SYDNEY (Reuters) – Elon Musk bought right into a Twitter (NYSE:) spat with Australia’s third-richest man on Friday over the worth of placing an finish to the pandemic-era behavior of distant working.

In an inner electronic mail this week, the Tesla (NASDAQ:) Inc chief government mentioned “everybody at Tesla is required to spend a minimal of 40 hours within the workplace per week”, and “in case you do not present up, we are going to assume you have got resigned”. That drew criticism from employee advocates about potential publicity to the coronavirus.

The co-founder of Australian mission administration software program maker Atlassian (NASDAQ:) Plc, Scott Farquhar, ridiculed the directive in a collection of tweets as being “like one thing out of the Fifties”. The U.S.-listed firm’s “work from anyplace” coverage was “key for our continued development”, he mentioned.

“We’re setting our sights on rising Atlassian to 25K staff by FY26,” Farquhar concluded. “Any Tesla staff ?”

Musk shot again: “The above set of tweets illustrate why recessions serve an important financial cleaning operate”.

The trade will not be uncommon for Musk, who often makes use of Twitter to make unapologetic pronouncements about delicate topics.

In Silicon Valley, many tech corporations moved to blended residence and workplace working through the pandemic, whereas others have set dates for returning to the workplace solely to push them again as new outbreaks have occurred.

Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and likewise CEO of SpaceX, additionally has a document of taking up different billionaires. In 2021, he posted a picture of a second-place medal in response to a tweet by Jeff Bezos celebrating the success of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:).

In 2017, Farquhar’s Atlassian co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, cooperated with Musk, publicly taking over and facilitating his supply to produce a strong Tesla battery set up for the state of South Australia after it suffered a blackout in 2017.

Cannon-Brookes, who has since led a marketing campaign to purchase Australian vitality firm AGL Power (OTC:) Ltd and velocity up its transition to renewable energy, reposted Farquhar’s remarks criticising Musk’s return-to-office order.

(This story corrects to vary to ‘U.S.-listed’ from ‘London-listed’ in paragraph 3)