Elon Musk's back-to-the-office demand is 'like something out of the 1950s,' says Australian billionaire

• Scott Farquhar, the 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."

Scott Farquhar, an Australian billionaire, 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 said in one of the two emails tweeted by Samuel Nissim, who says he's a Tesla shareholder, that staff who continued to work remotely would be assumed to have resigned.

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that Musk's comment that "everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week" was an outdated approach to "the future of how we will work."

—Scott Farquhar (@scottfarkas) June 2, 2022

Farquhar, who is worth more than $12 billion, Forbes estimated, is a cofounder and the CEO of the software company Atlassian. He said in his thread that his company takes a different approach to Musk's.

"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 FY26. Any Tesla employees interested?"

Musk 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 said he needed to cut 10% of jobs at the electric-car maker.

Jason Stomel, the founder of the 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."