world view of the day.
If the environment is a priority for you, is it stupid that you buy an electric vehicle and partially hope that it encourages others to do the same? And would it be stupid if you regretted that Musk was needlessly muddying that?
I think this is a naïve view. If you do not like the next leader in your country, you'll not complain since you are not a trapped adult, and you'll emigrate instead?
People have a right to expect reasonable policies from their employers. It should not be "I'm the CEO, I'll do whatever I damn well please and you either take it or leave".
> People have a right to expect reasonable policies from their employers.
No, they don't have this right. What the 'people' might find unreasonable can be, in fact, very reasonable from the point of view of their employers, who quite possibly have far more knowledge about the best way to run an organization. They also have far more responsibilities than workers, the biggest of which is paying the salary. The employee can get away with not doing any work for months, which is relatively easy on remote. Try getting away with not paying salary!
To combat unreasonable policies, people DO have a different right: to quit and find a job they like more.
We are talking about employers and employees who we can both assume to be adults.
There is no reason for Musk to say: "come to the office for 40 weeks or I'll fire you" - this is not how employer-employee relations should be in the 21st century.
Nobody defines how employer-employee relations should be in the 21st century but the employers. They run their business as they please. Employees decide if they want to work for them, or walk away.
Also. I do have experience with very adult people who fake productivity working remotely. Some even brag about 'working' remotely for several companies at once, effectively frauding their wage from each.
I think we’ll not come to an agreement. Personally I find the top-down views you seem to hold on employment and workplace conduct very reminiscent of the “zero sum capitalism” from the Industrial age.
Since my company is my business, and Musk's company is Musk's business, it is both figuratively and literally not your business how we should run them.
But hey, you are always welcome to start your own company and run it as you think companies 'should' be run in the 21st century!
Thanks mate. I’m just glad my employer also takes into consideration the wellbeing of the assets that make his business profitable: the employees.
If your employees enjoy working for you: glad it’s all working out. If they (secretly) don’t, good luck running your business in a job market with ongoing labor shortage!
Why does this bother you? He's running a business and for whatever reason he feels its important to productivity have employees come into the office. I don't know why you're so confident that this decision is an "ego trip" as opposed to an effort to more effectively produce cars and help the share price.
> If your employer is making you return to an unsafe office during a global pandemic, this is in violation of that.
You're living in a bubble if you most employers are okay with indefinite work from home after two and a half years.
> Can't he just keep it focused on the cars and the share price?
I actually agree with your sentiment, but for a different reason - I think tweeting is a massive waste of his time which I would prefer be spent either working on any of his amazing companies, or for restorative rest - but obviously I don’t get a vote where he spends his time!
For the same reason, I really hope he doesn’t buy Twitter - not because I don’t like what he’ll do, but because Twitter is a dumpster fire and I don’t want his valuable attention squandered on something so worthless as fixing discourse Twitter.
> I hope this pushes folks at Tesla to unionize.
Elon corporate culture/values seems like it’s definitely unique, and not something for everyone.
It’s probably better for everybody if those who aren’t onboard go work somewhere that aligns better with their values.
Disagree with Musk on this one. His follow up tweet "They should pretend to work somewhere else" implies that everyone who works remotely is merely pretending to work.
To make a blanket statement like this shows a lack of judgement. He further states that people who are particularly exceptional should be allowed to work remotely.
This means that a contributor who is substantially more productive at home than in office should be forced to sacrifice their gain in productivity if they don't meet the bar for "exceptional".
Furthermore, while the total number of "hours worked" might be more at the office, everyone knows that the number of fake hours worked is also higher.
Finally, the nail in the coffin to his argument is the following:
If someone can successfully pretend to work from home without any performance repercussions, there is clearly a lack of proper management in the company since performance is not measured by any proper metric of success but rather by their physical presence or hours worked. If an individual's productivity is found to be lacking due to their preference to work remotely, this should be communicated by the management chain and appropriate incentives/disincentives have to be put in place to guide the individual to perform at the level desired.
For roles that require you to be present at the location e.g. human resources or hardware roles, you can make those positions non-remote. Certain kinds of work like software development or design can absolutely be done remotely if the management is competent.
Lastly you can make an argument for innovation arising from the propagation of ideas and that this is more likely to happen if people are colocated. I think this is probably true but I also suspect that you can design a remote environment that allows this to happen even more effectively than in person. One idea that I think can work is to hold a brainstorming session with round-robin 1:1 discussions. You can form a fully connected graph of everyone's pairwise experience bouncing off each other which is more effective than the small k to many interaction that happens in meetings where an overconfident vocal minority comes up with most of the ideas.
> Eh i love remote work but people saying no one is slacking at home show a clear lack of judgement themselves.
No one is saying "no one is slacking at home". Individuals who don't slack at home are saying "I don't slack at home, and I don't want to be weird tangent punished for your other incompetent employees. If they aren't doing their jobs fire them, I'm not going back, and I'm worth more to your company than you are to me."
+1 to this. I'd go one step further and say that it doesn't matter who is actually slacking at home. The same people probably slack at the office too. In any case, if work from home increases the number of people who slack or the magnitude of slacking, it should be apparent in their performance. If this is set up correctly, you can identify those don't benefit from working from home and have a conversation with them about it.
If all competent employees are equally competent at home but some other slack more at home then WFH is a net negative for the employer. Hence the policy.
Also you're assuming it's possible to control who is slacking / incompetent or not. It's not.. it's a partial information game. Hence the policy.
People should be allowed to do what makes them the most productive, be given feedback and coached if they’re not productive enough and finally let go if that doesn’t work.
That’s how it has always been. There are always many factors affecting one’s performance in person or remote.
It is never possible to control people but you can certainly measure productivity if your management is good.
people slacking at home slack in office as well no? We've had to experiment with work from home worldwide because of covid. Overall I'm not observing reduced (or improved) productivity
Is it so hard to imagine that people who are home, surrounded by a spouse/so, perhaps children, entertainment systems, a fridge, a bed, no one looking at their monitor, etc... aren't on average more distracted?
I am equally distracted at home or office, just by different things. At home, kids, fridge, etc. At the office I lose time to the commute, to moving my car every two hours, to office conversations, etc. I burn time reading HN, watching basketball stats and researching roadtrips from either location so they even out.
How can we tell to what effect WFH has had to make supply chain worse? If some percentage of people are pretending to work, why couldn't that worsen the issues by some other percentage?
> ...performance is not measured by any proper metric of success but rather by their physical presence or hours worked.
I think that one thing that has become crystal clear over the course of this pandemic is what a large percentage of our managerial class thinks that this is the only worthwhile metric for performance—at least, the only metric for performance that is worth their time to try to measure.
> To make a blanket statement like this shows a lack of judgement.
In other words, nothing new. If there's one thing I associate with Elon Musk it's blanket statements that show ignorance/stupidity/lack of judgement/bad character.
That is totally expected. Self-serving bias, egocentric bias or survivorship bias are very common in the 0.01%.
In case of Elon I guess at least egocentric bias is in play. Because he thinks people slack off at home/he would slack off at home, he assumes that is what is actually the case.
It's even worse than that because he silently assumes that middle management and team coordinators are unable to determine whether someone has worked or not other than by registering their presence. That attitude makes no sense, if a company cannot evaluate the results of their employees' work, then it is doomed. He knows that, of course, he's just being an a**hole. I would never work for someone like that.
I think for a manufacturing company this is only fair. He specifically points out a problem - the Fremont factory HR manager who lives in another state.
The factory workers have to come in every day. It’s probably demoralizing to them that the people with the cushier jobs don’t have to.
> The factory workers have to come in every day. It’s probably demoralizing to them that the people with the cushier jobs don’t have to.
Sure, people who work a line have to actually be at the line to do their job, but even if the office staff has to go in, the complaint moves to how they get to sit in their offices and drink coffee all day. It's still not incorrect, but being present or absent isn't the source of the friction between factory workers and office workers.
IMO, having actually worked in a factory (running IT at a Ford plant), I think it makes a huge difference.
There was always some amount of friction between salary and hourly workers, but a lot of it went both ways. The salaried workers had a (slightly) nicer work environment, but hourly workers got time and a half or double time for anything over 40 hours per week and more job protection (union).
