Elon Musk is known for making claims intended to foster infinite debates on Twitter and on almost every social platform. The last one is about smart working, and surely it’s the one that inflamed the passion of the tech worker out there willing to continue working from home. Here’s the infamous tweet’s answer from Elon:
First of all, let me clarify once and for all: I’m not against smart working at all. Even if i barely go smart for a great number of reasons, I can understand (and actually promote) smart working as a way for having a better work-life balance, and most of the times to also improve productivity. So please stop blaming around that everyone trying to understand exactly what Elon meant is some kind of Jurassic freak: I simply love to analyse and understand exactly the context, even more if this kind of statement came from someone like Musk.
Let’s write down some points on exactly what is the message I read in Elon’s lines:
- Elon never confirm the email, but he answered to the tweet as you can see above, so let’s pretend the email is real. Various other emails leaked out but this is the only one that actually have some sort of side confirmation by him.
- I strongly question the way Elon write to his staff, beginning with he tone and ending with the 40 hours a week minimum requirement. It’s not something I’d promote nor do, but it’s not something uncommon with that kind of entrepreneurs. Just think about the stories about how hard was to work for Steve Jobs. I don’t know who is right here, I really can’t relate and say to someone like Elon he’s wrong, even if I feel he is.
- Elon’s email is addressed to ExecStaff, and this is something most of the people didn’t realise, but it’s pretty important to me. Executives are usually managers, and in companies like Tesla and SpaceX managers are the glue between service line and production line. It’s very very complicated to do proper management in remote in companies like those. Damn, it’s pretty hard even in service only companies like mine. A manager should catch the feelings of the teams, settle differences, improve company feeling. When half of your company is “forced” to work in the factory it’s incredibly easy that workers begin to feel that the company is not there. There’s a high risk of detachment from company values, where factory workers start thinking that they are second-class employees. I really don’t see something wrong in this.
- Assuming also the other leaked emails are real, Elon asked to everyone in the company to came back to office. His reasons are pretty clear: he believes (rightly or wrongly it’s hard to say right now) that the added value of having employees side by side outweighs the possibility of a great resignation. Also, Tesla is probably one of the companies that has more candidates that it can handle, so it’s a statement that can be done only because you are that kind of company. It obviously cannot work for most of the companies around. Again, I don’t know if Elon is right or wrong (except for the 40 hours limit, as above mentioned), we’ll probably understand it in a matter of months, but he’s not something he’s doing because he’s “jurassic” or “old school”: he has his reasons and he strongly believe in them, it’s not something wrong or right per se, it’s simply his choice.
- I’ve read a lot of incredibly worried developers fearing that these statement would move them back to the office because of some manager being influenced from Elon’s tweet. Well, if you are in a company where manager are influenced by someone else’s Tweet, probably you should move away in any case, because working from home or not is really the least of your worries. Working smart or not is really a matter of organisation and possibilities. I don’t know if Tesla’s Android developer would be forced to came back in offices in a short time, but I won’t be surprised if they are required to hit the office too: developing a mobile application integrating so deeply with on board appliance, and probably with the factory line, usually requires a strong testing phase that needs to be done in the factory itself. You can mock almost everything but you cannot pretend not to test it on the real appliances. If you are working on something like this, it’s highly possible that you’re required to hit the office for testing on live devices. If you’re not, you shouldn’t fear you’re forced to came back just because of a Tweet.
I’d have a lot more to say about smart working in general, and how smart working is done in Italy, but this is not the correct post to do so. But I have a question about this topic that connect on my last point: why every post about (or against) smart working is so damn important for you all? I mean, If you are so strong in your beliefs (and I suppose you are also supported by facts) that smart working is better , no matter how you look at it, and you trust your company is capable of making the right choices, you shouldn’t be afraid that some other company somewhere take the wrong path. Eventually, it will learn from its errors (if they prove to be such) and fix the target. This will never affect you and your life. If you don’t trust your company, as I said before, probably you should think less about smart working and more about quitting.
In any case, please don’t assume that what is great for you is great for everyone else.
Photo by Austin Ramsey on Unsplash
Be First to Comment