By and large yes, people returned to the office however a lot are disgruntled and exceptions to work remotely largely depend on your manager and their ability to push that up the chain as Elon is meant to approve each exception personally. (in practice most of the full-time remote employees already had such exceptions but some newer hires during the pandemic weren't hired under that regime).
However a lot of folks quit but it has less to do with the remote work policy and more to do with a massive options cliff that occurred recently. Once the golden handcuffs came off a lot of folk figured it was time to move on, which is fair given the hell they went through to deliver 3 and Y + the 10x appreciation in their options.
A friend's wife worked at the Bay Area factory then volunteered to take a management position at the Shanghai branch. She worked remotely from California during COVID which she loved and now is required to move full-time to Shanghai (my friend is doing it more begrudgingly than her, she speaks mandarin so it's easier).
She basically became a millionaire from those stock options. Even though she only made $150k when she joined. So it's not all bad.
> A friend's wife worked at the Bay Area factory then volunteered to take a management position at the Shanghai branch
I would be somewhat resentful if I had a manager at an engineering plant that was located thousands of miles away. I think managers working in the same physical location as workers is the right call
I know some German engineers who quit Tesla and went back to the traditional German car manufacturers. Working for Tesla was hell and you aren't even paid that well.
This is not racist. It's a very rude, most notably false and nationalist take – but not a racist one. We should be distinguishing between these two, as not doing so will lead to actual racism to go unpunished.
It's not racist, it's borderline nationalist but sounds like OP was originally from Germany themselves.
I've no idea about the productivity, but even if OP's statement was true, as an American I'd take a production hit to work less hours and be guaranteed sick pay and holiday leave at amy job and worker protections in General.
If you work your people like slaves and keep the majority of them poor, is productivity something to be proud of?
I've always been jealous of the European approach to WLB and wonder how we can go so very wrong in America when there are working examples of doing better.
However a lot of folks quit but it has less to do with the remote work policy and more to do with a massive options cliff that occurred recently. Once the golden handcuffs came off a lot of folk figured it was time to move on, which is fair given the hell they went through to deliver 3 and Y + the 10x appreciation in their options.