Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk slammed tech professionals for clinging to their work-from-home fixation and doubled down with some scathing criticism, dubbing them "the laptop class living in la-la-land," as quoted by media. Apart from the obvious productivity concerns, he also cited moral reasons.
Musk believes that software engineers are being hypocritical, wishing to work from home while expecting service workers to continue to show up in person.
He went so far as to mention the fake Marie Antoinette quote, "Let them eat cake.″
Musk concluded his rant with a suggestion that programmers should get off "their moral high horse with their work-from-home bullsh**."
The remote work trend became mandatory amid the COVID lockdown, and many got accustomed to it. However, as productivity shrank and investor appetites grew, many tech companies started actively urging their employees to return to the office.
When Musk bought Twitter in the fall of 2022, he immediately banned working remotely and stated that employees must be present in the office for 40 hours a week.
Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter experienced many changes, starting from paid verification checkmarks and unveiling a "For You" section of the newsfeed, and ending with the disclosure of the now renowned Twitter Files. The latter is a trove of documents that revealed the unpleasant truth about the platform collaborating with the US government and whitewashing 'Deep State' censorship.