source | Financial Associated Press
Financial Associated Press, June 29 (Editor Bian Chun) According to media reports citing people familiar with the matter, Tesla has closed a research and development facility in California and laid off employees. Hundreds of employees on the Autopilot team. This is the largest of the company's large-scale layoffs.
Sources said the laid-off employees were notified of the layoffs on Tuesday. The laid off team is responsible for evaluating and labeling customer vehicle data related to autonomous vehicle assistance features. The office where the
team is located has a total of about 350 employees. About 200 workers were laid off this time, many of whom are data annotation experts. includes regular employees and contract workers, and some employees were transferred to a nearby office.
Tesla is pulling back from its rapid hiring spree in recent years. In the past few years, Tesla has established several new factories in places such as Austin and Berlin. Due to rapid expansion, the company's number of employees worldwide has increased to approximately 100,000.
Tesla turns to "throttling" in anticipation of recession
Earlier this month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told Tesla executives in an email that he had a "very bad feeling" about the economy. , The company needs to lay off about 10% of its employees and "suspend all recruitment globally."
These words not only shocked the employees, but also surprised the outside world.
However, Musk later clarified that Tesla would cut 10% of its salaried (formal) employees in the next three months while hiring more hourly workers. He said that this means that Tesla's layoff plan will affect about 3.5% of the overall number of employees, and the actual number of layoffs is "not super huge."
When asked at a recent event about the prospect of the economy slipping into recession, Musk said it was "inevitable at some point" and the question was when that would happen.
He stressed that a recession in the near future was "more likely" than not.
Tesla's sales and revenue have continued to grow in recent years, and it has firmly occupied the top spot in the electric vehicle field. As of the first quarter of this year, Tesla's revenue has exceeded the $10 billion mark for five consecutive quarters, its revenue has hit a record high in a single quarter for three consecutive quarters, and it has achieved positive profits for 11 consecutive quarters.
However, as the pressure on the global supply chain continues, raw material costs soar, and concerns about economic recession intensify due to the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes, Tesla will face challenges in maintaining outstanding results in such an environment. Musk has complained several times this year that the company faces huge inflationary pressures.
It is worth noting that Tesla’s recent layoffs are mainly concentrated in areas that are growing too fast. For example, some human resources staff and software engineers have been laid off. In some cases, the layoffs also affected new employees who had only been working at the company for a few weeks.
