(Photo by Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As of late 2023, electric automaker Tesla had more than 140,000 employees. As of this week, according to company CEO Elon Musk, about 10% of them are going to have to find new jobs.
Tesla last announced layoffs in 2022, when Musk told company executives he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy. Basing anything on Musk’s feelings apparently was not as bad of an idea back in 2022.
Musk’s 2022 take on the economy’s likely direction was proven very wrong, again and again, as the economy has been soaring for the past two years based on just about any metric you want to pick. And before any of you who’ve been watching too much Newsmax write me emails, yes, I understand that inflation is slightly higher than it once was, that happens in a hot economy — you see, people are spending all the extra money they feel like they have, which is what causes inflation.
Anyhow, Tesla seemed to be doing quite well until relatively recently. Midway through 2023 they were announcing record quarterly deliveries, and the stock price climbed healthily on news that other electric automakers were switching to Tesla’s charging network. In the first quarter of 2024, however, Tesla’s deliveries fell for the first time in close to four years.
So, something bad for Tesla obviously happened, and it clearly was not a downturn in the economy as a whole. Hm, let me see … could it have anything to do with Tesla’s CEO buying Twitter and using this new acquisition to switch out his reputation as a respected tech genius for one as a reviled out-of-touch right-wing lunatic?
OK, let’s not overthink this too much. This guy is the CEO of an electric car company. As with many new technologies, a great number of people are cautious about adopting electric cars. Now, here’s a little riddle for those of you who went to business school: is it a good idea or a bad idea for someone who is the CEO of a company to gratuitously insult all sorts of different groups and individuals who are potential consumers of his company’s products?
But you don’t simply have to take my musings at face value, because Tesla sales have slowed notably more than those of competing automakers. A number of would-be customers directly blame Musk’s incendiary rhetoric.
Musk is not nice in his tweets, or eXes or whatever they are supposed to be called now. It would be like Disney CEO Bob Iger issuing a press release that said, “You know what? F*ck your children. I hate children, especially yours, because they are particularly awful. Children don’t deserve the quality entertainment my company produces.” Of course, all of that is probably true. Yet, most of us, including Iger, have discovered that you don’t have to turn every mean thing you think into an announcement just because it may be true.
Musk has become too rich and powerful to learn from his mistakes. If he retained the business instincts and sense of altruism that made him want to run an electric car company in the first place, he’d realize that he should burn X to the ground then offset the resulting carbon emissions with a new fleet of Tesla robotaxis. Musk may have the most followers on X, but all that makes him is the biggest victim of an inherently toxic platform.
Well, if you’re one of the more than 14,000 Tesla employees losing your job, really sorry you have to go through that. Getting laid off sucks.
Perhaps you can take some comfort in knowing that, when announcing the layoffs, Musk did say, “As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity.” Hey, “every aspect” — that means even at the top, right?
Maybe instead of posting more counterproductive insults, next time your former CEO goes on X he will do the bare minimum in showing a little respect for the 14,000 plus people he just put out of work. Here, I’ll even provide a template for him: “I’m truly sorry my dumb posts on X cost all of you your jobs — I was wrong.”
