WFH: TECH MOGULS SPAT OVER APPROACHES
A WAR of words has erupted on Twitter between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Australian Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, after Mr Farquhar made a dig at the Tesla chief executive’s cancelled work from home (WFH) policy and called it “something out of the 1950s”.
A letter from Mr Musk leaked this week, in which he demanded Tesla staff return to the office or “pretend to work somewhere else”.
“Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” Mr Musk wrote in the email. “If you don‘t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”
Australian software giant Atlassian has taken the complete opposite approach, allowing its staff to work from anywhere in the world, and Mr Farquhar – who most recently ranked as Australia’s fifth richest person – took the opportunity to try to woo Tesla staff to his company.
“We‘re setting our sights on growing Atlassian to 25K employees by FY26. Any Tesla employees interested?” he posted.
Mr Musk hit back, writing: “The above set of tweets illustrate why recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function.”
Atlassian’s share price is down 44 per cent over the past six months, amid a broad rout of software stocks.
It’s a far cry from when Mr Musk was Twitter best friends with Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-brookes – their Twitter bet resulted in the world’s biggest battery, in South Australia.
The spat is representative of competing views between company executives about when to force workers back in to the office – if at all.
An Atlassian spokeswoman said their careers page has experienced 500 per cent its usual traffic since the tweet.
“Requiring office attendance is outdated,” Atlassian’s head of Team Anywhere Annie Dean said.
“Companies need to ask themselves – who is this benefiting? It’s time to invest in a future where productivity and collaboration are no longer synonymous with physical location.”