“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” Musk also wrote, as if checking email is a reliable measure of productivity in all public-sector jobs. If you’re a NASA employee doing maintenance on a remote telescope, or a Department of Labor employee traveling to far-flung coal mines to assess their safety, or a Coast Guard employee patrolling a patch of ocean, or an NSA employee trying to hack the personal device of a foreign general, checking email irregularly could as easily show that you’re working hard as that you’re hardly working.

This journalist is an idiot.

First, sure if you are a miner underground you cannot check your email. However if you work for NASA or the government, whatever your job is, you are supposed to communicate with coworkers and superiors, especially on important issues. So YES you ARE supposed to check your e-mail on a reasonable time.

Second, here we are talking about government employees who spend their 80% time behind a computer (and 20% taking breaks). Not answering an e-mail in reasonable time is even more egregious .

Ah yes. the Atlantic...