The amount of class warfare here is hilarious. Will you really parrot elite coined phrases like “laptop class?” What even is the laptop class? It’s a meaningless term created so it’s easier to dehumanize a group of people that have a massive salary range. There are WFH making $50k. They are not all vest and resters.
Do we really need to make the conversation be about the upper middle class being “lazy” and completely ignoring the fact that these RTO orders come from billionaires?
> Will you really parrot elite coined phrases like “laptop class?”
Sometimes, I think about the phrase "human resource" and how it's a nice linguistic nod toward "natural resources", which obviously are meant to be exploited. It makes it easier when you think about laying off thousands of people, or making thousands commute needlessly simply to boost someone's ego.
Writers gonna artist. I wouldn't take it as anything but a colorful metaphor.
The strata who should be rightfully derided are the chauffeured-and-business-jet-class who have an embarrassingly-low tax rate while concentrating and keeping vast amounts of profits. Nearly 60% of the post-pandemic inflation was due to the profit price spiral. The "wage spiral" is a delusion and layoffs aren't actually necessary. They're business theater belying boosting corporate profits to keep up with the proverbial Jones' in other stocks.
The laptop class’s interests are closely intertwined with those of the billionaires. When billionaires offshored jobs to China, there was an army of laptop class people who helped them do it. And they collectively benefit very much from the economic changes that have fueled billionaires’ fortunes. The top 10% have an annual income of over $6 trillion. The total income of all US billionaires is less than half a trillion dollars. Since 1970, the growth in median income of the upper middle class has vastly outstripped the growth in median income of the rest of the country.
If there’s anything standing in the way of more economically redistributive policies in this country, it’s the laptop class. They would take a huge and material hit in their standard of living in a more equal society such as Canada or Germany. Everyone from programmers to lawyers to HR administrators make a third to half as much as their counterparts in those countries.
I still think out of all the...unique... things Elon has said... work from home is morally wrong has to take the cake. I try to spend time looking at things as radically as I can. I think it's helpful to accept folks views as widely as possible, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong.
I was on a bicycle ride listening to this interview when he said it and I literally pulled my bike over and sat for a half hour or so thinking about what I think about the idea, I'm still not sure what I think. (Intellectual dishonesty or a valid view point?)
My two cents on this is that he is saying "working from home is morally wrong" - for his companies... but he left out the for his companies part.
He owns a car company and a space ship company - both of which have assembly lines with tons of workers. A majority of his employees will need to be working in a factory or with physical equipment/prototypes. Therefore they must be at the office or at the plant.
In that environment - allowing a small percentage of people to have the flexibility to work from home all the time, actually can seem amoral as that will create two classes of workers - the in-office class and the laptop WFH class - within the same company.
Friction could be generated if for instance the laptop class is making decisions/mistakes from the comfort of their PJs which negatively impacts the production line class. Its much easier to just make that 8% laptop class of the company RTO and experience the impact of their decisions.
Similar issues would be apparent at Amazon (distribution center workers versus AWS staff) and possibly Apple (i.e. HW Apple engineers have to be in office, but iCloud workers can WFH).
I think it'd be hard/impossible that a small cloud first company or small remote only startup like GitLabs would be amoral for being WFH.
Twitter could probably be WFH, but in order to make statement that would not possibly be construed as hypocritical he unfortunately can't make such a distinction.
Pure speculation, but my guess is that he’s invested in the commercial real estate market and hoping for a turnaround. I don’t think it’s some profound or insane ideology he has, I think he’s just trying to prop up CRE like he does with crypto.
He’s famous for buying distressed commercial properties and for gaslighting, it just makes sense and the whole moral argument was a great way to get people talking about it.
And another thing -- the "morally wrong" is remarkably selective. Musk is clearly saying that it's "morally wrong" for white collar workers to be remote while insisting that blue collar workers be fully present.
In a CNBC interview this week, speaking about service and manufacturing workers, Musk said “it's messed up to assume that, yes, they have to go to work, but you don't. It's not just a productivity thing, I think it's morally wrong,” suggesting “the laptop class is living in la-la land.”
What if the headline was "CEO phones in 20 hours/week from Hawaii while threatening to fire workers who clock < 60 hours/week"?
