Tesla freezes all hiring in North America, deletes all listings, posts from job portals and social media

Over the weeks that Tesla has been laying people off, CEO Elon Musk has gotten more and more aggresive about the layoffs. Image Credit: Reuters

Up until a few weeks ago, Tesla boasted a workforce of over 140,000 employees. However, in recent weeks, the EV giant has seen a wave of layoffs sweep through, coupled with a hiring freeze across, especially in its North American offices.

As of Wednesday, Tesla’s job board displayed only three available positions. These roles are all part of its manufacturing development program, based in Texas, California, or Nevada. The program offers a seven-week training period with the potential for participants to transition into full-time Production Associate roles at Tesla factories.

This stark reduction contrasts sharply with the extensive job offerings that were available until Tuesday this week. An archived version of Tesla’s career webpage from May 1 revealed that there were over 3,400 postings across the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

The majority of these positions were concentrated in California, Texas, and Nevada, where Tesla operates its sprawling Gigafactories. Many of these job listings were still active on Tesla’s website as recently as Tuesday.

On LinkedIn, Tesla currently advertises 326 job openings, with most located in China, alongside a few in Europe and one in the Dominican Republic. Interestingly, only one job listing, on the manufacturing development program, appears to be located in the United States.

This marks the second such time when Tesla has nuked nearly all of its job postings, in about two months. According a to news portal, Drive Tesla On April 16, when it had announced a round of layoffs, the majority of the job postings across Tesla’s North American operations back then, had been removed. However, within a few days, the job board was repopulated with thousands of postings.

In a message to employees last month, CEO Elon Musk attributed the job cuts to the need for streamlining operations due to duplicated roles and functions in certain areas. Musk emphasised on the need to cut costs and increase productivity as the company prepares for its next phase of expansion.

Musk thanked and extended well wishes to the approximately 14,000 affected workers, acknowledging the difficult decision that had to be made. During the initial days of the layoffs, Musk expressed that he was regretful of the decision that had to be made.

However, In more recent communications, Musk has taken a firmer stance. In an email to senior Tesla executives, he expressed how the organisation had to be “absolutely hardcore” about layoffs, going forward.

Musk also stated his intention to request the resignation of any executive who retains more than three employees who do not meet the criteria of excellence, necessity, and trustworthiness. Following this directive, at least three executives departed from the company later that week.

According to a report from Bloomberg last month, the first wave of headcount reductions at Tesla may have affected more than 20,000 people. Furthermore, summer internship offers were rescinded just weeks before the interns were to set to start.

Tesla entered its fourth consecutive week of layoffs on Monday, with the latest round impacting various roles including service advisers, human resource personnel, product engineers, and industrialising engineers.

Furthermore, at least six high-profile executives have either resigned already or plan to do so later this year. This includes individuals such as former senior vice president of powertrain and energy Drew Baglino, and senior director of human resources for North America Allie Arebalo

(With inputs from agencies)