11 ms·

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

by neom 3y ago

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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OHFt8QyiU 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.

langsoul-com 3y ago
Makes sense given his position. He has a vested interest in his workers coming in. He, unlike others, can afford to be extremely close to the office. There's all benefits and no detriments for his statements.
throwaway675309 3y ago
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.
- vkou 3y ago
  I like his argument, and I would like to extend it to something like 'Since some people get through life on a salary of $7.75/hr (Or less), we should take away Elon's billions of dollars.' It'd only be fair - he can, after all, do well without all the comforts and power that his wealth affords him.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    But that would be unfair because it harms Elon. What happens to us doesn't matter, remember? We're all just NPCs.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    I think it would also be a reasonable accommodation to just cut the SWE’s salaries down to 10% below the lowest end salary of the manufacturing workers who have to be in person to do their job and let the SWEs do their job remote. But I expect that may not be a popular opinion here on HN, though.
voisin 3y ago
It’s really no different than other forms of wealth inequality. Some people get to work in palaces and others have to work in the salt mines, and most of us are somewhere in the middle, mostly (not totally) due to our status at birth. It isn’t moral or immoral in and of itself - it is a direct consequence of our economic and social system. I don’t think there is any value inherent to it at all.
LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
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.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  He's hedging his bets by not paying rent for Twitter's offices.
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    Maybe someone can help me understand this. If I were to refuse to pay my rent. My landlord would post an eviction notice and if I refused to comply, I would likely be arrested or forcibly removed. Why can’t the landlord “evict” twitter? Does the process look significantly different for commercial real estate? Does twitter provide value to the landlord in some form other than rent? Maybe they’re afraid of bad PR?
    - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
      It would probably cost a lot more to evict Twitter and find a new commercial tenant than it does to compel them to pay rent. The reason this wouldn’t apply to you is that residential real estate vacancies are usually easy to fill, especially nowadays.
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        > The reason this wouldn’t apply to you That remains to be established. People often have no idea what renter protections are like. If he's in California, he might find that he can't be evicted without the landlord going through a multi-year process.
colordrops 3y ago
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.
- favorited 3y ago
  It makes a lot of sense when you consider how much of his wealth is invested in a car company. Even in a hybrid work environment, the vast majority of the miles I put on my car are commuting to and from the office. And if a household has 2 adults who need to commute, they're more likely to want 2 fuel-efficient vehicles.
lettergram 3y ago
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.
- mwint 3y ago
  What does your planning process look like? I’d like to get more structure in my workday, maybe not that much… but how do you deal with the Stuff that inevitably Comes Up?
  - lettergram 3y ago
    If you can, you push it to the next day and schedule accordingly. If you can, obviously plans changed lol. 99% of what we have going on can be pushed to tomorrow
- NegativeK 3y ago
  I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that, morally, we should all be working like you do?
- moneywoes 3y ago
  How do you do this 15 minute scheduling, google calendar?
  - lettergram 3y ago
    Most calendars you can break down to w.e. interval you want, I share a calendar with my family and we put our stuff up. Then for each bucket, I break it down individually as the day comes up. Takes like 10 min at night to put it all in, so maybe an hour a week of planning. That may seem like a lot, but worth the effort IMO. As an example, every day my basic schedule: 6-8am with family, 8am-12pm [farm] work, 12pm-4pm [collaborative] work, 4-7pm chores & family, 7-9pm [emails / focus work] work, 9-10pm family, 10-12pm [focus] work. Then the day before, I will break out individual events. There are times, for instance, I have to take a kid to the doctor so I'll block that out, put in all my meetings and adjust the 4-7pm family time to say 5-7pm (take an hr from work & family time). It's all about being disciplined and trying to ensure you are organized and maximize time for me. Gotta keep focused
drewcoo 3y ago
