Report: Tesla Layoffs Could Be Imminent, as Managers Flag "Critical" Positions
A Bloomberg report cites an internal source that employees are being scrutinized, causing dismay.
A report today from Bloomberg is raising questions about whether Tesla might be headed for a round of layoffs. The news comes after a year of headlines about the American EV maker slashing prices, causing chaos in the secondhand EV market, and amidst fears of softening EV demand. The company's 2023 fourth-quarter results were also weaker than analysts expected, showing just 3 percent growth in revenue, and warning of lower vehicle volume in 2024. While the purported layoffs may or may not happen, the circumstances for layoffs at Tesla seem to exist.
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Bloomberg reports that Tesla managers have been asked to apply a binary criteria to their employees: Are their jobs "critical" to Tesla? Elon Musk has often taken an "all or nothing" approach to his employees, demanding intense commitment from the remaining workers at X (formerly Twitter) and ultimately laying off between 80 and 90 percent of the total staff. Tesla has, Bloomberg notes, increased headcount recently, so given the projected slowing in vehicle sales and continued low prices and soft demand, layoffs may be unavoidable.
It's the latest in a swirl of negative news about Tesla recently. Hertz dumped 20,000 EVs, the majority of them Teslas, after high repair and parts costs, as well as declining value, made them a liability (though, we stress, that move involved more nuance than "people don't want EVs"). And a Delaware court agreed with some shareholders that Musk's latest compensation package was awarded under misleading terms, putting the CEO's $55 billion payday in jeopardy.
Like a lot of the other staffers here, Alex Kierstein took the hard way to get to car writing. Although he always loved cars, he wasn’t sure a career in automotive media could possibly pan out. So, after an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Washington, he headed to law school. To be clear, it sucked. After a lot of false starts, and with little else to lose, he got a job at Turn 10 Studios supporting the Forza 4 and Forza Horizon 1 launches. The friendships made there led to a job at a major automotive publication in Michigan, and after a few years to MotorTrend. He lives in the Seattle area with a small but scruffy fleet of great vehicles, including a V-8 4Runner and a C5 Corvette, and he also dabbles in scruffy vintage watches and film cameras.
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