Interesting, haven’t seen this exchange till now. He’s basically talking about what is increasingly becoming identified as the “laptop class” who can do the whole virtual life, live in lockdowns indefinitely, carry on with delivery stuff, etc etc. He’s building a set of claims about the morality of that set of arrangements for our subpopulation who are members of the laptop class. I’ll have to think about that one, that’s a novel claim to view those affordances critically in terms of special treatment and how that all intersects in the morality angle.
Eh, the more mindshare these people think they have the more crazy they become. Pre-2018 Elon was more focused on the companies, although he still made mistakes (Taking TSLA private tweet, borderline self-dealing with the SolarCity acquisition). The cave rescue fiasco and how he was sleeping on the floor of the factory during the 2018 Model 3 Ramp[0] (which also supposedly had Tesla a month away from bankruptcy[0]) must have triggered something, perhaps he'd already done the hard work and wanted to celebrate by increasing his fame/clout and by eventually purchasing his favorite social media platform.
Take it to it's absurd conclusion... Is it morally wrong for you to have a job sitting at a desk while someone else digs ditches all day?
It's obviously not. The fundamental differentiator is what is the nature of the job? What are the needs to accomplish the work being performed? If it's typing on a computer and talking to people, it can be done from home. It's not morally wrong to do it that way.
As someone who generally likes what Musk has to say, this one threw me for a loop. He's smarter than that and I don't think for one second he truly believes that. I think it's a public position he is taking on the subject, moralizing to dismiss criticism, he has other motivations. I don't think they're "his ego" but I don't think he genuinely believes it's morally wrong to sit down while typing.
> 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 told CNBC.
> "It's like, really, 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 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?" the billionaire asked. "That's messed up."
Of all the people in the position to claim people are morally obligated to commute to work, a rich billionaire focused on minimizing carbon emissions isn't one.
Elon's argument makes no sense on multiple levels:
1. Every job has different requirements, and you can't arbitrarily apply the same standards to every one. It's no different from saying that "Cooks have to de-grease the grill, so desk workers have to de-grease their desks at the end of the day as well." You'd think that someone so ruthlessly focused on productivity and efficiency would acknowledge this.
2. He speaks as if the current hierarchical capitalist structure with all its particular corporate idiosyncrasies is a fundamental aspect of reality rather than a very specific and arbitrary social construct. We should be fighting to move away from it rather than submit to it further.
3. He does not apply these standards to himself, flying around in his corporate jet and rarely "in the office" himself. So apparently he does believe some roles are not bound by the same rules and requirements, which is inconsistent.
Realistically he likely understands all this, but just can't say the truth directly because it's not so palatable.
I think a lot of the speculation about his motivations and just how long of a game he is playing give him too much credit. The past 12 months have been a complete backslide in his credibility. I chalk it up to the fact that he has literally become an attention seeking soundbite machine.
I have a farm and work remotely. I'm awake 18 hrs a day, spend 6 with my family & 12 working -- 8 for tech job, 4 for farm. I do this 6 days a week. I'm insanely productive by most metrics (many many launched products, side gigs, work 1.5 jobs, etc). I schedule my day down to 15 min increments (though obviously, adjustments are always made).
Remote work affords me that opportunity and I work as hard as anyone. It's fun to wear the blue and white collar at the same time to be honest. I have survivalist friends, guys who work on cars, tech folks where wee discuss AI, etc.
I think Musk is wrong here, but do agree people need to roll up their sleeves and do legit work. You should always be contributing to your community, family, etc.
His argument also boils down to the idea that since other jobs such as manufacturing require employees to be on site, that all jobs should have the same requirement. Smh...
Also the idea of a ruthless capitalistic multibillionaire invoking morality as a defense is just kafkaesque.
How about people with dangerous jobs? police officers, firefighters, miners and ironworkers, pilots, soldiers, drivers...
Would that make having a desktop job morally wrong?
I get Elon's point that manufacturing often requires some people to report to site, particularly in a company like Tesla.
But generalizing and saying that all positions require to report to office because of moral and ethical reasons is ridiculous.
How about incentives for commuting to work? Not flashy offices with free snacks and meditation rooms, how about money?
Companies usually reallocate to remote suburban areas to pay less taxes, and they expect people to spent over 40 hours per month, a full week of additional work, for free, to commute to the office.
It's pretty textbook behaviour for narcissistic manipulators.
