Tesla announced layoffs on Sunday night.
Justin Sullivan
On Sunday evening, Elon Musk sent a company-wide email to Tesla employees in which he announced a workforce reduction of more than ten percent.
A laid-off Tesla employee said he moved for the job about six months ago before being fired.
He moved his family across the country after Tesla offered them a scholarship to do so.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
This post is based on a conversation with a former Tesla employee who was fired on Sunday evening and requested anonymity to protect his privacy. Business Insider has verified the employee’s identity and employment relationship. A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request from Business Insider for comment. The following text has been edited for length and clarity.
I started at Tesla during the pandemic as a commercial field service technician. I was responsible for troubleshooting and maintaining Tesla’s energy department.
Back then, I started at the company in California and moved twice while working for Tesla. Just six months ago I moved across the country for this job.
Tesla transferred me to one of its southern regions to oversee the energy department. The company needed someone in this region and had not had anyone on site there for over a year. Employees had to fly to the region regularly to look after them.
I also flew there for a while. Over a period of about three months, I was on site for two weeks and back for two weeks to balance things out.
Then Tesla asked me if I would consider moving there with my wife. I told them I would only consider it if they paid for our move. Eventually they helped us move and even offered us a scholarship.
We packed and moved within a week. We sold most of our stuff and rented a large moving truck to go there.
I was completely surprised when I woke up on Monday morning and received the discharge notice
I woke up on Monday morning and wanted to report to work. And my phone said something along the lines of: Password error, contact IT.
So I went to my laptop to log in and my computer was also locked and the IT department number was on the screen. I called the IT department and they told me to contact HR. Then I went to my personal email account and saw an email from Tesla, which had been sent overnight. It was this general letter that a lot of other people said they got.
I felt like I was doing well and receiving positive feedback from my managers. The resignation letter said the cuts were due to redundancies, but I didn’t feel my role was redundant.
I feel like Tesla could have handled the layoffs better. It was impersonal and abrupt.
Now my wife and I feel like we’re kind of stuck.
We live in a city where I probably won’t find many other options without having to commute an hour and a half to work because we live in a rural area. We are also far from family and have no support system nearby to help us.
When we moved, we lost some of our safety net. We rented a house that was within our budget on my Tesla salary, but now that I’ve been laid off, that’s no longer the case. Now we’re stuck in the lease for another six months.
When we moved for Tesla we didn’t make it easy, but we didn’t expect this. Leaving was hard because we lived close to family. I have two children, a 17 year old and a 9 year old, and we had to uproot them.
Now I feel like we shot ourselves in the foot with this.
You can read the original article here.