Elon Musk is considering a hiring freeze and job cuts of up to 10% of staff at Tesla because he has a “super bad feeling” about the state of the economy, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.
Tesla currently has about 5,000 job openings advertised worldwide, and 100,000 employees. The email was sent to Tesla executives late on Thursday with the subject line “pause all hiring worldwide”, and comes days after Musk ordered all employees to return to the office for at least 40 hours a week or face immediate termination.
Tesla’s stock was down 3% after hours on the news. Neither the company nor Musk replied to requests for comment from the Guardian.
So far, there has been no fall in demand for Tesla cars and other electric vehicles. The usual indicators of a downturn – including increasing dealer inventories and incentives in the US – have not materialised.
However, Tesla’s stock has been hammered, falling 22% since the billionaire used his shares to finance a planned acquisition of Twitter, which now appears to have stalled. Anxiety about the global economy and the impact of China’s Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai, where Tesla has a factory, have also weighed on the company’s share price.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ing-freeze
This certainly lends credence to the idea that Musk's culture war over working from home was an underhand attempt to reduce staffing levels without paying redundancy to his employees.
Although he won't be missing any meals Musk personal net worth has dropped my more than a third in the last 12 months, or so his tax declarations say. A quick caveat is required there, the way the US tax system works allows losses one year can be offset against future taxes so having a $100 billion "loss" could work to Elon Musk's advantage in years to come and it certainly means that although he is one of the wealthiest men in the world he will pay no taxes this year.