Harm the victim in some way, when victim complains about it, turn it around so as to frame it as the victim doing the wrong thing all along, and the victim should feel like a bad person.
I’m so proud of these workers uniting and fighting back on RTO mandates. It has been proven that knowledge workers can work productively and efficiently without being required to be in the office a set number of days.
If my company's office were close, I would return to it without much of a fight. But my roundtrip commute is over three hours. That changes my entire day/life. That's a lot of time and energy spent and the benefit isn't clear to me, at least not the way the office is currently structured or laid out. Our office is an open office plan and engineers are near sales and others whose job is to chat on the phone all day, making it nearly impossible to get any deep work done. The reality is that on the rare occasion that I do go to the office, no real work gets done. Constant interruptions, I maybe get 30 minutes of uninterrupted, heads down work done. There is so much socializing and roaming around and eating that goes on at the office. When I'm home, I'm just working all day. Being in the office is kind of cushy, actually. But a) I'd rather do my best work and b) I'm willing to work harder at home if it means I can avoid spending a large chunk of my day commuting. I think companies really need to make the office a place you _want_ to come to. Give me a space that's conducive to work. Make the office feel more inviting than home. Simply saying "you all need to be in the office" just isn't going to cut it. I know I've conveyed a few unrelated ideas here, but that's my ramble. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk :P
Also screw the office, coworkers are so distracting. I don't know how anyone gets anything done. Any amount of chit-chat throws me off and gives me a headache.
Why should anyone quit their job? The company is the one who changed the terms of employment. Mass walkouts are a form of collective action, and are a good step towards unionization. Amazon can fire all the participants if they want (but something tells me they are not going to).
During the pandemic I had an initial meeting with a hiring manager at Amazon that didn’t care that I was multiple time zones away from her office. Even though the official policy was actually return to office when pandemic conditions change. Luckily I didn’t want to go through their interview process- I’m guessing I would have gotten axed in the layoffs for being newer on the team and not being able to come to the office.
"You need to be in the office because you will collaborate better" is corporate code for "we're unwilling to build up our internal documentation to make it possible to do your jobs without serendipitous meetings with colleagues which is actually an admission of our own organisational failures"
Change my view.
The remote working genie is out of the bottle. Trying to push it back in is pointless.
> There’s been good energy on campus and in urban cores like Seattle where we have a large presence. We’ve heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices.
This is not about in office productivity and they are not exactly hiding who and what the real goal of RTO is.
So they are fine with worst in class vesting schedule, pressure cooker, stack ranking, PIP good engineers, disconnected middle managers culture. As long as they can do it from home
I hope these return to work policies get outdated. Remote work is the single greatest thing about high speed communication in my opinion. A lot of tech advancement related to computers has proven to be underwhelming. We have fancy 3D games and social media and search engines. None of these things are better than a climbing rope, mountain bike, or good library in my experience.
My neighbor at AWS did WfH pre-pandemic, went to "100% in-office" for about 3 weeks, and I think is at about 50/50% now. There's no real reason to go into the office without coworkers on the same team.
Offices = commute time and expense + noisy distractions - declining perks.
Long answer is effectively things will go back to how they were pre-pandemic. Except you now have to average 3 days a week in the office instead of the 5 that it was before. Some people can get exceptions, but it's basically going back to 2019 rules where the default is office.
The funny part for me is that if they had of announced these new rules in 2019, they would have been heralded as forward thinking employee first visionaries... but because it is a step back from the temporary COVID rules, it's all pitchforks and walkouts.
Here in South Africa, with electricity outages every few hours, driving through traffic with disabled traffic lights is a nightmare. So glad my job is fully remote.
[+] [-] klipklop|2 years ago|reply
Do we really need to make the conversation be about the upper middle class being “lazy” and completely ignoring the fact that these RTO orders come from billionaires?
[+] [-] hn_version_0023|2 years ago|reply
Sometimes, I think about the phrase "human resource" and how it's a nice linguistic nod toward "natural resources", which obviously are meant to be exploited. It makes it easier when you think about laying off thousands of people, or making thousands commute needlessly simply to boost someone's ego.
[+] [-] sacnoradhq|2 years ago|reply
The strata who should be rightfully derided are the chauffeured-and-business-jet-class who have an embarrassingly-low tax rate while concentrating and keeping vast amounts of profits. Nearly 60% of the post-pandemic inflation was due to the profit price spiral. The "wage spiral" is a delusion and layoffs aren't actually necessary. They're business theater belying boosting corporate profits to keep up with the proverbial Jones' in other stocks.
