Good morning!
Just over two weeks into his tenure at Twitter, Elon Musk is already shaking up the social media company’s corporate culture and office policies. One of his biggest changes last week was the announcement that Twitter employees would no longer be permitted to work remotely.
On Thursday, during Musk’s first official meeting directly addressing staff, he said that much like at his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX, employees would only be permitted to work from home “on an exception basis for exceptional people.” The transcript of the internal Q&A session, later obtained by The Verge, reveals a stubborn stance on returning to the office, with few exceptions to the rule.
So how does he determine who's exceptional enough to work from home? For Musk, it comes down to a proven superhuman ability to transcend the tensions of remote work.
“If somebody’s contribution is so significant that they can overcome the communication difficulties of being remote, then they should absolutely remain at Twitter. But it will be a higher bar,” he told employees. “They have to be that much better to overcome the communication issues of being remote.”
How exactly Musk plans to assess a person’s ability to overcome the so-called communication challenges associated with remote work was not shared. But Musk affirmed there are “plenty of people at Tesla and SpaceX that do work remotely,” all of whom he considers exceptional. One could also reason that Musk prefers employees who share a similar work style to his. (Read: long hours in the office, though he did tell employees that while he works “crazy hours,” he’s not expecting them to do the same.)
When a Twitter employee inquired about how Musk plans to address the current state of attrition and rally workers around a common vision, Musk doubled down on the need to make the office the default, even appearing to welcome turnover.
“I’m a big believer that a small number of exceptional people can be highly motivated [and] can do better than a large number of people who are pretty good and moderately motivated,” he said. “Those who are not—totally understand. But then Twitter is not for you.”
Whether his uncompromising return-to-office philosophy will resonate with employees remains to be seen.
Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton
