Tesla to Make Job Cuts Through June, Leaving Workers in Limbo

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(Bloomberg) — Tesla Inc. employees are making a living. In fear of the “Dear Employee” email saying he was laid off from work.

More than a month after CEO Elon Musk planned to cut at least 10% of the company's workforce, he's not done yet. This means that anxious employees wake up every day to check their messages, wondering if they still have a job. The ongoing job cuts will likely extend through at least June, according to people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the layoffs.

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“It's hard to imagine what it's like to walk on eggshells every day at work, unsure of whether or not you'll be able to pay your bills or feed your family,” said Michael Minnick, a former Tesla sales representative who was laid off in April. He wrote on LinkedIn. “It will be comforting to know that they can breathe and focus on their work, without a gray cloud of uncertainty looming over them.”

Tesla's workforce has already undergone a radical transformation in the past few years — the Silicon Valley startup with an obsessive vision of clean energy is now based in Texas and focusing its attention on other projects, including artificial intelligence and robotics.

Some who still work at the company say Musk has sapped morale by prioritizing a robotaxi over a $25,000 electric car. They also say the mission that inspired legions of Musk's aides has become disorganized.

Musk has yet to give employees a “crystal clear” signal that the job cuts are over, prompting co-workers to darkly joke with each other about anxiety and insomnia. One current employee described the atmosphere as being similar to Squid Game, the hit TV series in which characters facing financial hardship fight for their lives by playing kid-killing competitions.

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The waves of dismissals, which have already hit thousands across divisions including sales, human resources and almost the entire Supercharger division, are expected to devastate large parts of Tesla, which started the year with more than 140,000 employees. Bloomberg reported last month that Musk pushed for a 20% headcount reduction.

Read more: Musk's Robotaxi Dreams Plunge Tesla into Chaos

And in the Supercharger division, some employees discovered that Max de Zegher, the North American shipping manager, had been laid off after his Microsoft Teams icon suddenly turned grey, indicating that he was no longer with the company.

Many team members spent the next few days saying goodbye, making jokes, and making references to Titanic, according to Joel Musial, who was laid off from his job as a construction manager at Tesla. “We just missed the string quartet!” Musial wrote on LinkedIn.

Gallows humor pervaded the Supercharging team, which had set up more than 6,200 stations and 57,000 connectors worldwide and was in the process of opening up the network to other automakers, which would increase usage.

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Musk says Tesla still plans to grow the network, albeit at a slower pace. He rehired De Zeiger, but did not say how many more people would be asked to return.

It's also unclear whether the company has enough staff to maintain the supercharging stations, after layoffs hit several groups of technicians. Twenty people were cut from an 80-person team that maintains and repairs superchargers in Northern California, leaving gaps in both geography and specializations, a former California employee said.

The district now has just one employee in the more than 200 miles between Santa Rosa and Eureka, said the person, who was fired two weeks after the initial layoffs were announced.

Read more: Tesla sales may have peaked in California, auto dealers say

Another person in a similar role based in Canada predicted chaos after he and dozens of others were laid off, given that many of Tesla's charging stations are hours apart, and the amount of work required will only increase once more corporate customers arrive.

He said he worked for two weeks after the initial layoff announcement in a state of distraction and uncertainty, as an ever-increasing workload and constant disappearances of co-workers made it difficult to concentrate. On his last day at Tesla, he said he was dispatching technicians and attending his daily meeting roster, only to find himself locked out of his company laptop at 10:45 p.m. By 11:01 PM that night, he received his layoff notice at 11:01 PM. His personal account.

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The cuts come at a time of slowing demand for the broader electric vehicle industry, increasing pressure on a workforce that has already begun to come to terms with changes in company culture, according to a former sales employee. That person said he had already seen significant turnover during his decade with Tesla, and that each departure cost the automaker important institutional knowledge.

“Great companies are made up of equal parts great people and great products, the latter of which is only possible when their people thrive,” Rich Otto, who resigned as head of product launches at Tesla this month, said in a LinkedIn post. After the media reported it. “The recent layoffs that have shaken the company and its morale have thrown that harmony off balance, and it's hard to see the long-term game.”

– With the assistance of Edward Ludlow.

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