In the end, the majority of the workers thought of each other as peers, in the same environment every day, working towards the same goal (production output), and that went a long way.
Having to deal with HR issues via a remote person would most likely be a major source of grief, with the remote person being seen as weaker or lessor for not being a part of the "family" in the plant environment.
I’ve also worked in warehousing for a lot of my career and would agree completely.
Your IT example is great as something that could be done offsite but worsens relations if that happens (and is not likely to be as effective).
There is a huge difference between the system slowing down and someone remote fixing it, and the system slowing down and everyone on the floor knowing that Dan from IT upstairs is working on it.
Also I have seen remote teams swear blind that there is not a speed issue, and they have remotely checked the systems and network on their end, while the warehouse/factory is in meltdown.
> people with the jobs that don't require interacting with things in person don’t have to
Fixed that for you.
Lots of things _could_ be acts of solidarity; for example, mandatory team lunches together. However, since they don't actually provide any benefit and do negatively impact the people involved, they tend to be avoided. The same should be the case here.
I don't see the salespeople complaining that HR doesn't need to travel to client locations with them; because clearly there's no reason for them too. The same should be the case here.
That's an excuse anyway. Factory workers have to come in, because that's where the machinery is. Most other jobs are fine as remote. I'd never work for Tesla locally as I'd probably have to make over $1M/year to just have my current (very spartan) standard of living.
An average house in Silicon Valley is like in the millions. If Tesla pays me $200k/year, it'll take a long time to pay off. Compare that where I live (nice house is $150k and I make over six figures). My buying power seems much higher where I'm at. Am I missing something obvious?
I heard this "Protestant work ethic" idea applied to European countries too (for instance to the Dutch, or more generally Northern vs Southern European countries).
Yet the standard working week in the Netherlands is just 38 hours (per Wikipedia), and in Germany it could be argued that the economically most successful states have a catholic majority (although this shifted after WW2, for instance from Saxony (protestant) to Bavaria (catholic)). I think the idea of "Protestant work ethic" is mostly bullshit these days, and it's more about worker's rights.
FWIW the 38 hours needs a lot of perspective. That average is mostly pulled down by individuals who feel pushed to work part time and individuals who are already making so much, taking an extra day off every week pays off more than getting most of the money taxed away and still being out of reach.
The above creates a dynamic where people will still work 40h to hit breakpoints, or will drop down as much as possible to stay at their current breakpoint (because working more isn't getting them there anyway). Doubly so because income tends to be a far bigger decider for things like housing and rent (highest expenses) than budgeting.
Because pretty much every Asian country was a rural wasteland in the 50s and 60s, and hard work and education is what got a lot of people out of that poverty. If you're white/only speak English, Chinese 40-60 year olds probably won't talk about this in front of you, but it's a widespread belief in China that Americans don't know what true poverty is like and are thus lazy.
That kind of makes sense, but not for Japan, which industrialised in the 19th century, so wasn't poor "a rural wasteland". It was war devastated post-WW2, but my understanding was that the working culture was there since industrialisation - which to be fair, was also the case in Europe until labour movements brought regulations at the cost of their blood. Maybe Japan just missed that train due to a combination of factors?
I want to say poverty as a one word one liner, but I'm really interested in a genuine explanataion.
However poverty and appearing to work hard to be at the top of an extremely competitive scramble out of poverty is my rough idea that isn't too hand-wavey in the direction of religion or culture.
Singapore has been high income since the 1980's and still has a very intense Asian work culture. The latest generation or two grew up in a very comfortable lifestyle, so any sense of "desperate poverty" is something their grandparents talk about. It even rare for Singaporeans to do much manual labor now, it's mostly done by foreign workers.
And other SE Asian countries (poorer than Singapore) have more of a reputation of "work shy" cultures. If you can work enough so you're not starving and have a house and beer to drink, why work harder?
So clearly the link between poverty and a "work hard" culture is pretty weak.
In one of Malcolm Gladwell's books this was explained as a by product of rice farming culture. Apparently in those climates rice grows all year round and every day you take off ends up hurting your bottom line, giving rise to hard work culture.
Not sure. Since we're asking hypothetical questions about work tied to productivity, why are there almost no EU companies on the top 30 annual revenue list in the technology sector?
EU funding is typically small government grants or seed money. Investors are culturally a _lot_ more risk averse if comparing with the US.
None of the tech sector in the US would exist without NSF, darpa, and NY,SV investors.
Most of the success stories in the EU have been with companies that secured capital from US funds. The only exception I can think of from the top of my head is Nokia and ASML.
Nokia doesn't really exist anymore except being a marketing machine and name brand for Chinese made OEM Android phones, and a networking device manufacturer with sweat-shop style dev offices in Eastern Europe because they're not competitive on Western wages due to chinese competitors like Huawei stealing/eating their lunch.
Yeah, but it used to be a huge company and it shaped the future of mobile phones forever, so I think it's fair to point out the major success it did have. It should be a lasting legacy, even if it turned out poorly.
A glorious past is pretty irelevant in the current market when you consider all the EU hardware jobs that have been lost or offshored in the process of Nokia's decline.
It's one of the reasons why embedded gigs pay so little in the EU.
Is that the most valuable measure of success you can think of?
Can you prove that there’s a meaningful relationship between people having to spend less time in a physical office and tech company annual revenue? ( spoiler alert: you can’t)
Also, why didn’t you just clearly outline your argument? It seems you’re implying that America is more financially successful than Europe because the US has a toxic addiction to perceived ‘work ethic’.
If EU companies and people are so sure their method of running a business is more successful than US companies, I just figured sales/revenue would at least somewhat reflect these opinions.
First: Do you really rate success by looking at revenue only?
Second: The Europe parts of e.g. Apple play a big role in developing the future of the US company, but revenue seems to be accounting to US only ...
> The Europe parts of e.g. Apple play a big role in developing the future of the US company
Not a great example, considering the recent Axx SoCs and M1 SoCs that have transformed Macs as a product and differentiated iPhones from Android were entirely developed in Silicon Valley. Most of the software and hardware engineering happens in the Valley as well.
being on the top 30 annual revenue list does not necessarily tell you anything about productivity or presence culture of the companies in question. it could also entail those companies having more customers and better marketing budget, which can result in good network effect(along with good enough product of course)
Language and bureaucracy? The UK and US both speak English and are closely aligned in terms of business practices, and even the smaller East coast Uk time zone difference has a bearing.
It is not the working hours (since this does not scale) but about putting work before anything else (little to no vacation, working in the middle of the night, flying to Asia with a day notice, making brutal decisions, ...)
Same in Germany, Austria and Belgium. Everyone I know there in a medium to large company has been called back into the office. Parent is taking his personal anecdote and extrapolating it to the whole continent for a cheap shot at the US when in my experience the US has so far much better remote and WFH acceptance for skilled professions than Europe due to their stronger tech jobs market where their tech employees have more leverage.
I found the Austrian/German management culture to be far more conservative and attached to measuring productivity by butts-in-seats time or your clocked-in time, than the US management which just looked at your outputs and doesn't care you've only been doing 3 hours of actual work and playing videogames the rest of your day, as long as you delivered what was agreed upon, VS my German manager who gave me a dressing down for seeing me spend "too much time scrolling on HN", despite me shipping everything on time.
Also most EU tech and white collar workers still work 40h/week. Those who work less are a fringe but very loud minority but they're not the norm. Even my friend at BMW Munich has overtime hours in his contract and never does less than 40h/week.
That is the opposite of what I've been hearing in Germany, tbh, although I think my "network" tends towards the small-to-medium rather than medium-to-large.
Even looking briefly at job listings in my area, most places are either fully or partially remote, and even those that are partially remote sometimes have a note saying that they'd accept fully remote candidates if they were good enough.
As to the 40h/week thing, I don't hugely keep track of my colleagues' hours, but my impression is that averaging 40 is the norm, but most places I've worked don't track that explicitly, so working about that or less seems to be the norm. In places where you record explicit overtime hours, I know a couple of people who do more than 40h/week, but they tend to also take extensive holidays off or travel a lot on long weekends. I wouldn't say that's the norm though.
Sure, but US tech TCs reach 800k+ vs 80k+. 10x the difference means the difference between early retirement with your own property and working till you drop without any property of your own potentially.