Harrison Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron full text: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtc3JlZG1hbmVuZ2xpc2h8Z3g6MjdlZjYzZmNmMjFjMjgxZA https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsd... That used to be standard reading in my high school. Elon is full of deepity. And high school reading.
stuaxo 3y ago
He owns a car company and wants people to use cars.
- marricks 3y ago
  That is such an incredibly obvious take I somehow never thought of. Thanks! Not to mention, his main consumer would be exactly that white collar worker who'd rather not drive to the office. It's a sort of sick inversion of Henry Ford's > "I want my employees to be able to buy my car" to... > "I want all employees to be forced to own one"
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    And for traffic to be so bad that they buy autopilot
zaptheimpaler 3y ago
Taking the argument seriously is exactly what he wants - debating the position makes it a valid position. There is really no argument there, just self-interest. If its immoral to have more or different privileges than someone else, thats literally communism. He should give up all his wealth in that case.
- whitemary 3y ago
  >If its immoral to have more or different privileges than someone else, thats literally communism This is not quite the Marxist definition of communism, but it is a lot closer than I would expect to find on HN. I am surprised.
jgalt212 3y ago
[flagged]
- Freedom2 3y ago
  Working in a separate place than your home is a recent concept - humanity has worked from home far longer than in offices or workplaces. Consider farming, or craftspeople working their trade, as well as nomadic cultures. In what way is WFH 'unnatural'?
  - jgalt212 3y ago
    because IRL you're avoiding contact with the wider world.
    - Freedom2 3y ago
      Define contact. I talk to my coworkers regularly, I am able to visit and support my local community businesses where I live (rather than a large, faceless city), I am able to socialize with my local community as well. I would avoid extrapolating your own WFH experience to others.
      - jgalt212 3y ago
        able to, but not forced to.
- taftster 3y ago
  I'm not even following this, "Unnatural" ... Work from Home - Throughout the ages of man, I would tend to believe that more work has been done at home than at any notion of modern workplace. Farming, milling, iron working, etc. have all historically been performed by small tradesmen working out of their homes. "Go to Joe's house if you want your horses shoed." Home School - Again, I would argue that far more children throughout history are being school at home than in a western notion of traditional school. I would wager that even today, more kids are currently "at home" schooling across the globe than in a modern school. Interest Rates - Maybe this one is a reasonable notion of "unnatural". But again, throughout all time, bartering has dominated merchant exchanges and simple currency exchanges (through precious metals). There has probably always been a notion of interest rates in all this, but what you're describing is more about the federal reserve's interest rates and fractional banking, which is quite a modern invention. In all, I don't think anything about work from home, home schooling or making transactions with neighbors is unnatural. If anything, it's the most natural way that society has worked and existed throughout history.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
I generally like feeling spouting off in the reflection that comes from it. I wouldn't want to put words, but I can see some individuals claiming a human right to work from home as an example of moral hypocrisy. That's sad, of course I don't work from home as a mutual agreement between consenting adults has any moral questions
rossjudson 3y ago
Farhad Manjoo wrote: "Office Workers Don’t Hate the Office. They Hate the Commute." That's true for a decent number of people...but definitely not all. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/elon-musk-remote-work.html 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"?
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  The commute and the open office layout. If getting to the office doesn’t take a big bite out of my day and salary and I’m given an environment that makes me more productive than I am at home, I’m happy to go to the office. That’s unusual, though. Usually getting to/from work takes at minimum of an hour (30m both ways), either due to traffic or from being pushed out way from where the office is located in order to be able to afford the rent/mortgage. You’re also usually stuck with an open office where maintaining focus for any period of time is impossible, as opposed to cubicles or private offices.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  If Elon finds it morally distasteful that blue collar workers' commutes are unpaid, he could simply pay them for their time, or have them work fewer hours for the same pay and benefits.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I think it's mostly true. Yes, people have gotten used to the flexibility and maybe their very particular setups at home. But, if people could walk 10 minutes to their office and people they knew would be there I'm pretty sure you'd see a lot less pushback--especially for coming in a few days a week.
