Tesla Death Watch 26: Death By Blog
When we reported that Tesla was laying off employees at its Michigan engineering center, we thought that was as bad as it got. Well, it seems that the Elon Musk era at Tesla is starting on a worse note than anyone thought possible. Jalopnik reports that employees at Tesla’s Rochester, MI development center did not find out about the layoffs until reading Musk’s blog post saying Rochester would be shut down. Worse still, 90 percent of employees there were simply let go, while the remaining ten percent “have to make their way to the San Jose headquarters with no moving costs covered, no increase in salary and no help getting rid of their old homes,” according to Jalopnik. Not that selling a house in Detroit and relocating to affordable San Jose isn’t a snap. Especially when your boss gives you all of zero warning, and you learn of your firing thanks to the following three sentences: “There will also be some headcount reduction due to consolidation of operations. In anticipation of moving vehicle engineering to our new HQ in San Jose, we are ramping down and will close our Rochester Hills office near Detroit. Good communication, tightly knit engineering and a common company culture are of paramount importance as Tesla grows.” Good communication. Common company culture. Right.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Musk sounds like a dick. At least he got all the key business school buzz words in. John Horner, what ever happened to f***** company? That sight was great.....
@ psarhjinian ...a company that either licenses their technology to other, or sue others into licensing Ain't gonna happen. All valuable stuff Tesla has is licensed from somebody else. Battery pack layout, motor design, power electronics design are all by AC Propulsion, just modifoed a bit. All the rest is Lotus' IP.
I grew up in Rochester Hills so I feel for the employees. But it's a drop in the bucket compared to devestation about to strike my hometown after "the merger." I hope Musk's company implodes into itself in a smoldering pile of irrelevance.