US tech workers are free to unionize and demand EU levels of PTO but it seems like the absurd levels of TC is a better deal for them.
Not the France I'm living in. For tech jobs remote multiple days a week is the bare minimum, and for non-tech jobs, even old school institutions have optional remote work.
Baring some exceptionally shitty companies where the top management can't figure out computers and think everyone just slacks off the whole day from home, or companies in sensitive sectors ( defense) partial remote work is the norm now.
Probably. But is it worth it, for people? I mean, a country would maybe have more valuable companies of they all have slaves slaving away for peanuts. I mean, it would create value, right? Actually we wouldn't have some of the most valuable building in the world if it weren't for slaves (or the next best thing). But again: is it worth it? Do overworked individuals really benefit from living in a country that has the most valuable companies?
I don't think so. How is US tech company's salary peanuts? You can work for sometime and happily retire, something you cannot do in the UK. It is a choice people can make.
The whole concept of Economy is slavery in a way, economy will grow if people work (or increase productivity), something we have to participate unfortunately. There is inflation making sure you will not have enough tomorrow. The only people are making out of the loop is people working in tech industry.
The argument I guess is that more GDP is more prosperity for the country, but with income inequality rising to the level that it is in the US, I don't think it matters much to the average worker that GDP is increasing if they're not getting any benefit from it.
The problem is, you don't get to pick the people who leave.
Probably for most companies, losing 10% of the workforce could either have little impact on productivity (or even a positive impact) or be devastating. It entirely depends on which 10%.
Those who can make remote work as effectively as presence gain a competitive advantage since the dead loss cost of commuting is eliminated, as is the dead loss cost of agglomeration - which is always borne by the employee. Living in a big city is expensive.
Hopefully with the ever decreasing supply of talent and workers, those operations that know how to manage people will flourish and those that don't will die.
Perhaps just a disguised layoff? A percentage of workers will not come back, and in case layoffs have to happen; that percentage is already out of the picture.
When you try to reduce employee count by making work conditions worse, the employees who will leave are those who can easily find opportunities elsewhere (so your top performers). With layoffs you want to be targeting the opposite end of the workforce – people who aren't pulling their weight and will never voluntarily quit.
Yeah I think companies will push for full return to office (while making exceptions for top performers who push back) as a way to reduce headcount without having to layoff. Cheaper that way.
Given that there is no legally required severance, couldn't companies just fire large groups of people. I thought paying people during a layoff was just a morale booster for those who remain anyway, so a thinly disguised layoff benefits no one.
Terminating emplpyees without cause makes the employee eligible for unemployment benefits. The more employees that receive unemployment benefits, the higher the unemployment insurance premiums will be (billed to the company by the state government).
Huh? So there's a clear incentive for the company to force employee separation in other ways?
At least in my country (and I guess in most of europe?) each worker pays % of salary to social benefits fund that pays unemployment benefit. There's severance pay on employer for no-fault separation though. Which is now lowered specifically to avoid situations when employers push people to „voluntarily“ leave.
> there's a clear incentive for the company to force employee separation in other ways?
Yes, however the law recognizes that creating a hostile environment to force people to quit is essentially firing them. Which means in that case you can quit, then move on to filing paperwork claiming it was due to the hostile environment, go before a government body, etc.
There are plenty of reasons, why it can be valuable for people coming to the company offices. But if it was not apparent before, the pandemic has shown:
- how much time is wasted in commutes
- how much productivity can suffer from too much interaction with your colleagues
- how much benefit for the performance and for your well being the flexibility of working from home brings.
- and of course, with a modern sizable company, the teams often enough are spread across different sites. If Tesla has a team in Austin and in Freemont working together, what do they care about home office?
If there is a direct work related reason to be in the office or even just the office actually being a more productive environment, one doesn't have to ask employees to come to the office. But forcing them to do so doesn't sound logical, as Spock would phrase it.
I understand. I'd rather not be required to go into an office again, ever, but Tesla has a culture that remote could hurt. Don't appreciate the "pretend to work" comment. I work harder and better from home.
Tesla has a culture of working 21/7 and sleeping at the factory. this is just typical asshatery from a ceo who gets paid millions while jerking off at the factory 24/7 and expects his employees to put in the same hours. the sooner Tesla goes bankrupt the better.
They expect more than 40 hour work weeks from factory workers?!
The "minimum 40 hours in the office" - to me - would read like "sure you can do remote work, as long as you are in the office full-time", but if his expectation is people pulling 60+ hour work weeks it becomes "sure you can do remote work, as long as it's after you're done with the regular full-time office shift".
To be fair, a lot of US employers talk to their employees this way over email. In person they're slightly less abusive but still on that side of the line. Part of the reason for the massive amounts of quitting and very low productivity going on.
If he's doing it to reduce headcount, the people who stay will be mindfully less productive than the people who leave. He's backsliding and in the near future he'll blame everyone else but himself.
40 hours is already more than most western nation's salaried full time work maximum, it's also more than the American average, and more than the worldwide average. Though I'm sure those averages are skewed heavily by the way employment has changed in the last decade, with the contractification of the work force, the gig economy and full-time work becoming less common.
Is it typical to work more than that as a white collar worker at Tesla?
Conversely, if you only look at the hours worked for people who make $200k+, you'll probably find that 40/wk is on the lower end. I think it's fair to say that North American engineers (like myself) are handsomely well-paid for the amount of time we put in, compared to really any other market in the world.
> 40 hours is already more than most nations salaried full time work maximum,
Citation? 40 hours is a standard full-time work week in many locations. Are you trying to suggest that “most nations” have work limits lower than 40 hours per week? Because that’s not true at all.
Sorry I've made an edit since your reply, I meant to write western nations, but in fairness I can't find any good collated citations, and it's not likely to be "most western nations" as I thought anyway. So I guess just consider my comment an anecdote. But anecdotally (ie based on googling around) it is around 38 hours in NZ, Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, France, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Luxembourg. It's usually reported as an average of hours worked by a full time employee, but in at least a few of these countries it's actually a government set maximum.
It wasn't really the 40 hours I was taking issue with anyway, as that's pretty reasonable. But what does it mean to say that if you want to work remotely, you have to put in 40 hours at the office as well, shouldn't that be all you have to put in? It's just a loaded way to communicate.
Those maximums in Europe are largely ignored in high-paying roles (like what Tesla engineers would certainly be).
As an example, in London when you get a high-paying finance job, on day 1 the HR person comes by your desk and has you sign a waiver to waive away any rights to overtime and to accept that you will work as and when needed regardless of national limits.
Edit: I would also like to point out that when I did that job, the builders working on the skyscraper next door were working substantially longer hours than my 50ish hours per week, and probably for substantially less pay.
Oh I know, it's implicit, but I guess there is a big difference between implicit and writing it down in such a way that makes it clear that more is expected of you, like I feel this email does.
Their stock price has so far been going up like a rocketship, and that is enough to make up for a lot of mismanagement and terrible work conditions. If the recent correction is sustained for an extended period then Elon will find that employees will no longer be willing to put up with all of this.
some people care about more than just money and actively like working on challenging problems that they feel are helping better the world. I'd say it's a good filtering mechanism so people who just want to max TC and work the minimum like so many at FAANG don't even bother to apply
average TC looks to be over 300K for devs with around 5 years experience, that's probably helped by how well their stock did the last few years
It’s kind of lame to not be able to make use of the huge catalog of apps that integrate with Android Auto and CarPlay. For example, I use a podcast app that’s on iOS and Android. It has worked seamlessly across multiple phones and cars for me, but it’s not on the Tesla. They’re making the same mistake every other automaker did of building their own boutique infotainment OS. Everyone else has figured out by now that supporting Android Auto/CarPlay is a good way of filling in all the gaps.
Sure Bluetooth will play the audio, but the app has a bunch of other controls: choosing an episode, skipping commercials, adjusting playback speed, etc. I’ve used that and it’s a big step backward to the 2000’s. I end up wanting to go on my phone while driving.
On the other hand, there was a bug in CarPlay that locked out part of the UI in the Music app in my car when the car was moving. To say that was beyond annoying is an understatement. (Who would use a car radio to play music?) It was a regression introduced during an iOS upgrade and it took Apple over a year to fix and was only patched when they rolled the major version.