[+] [-] rayiner|2 years ago|reply
If there’s anything standing in the way of more economically redistributive policies in this country, it’s the laptop class. They would take a huge and material hit in their standard of living in a more equal society such as Canada or Germany. Everyone from programmers to lawyers to HR administrators make a third to half as much as their counterparts in those countries.
[+] [-] geodel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OHFt8QyiU
I was on a bicycle ride listening to this interview when he said it and I literally pulled my bike over and sat for a half hour or so thinking about what I think about the idea, I'm still not sure what I think. (Intellectual dishonesty or a valid view point?)
At least he got me thinking I suppose, heh.
[+] [-] somethoughts|2 years ago|reply
He owns a car company and a space ship company - both of which have assembly lines with tons of workers. A majority of his employees will need to be working in a factory or with physical equipment/prototypes. Therefore they must be at the office or at the plant.
In that environment - allowing a small percentage of people to have the flexibility to work from home all the time, actually can seem amoral as that will create two classes of workers - the in-office class and the laptop WFH class - within the same company.
Friction could be generated if for instance the laptop class is making decisions/mistakes from the comfort of their PJs which negatively impacts the production line class. Its much easier to just make that 8% laptop class of the company RTO and experience the impact of their decisions.
Similar issues would be apparent at Amazon (distribution center workers versus AWS staff) and possibly Apple (i.e. HW Apple engineers have to be in office, but iCloud workers can WFH).
I think it'd be hard/impossible that a small cloud first company or small remote only startup like GitLabs would be amoral for being WFH.
Twitter could probably be WFH, but in order to make statement that would not possibly be construed as hypocritical he unfortunately can't make such a distinction.
[+] [-] LapsangGuzzler|2 years ago|reply
He’s famous for buying distressed commercial properties and for gaslighting, it just makes sense and the whole moral argument was a great way to get people talking about it.
[+] [-] rossjudson|2 years ago|reply
That's true for a decent number of people...but definitely not all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/elon-musk-remote-...
And another thing -- the "morally wrong" is remarkably selective. Musk is clearly saying that it's "morally wrong" for white collar workers to be remote while insisting that blue collar workers be fully present.
In a CNBC interview this week, speaking about service and manufacturing workers, Musk said “it's messed up to assume that, yes, they have to go to work, but you don't. It's not just a productivity thing, I think it's morally wrong,” suggesting “the laptop class is living in la-la land.”
What if the headline was "CEO phones in 20 hours/week from Hawaii while threatening to fire workers who clock < 60 hours/week"?
[+] [-] stuaxo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jxramos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|2 years ago|reply
0: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/elon-musk-says-he-is-sleepin...
1: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/musk-tesla-was-about-a-month...
[+] [-] friend_and_foe|2 years ago|reply
It's obviously not. The fundamental differentiator is what is the nature of the job? What are the needs to accomplish the work being performed? If it's typing on a computer and talking to people, it can be done from home. It's not morally wrong to do it that way.
As someone who generally likes what Musk has to say, this one threw me for a loop. He's smarter than that and I don't think for one second he truly believes that. I think it's a public position he is taking on the subject, moralizing to dismiss criticism, he has other motivations. I don't think they're "his ego" but I don't think he genuinely believes it's morally wrong to sit down while typing.
[+] [-] nonethewiser|2 years ago|reply
> "It's like, really, 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 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?" the billionaire asked. "That's messed up."
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-working-from...
[+] [-] dataflow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colordrops|2 years ago|reply
1. Every job has different requirements, and you can't arbitrarily apply the same standards to every one. It's no different from saying that "Cooks have to de-grease the grill, so desk workers have to de-grease their desks at the end of the day as well." You'd think that someone so ruthlessly focused on productivity and efficiency would acknowledge this.
2. He speaks as if the current hierarchical capitalist structure with all its particular corporate idiosyncrasies is a fundamental aspect of reality rather than a very specific and arbitrary social construct. We should be fighting to move away from it rather than submit to it further.
3. He does not apply these standards to himself, flying around in his corporate jet and rarely "in the office" himself. So apparently he does believe some roles are not bound by the same rules and requirements, which is inconsistent.
