• Scott Farquhar, CEO of Atlassian, has challenged Elon Musk's return-to-the-office directive.
  • He said the Tesla chief's call "feels like something out of the 1950s."
  • Musk sent a memo to Tesla employees saying they should return to the office full-time or resign.

Australian billionaire Scott Farquhar has branded Elon Musk's decision to order Tesla staff back to the office full-time like "something out of the 1950s."

Musk sent a memo on Tuesday telling employees to return to the office or resign. Musk reportedly said in one of the two emails tweeted by Samuel Nissim, who claims to be a Tesla shareholder, that staff who continued to work remotely would be assumed to have resigned.

In a Twitter threat, Farquhar said that Musk's comment that "everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week" was an outdated approach to "the future of how we will work."

 

Farquhar, who is worth more than $12 billion according to Forbes, is the co-founder and CEO of software company Atlassian. He said in his thread that his company takes a very different approach to Musk.

"Atlassian employees choose everyday where and how they want to work - we call it Team Anywhere. This has been key for our continued growth," he said. "This is the future of how we will work."

"In the past year alone, 42% of our new hires globally live 2 or more hours from an office. There is great talent all over the world – not just within a 1hr radius of our offices," Farquhar added.

He concluded: "We're setting our sights on growing Atlassian to 25K employees by [2026]. Any Tesla employees interested?"

Musk quickly responded: "The above set of tweets illustrate why recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function."

Meanwhile, the Tesla chief sent a memo to executives on Thursday titled "pause all hiring worldwide." He shared his concerns about the economic outlook and wants to cut 10% of jobs at the electric carmaker.

Jason Stomel, founder of tech talent agency Cadre, said of the return-to-work directive to Reuters: "I think there's potential that this is just a disguised layoff, meaning they're able to get rid of people with attrition, or without having to actually have a layoff."

Read the original article on Business Insider