If there was deep hardware-software-vehicle integration this would have never happened and would have been caught in testing. Unfortunately since CarPlay is developed in a disconnect from the display device, and insufficient testing is done due to the plethora of vehicles out there, bugs like this can and will happen.
Ironically, this is the antithesis of the common praise levied on Apple's "controlling both the hardware and software" approach.
If you're making 300k/year writing software you can drag your ass into the office as far as I'm concerned. If you compare that to similarly compensated occupations (doctors etc.) they don't get to play pretend-work from home. There is a definite imbalance in the value of professional occupations across industries.
People outside the SV tech bubble in traditional industries (manufacturing, medical devices) are making half that doing essentially the same job. If you want to work remotely full-time, fine, but you take a pay cut.
I know this comment is going to upset a lot of folks - and rightfully so - but this gravy train is going to end some day just like it did back in '00. Inertia is keeping things going at the moment.
1. If you hire people you can’t trust to do the work or if your company is so broken that people pretend-work, it’s not like warming up the seat in the office will change anything.
2. Let’s just forget about the last two years where most were remote and companies kept making record profits. Clearly, spending hours a day sitting in a polluting car to all gather in a room is a good use of everyone’s time and resources.
It's not a matter of trust so much as it is human nature. Even good employees are more likely to slack off given the temptation of essentially unsupervised work.
Another way to look at it is not that the employees are remote, but that the manager is phoning it in. It's hard to be a dynamic leader through a Zoom window.
I would never work for a person who puts their poor image of humans first in our relationship vs observing my output and process and then deciding what kind of person I am.
It sounds like you are a lazy slacker and expect others to be lazy slackers too.
The second I smell such a suspicious attitude I run away.
You would lose good people and thus should never set foot into managing anything but a locksmith SEO mafia, which will produce employees who perform to your low expectations.
The part where he says "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."
Is he serious? There are plenty of companies shipping great products with people working from home. My own company had 99% of the employees including most lab engineers working from home for the last 2 years. We posted record profits, our stock quadrupled, and won a lot of new customers.
I’m actually surprised they allowed remote work at all.
I’ve had a few friends and coworkers work at, and subsequently leave, Tesla. It’s not a place you choose to work at if your goal is to have a relaxed job.
The charitable interpretation is this is addressed and intended to apply to the executive staff only. Which isn’t unreasonable given their higher responsibilities and likely higher monetary compensation.
But I bet everyone just jumps to assuming he means everyone working for Tesla and makes a huge deal about this. Because hating on Elon gets clicks and thus ad revenue…
"If there are exceptional contributors" - one would hope that the entire executive team is exceptional in his eyes, or why are they executives? And he wouldn't need to specify "I will approve them directly" - executives outside of policy would already be approved by Musk. He's saying "I have to approve it, not you."
This is a directive, not "hey you guys, and only you guys".
Also worth remembering that Tesla’s original eng culture was about collocating design and production. Remote makes their culture look a lot more like a standard auto company.
I’ve replied to your comment elsewhere and I get the impression that you are very disconnected with what Elon is like and is doing. Your comments echos mainstream media headlines which are misinformed and/or malicious wholesale.
I really suggest you watch interviews with him, especially the technical ones (like with Tim Dodd at Starbase) where he is in deep in engineering and problem solving, on the ground at the site, not from some ivory tower, drinking whiskey.
Its not that I don't see or know the same information you are using to base your decision on. I've seen the interviews. It's that I've drawn a different conclusion than you from that information.
The fact that he works as many hours as he claims isn't a good thing. It isn't a badge of honor. It's not good that he has had so many romantic partners, it isn't good that he has so many kids that he clearly isn't raising, it isn't good that he is publicly so out of balance and is clearly constantly feeding his own ego with no boundaries. It isn't good that he now is facing sexual misconduct allegations. None of these things are good. None of those things are respectable. None of those things are OK for a role model to be modeling. We need to stop idolozong people for simply being rich and famous and good engineers and we need to start idolizing people for being good humans.
Elon isn't a good human. Everything he or his fan base is told so, he and they (you) hide behind all the "good" he's doing do as to draw the attention away from him not being a good human.
You've drawn the wrong conclusions, evident by you leading your argument with "pedo guy".
> The fact that he works as many hours as he claims isn't a good thing.
Good is too vague. Good for what? It's probably not good for his general well being. But then neither is sitting and watching Netflix. Long hours is necessary to achieve his goals as he has laid out for Tesla and SpaceX. And not just for him, for everyone who works at those companies.
> It's not good that he has had so many romantic partners
That's his private business. You should perhaps look into swinging. That may broaden your horizons about what is good and isn't in respect to number of romantic partners.
> it isn't good that he has so many kids that he clearly isn't raising
He's raising them better than 99.9% of parents out there (and he better, given the resources he has).
> it isn't good that he is publicly so out of balance
That doesn't mean anything!
> It isn't good that he now is facing sexual misconduct allegations.
So did Assange, and then they dropped it. An allegation by itself is not a proof of anything. It is however a very good signal that someone is either getting too famous, too powerful and nothing else has worked to stop them.
> None of those things are respectable.
None of the things you listed are valid or of any significance.
> None of those things are OK for a role model to be modeling.
He's led people to do their beyond best effort to achieve things that have been deemed impossible over the last 20 years, and made the world better for everyone. That's what you should be paying attention to, not his number of romantic partners.
> We need to stop idolozong people for simply being rich and famous and good engineers
He's rich and famous, because he's a visionary and a leader. The fact that you think people idolize him for being "rich" is yet ANOTHER clear evidence that you know little of him. You're basically equating Musk with Kardashians.
Your exactly right on one point. Elon is the Kardashian of the tech world.
He has achieved nothing we thought impossible. We thought all of these things were possible. His achievement is becoming a billionaire whole doing it. There have been many visionaries in the past, and will be many in the future, he doesn't have a monopoly on that. Correlation isn't causation. He hasn't been a visionary because he behaves in this way, he behaves in this way because he doesn't have any guardrails, consequences.
There are lots of tech moguls, visionary leaders, that don't behave like him and we couldn't even name them because theybhavent had any scandals, weird behavior, etc. Those are the true role models.
If he’s so clever he can probably figure out a way to process feedback that he’s being a deliberate dick with his statement on “pretend to work”
Nothing about his public presence suggest nuance and a capacity for intelligence.
Is he secretly a genius? Maybe so, but his comments about voting Republican due to twitter mob reactionism, when he is deliberately trying to buy what is obviously a political trumpet to cudgel people with suggests that he has no game theory at all…
I suspect that he was lucky and interprets his luck as genius and favor from God
You should care if you already don’t. He runs some of the most successful businesses and people are in long lines waiting to get hired by his companies despite the high workload and below competition (e.g. facebook, google) pay.
>You should care if you already don’t. He runs some of the most successful businesses and people are in long lines waiting to get hired by his companies despite the high workload and below competition (e.g. facebook, google) pay.
Except that I really don't care about him though and it works well for me so far. With the risk of getting downvoted, people give him and other tech billionaires far too much importance.
My life would be exactly the same without any of his products. I can easily live without PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX, while my life (and everyone else here as well) would not be possible without the products from traditional "boring" companies that nobody cares about anymore, like wind and hydro turbines from Siemens and GE, healthcare devices from Philips, Siemens and GE, semiconductors, jet engines, planes, trains, etc.
I lost count of the number of "I", "me", "my" in your comment.
> My life would be exactly the same without any of his products.
And what about the lives of people who'll come after you, generations after you? Well he does care. And if you think that he runs his businesses for the money, then you're in for a big surprise when I tell you, there are far far far easier ways to make lots of money with someone of his skills and intelligence, than trying to compete in two industries, one monopolized by a few with a mind shatteringly high barrier to entry, and the other saturated by established players that have optimized their cost over a century and reduced their margins to bare minimum to stay competitive.
> while my life (and everyone else here as well) would not be possible without the products from traditional "boring" companies that nobody cares about anymore
Wait 50 years. Then Tesla will be traditional, boring and the one that one's life would not be possible without.
Yeah, my union blue collar friends have a retirement, the non-union ones not so much, hourly pay is massively different in trades like sheet metal workers, etc.
Unions were hard won on the blood of workers.
