The Irony of Elon Musk Ordering Tesla Execs To Work 40 hours Per Week At their Desk

A recent memo by Elon Musk has made its way around the internet. Is it entirely true? Who knows. Bloomberg and other media outlets have reported that Mr. Musk fired off a missive saying, the following, “Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week. To be super clear. Moreover, the office must be where your actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo office. If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”

Related Story: Elon Musk Announces Plan to Fire 10% Of Tesla Office Workers

What we find funny is that Elon Musk, an employee of Tesla, Inc. will find it very hard to comply with his instructions to his executive team. Not because Elon Musk doesn’t work hard. To the contrary, he is one of America’s hardest workers by all indications. It’s just that he can’t possibly be putting in 40 hours per week at his Tesla desk each week.

This is because Elon Musk is not just a high-ranking executive at Tesla. He is also the top executive and chief bottle washer at a long list of other endeavors. Rather than having us list out his Google Calendar for you, we simply went to Tesla, Inc.’s Corporate Governance page and copied the information below that gives you a bit of a background on just some of the things Mr. Musk is presently engaged in.

Elon is Technoking of Tesla and has served as our Chief Executive Officer since October 2008 and as a member of the Board since April 2004. Elon has also served as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer and Chairman of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, an advanced rocket and spacecraft manufacturing and services company (“SpaceX ”), since May 2002, and served as Chairman of the Board of SolarCity Corporation, a solar installation company, from July 2006 until its acquisition by us in November 2016. Elon is also a founder of The Boring Company, an infrastructure company, and of Neuralink Corp., a company focused on developing brain-machine interfaces.

While running the globe’s foremost aerospace company, the world’s most notable tunnel construction enterprise, a solar energy and storage company, and whatever a brain-machine interface company is, Mr. Musk also puts in a few shifts at Tesla, Inc., the car builder. But that’s not all. Mr. Musk has also been burning the midnight oil trying to become a media mogul by acquiring Twitter with plans to take the company public. And he is also working on stuff like flame throwers, robots, AI tech, and about a dozen other things in his spare time.

Mr. Musk may well spend 40 hours or much more in any given week at his desk in the Tesla corporate offices, or one of Tesla’s many factories, or retail outlets, or visiting a supplier, or traveling to meet with Panasonic or other battery suppliers. He seems to do the who dog and pony show solo. There is no press contact at Tesla. That name is also Mr. Elon Musk.

By our rough accounting, Mr. Musk can’t possibly be spending 40 hours per week at his Tesla desk each and every work week. And if he is there, our bet is he is sneaking in a call about a spaceship to Mars, a tunnel to Timbuktu, a new brain thingy, and a lot of calls related to his spending a few dozen billion on a social media company he wants to set straight.

Mr. Musk's threat to executives that are not putting in the face time seems pretty serious. We will let you know if any new Tesla firing stories come to pass.

Image of Tesla employees at their desks by John Goreham.

John Goreham is a long-time New England Motor Press Association member and recovering engineer. John's interest in EVs goes back to 1990, when he designed the thermal control system for an EV battery as part of an academic team. After earning his mechanical engineering degree, John completed a marketing program at Northeastern University and worked with automotive component manufacturers, in the semiconductor industry, and in biotech. In addition to Torque News, John's work has appeared in print in dozens of American news outlets and he provides reviews to many vehicle shopping sites. You can follow John on TikTok @ToknCars, on Twitter, and view his credentials at Linkedin

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