June 5, 2022
Twitter’s very flexible remote-work policy could be in peril from Elon Musk, the tech giant’s potential buyer, based on Musk’s pessimistic view on remote work.
Musk sent an email to Tesla executive staff on Tuesday mandating all employees to work onsite for a minimum of 40 hours a week.
“If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned,” Musk warned his employees. He also took a shot at companies that offer flexible remote work options to their personnel.
“When was the last time they shipped a great new product?, ” he asked.
In May 2020, two months after allowing employees to work from home as the COVID pandemic worsened, Twitter’s then CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the tech giant would permit employees to work remotely even after the pandemic has ended.
Despite Twitter reopening its office on March 15 this year, CEO Parag Agrawal assured employees that Dorsey’s remote work policy remained unchanged.
Twitter employees are very concerned about how Musk might change the company’s culture—including changing its remote-work policy. He has already announced his plan to introduce sweeping changes at the social media company, tweeting in May that “work ethic expectations would be extreme” for any Twitter employee.
In a May filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the tech giant cautioned that the looming acquisition could negatively impact its ability “to attract and retain key personnel and recruit prospective employees.”
Since Musk made his unsolicited $44 billion bid to take Twitter private, the social media firm has started a hiring freeze, laid off a number of employees, and moved staff away from more experimental projects.
The tech giant did not immediately comment on whether a Musk acquisition would end its remote-work policy.
For more information, read the original story in Fortune.com