Every OSHA safety regulation the boss complains about costing him money has worker blood on it. It’s like electrical code, you may not like it, but adherence to it provides a market standard.
Workers made American industry great, not grifter CEOs who pretend to speak engineering, and don’t you forget it.
Your grandchildren called me the other day, by the way, so spare me the folksy veneer on anti-Americanism disguised as a work ethic.
> my union blue collar friends have a retirement, the non-union ones not so much
Tesla employees own shares. They'll retire as millionaires, not just with a retirement.
> It’s like electrical code, you may not like it, but adherence to it provides a market standard.
Union brings a lot of baggage with it. Sure the above is good but doesn't mean union can be the only way.
> who pretend to speak engineering
He's more of an engineer than you'll ever meet in your life, count on that.
> anti-Americanism disguised as a work ethic
WTF does nationalism have anything to do with this? Musk is planning to put "humanity" on "Mars". You think he gives a flying fk about one country or the other, or traditions and status quo? He cares about people, not Americans. This the most shortsighted comment I've read all week.
Meaning, you can’t walk sideways into a union bashing comment just in passing, that’s literally class warfare and shan’t be taken as a mild personal opinion but as an attempt at undermining the working class as a whole an remove the institution known as the trade union that has a solid presence and isn’t dismissible by you or any other mortal much like slavery will never legally return under this civilization ms watch
If the economy goes into the crapper expect more of this.
It’s easy for companies to bend to every ask by employees when the money is rolling in - protest against our customers, bring your pets in, work remote 100% on your terms.
But when revenue is falling and it’s crunch time all that goes out the window.
Not having an office makes the company much more flexible.
- They can hire anywhere.
- Adding / removing employees is much cheaper
- Most business are already prepared for their employees to work from everywhere.
1) Tesla needs to reduce costs. Getting people to voluntarily quit is a lot easier, cheaper, and less messy than layoffs or firing people.
2) We’re all talking about this topic here, which is exactly what Elon wanted. So he was quite successful here too.
3) This whole WFH or not debate is going to ultimately be settled by the markets on an industry by industry basis. If being in the office matters and one company does that while another offers WFH the latter will get its ass kicked in a competitive environment. If one trusts “the market” in the long run companies will migrate to what works best and those that don’t will be out competed and gradually perish, either because they struggle to operate or struggle to recruit the best talent.
Wall Street does not care. It's also worth noting that plenty of other companies have reportedly bad working conditions, such as Chipotle and Disney, but get much less media coverage. Tesla is literally the biggest target.
What we hear and how informed we are about the conditions are not necessarily the same thing.
And I would add that anything that hurts Tesla and SpaceX is a desperately needed opportunity for others in those industries to claw back market share. There is a lot of genuine criticism of Musk but gunning for him is also a good strategy from would-be rivals that are unable to compete as well regarding production and desirability. At this point slowing down Tesla and SpaceX is one of the only strategies left to companies that have fought the current changes to those industries for decades.
There's likely a tenth-ening still left in Tesla stock, don't worry. There's a lot of hype holding that valuation. I wouldn't be brave enough to try and short it, however.
There is no issue: one side demand something, maybe the other side agree or not. If the company side loose talents than they have to change, that's the "market".
Oh, BTW such "market" depend on unity on all sides, one, the corporate, is united, the other so far is not, but IF it realize the power of being united...
I see so many folks reading that it is to the executives only. But it’s fairly clearly written to the professional staff, which includes functions like software engineering, AI, design, and a bunch of the workforce that likely wants to work from home a lot and reasonably can successfully. I’m a little confused where the “execs” interpretation comes from. Do you think the person who handles HR for the Fremont plant is an executive? They’re a mid level person at best, but they’re a professional worker rather than a line factory worker.
I can understand this. Factory workers need to be present obviously and to have a large part of company remote, it kind of is bad for morale. And morale is vital part of Tesla, they are on the mission.
That said, I don't think I would be working from office anytime soon, preferably never.
It's really the lack of nuance on this topic that bothers me on HN. Tesla needs collaboration, drive, human interaction to be able to get their innovation and vision moving and I don't care what any snowflake here says, remote work slows this down.
I have been working remotely the past 2 years and I have basically had enough of it. I am moving back to Miami to go back into the office and my company is rewarding me financially for it WHILE it being completely my choice to do so.
I think it’s great that you’re doing that. It being your choice is key. For many of us we’ve seen that we’re just as productive working remotely plus we have more free time. There is no personal upside to me working in an office.
This is fair and balanced reply. I still think it comes back to nuance on the company, what task you are performing, team size.. etc.. It's removing the nuance that causes the 'group think' on this topic and any company being flagged as regressive just because of this workforce decision.
you say remote work slows things down, but, today.... I met with the various teams I oversee (contractors, FTEs). The majority of them live/work in other states and I only see them when they fly to the mothership for an onsite (and many, I will never meet). I work for a subsidiary of a company that has its own mothership in another continent, so much of my work is necessarily remote.
I didn't go to the office this week because my employer said we're in "yellow tier", which means masking up in the office. We're open office, so that means a bunch of people sitting around each other in masks. I didn't have any critical meetings that would have worked best in person.
I talked to my one coworker who is also local (my manager used COVID to move to another state) and we agreed it didn't make much sense to come in since the majority of my coworkers work elsewhere. Why come in if there's almost nobody there?
That said after a few weeks, I do want to visit the office to see a bunch of people in person but it's mainly for social reasons, not because it makes me more effective locally. I have worked on linux/python remotely off hours for decades (and often just not come into the office a few days a week). It really seems like this is ultimately about personal preferences.
That is really good for you, you will probably be able to be paid more because you can be in the office, I just heard from a friend who got unheard compensation because he was willing to go to the office.
Everyone in this thread seems to make the implicit assumption that allowing everyone to work from home is at least as productive as requiring everyone be in the office.
My personal experience is the opposite.
Note that it is not just about personal productivity, but also about aggregate/corporate productivity. There are a few points to this:
* Does the company collaborate or innovate better or worse if employees are remote?
* Is it just as easy for new employees to on-board remotely? Does it take longer for them to get up to speed/full productivity?
* Is it simply easier to work through problems in a specific problem domain in person?
If Tesla thought remote work was as productive, they clearly wouldn’t make this move. They won’t be doing it to just cull numbers, there are better ways to do that linked to performance.
A company stating that they'd like people to work in the office, or from home, doesn't mean that they're correct about that, even in their particular context. Companies do all sorts of things that contradict established science in terms of increasing productivity.
As an example, from the sounds of these e-mails Tesla has their factory workers working longer than 40 hours a week, which is well established to decrease overall productivity.
> As an example, from the sounds of these e-mails Tesla has their factory workers working longer than 40 hours a week, which is well established to decrease overall productivity.
Productivity is very context dependent - if your job is working on a production line often your productivity is fairly fixed - you have x seconds to do y task while the car moves by. If you do it faster, the next car isn’t coming down the line any faster. You aren’t allowed to do it slower.
A 42 hour average week on a 4 on 4 off shift is a pretty standard working arrangement for a factory. Also factory workers are paid hourly, so often offering fewer hours for a blue collar job isn’t seen as a bonus as it is for a salaried position.
What shift pattern and hours would you propose instead that provides 24/7 cover and will be attractive to frontline workers? (12 hour days with 4 on and 4 off is often seen as the dream in factories that don’t have it!)
I don't know Tesla's shift pattern, and if it's indeed 42 hours, I agree that there's probably not a lot of functional differences between a 40 hour week and a 42 hour week, particularly if the 42 hour week has shifts laid out in a way that makes sense.
So I may have been wrong about Tesla itself, but there's plenty of companies of all stripes that go significantly above 40 hours a week, even in contexts where there have been studies demonstrating reduced productivity when working 50+ hours.
I'm not necessarily saying Tesla is absolutely wrong here, just that the argument that "well Tesla is doing it, and they know their business, so they must be right" is BS - companies are routinely wrong about how to optimize productivity.
> I'm not necessarily saying Tesla is absolutely wrong here, just that the argument that "well Tesla is doing it, and they know their business, so they must be right" is BS - companies are routinely wrong about how to optimize productivity.
That's not what I said - I said tesla genuinely think it. I never said that they must be right, but also they are probably in a better position to judge than you or me for their business IMO. If their existing remote work situation was all sunshine and rainbows for Tesla then they probably wouldn't be making the move back.