- 3y ago
grensley 3y ago
I think it's that he doesn't feel enough power over remote workers. Also Elon Musk accusing anyone of being in "La La Land" is hilarious.
kryogen1c 3y ago
> but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. Are you? Have you tried seriously considering his position instead of watching 1 second sound bites OBVIOUSLY taken out of context? > 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 Oh? This musk interview was the first time you learned about unfairness in the world? I'm glad he "got you thinking". Heh. It is not some extreme, radical position that shutting down your company by staging a strike because you _deserve_ to work from the comfort of your own home is morally tenuous. You can disagree, but acting like musk is a raving lunatic for sympathizing with minimum wage workers who bus to work is nothing short of supreme stupidity. Honestly the anti musk sentiment around here is so braindead and reactionary its beginning to feel like an astroturfed psyop.
- mediasavvy 3y ago
  > acting like musk is a raving lunatic for sympathizing with minimum wage workers who bus to work is nothing short of supreme stupidity It’s called concern trolling
- blodstone 3y ago
  [dead]
- campbel 3y ago
  > It is not some extreme, radical position that shutting down your company by staging a strike because you _deserve_ to work from the comfort of your own home is morally tenuous. Why? This is just a negotiation. Striking is one bargaining chip that labor has that they can play. Striking isn't morally tenuous. > You can disagree, but acting like musk is a raving lunatic for sympathizing with minimum wage workers who bus to work is nothing short of supreme stupidity. How is Musk sympathizing with minimum wage workers? Did the minimum wage workers ask for the "laptop class" to comeback to the office? Do they even care? What about people in other lines of work where remote isn't an option? Do they care? It seems more likely that Musk is just using this false comparison as a way to pit labor classes against each other. > Honestly the anti musk sentiment around here is so braindead and reactionary its beginning to feel like an astroturfed psyop. Come on...
jpeg_hero 3y ago
I read it as a direct opposition to the moralizing here oh HN about how it’s morally wrong to not let people work from home. (the “noise” argument, the “I’m individually more productive” arguments and all that)
w_for_wumbo 3y ago
If I had to try and think of an angle, I guess it could be around the protection of intellectual data. In the office, it's a controlled environment. Whereas working from home is essentially taking corporate assets into an uncontrolled environment.
kbos87 3y ago
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.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
Hard to judge from the truncated context provided there. Was he just saying anybody who wants to work from home is morally wrong? It actually sounded like the conversation was about people who thought they had a right to work from home. If they expected others not to, I can see that as being somewhat hypocritical.
judge2020 3y ago
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. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/elon-musk-says-he-is-sleeping-on-tesla-factory-floor-to-save-time.html 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-from-bankruptcy-during-model-3-ramp.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/musk-tesla-was-about-a-month...
sottol 3y ago
It does sound good on the surface. Equality for all. Right? Only selectively. But nice touch invoking immorality. 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?
nonethewiser 3y ago
> 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." https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-working-from-home-morally-wrong-service-workers-have-to-show-up.amp https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-working-from...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jxramos 3y ago
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.
dataflow 3y ago
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.
- 8note 3y ago
  He's certainly not focused on minimizing carbon emissions - otherwise he wouldn't be making a luxury car company He exploited tax incentives intended to reduce carbon emissions, sure, but that's not the same thing as focussing on reducing carbon emissions
GiorgioG 3y ago
I deactivated my twitter account over it. It’s just complete nonsense.
hanniabu 3y ago
> I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. By being a selfish individual and wanting to work remotely you are devaluing a wealthy investor's commercial real estate all because you didn't want to waste a tenth of your day pointlessly commuting to the office to do something that could have been done at home
WesternWind 3y ago
Hasn't work from home been shown to improve worker efficiency and happiness too?
- missedthecue 3y ago
  I think it's been shown to increase isolation. The number of young people going days without seeing another human being should startle and upset.
