MILANO – Stop hiring at Tesla. Indeed, the electric car company is moving towards a diet that could affect 10% of the staff. A few hours after the controversy about returning to work at the headquarters, the volcanic Elon Musk returns to be talked about. The reason is an internal e-mail that Reuters advertised, with the eloquent title: “Suspend all hiring in the world.”.
In the document, Musk says the electric car company needs to cut staff by about 10 percent. And he adds, in the text sent to the automaker’s executives on Thursday, that he has a “bad feeling” about the economy. His words echo those of JP Morgan’s number one, Jamie Dimon, who a few days ago predicted a “hurricane” coming on the US economy.
Tesla spokespersons have not received any replies to requests for further information.
Earlier this week, Tesla’s billionaire owner wrote that everyone in the organization was obligated to spend at least 40 hours a week in the office. “The older you are, the more tangible your presence has to be,” she said.
According to the calculations of Bloombergconsidering that Tesla has factories in the United States, China and Europe (Berlin) with nearly 100,000 staff, the 10% cut would affect 10,000 people. The company that set up its headquarters in Texas, Austin, in early 2019 cut its workforce by 7% (then over 3,000 jobs), warning of the difficulties it faced in making electric cars within reach of the mass market.
As the ReutersAlthough the risks of recession are perceived with increasing urgency in the markets, demand for Tesla has remained strong and the lights that traditionally indicate a slowdown is not lit up (such as the increase in retailer inventories). There were, it is true, difficulties in resuming production in Shanghai after the problems with Covid. Before the email, explains the agency, Tesla had around 5,000 open positions on LinkedInfrom sales in Tokyo to engineers for the new German gigafactory.