They aren't doing this to spite people working from home, they will be doing it because they genuinely think it isn't productive in their use case.
In a way, I’m glad they as a company look like they’ll be upfront about the conditions if you apply for a role.
I left the last company I worked for due to a number of factors, most obviously though was an office move out of the city and into the suburbs. In many cases this would be great, but with the way Sydney is configured with transit, if you’re on the ‘other’ side of the city, it would mean a journey all the way through and back out to get there, doubling the transit time, which coupled with a forced return to office contrary to the ‘flexible’ employment described in the contract was just a non-starter.
So, while I understand why people would rather WFH became permanent, at least it seems Tesla will be upfront about that not being how they work.
I think the long term trend with this is that the market is going to be segmented. You're going to have companies that allow remote work and operate that model going forwards. They'll establish some minimum requirements for on-sites, working hours, performance management etc. They'll have access to a wider pool of talent, a lower average cost of employee, but it'll be more difficult to establish those systems.
Then you'll have the permanent work from office companies. They'll have minimum hours in the office, a limited talent pool, higher cost of employee, higher costs of office space too.
Over time you're probably going to see the latter group outcompeted by the former group, simply because the latter group can provide far more benefits in terms of quality of life, more competitive effective comp (they can pay you less, but your cost of living can be far lower), and of course the fact that the latter group is just the "back to normal" group where presenteeism has replaced productivity in a lot of the real metrics for success.
Of course there's the real third category - the companies who loudly say they're work from the office, but whose entire management chain understands that's untenable after spending 2 years hiring in people telling them they can work remote and so the policy will be "work from the office" but the real policy will be "don't let Elon Musk catch you working from home".
I talked to a lot of companies when interviewing a few months back. All of the always in office or 3 days a week in office firms were not paying a premium over remote roles. This made me ask myself, if I provide so much more value in the office why can't they share some of it with me?
Unless Tesla has been on top of inflation adjustments over the past two years, I'd be looking for another job just on principle.
I think they’d reply that those salaries come from a time when in person work was expected.
It’s the remote companies that are effectively giving you a pay rise. Let’s see how it works out now their competitors are back in-office - the next few years will be a big experiment on the efficacy of remote work (unlike the last, where there was no control group).
Ah yes, the cargo cult of productivity - if i'm in the office, i'm producing value.
I think about this quote from Bezos in 2017 a lot, which is quoted in Mik Kersten's Project to Product:
"As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.
A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right."
Recently I've been reading some docs on productivity, inspired by a comment on HN. There are some solid findings - don't work too many hours, put your team in a single office so they can directly chat to each other as and when needed, avoid external interruptions from outside that office, etc.
It seems that a lot of the findings of improving productivity in-person may also imply that remote work drops productivity. For example, being at home with a bunch of other people in your house might dramatically increase the possibility of external interruption to the team.
A discussion between two people in an office might be lower-friction and also instantly bring in other team mates to help if relevant - whilst that might lower individual productivity, the team as a whole is more productive. And this is not just speculation rather looking at existing studies and applying their conclusions to remote.
Speculation from me: there's also the matter of lost communication through coffee and lunch breaks. Building that mutual understanding between individuals and about the system surely increases productivity.
I think there's a big assumption on HN that individual productivity correlates with team and company productivity, and so if you get more "stuff" done wfh then it must be best. But that clearly isn't true from the experiments we've already done.
A fully remote company has no capital cost when it comes to building rent, taxes, electricity, etc… that all shifts to the worker. How is it that the company gets the glory for a perceived “pay raise”?
That doesn't match my experience. I've found 2 jobs since the start of the pandemic, both fully remote, both paid within 5k of a similar "in office" job.
In a recessionary environment it's a great way to shake off the fat of the organization. I great in the way it'll achieve a stealthy downsize, not in the fact all the best talent will just walk out the door.
The main benefit of a self driving car will be sleepy commute. Obviously he wants people to commute. No need for a fancy tesla when you can be sleepy at home
I like it. He wants his company to work a certain way. His communication is clear and as he states they can work at other companies if they want.
Personally I prefer meeting and collaborating in person. I find the bandwidth is much higher. For some focus work it doesn't matter but there is always an element that requires communication.
You don't change the world without ruffling a few feathers.
Yeah but I want to get paid for my time. Working anything above 40 I a salaried position makes no sense. Cultures that are built on this exploitation of workers and flat out EXPECT an AVERAGE of over 40 hours are exploitive, simple as that.
I'm sure Tesla execs get paid enough to cover the extra hours they do. You are right it's about what's worth the exchange to you. For me I'll work an extra 30% time happily if I'm earning an extra 30% in income. Even if that's not spelt out in my contract.
And I've happily made that trade in the past as well. The point I'm making is it doesn't sound like they have the option to say no to the extra time and pay. It's not a choice at that point, and it stops being a good thing too. If it's like overtime or a bonus where folks that choose (operative word is choose) to do that they can get more pay in return. If they choose not to, not. That's not this. He's literally saying of you want to stay at tesla this is it, you must work the extra hours. That's not good and it's not how you maximize your workforce. It's how you churn through talent and spit it out.
Choosing a different job is how you choose different hours. There are few jobs where you get to pick how many hours you want to work, especially when salaried.
Agreed on the first part, not on the second. There are in fact many. Many, most companies really allow people to work more or less as their life allows. It's actually quite common in the regular community (not as much among hustle culture startup folks like the average HN reader)
"If you do a rank-and-file job at a megacorp and there’s a stack of resumes on your boss’s desk, you show up when you’re scheduled or you get replaced."
I agree that this is a simple reality that does happen all too often, but also want to point out that it's not right, and often against the law. Workers time off, sick time, etc. is protected by law. Tehhnically businesses can't fire people for taking time off. I get that it happens all the time, but it shouldn't.
Time off doesn't really enable anyone to work a different schedule, as mentioned above. If your boss wants 40hrs/week and you want to work 30hrs/week, you’ll burn two weeks of time off in 8 weeks.
I'm referring to long term time off like reduced schedules due to family, personal, or medical hardships. I've worked with dozens of people who worked reduced schedules for years of their careers for many various personal, medical and family reasons. It's actually much more common than you expect.
I have worked with many people who do the same as well. You can do it if you're in a privileged job, like many of us work, or if you were hired under those circumstances. If you have a below-median wage job where you're expected to work 40hrs/week and you have a medical hardship, you'll be looking at being reassigned to a part-time position at best, and if one is not available, you'll be spending your FMLA time looking for a new job.
> as he states they can work at other companies if they want.
That's not what he states though, or it would be ruthless but not controversial. He's stating people working remotely are pretending to work which says more about him and the management structure than his employees.
Basically you can have the opinion that working remotely is less effective and not be a dick about it. He chose the other option.
I also like the "communication is clear" part. People might not like the content that is being communicated but at least it's clear and not infused with corpspeak.
Rather it’s written to professional staff, which includes his non trivial software groups. I see nothing indicating it’s written to senior management, in fact his only scoping reference is about a mid level HR type role and it was fairly obviously written to everyone other than the factory workers who obviously can’t work from home.
> Sounds like you wouldn’t be a good fit.
Yes, I assumed my post implied I wouldn’t want to work at one of his companies. Did you read it differently?
Makes sense that if you are an executive at a car factory, you should show up at the car factory and not just be some faceless void that sends orders from email.
Yet, people are in here acting like this is a violation of the Geneva convention or something.
I LOVE remote working. It allows me to manage scheduling issues at home (like deliveries and sick children), and stops me from the endless distractions of office chatter.
...and the upsides cloud my judgement as to whether it's a net positive from the company's perspective.
While all the good I've seen for myself, it's also been a nightmare for managing the small group of people I have. I had to terminate TWO people because we discovered they were also working a 2nd job, and multiple people have had trouble focusing on work while at home.
Some people did great - others didn't. ...and there's no question that the company culture overall has suffered. I'm not saying I'm definitely for or against it - but I wish people would stop taking absolutist positions on this debate.
I'm with you. I love remote working. (Knocking on wood) I'll do it until I retire.
It's very easy for this to become a heated thing. I too wish discussions on this would trend away from absolutism. There's too much gray in the world for this to be productive.
