HumanDebt™ by Elon Musk

Everyone is familiar with the now-famous Elon email asking his employees to physically come back to the office and the reactions to it are many and very interesting.

While most people are in shock and rightfully rolled their eyes, there are some defending him. The main argument is that he can do whatever he chooses as he is the owner of the place and what he says, for whatever reasons - goes. While this is very true, it doesn't mean it makes his stance right or ethical.

Obviously, Tesla employees like anyone else, have a choice to simply leave if that doesn’t suit their lifestyle and many will. In fact, there’s a bevvy of reactions asking them to come on over with the most hilarious coming from AWS where Zafar Choudry said “If the emperor of Mars doesn’t want you, I’ll be happy to bring you over”.

Aside from how taking this stance publicly, is in my opinion, irresponsible as it validates the drones of command&control execs that are still too fearful to let people truly choose, it is also irrational and unbecoming of someone we have collectively decided to call a visionary. He is not only building HumanDebt™in Tesla but elsewhere that listens too.

The POC of “Look, we can work from our homes and be as if not more productive” that Covid inadvertently gave us is precarious, it is in a direct and constant fight with the command and control set point of old-style management. It goes against the nature of the micro-managers and the small thinkers and there are more of them than not. We can’t allow rhetoric that could have easily been written on a whim or after a couple of pints or edibles to set us all back so we must ignore it.