It’s been more than a month since CEO Elon Musk’s plans to cut at least 10% of the company’s workforce, but he’s still not done. This means anxious employees wake up every day to check their messages and wonder if they still have a job. The ongoing job cuts will likely last at least until June, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly about the layoffs.
“It’s hard to imagine the feeling of going to work on eggshells every day, not knowing if you can pay your bills or feed your family,” Michael Minick, a former Tesla sales representative who was fired in April, wrote on LinkedIn. “It would be a relief to know that they could breathe and focus on their work without a gray cloud of uncertainty hanging over them.”
Tesla’s workforce has already undergone dramatic changes over the past few years, with the former Silicon Valley upstart with a maniacal vision of clean energy now focused on in Texas and is fixated on other endeavors, including artificial intelligence And robots.
Some who still work at the company say Musk damaged morale by prioritizing robotaxis over a $25,000 electric vehicle. They also say the mission that inspired Musk’s legions of supporters has been muddled.
Musk still hasn’t given employees a “completely clear” signal that the job cuts are over, leading colleagues to darkly joke with each other about anxiety and insomnia. One current employee described the atmosphere as Squid gamea popular television series in which characters facing financial difficulties fight for their lives by playing deadly children’s contests.
Waves of layoffs that have already affected thousands of departments, including sales, human resources and virtually all Supercharger The division is expected to gut much of Tesla, which started the year with more than 140,000 employees. Musk has pushed for a 20% headcount cut, Bloomberg reported last month.
At the Supercharger division, some employees learned that Max de Zegher, director of charging for North America, had been fired after his Microsoft Teams icon suddenly turned grey, meaning he was no longer with the company.
According to Joel Musial, who was fired from his job as a Tesla construction manager, many team members spent the next few days saying goodbye, making jokes and mentioning the Titanic. “We just needed a string quartet!” Musical wrote on LinkedIn.
Gallows humor permeated the Supercharging team, which had installed more than 6,200 stations and 57,000 connectors worldwide and was in the process of network opening other automakers, which should increase usage.
Musk says Tesla still plans to grow networks, although slower. He rehired de Zeger, but did not say how many people would be asked to return.
It’s also unclear whether the company will have enough staff to maintain Supercharger stations, as layoffs have affected several groups of technicians. A former California employee said two dozen people were cut from the 80-person team that serviced and repaired Superchargers in Northern California, leaving gaps in both geography and expertise.
The region now has just one employee in the more than 200-mile stretch between Santa Rosa and Eureka, said the person, who was laid off two weeks after the layoffs were initially announced.
Another Canadian job holder predicted chaos after he and dozens of others were laid off as many Tesla charging stations are hours apart and the amount of work required will only increase once new ones gain access to them company clients.
He said he spent the two weeks following the initial layoff announcement in a state of distraction and uncertainty, with an ever-increasing workload and constantly disappearing colleagues making it difficult to concentrate. On his last day at Tesla, he said he dispatched technicians and attended his daily meetings, but at 10:45 p.m. he discovered he had no access to his company laptop. By 11:01 p.m. that day, he received notice of termination in his personal account.
The cuts come at a time of sluggish demand for the broader electric vehicle industry, putting enormous pressure on employees already grappling with changes to the company’s culture, according to a former sales employee. The person said he had already seen significant turnover in his nearly decade at Tesla, and that each departure cost the automaker critical institutional knowledge.
“Great companies are made up of equal parts great people and great products, and the latter is only possible when employees thrive,” Rich Otto, who stepped down as Tesla’s head of product launches this month, said in a LinkedIn post he deleted. after the media reported it. “Recent layoffs that have rocked the company and its morale have thrown this harmony out of balance, and it is difficult to see the long-term play.”