I find a possible motivator in that is there being a sort of imbalance with preference -- if we assume whoever 'wins' sets the tone for the future.
If those who love the office get their way, the remote lovers (more likely) concede more than the opposite.
The remote people don't need other people to be remote. Just accommodate by using Slack, Git, whatever. The in-office people however do 'need' people to also join them on-site for the benefits of it to truly realize
(As much as I hate words like synergy, it really is sometimes easier to just hash things out in person)
Serious question: Is there a law that says a person cannot be working two jobs? I mean, I get it if the people fired failed to do their job, but if they were fulfilling their duties and weren't working for a competitor, I don't see an issue.
From the email you can quickly work out that he intends this to apply to everyone. He would not ask for exceptions to be routed to him if he meant this just to apply to his direct staff.
Many of the workers have to be there because it is physically impossible to do their jobs if they aren't.
The rest have to support, manage, or otherwise interact with the people who need to physically be there, and the most efficient way to do that is if they are also there.
I imagine the design, AI, software and technical operations etc workforce is fairly large. Likewise their accounting groups etc. I.e., the segments of every other company that are rebelling against coming in. None of these are working with the line workers.
Just like Amazon, most of the employees work in Whole Foods or fulfillment centers. But the professional staff in software engineering etc don’t have to be in the office to do their work. Even if their software impacts the fulfillment center they likely have never set foot in one.
If you're designing a car, are you not ever going to go down to the production line to see how your design worked out?
If there's an issue with your design and you need to rearrange it to accommodate some production limitation, do you think it might be helpful to be able to walk down to the factory floor and look at it first hand?
There's tons of companies where you can do all the work remotely. If that's a high priority, don't work at Tesla. When you need to make physical products, it's helpful to be at the place where the physical product are being made, because they don't just exist entirely in your code editor.
I feel like you didn't read what they said. There's a ton of things in any large corporation that need to be handled that need software or corporate admin work. Inventory management, logistics, people management software, end user servicing management, Tesla.com, general IT work, HR work, etc. I could go on and on.
Even as close to something like working on the UI for a vehicle -- I would assume they have the ability to run that in an emulator, in a desktop test bed, or even as a developer build in their personal car. And it's going to faster for most work to work that way (perhaps other than integration with a new model).
Also, I don't think most people are saying "never" with respect to going into the office. It's Tesla's CEO that's saying "never" to remote work.
Not sure what are you so angry about. All of these jobs were done remotely during pandemic and out of sudden they just can't. This has zero logic to it. And is all about someone being emotional control freak.
The question is not "can these job be done remotely". The question is "can these job be done more efficiently remotely perpetually".
A lot of things were doable during pandemic time because it was global, temporary and necessary. Eg: lots of people got their salaries maintained despite their job not really existing anymore. That was possible (and necessary) because we knew it was temporary. But the conclusion cannot be "As the pandemic showed us a lot of the workforce can be paid even if they don't produce anything, we should stop asking people to work at all".
Similarly, while some level of operations were able to be maintained during the pandemic, the rate of innovation and the global productivity definitely went down, significantly. If you intent to be maintaining the same working conditions, with the same effects in a post COVID world while your competition resumes regular operations, going back to regular speed, you are going to have a hard time.
Lots of things were done sub-optimally during the pandemic due to the circumstances. That doesn't mean we shouldn't go back to doing them a way that works better now that we can.
Would argue quite the opposite. Technology companies, TSLA standing out, have done exceptionally well. In fact having the pandemic as a tailwind instead showing they're able to adapt and capitalize on technology to be even further productive.
profit-wise maybe, but if you look at the massive global production shortages and supply chain issues, it’s pretty clear that the pandemic working situation was not the ideal way to produce things.
That's a pretty simplistic view of an extremely complex issue. For one, factories shutdown. This wasn't caused by people wanting to work remotely, but due to covid outbreaks in the factories and government mandates. Second, the supply issues were already starting pre-covid. It was clear we were heading into an IC supply crunch 3 months before Covid emerged in China.
those shortages and supply chain issues are because people make systems that are near peak efficiency, not peak robustness, and when you engineer for peak efficiency, it always means you're brittle in the face of unpredictable failures.
That things weren't worse is a sign that the world adapted to the new working situation very effectively.
> If you're designing a car, are you not ever going to go down to the production line to see how your design worked out?
Somewhere along the line, goalposts were shifted. At the beginning, the concern was about Elon saying "everyone has to be in the office all the time". Now somehow we're at the point of a false dichotomy between "always on site" and "never on site". For most people, remote work is a healthy minimum. Most of my colleagues are at home 3-4 days a week and in the office 1-2 days a week. That saves them the commute most of the time, but we still get collaborative tasks done when we meet in the office.
I imagine it could be similar for industrial designers: When they are interacting with their CAD programs, there is no need to "go down to the production line to see how their design worked out" right away. That can happen whenever they're at the factory the next time, which may be a few days or a few weeks out.
Cars also involve software, design, marketing materials. None of those things require physical presence any more than those jobs did when they were remote during the pandemic. Many of those roles were successfully performed remotely before and after the pandemic.
If people really want to work for any company non-remote, then they will. That doesn't mean that banning remote work is popular or necessary.
Automotive engineering isn't a three-dudes-in-a-garage startup where "the shopfloor" calls "the design engineer" for "that part" because "there's a production limitation" and he needs to fix his design. It works nothing like that.
Elon from the very beginning wanted engineers to work as close to factory floor as possible. E.g. at SpaceX you can stand up from your cubicle and walk max couple of hundred of meters and have a look at the factory floor.
Exactly the same philosophy applies at Tesla.
Whatever it is that Elon does it works for his companies.
If you don't want the expectation to give 110% of what you can, don't work for Elon companies.
You can argue that factory workers don't have choice what job their are doing, so they need checks and balances.
But people who could work remotely certainly can change employer if they dislike Elon work ethics.
This super contrived example (which I'd bet even still isn't as frequent as you think) doesn't require 40 hours in office, which is also most likely not in the same physical location as an actual factory.
I've worked for a retail company where we made physical kiosks for stores - no one ever went into the stores to debug anything, we just worked on simulators and a couple of example units in head office.
He specifically points out that this requirement is less than what is asked of factory workers. How can it apply to everyone if everyone necessarily includes factory workers? Also if it was intended for everyone why was it only addressed to the "ExecStaff" list?
In a company owned headset, that measures your resting heart rate, blood pressure and eye movement with a dystopian sensor/camera setup to monitor your body language.
I'm not aware of hardware companies where most office workers work in the actual factory location (or often even the same company that produces the items).
If the argument is "well you might need to interact with a line worker at the factory" working from home vs. an office not at the actual factory isn't really any different?
That “probably” is doing about 60 hours a week of work in that sentence.
The ford motor company bargain was 8 hours of work, 8 hours of life, 8 hours of rest and a middle class lifestyle. The tesla motor company bargain is…? Seems like mediocre to bad pay, 12 hours of work, 6 hours of life, 6 hours of sleep? Yeah, i’d be unionizing if I was a tesla worker.
Who says the pay is mediocre/bad? Seems like "Manufacturing Associate" and "Machine Operator" is at $18 / hr. Which would average out to $21 / hr if they're getting time and a half overtime for 20 hours a week. Not bad for an entry level factory job. They get stock too.
Sure, they should unionize if they want. Seems like most are pretty happy with the job though.
If you have to sacrifice 60 hours a week of your life to get good pay, it’s not good pay.
And $63k/year is mediocre at best. It’s below the national median, and I’d be willing to bet if you adjust for cost of living near most of the locations where tesla workers work, it’s worse than “near average”
> At jobs site Glassdoor, Tesla's overall company rating fell to 3.2 out of 5.0 stars based on reviews written in the first quarter from a high of 3.6 in 2017
A high of 3.6 isn’t exactly a enthusiastic endorsement. Toyota has a 4.0, Ford has a 4.1.
By definition, 50% of jobs are going to be below the median wage. That's what the median means. Why would an entry level job that doesn't require a college degree pay more than 50% of all other jobs?
According to this[1] the median is $19.33/hr, so Tesla is not far off. It's above with overtime.
An "entry level" job that "doesn't require a college degree" doesn't need to pay more than 50% of all other jobs. But a job that demands you give up 60 hours of your life every week needs to pay much better than 50% of all jobs.
