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Tesla laid off 7% of its employees Friday, seven months after cutting its workforce by 9%.
Tesla has increased its workforce by 30% in 2018 by increasing the production of its Model 3 sedan, CEO Elon Musk said Friday in an e-mail to employees. cheaper vehicles like the long-awaited version of Model 3 at $ 35,000.
But Musk had defined the 2018 layoffs as a decision that Tesla would not have to repeat.
"We are making this difficult decision now so we never have to do it again," he told employees at the time.
Read More: Anyone who tells you that Tesla influences the rest of the auto industry have completely wrong
Five former Tesla employees, who were fired on Friday, told Business Insider about their time at the time and how they had learned that they were being fired.
Each former employee requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from Tesla.
Were you affected by the layoffs of Tesla? Do you have a story to share? Contact Linette Lopez of Business Insider at [email protected] and Mark Matousek at [email protected].
"Like sheep at the slaughterhouse"
A former employee, who worked in the Tesla Deliveries Division in California, woke up Friday at Musk's e-mail. He said that he had tried not to think about it but had found it difficult once arrived at his office, where his colleagues were discussing email. He noticed that one of his leaders was silent and "rather neutral" by storing chairs in the corner of the office farthest employees.
The manager asked the delivery man and about fifteen of his colleagues to meet him near the chairs. There, the manager read a script informing them that they were released. The script sounded as if it had been written by the Tesla Human Resources Department, the deliveryman said.
"I sat there silently like a sheep at the mbadacre," he said.
A colleague asked if he could talk to the person responsible individually after the speech, but he declined the request.
The manager told employees that their positions had become useless, but not all members of the delivery team were removed from their jobs. The manager did not provide detailed information on the reasons why each employee was laid off. Employees did not receive details of their severance pay, but simply a blank piece of paper with their name and personal email address. The deliveryman then said goodbye, packed his belongings and left.
"I just want to know why we were chosen," he said.
The driver said the dismissal was not devastating, as he planned to leave the company later in the year, but the speed of the announcement bothered him.
"It's a very ugly way to treat your employees who have been working hard," he said. "Now, I do not know what to do."
Overall, the delivery person stated that he enjoyed spending time with Tesla, especially camaraderie with his colleagues, but he did not feel the same connection with his superiors and sometimes felt forced to work long hours without notice. .
I was shocked & # 39;
An engineering employee at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada said she was surprised by the layoffs, citing Musk's claim that the 2018 layoffs would be the last for Tesla.
About an hour after arriving at work on Friday, senior staff began coaching some of his colleagues in meeting rooms. An hour later she was summoned to one of the rooms, was let go and asked to confirm her contact details. She was then accompanied to her office, where her laptop was washed away. He was ordered to leave immediately.
The process took about five minutes, she said, and she had no reason to fire him.
"I was in shock," she said.
She was told that she would be receiving a two month termination pay, but she had not seen the exact details of her allowance on Tuesday afternoon.
The engineer said that she had enjoyed her work at Tesla, particularly her ability to work with different departments and learn from it, but she would have liked more information on the reasons for it. which she had been fired.
"It was actually a lot easier than I thought."
A third former employee, who was working in Tesla's energy division in California, said that if she liked working at Tesla and that she was sad to see that she was working until the end of the year. Company, she found it easier to let go than to see her dismissed colleagues and deal with the consequences.
"Having seen everyone go by before, being one of the people who stays, it's a lot harder than being one of those people who can go there." , she said.
Friday morning, after waking up, she read Musk's email and saw that her manager had sent her an invitation to Google Calendar. Her meeting with her manager was brief and she did not ask why she had been fired since a conversation she had had with another manager prior to the meeting, suggesting that this one had not been able to choose the members of his team who would be fired. . She found the experience relatively painless since her team was working remotely and was not at the office that morning.
"It was actually a lot easier than I thought," she said.
She described Tesla as a demanding but rewarding work environment and stated that she felt proud of her mission and that she had close ties with her colleagues.
It does not bother her to take a few months off with pay, she said, and the flood of messages she's received about job opportunities has cleared her worries about her next step.
"People seem rather eager to help me find a new job," she said.
It was another "great purge"
One delivery experience specialist who was released told Business Insider that this round of layoffs was just another of Tesla's big "purge jobs". They were happening every six months or so in the company, she said. Employees are overflowing monthly too. Then, every three months or so, there will be a wave of new hires.
The logic of leaving, the woman said, was "random" and the turnaround was the fastest she had ever seen in a business.
"The managers who were in my store a year ago are no longer the same today. My store operates as a sales, service and delivery center, and every management role has been changed from January 2018 to January 2019. That's just management, "she told Business Insider.
So, finally, another purge was expected.
She described her seven months of work at Tesla as exhausting and chaotic. His job was to prepare documents for customers who came to buy their cars. She then went to a document signature that could take five minutes or an hour depending on the client or the quality of the writing of the documents.
Then the customer would get a brief orientation of his car. According to his training, everything was supposed to last about 15 minutes, but it usually took a lot longer and resulted in a backlog of customers waiting. Sometimes she and her colleagues needed help from nearby vehicle repair centers.
Sometimes clients refused to deliver their car due to damage, which made it even more complicated, she added.
In the future, she will see fewer cars delivered due to a reduction in tax credit offered to Tesla customers. She also said worry about competition from new entrants in the electric vehicle market, such as Porsche. But that does not mean that she has lost confidence in the company.
"I'm convinced it's a great product, they still have a good customer base, they just need to hang on."
& # 39; Then it's my shame march & # 39;
A factory supervisor at Fremont Tesla said his dismissal was a total shock. He loved working at Tesla and found his colleagues extremely supportive.
"I loved it, I loved what I did, it was fast, exciting, very demanding, at best it was stimulating, but I did not get it. I loved it. "
He was good at that too, he said. He said he received outstanding criticism in December with an extremely generous performance award. He therefore said that he had reason to believe that he would be successful in this series of layoffs.
In addition, the day of the layoffs, he was informed that his team would be saved. He therefore badumed that he was in this category. But at the end of the shift on Friday, his supervisor asked him to collect his business and accompany him to HR.
"So, it's my shame," he asked his manager.
He was asked to hand over his laptop and wait for company documents on Saturday.
Regarding his performance bonus for 2018, he said he was disappointed. Due to the structure of Tesla's bonuses, he will only receive a portion of his bonus of 2018.
A Tesla representative stated that the company offered cash options acquired quarterly over a four-year period.
"I worked hard, I had a great bonus, and they just took it," said the supervisor.
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