  - 8note 3y ago
    Young people all have 6 roommates with somebody turning the living room into an extra bedroom because rents are too high. The isolation of being at home is countered by how many people are at home
  - Kbelicius 3y ago
    > The number of young people going days without seeing another human being should startle and upset. That number has little to do with WHF. WHF might have increased it but it certainly isn't the root cause or even a major driver of the rise.
  - rirze 3y ago
    It's hard to decouple this phenomenon from the aftereffects of COVID restrictions. We'll be able to figure the isolation from WFH in the next few years.
- thybag 3y ago
  It does seem like most studies show WFH workers being happier/healthier/more productive. Wouldn't necessarily take that as conclusive, but i've certainly not found much evidence beyond random anecdotes saying the opposite. e.g.https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/04/3-new-studies-end-debate-over-effectiveness-of-hybrid-and-remote-work/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/04/3-new-...
- Timon3 3y ago
  There is no way Elon doesn't know about this. I think for him, poor people should feel unhappy. He feels it immoral for poor people to be happy and content.
notyourwork 3y ago
> At least he got me thinking I suppose, heh. Wealth doesn't automatically give credence to valuable perspective. Further, I tend to just disregard Elon for what he is.
Thorentis 3y ago
> when he said it and I literally pulled my bike over and sat for a half hour or so thinking Meta comment, but seriously? A comment from Elon made you pause your commute for 30 minutes? I can't imagine ever being this affected by a podcast.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Your response is interesting in its own right. Half the fun of this life is exploring and questioning new ideas and podcasts are a great way to do that. I don't think I pulled over, I've definitely spent some time sitting and thinking once I get to my destination
- neom 3y ago
  Yeah seriously! I was riding beside a river (for fun) listening to the interview and it came to that section, he said it and I laughed out loud... thought what a weird perspective. I'd never considered that before and there was a bench over looking the river a ways down so I pulled over, sat on the bench and debated it with myself for a while... let myself agree in one direction... see how I feel, let myself agree in the other direction, see how I feel. Just think it back and forth with myself for a while. As the other reply to this comment said, it's a great deal of fun to do this and I enjoy it a lot!
somethoughts 3y ago
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.
- hamburglar 3y ago
  > 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 This is kind of absurd, though, since they are already two classes of workers. Information workers and factory workers are different. But also, the deciding factor on whether you can work from home should be: can you do your job from home? Look at nurses. They have to be in a hospital, walking into rooms and tending to patients, right? Not phone nurses and poison control center nurses. They work from home nowadays.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    > Information workers and factory workers are different. Should they be, in terms of work-life balance?
lIIllIIllIIllII 3y ago
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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
george-in-sd 3y ago
Upper class is fighting for a perk that the working class will never have. Maybe not morally wrong but working class is treated pretty badly in a place like SF.
davidw 3y ago
I think all the casting doubt about some recent mass shooter being a nazi has a viable claim in terms of cake taking. I used to think he was eccentric but did some cool stuff too. I now have a very negative opinion of him as a person.
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
Musk presenting wfh as a moral argument frustrates me, and comparing office workers with manual workers strikes me a false dichotomy. 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.
xwowsersx 3y ago
That was a real head scratcher for me too. I really think it was some kind of a virtue signal. He framed it in a way that evokes a kind of righteous indignation from people...like calling out the privilege of people who work from home when there are nurses who have no choice but to be at their workplace. I too tried to see the argument, but I just don't get it. I _can_ work from home and some people can't...therefore I ought to travel to some arbitrary place...for what exactly? As a show of solidarity with people who don't have a choice? I just don't get it...
friend_and_foe 3y ago
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.
Mizoguchi 3y ago
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. That's morally wrong from all angles.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pragmatic 3y ago
He owns a car company. He needs people to need cars. Commuting in many places requires a car. Cui bono?