If you want to work 60 hours a week at your FAANG or startup job, that's your choice (though that choice does have an impact in terms of the expectations within the industry) - but you're probably being paid 2x-5x so you're well rewarded for your time.
Any evidence that overtime at 60 hours a week, every single week forever is mandatory for all Tesla factory workers?
That seems unusual compared to how most hourly jobs are run. Lots of people are happy to take overtime when it's available. Never seen anything that says 60hrs per week is mandatory all the time.
“Starting hourly pay is essentially poverty wage in the Bay Area and you only get overtime pay after 10 hours, not 8 hours like you would think.”
“Occasionally is fine, but 12 - 14 hours a day five days a week is not safe especially considering we work with electricity”
Too many quotes to that effect to list them all. Universally they say: overtime starts at 10 hours not eight, there is a lot of it (i didn’t see any comment citing overtime under 60 hours), and it’s mandatory.
> So straight from the horses mouth the expectation is somewhere over 40.
There are 19 other numbers between 40 and 60. How do you reach the conclusion that since it's more than 40, it must necessarily be exactly 60 all the time for every employee?
> “Insane work hours for everyone, no overtime pay”
> you only get overtime pay after 10 hours, not 8 hours like you would think.
It sounds like these are salaried positions and they are not entitled to any overtime pay. If they were talking about hourly positions they would be getting time-and-half from 41 hours on, because that's the law. The fact that they're getting any overtime pay at all in a salaried position is more than most companies do and is beyond what is required by law.
From the Department of Labor website:
> Nonexempt workers must be paid overtime pay at a rate of not less than one and one-half times their regular rates of pay after 40 hours of work in a workweek.
For household maybe, I think median individual median is much lower. I know many college educated individuals who say they’d kill for $60k. Most of them are probably in the $35k-$45k range working office positions that require education for some reason.
I'm not comparing this to what exists in the job marketplace, I'm comparing it to what the cost of living is. Buying a house, having two kids, sending them to collage, while being resilient enough to handle a long period of unemployment or health crisis. Those are things that should be possible for everyone and anyone if you're working 40/week - or at least, that was the Ford motor company bargain. Any job that offers you less than that isn't a "good job" - and any company that mints billionaires while offering less than that to their employees is deeply exploitative.
And remember - $63k a year was just a number that the comment I was replying to floated. $19/hour is $38k / year - you only get above that by sacrificing over 40 hours of your life every week to the company, and Tesla doesn't pay overtime until +10 hours.
In the USA: Fremont, California - Lathrop, California - Grand Rapids, Michigan - Storey County, Nevada - Buffalo, New York - Brooklyn Park, Minnesota - Elgin, Illinois - Austin, Texas
BMW (my closest car factory) is allowing a certain degree of home office for executives and production controlling employees. Of course they have teams on site to react fast, but the next layer of decisions is anyway a few hundred meters away on the end of an internet connection.
BMW is a more mature organization with relatively slow or even unchanging processes.
Tesla on the other hand is rapidly scaling up and constantly changing its assembly line and was doing work out of actual tents until recently (probably now as well).
What works for BMW is unlikely to work for Tesla
.
Even if Tesla was stable their manufacturing processes and tech DNA are very different from BMW or other major car makers, more in-house vertical integration and electric driver train vs traditional ecosystem and conventional combustion engine.
As far as i understand, BWM is way more agile then Tesla is - they are planning (and executing) to be able to build any car and configuration on any production line - ICE / e-drive / hybrid. This has not been visible in Tesla's planning for the Berlin factory.
I think he means more like separate models. Things like being able to easily swap a line from 3 to Y and vice versa.
AFAIK, Tesla does do that at plants that produce both. There have been no announcements of other models for Berlin, but it'd be shocking if it stays only producing Y. There will b similar flexibility when that changes, possibly for new models.
I believe this is directing his staff to bring all the employees back. The exceptional individual part is him saying if they are a really good ic I’ll consider it.
> and not just be some faceless void that sends orders from email.
No, even that, logically, does not make sense from an efficiency standpoint (assuming productivity is equal). Besides, if i were a factory worker i'd rather not have the boss over my shoulder
Let me answer this with an analogy. And I'm really not wanting to explore the analogy directly (so let's not get off topic) but it may help you to understand how this ends.
Why shouldn't there be a binding UN resolution that enforces public transport, and bans the production and use of cars to save us from climate change?
Or here's another even more contraversial one (again, let's not get distracted) why don't we have a UN resolution banning the personal ownership of firearms?
I'm hoping you can see from these why UN binding resolutions would be pointless - they would simply result in the ultimate dissolution of the UN. (uxit?)
Well for starters, the moment (nearly) all other nations dictate the laws of your country, you no longer have a country – and certainly not a democratic one. Your elections become irrelevant because people in distant lands (including those with tyrannical governments) can simply overrule the will of your people.
Codifying the long-term destruction of your own nation into law for the sake of a single issue is a bad idea.
HN threads on remote work and no-code reveal the change from its “founder” focus ~10 years ago to “worker” today.
Nobody I know with a “founder” mindset even remotely entertains the possibility that remote-work can be as efficient as in-person, or instinctively reacts to no-code developments as an attack on their self-worth(as programmers).
there's now multiple unicorns who have proven purely remote companies can work just fine. I'd say it's the opposite, people stuck in the past will cling to office work while actively hurting their business. Meanwhile actual innovators will take advantage by poaching quality talent from these companies
Google and Tesla can force office work by paying ridiculous amounts of money, good luck with your shitty startup getting quality people to join while not offering remote. Engineers on HN for years have talked about hating open offices, remote work is a gift if you actually value productivity
I don't think it's so black and white. I prefer remote work but I know lots of people who prefer to work from the office. For various reasons - their home is too noisy, they like the food at office, or they just like the company of colleagues. The last one can be a productivity killer though - at a large tech company I used to work for, most people would just exchange pleasantries until lunch and start working only after that.
i think I am with Elon here ... Tesla makes physical product so it's best if all the decision makers and not only the grunts are as close to the product as possible.
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I would have a hard time taking "pretend to work somewhere else" seriously from my boss if he was a Twitter meme lord who seems to spend most of his cycles flinging poo in the shittersphere.
Of course he wants people in the office, not just at Tesla but all companies. He's not exactly going to be happy about more remote-friendly companies while owning a car company. Or more pithily: "Man who owns car company encourages more commuting"
Also tunnel boring company which makes rather poorly utilized tunnels so people can have semi-public transit without all of those horrible other people...
> "They should pretend to work somewhere else"
Yep, remote working is perfect excuse ! :) I hear there is new Zoom function to simulate trousers or something :>
As for harsh form of that sometimes boss needs to be harsh. There are limits and buffers to almost anything in that reality.
And as for remote working security: it's very, very hard ! What tools you can use ? Zoom, MS Teams/Skype, Signal, vpn ? Nothing is even close or even far from working in company place.
Team/company building and cooperation and gains from that ?
Remote working could be allowed for some less important and well defined work. But IMO it should be less paid, because it's less important, etc. Of course almost everything vary.
And there is no doubt that remote work allows to pretend better to do actual work. Don't agree ? Make some scientific study that will, somehow, contradict that common knowledge and sense. Remote work allows and makes more peoples to pretend more.
Until you are an artists :) But also check story of that ex-importand man from Apple...
*For executive staff - headline should be updated.
This is normal and understandable - if you work in a position of leadership in any company where a large part of the workforce need to be onsite (eg: a factory or another manufacturing type environment), then it's a huge morale thing if your bosses are simply never around.
If you've never worked in this type of company, either as a line-worker or in management, you won't understand this, as your frame of reference is our wonderfully comfortable tech-only remote-always orgs. This simply isn't possible for most other businesses where being onsite with your human reports is highly important since they themselves cannot work remote.
No, it’s from Elon to his ExecStaff distribution list informing them of a policy change. They’re to execute and he will personally review exceptions. This means expectations for Tesla are now you work from an office or Elon must personally approve the exception.
it depends - if your direct reports must be on site to work, it does make them feel salty that their boss isn't there with them. But you could make it work, if the relationship is one of mutual respect and trust. If the boss is there to micromanage or to enforce work quotas, then it won't work.
