Is Elon Musk’s war on remote work moral?

Remote work isn’t just killing productivity, according to Elon Musk: it’s morally wrong.

In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Musk accused at-home workers of hypocrisy for expecting those in service and manufacturing industries to go into work. The “laptop class” needs to get off its “moral high horse” with its “work-from-home bullshit,” Musk said. 

“You’re going to work from home and you’re going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? You’re going to make the people who make your food that gets delivered that they can’t work from home? The people that fix your house — they can’t work from home? But, you can? Does that seem morally right?” Musk asked. “That’s messed up.” 

Musk himself has been at the forefront of the return to work campaign. In 2022, he imposed a return to work policy at Tesla. And in his first company-wide email to Twitter after acquiring the company, Musk banned remote work and eliminated “days of rest,” a previous policy that allowed employees a scheduled day off each month.

“If you want to work at Tesla, you want to work at SpaceX, you want to work at Twitter — you got to come into the office every day,” he said in the interview.

But Stanford economics professor Nicholas Bloom, who studies remote work, said that Musk’s comments reveal his own desperation.

“There is nothing moral about being in the office or being at home. He is trying to make a play that the workers coming in every day have a harder situation as they don’t get to avoid commuting. That is true, but they are his employees,” Bloom told The Spectator. “If that is so hard he can pay them more. Or he could provide them with chauffeured Teslas to make their journeys to work easier.”

Although Musk allows employees to condense their work week into four days and encourages them to take vacations, they are still expected to spend forty hours a week in the office. 

“There are some exceptions, but I think that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Marie Antoinette quote, ‘Let them eat cake,’″ Musk said. 

Musk accused others in Silicon Valley of living in “la-la land” while working from home, but made it clear that he is not. In the interview, Musk claimed that he works seven days a week.  

“How many days a year do I not put in some meaningful amount of work, it’s probably about two or three,” Musk said. The interview came three days after footage went viral of Musk bopping along to dance band Rüfüs Du Sol at a festival in Cabo San Lucas.