by neom 3y ago

langsoul-com 3y ago

Makes sense given his position. He has a vested interest in his workers coming in. He, unlike others, can afford to be extremely close to the office. There's all benefits and no detriments for his statements.

throwaway675309 3y ago

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.

vkou 3y ago
I like his argument, and I would like to extend it to something like 'Since some people get through life on a salary of $7.75/hr (Or less), we should take away Elon's billions of dollars.' It'd only be fair - he can, after all, do well without all the comforts and power that his wealth affords him.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  But that would be unfair because it harms Elon. What happens to us doesn't matter, remember? We're all just NPCs.
- kcplate 3y ago
  I think it would also be a reasonable accommodation to just cut the SWE’s salaries down to 10% below the lowest end salary of the manufacturing workers who have to be in person to do their job and let the SWEs do their job remote. But I expect that may not be a popular opinion here on HN, though.

voisin 3y ago

It’s really no different than other forms of wealth inequality. Some people get to work in palaces and others have to work in the salt mines, and most of us are somewhere in the middle, mostly (not totally) due to our status at birth. It isn’t moral or immoral in and of itself - it is a direct consequence of our economic and social system. I don’t think there is any value inherent to it at all.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago

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.

908B64B197 3y ago
He's hedging his bets by not paying rent for Twitter's offices.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  Maybe someone can help me understand this. If I were to refuse to pay my rent. My landlord would post an eviction notice and if I refused to comply, I would likely be arrested or forcibly removed. Why can’t the landlord “evict” twitter? Does the process look significantly different for commercial real estate? Does twitter provide value to the landlord in some form other than rent? Maybe they’re afraid of bad PR?
  - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
    It would probably cost a lot more to evict Twitter and find a new commercial tenant than it does to compel them to pay rent. The reason this wouldn’t apply to you is that residential real estate vacancies are usually easy to fill, especially nowadays.
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      > The reason this wouldn’t apply to you That remains to be established. People often have no idea what renter protections are like. If he's in California, he might find that he can't be evicted without the landlord going through a multi-year process.

colordrops 3y ago

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.

favorited 3y ago
It makes a lot of sense when you consider how much of his wealth is invested in a car company. Even in a hybrid work environment, the vast majority of the miles I put on my car are commuting to and from the office. And if a household has 2 adults who need to commute, they're more likely to want 2 fuel-efficient vehicles.

lettergram 3y ago

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.

mwint 3y ago
What does your planning process look like? I’d like to get more structure in my workday, maybe not that much… but how do you deal with the Stuff that inevitably Comes Up?
- lettergram 3y ago
  If you can, you push it to the next day and schedule accordingly. If you can, obviously plans changed lol. 99% of what we have going on can be pushed to tomorrow
NegativeK 3y ago
I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that, morally, we should all be working like you do?
moneywoes 3y ago
How do you do this 15 minute scheduling, google calendar?
- lettergram 3y ago
  Most calendars you can break down to w.e. interval you want, I share a calendar with my family and we put our stuff up. Then for each bucket, I break it down individually as the day comes up. Takes like 10 min at night to put it all in, so maybe an hour a week of planning. That may seem like a lot, but worth the effort IMO. As an example, every day my basic schedule: 6-8am with family, 8am-12pm [farm] work, 12pm-4pm [collaborative] work, 4-7pm chores & family, 7-9pm [emails / focus work] work, 9-10pm family, 10-12pm [focus] work. Then the day before, I will break out individual events. There are times, for instance, I have to take a kid to the doctor so I'll block that out, put in all my meetings and adjust the 4-7pm family time to say 5-7pm (take an hr from work & family time). It's all about being disciplined and trying to ensure you are organized and maximize time for me. Gotta keep focused

drewcoo 3y ago

Harrison Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron full text: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtc3JlZG1hbmVuZ2xpc2h8Z3g6MjdlZjYzZmNmMjFjMjgxZA https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsd... That used to be standard reading in my high school. Elon is full of deepity. And high school reading.

