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Comment by fnordpiglet | Hacker News Reader

Yet another reason to not work at a Musk company.

I like it. He wants his company to work a certain way. His communication is clear and as he states they can work at other companies if they want.

Personally I prefer meeting and collaborating in person. I find the bandwidth is much higher. For some focus work it doesn't matter but there is always an element that requires communication.

You don't change the world without ruffling a few feathers.

Yeah but I want to get paid for my time. Working anything above 40 I a salaried position makes no sense. Cultures that are built on this exploitation of workers and flat out EXPECT an AVERAGE of over 40 hours are exploitive, simple as that.

I'm sure Tesla execs get paid enough to cover the extra hours they do. You are right it's about what's worth the exchange to you. For me I'll work an extra 30% time happily if I'm earning an extra 30% in income. Even if that's not spelt out in my contract.

And I've happily made that trade in the past as well. The point I'm making is it doesn't sound like they have the option to say no to the extra time and pay. It's not a choice at that point, and it stops being a good thing too. If it's like overtime or a bonus where folks that choose (operative word is choose) to do that they can get more pay in return. If they choose not to, not. That's not this. He's literally saying of you want to stay at tesla this is it, you must work the extra hours. That's not good and it's not how you maximize your workforce. It's how you churn through talent and spit it out.

Choosing a different job is how you choose different hours. There are few jobs where you get to pick how many hours you want to work, especially when salaried.

Agreed on the first part, not on the second. There are in fact many. Many, most companies really allow people to work more or less as their life allows. It's actually quite common in the regular community (not as much among hustle culture startup folks like the average HN reader)

It depends on the job. In jobs constrained by labor supply, there’s a good bit of flexibility.

If you do a rank-and-file job at a megacorp and there’s a stack of resumes on your boss’s desk, you show up when you’re scheduled or you get replaced.

"If you do a rank-and-file job at a megacorp and there’s a stack of resumes on your boss’s desk, you show up when you’re scheduled or you get replaced."

I agree that this is a simple reality that does happen all too often, but also want to point out that it's not right, and often against the law. Workers time off, sick time, etc. is protected by law. Tehhnically businesses can't fire people for taking time off. I get that it happens all the time, but it shouldn't.

Time off doesn't really enable anyone to work a different schedule, as mentioned above. If your boss wants 40hrs/week and you want to work 30hrs/week, you’ll burn two weeks of time off in 8 weeks.

I'm referring to long term time off like reduced schedules due to family, personal, or medical hardships. I've worked with dozens of people who worked reduced schedules for years of their careers for many various personal, medical and family reasons. It's actually much more common than you expect.

I have worked with many people who do the same as well. You can do it if you're in a privileged job, like many of us work, or if you were hired under those circumstances. If you have a below-median wage job where you're expected to work 40hrs/week and you have a medical hardship, you'll be looking at being reassigned to a part-time position at best, and if one is not available, you'll be spending your FMLA time looking for a new job.

Consulting. It can be any job, just billed differently.

I also like the "communication is clear" part. People might not like the content that is being communicated but at least it's clear and not infused with corpspeak.

See also: "Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128061

> as he states they can work at other companies if they want.

That's not what he states though, or it would be ruthless but not controversial. He's stating people working remotely are pretending to work which says more about him and the management structure than his employees.

Basically you can have the opinion that working remotely is less effective and not be a dick about it. He chose the other option.

Surprise deadlines coming from your CEO's Twitter page wasn't enough to convince you?

More accurately, you should avoid being an exec at one of his companies. Sounds like you wouldn't be a good fit.

Rather it’s written to professional staff, which includes his non trivial software groups. I see nothing indicating it’s written to senior management, in fact his only scoping reference is about a mid level HR type role and it was fairly obviously written to everyone other than the factory workers who obviously can’t work from home.

> Sounds like you wouldn’t be a good fit.

Yes, I assumed my post implied I wouldn’t want to work at one of his companies. Did you read it differently?

I think they meant it as an insult. I wouldn't want to work for a pedo projector either.

And he should leave the US if he thinks taxes are too high

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