Remote Work Is A Moral Issue For Elon Musk

Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur and Twitter fratbro extraordinaire is at it again. Just last week, during an interview with CNBC, in addition to his usual spiel about productivity in the office, he opined the following, while putting on the most snicker-inducing look of put-upon indignation ever.

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? That's messed up.

People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit. They're asking everyone else to not work from home while they do.

The laptop class are living in la-la land.

Make no mistake, there are parts I agree with. Remote work is not, and should not be, an entitlement. I would even be OK with his argument that people are more productive in the office, because there are some cases where that's true. But the rest of the argument? There's no way to be nice about it: framing it as a moral issue is jaw-droppingly stupid, devoid of any coherent logic whatsoever.

I feel like the flaws are evident enough that I shouldn't have to address them, but here we go anyway.

Dismantling the "moral" argument

Before we begin, I should just state that I do work remotely, with days spent in the office when it becomes absolutely necessary. However, it's more of a perk than any sort of entitlement. And while I may have the occasional day where I just can't seem to get much work done, I also have them in the office. Not working in Silicon Valley probably excludes me from the "laptop class" that Elon Musk is taking such pains to dump on, though.

I'm not sure what "make everyone else work in the factory" means. I have neither the authority nor wherewithal to make anyone do anything. If they have to work in the office, that is the nature of their job, and me working from home or office or planet Mars does nothing to change that. Thus, that part already is perplexing in its sheer absurdity.

Working from outer space.

As for "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? That's messed up.", let's try to justify that statement.

How about we say, "you're going to buy Twitter but you're gonna make the rest of us pay eight dollars to get a blue check on our accounts? We can't buy Twitter, but you can? Does that seem morally right? That's messed up."?

Did that make sense? No, it didn't make a lick of sense. Consequently, neither does his argument.

Lastly, morality is subjective. Trying to introduce a subjective component into a business decision (I assume that the issue of remote work is a business decision for people like Elon Musk, but you can never tell these days) is doomed to failure. Just because you feel that something is immoral doesn't make it immoral for the rest of the world. Guess who needs to get off their moral high horse?

He said what he said, but why?

Normally, if it had been anyone else who uttered this, the first thing I would have wondered was, how did this moron manage to tie his shoelaces in the morning, much less make it to a CNBC interview? But this is Elon Musk, yo. He is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, both huge enterprises. He's one of the world's richest men, and while wealth is no indication of IQ, let's just say that I highly doubt that the Elon Musk is an idiot of that magnitude.

In other words, there's no way he's that big a jackass. So let's get that out of the way.

The easiest (and probably laziest) explanation is that he was high when he made these comments. Gotta lay off the weed, bro.

A more charitable interpretation is that Elon Musk does truly have something against remote work and he let his emotions get the better of his logic. He wouldn't be the first, millionaire genius status notwithstanding.

Look at me!

The last, and unfortunately most believable explanation is that it doesn't matter what Elon Musk believes, he's going to say whatever gets him the most eyeballs. Years of watching Elon Musk make an absolute monkey of himself on Social Media has driven me to the conclusion that the man's a bit of an attention junkie.

I think he's playing to a certain gallery. It's extremely unlikely that people who work from home are going to listen to that largely performative rant and tearfully repent of their immoral ways, thus I can only speculate that he is courting the attention of Boomer Bosses very traditional-minded employers.

Finally

There are no absolutes where remote work is concerned. It's not inherently good or bad. It is merely one possible component in an employer-employee relationship. Tech workers work with software, therefore remote work is a distinct possibility. Not so much for others.

And no, I don't think even Elon Musk truly believes that it is a moral issue.

But whatever, guys. I'm done. An entire blogpost devoted to this, is already more attention from me than the man deserves. Points for effort, though. He certainly had me going.

Signing off from home,
T___T