stuaxo 3y ago

He owns a car company and wants people to use cars.

marricks 3y ago
That is such an incredibly obvious take I somehow never thought of. Thanks! Not to mention, his main consumer would be exactly that white collar worker who'd rather not drive to the office. It's a sort of sick inversion of Henry Ford's > "I want my employees to be able to buy my car" to... > "I want all employees to be forced to own one"
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  And for traffic to be so bad that they buy autopilot

zaptheimpaler 3y ago

Taking the argument seriously is exactly what he wants - debating the position makes it a valid position. There is really no argument there, just self-interest. If its immoral to have more or different privileges than someone else, thats literally communism. He should give up all his wealth in that case.

whitemary 3y ago
>If its immoral to have more or different privileges than someone else, thats literally communism This is not quite the Marxist definition of communism, but it is a lot closer than I would expect to find on HN. I am surprised.

jgalt212 3y ago

[flagged]

Freedom2 3y ago
Working in a separate place than your home is a recent concept - humanity has worked from home far longer than in offices or workplaces. Consider farming, or craftspeople working their trade, as well as nomadic cultures. In what way is WFH 'unnatural'?
- jgalt212 3y ago
  because IRL you're avoiding contact with the wider world.
  - Freedom2 3y ago
    Define contact. I talk to my coworkers regularly, I am able to visit and support my local community businesses where I live (rather than a large, faceless city), I am able to socialize with my local community as well. I would avoid extrapolating your own WFH experience to others.
    - jgalt212 3y ago
      able to, but not forced to.
taftster 3y ago
I'm not even following this, "Unnatural" ... Work from Home - Throughout the ages of man, I would tend to believe that more work has been done at home than at any notion of modern workplace. Farming, milling, iron working, etc. have all historically been performed by small tradesmen working out of their homes. "Go to Joe's house if you want your horses shoed." Home School - Again, I would argue that far more children throughout history are being school at home than in a western notion of traditional school. I would wager that even today, more kids are currently "at home" schooling across the globe than in a modern school. Interest Rates - Maybe this one is a reasonable notion of "unnatural". But again, throughout all time, bartering has dominated merchant exchanges and simple currency exchanges (through precious metals). There has probably always been a notion of interest rates in all this, but what you're describing is more about the federal reserve's interest rates and fractional banking, which is quite a modern invention. In all, I don't think anything about work from home, home schooling or making transactions with neighbors is unnatural. If anything, it's the most natural way that society has worked and existed throughout history.

s1artibartfast 3y ago

I generally like feeling spouting off in the reflection that comes from it. I wouldn't want to put words, but I can see some individuals claiming a human right to work from home as an example of moral hypocrisy. That's sad, of course I don't work from home as a mutual agreement between consenting adults has any moral questions

rossjudson 3y ago

Farhad Manjoo wrote: "Office Workers Don’t Hate the Office. They Hate the Commute." That's true for a decent number of people...but definitely not all. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/elon-musk-remote-work.html 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"?

kitsunesoba 3y ago
The commute and the open office layout. If getting to the office doesn’t take a big bite out of my day and salary and I’m given an environment that makes me more productive than I am at home, I’m happy to go to the office. That’s unusual, though. Usually getting to/from work takes at minimum of an hour (30m both ways), either due to traffic or from being pushed out way from where the office is located in order to be able to afford the rent/mortgage. You’re also usually stuck with an open office where maintaining focus for any period of time is impossible, as opposed to cubicles or private offices.
plagiarist 3y ago
If Elon finds it morally distasteful that blue collar workers' commutes are unpaid, he could simply pay them for their time, or have them work fewer hours for the same pay and benefits.
ghaff 3y ago
I think it's mostly true. Yes, people have gotten used to the flexibility and maybe their very particular setups at home. But, if people could walk 10 minutes to their office and people they knew would be there I'm pretty sure you'd see a lot less pushback--especially for coming in a few days a week.
3y ago

grensley 3y ago

I think it's that he doesn't feel enough power over remote workers. Also Elon Musk accusing anyone of being in "La La Land" is hilarious.

