Twitter CEO Elon Musk chose an odd time to email employees last week about the social media company’s remote-working policy.
“Office is not optional,” the billionaire entrepreneur wrote in an email to the staff that was sent at 2:30 am on Wednesday, according to a tweet from Zoë Schiffer, the managing editor at Platformer.
Per Schiffer’s tweet, Musk wrote in his memo that the company’s headquarters in San Francisco “was half empty yesterday.”
“NEW: Apple is tracking employee attendance (via badge records) and will give employees escalating warnings if they don’t come in 3x per week,” Schiffer said about a report on Twitter. “ALSO: Elon Musk sent Twitter employees an email at 2:30am saying the “office is not optional” and noting SF was half empty yesterday.”
In the subject of the email to all Twitter employees, it stated “Remote work is no longer acceptable.” It required employees to be at San Francisco headquarters a minimum of 40 hours per week.
Last November, Musk banned remote work at Twitter in his first email to the staff after buying the company.
He explained that the social media platform required “intense work” in the office in order to turn around its fortunes and that employees must be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week.
Even at Tesla Inc, Musk asked staff to return to the office or else they would be fired. It is the same case at Twitter.
In a tweet last year, Musk said that working from home during the pandemic had “tricked” people into thinking they didn’t need to work hard.
“Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen,” Musk said on Twitter. “Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!”
In November, Twitter laid off thousands of workers in departments across the company, a move Musk attempted to justify. This past January, the company laid off employees who were responsible for global content moderation.
Reports previously noted that the social media platform had shed about 80% of its employees since Musk’s takeover and that the headcount hovered at around 1,300 employees earlier this year. Musk later dispelled those figures and said that Twitter had about 2,300 active employees.
The company posted a net loss of $270 million in the second quarter, which ended on June 30, 2022, compared to a profit of $66 million in the same period the prior year.
It was reported that 75% of the workers had rarely worked from home or not all in 2022. As more people were vaccinated against COVID-19, more employees had returned to the office.
Produced in association with Benzinga