Realistically he likely understands all this, but just can't say the truth directly because it's not so palatable.
[+] [-] sottol|2 years ago|reply
Is it moral to fly around the US and the world while the guy that's hiring the chef that cooks your food stays grounded?
[+] [-] langsoul-com|2 years ago|reply
He, unlike others, can afford to be extremely close to the office. There's all benefits and no detriments for his statements.
[+] [-] notyourwork|2 years ago|reply
Wealth doesn't automatically give credence to valuable perspective. Further, I tend to just disregard Elon for what he is.
[+] [-] kbos87|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lettergram|2 years ago|reply
Remote work affords me that opportunity and I work as hard as anyone. It's fun to wear the blue and white collar at the same time to be honest. I have survivalist friends, guys who work on cars, tech folks where wee discuss AI, etc.
I think Musk is wrong here, but do agree people need to roll up their sleeves and do legit work. You should always be contributing to your community, family, etc.
[+] [-] throwaway675309|2 years ago|reply
Also the idea of a ruthless capitalistic multibillionaire invoking morality as a defense is just kafkaesque.
[+] [-] Mizoguchi|2 years ago|reply
Would that make having a desktop job morally wrong?
I get Elon's point that manufacturing often requires some people to report to site, particularly in a company like Tesla.
But generalizing and saying that all positions require to report to office because of moral and ethical reasons is ridiculous.
How about incentives for commuting to work? Not flashy offices with free snacks and meditation rooms, how about money?
Companies usually reallocate to remote suburban areas to pay less taxes, and they expect people to spent over 40 hours per month, a full week of additional work, for free, to commute to the office.
That's morally wrong from all angles.
[+] [-] mouzogu|2 years ago|reply
Everyone is different, and flexibility should be a recognition of that.
If anything the arbitrary denial of flexibility is much more of a moral argument.
[+] [-] lIIllIIllIIllII|2 years ago|reply
Harm the victim in some way, when victim complains about it, turn it around so as to frame it as the victim doing the wrong thing all along, and the victim should feel like a bad person.
[+] [-] cebert|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwowsersx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnt12|2 years ago|reply
Its fine once in a while but I don't wanna get back to WFO again.
[+] [-] captainkrtek|2 years ago|reply
That’ll show ‘em.
[+] [-] victor9000|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hmmokidk|2 years ago|reply
There was no traffic. Even in LA!
How does one not yearn for that. I don't get it.
Also screw the office, coworkers are so distracting. I don't know how anyone gets anything done. Any amount of chit-chat throws me off and gives me a headache.
[+] [-] antoniuschan99|2 years ago|reply
• Remote work was the thing that kept the economy going during the pandemic and now phrased as morally wrong
• Flying Private is morally wrong in that it creates so much pollution from a small group of people
[+] [-] throwawaaarrgh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheeze|2 years ago|reply
Most folks don't have the privilege of just up and qutting their jobs. Especially in tech right now.
Sure, FAANG salaries are high, but many people have mortgages, kids, etc.
[+] [-] i2cmaster|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anothernewdude|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WatchDog|2 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038992
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36037225
[+] [-] gregwebs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l33tc0de|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxehmookau|2 years ago|reply
Change my view.
The remote working genie is out of the bottle. Trying to push it back in is pointless.
[+] [-] devsda|2 years ago|reply
This is not about in office productivity and they are not exactly hiding who and what the real goal of RTO is.
[+] [-] shmatt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andsoitis|2 years ago|reply
... though reading the article, it sounds like it is really motivated by a desire to see certain climate change action taken by Amazon.
[+] [-] starside|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sacnoradhq|2 years ago|reply
Offices = commute time and expense + noisy distractions - declining perks.
Butt-in-seat mentality (BISM) is antiquated.
[+] [-] chrisbrandow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnfx|2 years ago|reply
Long answer is effectively things will go back to how they were pre-pandemic. Except you now have to average 3 days a week in the office instead of the 5 that it was before. Some people can get exceptions, but it's basically going back to 2019 rules where the default is office.
The funny part for me is that if they had of announced these new rules in 2019, they would have been heralded as forward thinking employee first visionaries... but because it is a step back from the temporary COVID rules, it's all pitchforks and walkouts.
[+] [-] liampulles|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dajtxx|2 years ago|reply