kryogen1c 3y ago

> but I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. Are you? Have you tried seriously considering his position instead of watching 1 second sound bites OBVIOUSLY taken out of context? > 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 Oh? This musk interview was the first time you learned about unfairness in the world? I'm glad he "got you thinking". Heh. It is not some extreme, radical position that shutting down your company by staging a strike because you _deserve_ to work from the comfort of your own home is morally tenuous. You can disagree, but acting like musk is a raving lunatic for sympathizing with minimum wage workers who bus to work is nothing short of supreme stupidity. Honestly the anti musk sentiment around here is so braindead and reactionary its beginning to feel like an astroturfed psyop.

mediasavvy 3y ago
> acting like musk is a raving lunatic for sympathizing with minimum wage workers who bus to work is nothing short of supreme stupidity It’s called concern trolling
blodstone 3y ago
[dead]
campbel 3y ago
> It is not some extreme, radical position that shutting down your company by staging a strike because you _deserve_ to work from the comfort of your own home is morally tenuous. Why? This is just a negotiation. Striking is one bargaining chip that labor has that they can play. Striking isn't morally tenuous. > You can disagree, but acting like musk is a raving lunatic for sympathizing with minimum wage workers who bus to work is nothing short of supreme stupidity. How is Musk sympathizing with minimum wage workers? Did the minimum wage workers ask for the "laptop class" to comeback to the office? Do they even care? What about people in other lines of work where remote isn't an option? Do they care? It seems more likely that Musk is just using this false comparison as a way to pit labor classes against each other. > Honestly the anti musk sentiment around here is so braindead and reactionary its beginning to feel like an astroturfed psyop. Come on...

jpeg_hero 3y ago

I read it as a direct opposition to the moralizing here oh HN about how it’s morally wrong to not let people work from home. (the “noise” argument, the “I’m individually more productive” arguments and all that)

w_for_wumbo 3y ago

If I had to try and think of an angle, I guess it could be around the protection of intellectual data. In the office, it's a controlled environment. Whereas working from home is essentially taking corporate assets into an uncontrolled environment.

kbos87 3y ago

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.

throwawaylinux 3y ago

Hard to judge from the truncated context provided there. Was he just saying anybody who wants to work from home is morally wrong? It actually sounded like the conversation was about people who thought they had a right to work from home. If they expected others not to, I can see that as being somewhat hypocritical.

judge2020 3y ago

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. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/elon-musk-says-he-is-sleeping-on-tesla-factory-floor-to-save-time.html 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-from-bankruptcy-during-model-3-ramp.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/musk-tesla-was-about-a-month...

sottol 3y ago

It does sound good on the surface. Equality for all. Right? Only selectively. But nice touch invoking immorality. 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?

nonethewiser 3y ago

> 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." https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-working-from-home-morally-wrong-service-workers-have-to-show-up.amp https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-working-from...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jxramos 3y ago

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.

dataflow 3y ago

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.

8note 3y ago
He's certainly not focused on minimizing carbon emissions - otherwise he wouldn't be making a luxury car company He exploited tax incentives intended to reduce carbon emissions, sure, but that's not the same thing as focussing on reducing carbon emissions

GiorgioG 3y ago

I deactivated my twitter account over it. It’s just complete nonsense.

hanniabu 3y ago

> I'm still trying to wrap my head around work from home being morally wrong. By being a selfish individual and wanting to work remotely you are devaluing a wealthy investor's commercial real estate all because you didn't want to waste a tenth of your day pointlessly commuting to the office to do something that could have been done at home

WesternWind 3y ago

Hasn't work from home been shown to improve worker efficiency and happiness too?

