- Elon Musk claims to be sleeping at the DOGE headquarters. He previously called Tesla factories his “primary residences.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has apparently been telling people he’s sleeping in at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) office, according to reports from Wired.
Born out of an executive order, DOGE is already facing multiple lawsuits, one of which claims the branch is acting as a federal advisory committee. Musk, heading said operations, says he is working out of DOGE’s headquarters in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, reports Wired. He also has asserted that he has been invited to spend the night in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom, per the outlet. There’s no confirmation as to the veracity of these claims.
Dozing off at headquarters and talking publicly about doing so isn’t out of the ordinary for the world’s richest man. In 2018, Musk claimed that he was “sleeping on the factory floor” of Tesla because he didn’t have “time to go home and shower.” In the past, Musk has directed workers to do the same. In an earnings call last January, he said that Tesla workers would have to sleep on the manufacturing line in order to ensure new EV model rollouts.
“We’ll be sleeping on the line, practically. Not practically, we will be,” he said. Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Musk has previously called Tesla factories his “primary residences,” asserting that it was a way to demonstrate he was not letting loose and perhaps inspire workers to “give it their all.” Tesla has come under fire for allegations of toxic workplace culture, facing and settling racial discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits.
Now that Musk has entered the D.C. sphere, federal workers are subjected to a similar hard line. On Tuesday, an email from Trump’s administration was sent to employees saying they had until Feb. 6 to either take a eight-month buyout or work in person five days a week.
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Neither the move or the buyout is authorized by Congress, as The American Prospect points out. The post, titled “Fork in the Road,” borrows language Musk used previously when issuing a Twitter layoff, writes Fortune’s Brit Morse. Musk has railed against federal employees working from home or on hybrid schedules in the past. A former Tesla executive is suing the company as he alleges he was “completely blindsided” by the RTO policy.
CEOs’ history of asserting sleepless nights
The CEO of investment management firm Renaissance Technologies also claims to use his office as a bedroom, confirming on Goldman Sachs’ Exchanges podcast that he’s spent almost 2,000 nights in his Long Island office.
And CEOs have a history of engaging in a rat race about who can pull an all-nighter. Former CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi reportedly did not sleep more than four hours a night.
Bill Gates admitted on a 2023 episode of Unconfuse Me With Bill Gates that there used to be competitive talk around how little everyone sleeps. It led him to believe that he had “to try harder because sleep is laziness and unnecessary.”
Gates says he’s since realized that getting sufficient sleep is important for one’s brain health and “one of the most predictive measures of any dementia, including Alzheimer’s.” Melinda French Gates, a noted philanthropist and Bill’s ex-wife, recently called the trend of executives working all insight “so dumb” in an interview with Vanity Fair.