Tesla is Reportedly Planning Layoffs. are Musk's Twitter Antics to Blame? - SlashGear
Tesla investors blame the Twitter lordship:
Elon Musk has reportedly ordered a hiring freeze at Tesla and told his lieutenants at the EV company to brace for a free round of layoffs. According to a report by Electrek, Tesla has already told employees that fresh hirings have been put on hold and that some teams will lose manpower early next year. However, these plans reportedly won't affect Tesla's expansion targets for the coming quarters.
[...] Ever since Musk went public with his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, the price of Tesla stock has tanked, and right now, the company is inching towards its worst quarter ever. Tesla stock has lost over half of its value since April, but Musk continues to assure that the company is doing better than ever. Instead, the billionaire has blamed the downward spiral of Tesla stock on global macroeconomic variables and the feds.
Not everyone is buying Musk's arguments. Fingers are being pointed in his direction at the moment, and from Tesla investors, no less. Ever since Musk disclosed his intentions to run the show at Twitter, concerns were raised that the social media platform will distract him from his duties at Tesla. Back then, Musk promised that won't happen and assured investors that Tesla will always be his top priority.
Tesla Reportedly Plans More Layoffs as the Company's Stock Tanks
Despite record delivery figures, the company may also freeze hiring:
The extent of the layoffs and hiring freeze are not yet clear. However, Tesla is trying to increase headcount at its manufacturing plants. Reports have suggested the company will announce plans to build another Gigafactory in Mexico in the coming days. Tesla does not have a communications department that can be reached for comment.
[...] Even though Tesla delivered a record number of its electric vehicles last quarter, the company's stock price has nosedived by around 65 percent this year and 22 percent this month alone. Musk has blamed the tanking stock on Federal Reserve rate hikes.
Like other businesses, Tesla has been dealing with an economic slowdown over the last several months. However, it has had to contend with the added wrinkle of Musk's protracted takeover of Twitter, then his chaotic day-to-day management of that company (which included mass layoffs).
[...] There are suggestions that demand for Tesla vehicles has slowed, with some people canceling preorders and leases amid Musk's calamitous Twitter reign. As Electrek notes, Tesla has even taken the rare step of offering discounts on its EVs in some markets.
Many other tech and automotive companies have carried out layoffs and/or frozen or slowed hiring this year due to a broader market downturn and fears of a recession. Among them are Rivian, Stellantis, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Snap, Roku and Peloton.
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Tesla has announced layoffs of "more than 10%" of its global workforce in an internal company-wide email:
For the last few months, it has looked like Tesla might be preparing for a round of layoffs. Tesla told managers to identify critical team members, and paused some stock rewards while canceling some employees' annual reviews. It also reduced production at Gigafactory Shanghai.
Then, over the weekend, we heard rumors that these layoffs were about to happen, which came to us from multiple independent sources, as we reported on yesterday. The rumors indicated that layoffs could be as high as 20%, and in addition we heard that Tesla would shorten Cybertruck production shifts at Gigafactory Texas (despite CEO Elon Musk's recent insistence that Cybertruck is currently production constrained).
Now those rumors have been confirmed – though with a lower number – in a company-wide email sent by Musk, which leaked soon after it was sent.
[...] The news follows a bad quarterly delivery report in which Tesla significantly missed delivery estimates, and had a rare year-over-year reduction in sales. While Tesla does not break out sales by geographical region, the main dip seems to have come from China, where Chinese EV makers are ramping quickly both in the domestic and export market.
Full text of email available at TFA.
Previously: Tesla is Reportedly Planning Layoffs
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Saturday December 24 2022, @12:40AM
He's one of those guys that need to just shut up once in a while.
I'm betting stockholders would love to sew his fingers to his lips so he couldn't talk or text/type.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Touché) by Barenflimski on Saturday December 24 2022, @02:36AM (2 children)
This Musk stuff is so ridiculous. The media saw they could sell stories of him. Now he's in headlines everywhere. How have people not learned how the media apparatus works?
For over a decade, he's been loud on Twitter. He's been boisterous about his businesses. He's let people know what he thinks.
The only thing that has changed is that due to Twitter, they've been able to cast him as "Anti-free-speech", which of course has connotations of "He hates American Morals!" Now they can write opinion pieces about him and project. Juicy!
It wasn't long ago that the same press made money off of, "Musk will save the world with EV cars."
I wish it surprised me that so many jump on the bandwagon so fast. Anyone that doesn't want to hear stupid stores about him, should stop clicking on stories about him, and un-follow him on Twitter.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by epitaxial on Saturday December 24 2022, @04:52AM (1 child)
He was pretty quiet politically until the second the massive Tesla subsidies stopped. Also nobody cared where his private jet was flying until he suspended the account of the kid running it. Now there's a dedicated website with realtime mapping and it makes the front page of reddit every time it moves. He suspended people and set up new rules for giving away locations as its now "doxxing" someone and literally the next day he posts a selfie saying he's at the world cup. Well he just doxxed himself under his new arbitrary rules. Tesla is about to show his ass the door for tanking the stock. A year ago it was $400 a share and now its down to $123.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Saturday December 24 2022, @02:21PM
The FTC, FAA, congress, federal transportation, just about every branch of government is stomping their muddy boots around everything he does. He may have not noticed but I'm sure he is a 100% political beast from the beginning. You can't build Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla etc without engaging fully with politics: who to pay off and when. Who to forward the insider trading info to in Congress, and so forth.
He simply saw that owning media was what every self-respecting elite billionaire did with their free money and power.
He doesn't align 100% with your politics and most people here, so you all call him names and act like children. Fun play time is almost over, guys.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by MIRV888 on Saturday December 24 2022, @06:34AM (2 children)
Twitter has been his jars of urine.
I dunno why, but he seems to be falling off the deep end.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Opportunist on Saturday December 24 2022, @08:26AM
That's good news. Hughes went complete nuts and shut himself off from the world.
Can't wait for that to happen with the Muskrat.
(Score: 2) by helel on Saturday December 24 2022, @05:20PM
He's used his wealth to completely surround himself with "yes men," people who will never contradict or correct him no matter how wrong he happens to be. Add to that enough cash to force even incredibly inefficient solutions to work through sheer pressure and the only outcome is wandering off into your own bubble in which you are author and protagonist. You can see the same pattern with allot of rich
bastardspeople. Look at Steve Jobs insisting on diet-based cancer treatment instead of proper medical intervention, for example.Or at least that's my take on it. I don't know the guy, I could be completely wrong.