CNBC: “Elon Musk: Work from home ‘morally wrong’ when some have to show up”

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. It’s not just a productivity thing, Musk said. I think it’s morally wrong.

Musk referred to tech workers as the laptop classes living in la-la-land, telling Faber it was hypocritical to work from home while expecting service workers to continue to show up in person.

Rohan Goswami

How detached from reality can you be to call remote work ‘morally wrong’ while holding who-even-knows how many job titles simultaneously and bouncing between them in your private jet!? As the owner of an automobile company, Musk has a commercial interest for people to commute more as it drives up demand for cars, including his own. If there’s a Marie Antoinette in this scenario, that’s most certainly Elon Musk himself.

Marie Antoinette tweeting and driving a Tesla in front of an angry mob in Paris (generated with Adobe Firefly)

looks like you’re not allowed to use guillotine or execution in Firefly prompts

There’s clearly an argument to be made that working remotely induces imbalances and additional unfairness on the job market, as not all jobs can be performed remotely. But that’s not a reason to deny remote across the board; companies can implement alternative work models for service workers, such as four-day weeks to compensate for the lack of remote. Reduced traffic during rush hours provides indirect benefits to non-remote workers as well, as it should reduce their commute times. Working from home creates more opportunities for local jobs outside of the big, concentrated office areas, which would help people find employment closer to their residence and therefore cut down commuting even further.