There could be a hiring freeze on the horizon.
Silent Shutout
As CEO Elon Musk carries out massive layoffs that continue to tear through Tesla’s workforce, it appears that the EV automaker is not only showing thousands of workers out the door, but closing it to new ones.
Gizmodo reports that Tesla — which once boasted over 140,000 employees — currently lists just three positions on its career page for North America, when just over a week ago there were over 3,400 positions.
The abrupt change suggests that there could be a hiring freeze at the automaker, in yet another sign of a company in crisis. It’s worth noting, however, that Tesla had similarly removed nearly all its job postings last month when the layoffs commenced, only to add them back days later.
According to an archived version of its jobs page from May 1, the bulk of those thousands of now-nixed openings were in California, Texas, and Nevada, where Tesla operates its massive “gigafactories.”
While those North American job listings have been wiped out, Tesla still advertises some 326 jobs on LinkedIn — most in China, Giz noted — where the automaker operates a gigafactory in Shanghai.
Nightmare Year
The past few months have been a tumultuous period for Tesla. Rolling layoffs have been the most significant disruption, with at least 14,000 employees losing their jobs and counting. It’s unclear when the layoffs will stop, and in emails to employees, Musk has made his “hard core” stance on the cutbacks clear, however demoralizing they may be. This should come as no surprise, as Musk has a long history of harshly treating his employees.
One of the most shocking victims of the ongoing layoffs was the entire 500-person team working on Tesla’s Supercharger Network, its EV charging infrastructure that was considered instrumental in facilitating EV adoption across North America and is one of the company’s most significant achievements.
Meanwhile, at least three of the Tesla’s top executives have left the company, including senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci who oversaw the Supercharger Network.
The financials look equally dire. This was one of Tesla’s worst quarters in recent memory, with profits falling by 55 percent. It also sold fewer cars this quarter than it did in the same period last year, falling embarrassingly short of delivery and earnings estimates.
All told, the fact that Tesla is now culling so much of its workforce while seemingly signaling a hiring freeze will do little to ensure onlookers that the automaker will be stabilizing anytime soon.
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