missedthecue 3y ago
I think it's been shown to increase isolation. The number of young people going days without seeing another human being should startle and upset.
- 8note 3y ago
  Young people all have 6 roommates with somebody turning the living room into an extra bedroom because rents are too high. The isolation of being at home is countered by how many people are at home
- Kbelicius 3y ago
  > The number of young people going days without seeing another human being should startle and upset. That number has little to do with WHF. WHF might have increased it but it certainly isn't the root cause or even a major driver of the rise.
- rirze 3y ago
  It's hard to decouple this phenomenon from the aftereffects of COVID restrictions. We'll be able to figure the isolation from WFH in the next few years.
thybag 3y ago
It does seem like most studies show WFH workers being happier/healthier/more productive. Wouldn't necessarily take that as conclusive, but i've certainly not found much evidence beyond random anecdotes saying the opposite. e.g.https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/04/3-new-studies-end-debate-over-effectiveness-of-hybrid-and-remote-work/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/04/3-new-...
Timon3 3y ago
There is no way Elon doesn't know about this. I think for him, poor people should feel unhappy. He feels it immoral for poor people to be happy and content.

notyourwork 3y ago

> At least he got me thinking I suppose, heh. Wealth doesn't automatically give credence to valuable perspective. Further, I tend to just disregard Elon for what he is.

Thorentis 3y ago

> when he said it and I literally pulled my bike over and sat for a half hour or so thinking Meta comment, but seriously? A comment from Elon made you pause your commute for 30 minutes? I can't imagine ever being this affected by a podcast.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
Your response is interesting in its own right. Half the fun of this life is exploring and questioning new ideas and podcasts are a great way to do that. I don't think I pulled over, I've definitely spent some time sitting and thinking once I get to my destination
neom 3y ago
Yeah seriously! I was riding beside a river (for fun) listening to the interview and it came to that section, he said it and I laughed out loud... thought what a weird perspective. I'd never considered that before and there was a bench over looking the river a ways down so I pulled over, sat on the bench and debated it with myself for a while... let myself agree in one direction... see how I feel, let myself agree in the other direction, see how I feel. Just think it back and forth with myself for a while. As the other reply to this comment said, it's a great deal of fun to do this and I enjoy it a lot!

somethoughts 3y ago

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.

hamburglar 3y ago
> 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 This is kind of absurd, though, since they are already two classes of workers. Information workers and factory workers are different. But also, the deciding factor on whether you can work from home should be: can you do your job from home? Look at nurses. They have to be in a hospital, walking into rooms and tending to patients, right? Not phone nurses and poison control center nurses. They work from home nowadays.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  > Information workers and factory workers are different. Should they be, in terms of work-life balance?

lIIllIIllIIllII 3y ago

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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

george-in-sd 3y ago

Upper class is fighting for a perk that the working class will never have. Maybe not morally wrong but working class is treated pretty badly in a place like SF.

davidw 3y ago

I think all the casting doubt about some recent mass shooter being a nazi has a viable claim in terms of cake taking. I used to think he was eccentric but did some cool stuff too. I now have a very negative opinion of him as a person.

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

Musk presenting wfh as a moral argument frustrates me, and comparing office workers with manual workers strikes me a false dichotomy. 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.

xwowsersx 3y ago

That was a real head scratcher for me too. I really think it was some kind of a virtue signal. He framed it in a way that evokes a kind of righteous indignation from people...like calling out the privilege of people who work from home when there are nurses who have no choice but to be at their workplace. I too tried to see the argument, but I just don't get it. I _can_ work from home and some people can't...therefore I ought to travel to some arbitrary place...for what exactly? As a show of solidarity with people who don't have a choice? I just don't get it...

friend_and_foe 3y ago

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.

Mizoguchi 3y ago

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. That's morally wrong from all angles.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pragmatic 3y ago

He owns a car company. He needs people to need cars. Commuting in many places requires a car. Cui bono?