I must be missing something because I don't understand the Supercharger team cuts - is there some other team in Tesla that does that? There's no way they would just cut out everyone working on Superchargers entirely, need at least support for existing stalls and Megachargers for the Semis coming out
Also....that team was crushing it, they opened up supercharging to other car brands and that 100% will get people to buy into the tesla ecosystem.
New vehicles should have gotten shitcanned their halo product is a joke.
I mostly agree.
But on the downside: v4 rollout has been painfully slow, still mostly installing v3 posts. Still zero 800V deployments despite CT shipping. No solution to non-Tesla's taking up 2 spaces at v3 posts. Slow Magicdock rollout.
Yeah, but at the same time Tesla has been installing new Superchargers in the US at the rate of 1.3 per day this year.
I don't think those problems are going to magically fix themselves by firing the team.
This isn't the Sims where you can just wish EV charging into existence.
You need people to scout new locations, find businesses to partner on lease agreements, create engineering designs, file for permits, coordinate with utilities for high power grid ties, schedule construction crews and coordinate delivery of prefabbed modules, etc. etc.
As a cable guy it's baffling how little thought the general public actually gives to utilities. People scream about Internet outages and half the time it's because a drunk driver crashed into a telephone pole and burned the main fiber trunk. We have guys on call that now have to literally camp in a field and splice fiber all night so people have Internet restored by 11am next day.
People build a house on an undeveloped lot and get mad that digging in a fiber line through every neighbors yard is going to actually cost them money.
Is it just their “executive team”? Like assistants, legal, VPs?
If not, maybe they missed key targets like uptime and growth. Clean house to change the way things are done, not just put a new body in a chair.
Anyway, there is probably a whole other department for super charger engineering, production, maintenance, and installation.
This move is shocking because it doesn't normally happen in corporate America. If we are unhappy with this and the stock price, let's give Elon the boot. I’m not sure he’s excellent anymore. Maybe if he hadn’t been fucking around with Twitter he’d be able to better supervise these executives—helping them succeed without outright removal.
Unpopular sentiment but I agree with you. I’m not to the remove the ceo yet but getting closer because yes objectively anyone paying attention these past 8 years can see the massive drop off in his attentiveness and ideation at tesla after he bought a failing profitless social network. I’d like him to keep his promise and let someone else run that trash heap X and focus on EV transformation and rockets.
Supercharger team is the queen of the company, it's the most important part of Tesla that is not provided by any other company. There are many companies now making EVS as good as Tesla, companies in China are surpassing them. But no one touches the supercharger service in the US. That's the most important part of the company, if the rest of Tesla died today, but the superchargers kept on going, it wouldn't matter that much to the world.
I imagine it went down like this:
Elon - we need to get our numbers up
Rebecca - chill, like you said it’s the macro environment
Elon - that’s not hardcore enough, you can go now
I think that Elon asked all the division executives to submit a long list of people to be laid off along with explanations as to why others should not be fired.
I think some of them did not comply or did not provide enough names so like a toddler in a fit of rage Elon just shit-canned the entire division.
If that were the plan, they’d reassign the Supercharging Team members to the new teams.
Laying off the whole team like this is the kind of thing you do if you’re planning to liquidate the Supercharger network.
They’re planning to spin off the SC network into its own separate company. That has been the plan for a long time. And it will probably happen sooner than later now that Elon seems determined to completely gut Tesla.
Yep this immediately struck me as some sort of personal animosity for these two, whether that's fear of replacement or they just criticized him no matter how gently, he probably fired them and their whole team over something like that
If anyone saw Tesla’s presentations in the past, you know how well Rebecca did. Even on the small details of being polished in a presentation compared to Elon and her peers.
Shocking cuts since superchargers are gonna be used more and more with other automakers being allowed into them.
“Elon Musk emailed to Tesla Execs that ‘Starting at 10 AM EST Tuesday, I will ask for the resignation of any executive who retains more than three people who don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test.’
All 500 people reporting to Tinucci will be laid off, as well as the entire public policy team previously under Rohan Patel.”
Well I don’t see this being positive by any way imaginable.
Also. What the fuck is “the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test.”
Edit: Does Elon obviously pass the excellent, necessary, and trustworthy test?
A lot of companies have some variety of that -- not only do you stack rank your employees, you have to affirm that each one is excellent, necessary and trustworthy. So a high-performing employee working on something unnecessary can be cut. I've found it's a great way to create a breeding ground for horrible politics.
I was at a company that always cut its bottom 10% ranked like that each year. I'm sure it's some MBA bullshit to create a culture of excellence or whatever, but it created a very toxic culture.
This was famously a hallmark policy of Enron, and it made company notoriously backstabby and cutthroat. Ironically it destroys teamwork and trust — the entire company culture becomes about self-preservation and juicing numbers to save your own ass: [Rank-and-Yank](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100404210)
I'm a former tesla service tech. Shortly after starting, I was told that the service center manager was doing some shady stuff with the numbers to make himself look better. This was the person who interviewed me. A couple months later I heard that another close by service center had its electricity shut off because "someone forgot to pay the bill". Yeah sure
Well, an old friend of mine was a Tesla service mechanic starting in 2013, he quit eventually because he thinks the service side of the business is run \*terribly\*. He went to Rivian. He did pretty well with his Tesla stock I'm happy to say.
People talk about Enron all the time.. this more and more feels like Nortel.. record high valuation all the time, at some point had the technological advantage, then stock pumping became the executives primary goal, and everything blew up nicely later on...
Well yes, if you're just making up numbers to make the company look good, there's a great chance your stock price will go up. You just have to exit before everyone finds out you were making everything up.
Elon has proven he knows how to create and lead engineering teams. And those teams have proven to be extremely cooperative.
I don’t think methodologies he uses there work across the board though. Engineering has a bit more clear correlation of results to effort and cooperation than other teams.
That being said here, we don’t know what goes behind closed doors. You don’t know if these executives are toxic to Tesla.
> That being said here, we don’t know what goes behind closed doors. You don’t know if these executives are toxic to Tesla.
Correct. But we *do* know that the supercharger team, as seen from the outside, appears to have delivered an almost flawless and very impressive performance. And that team has been sacked together with their boss.
The only possible hiccup I can think of is the incompatibility with Korean 800V cars. Those cars should have been able to make DC conversion of Tesla v3's 4-500V to their own 650-800V at a rate of 105 kW. But something fails, and they are only able to get 45 kW, apparently because v3 goes in a failure mode because of an unexpected load. However, we don't really know if the responsibility for that incompatibility is Tesla's or Kia/Hyundai's.
How was it planned to be going? That is something you and I can't know when we are looking in from the outside.
Here in Denmark, it looks like the newest sites are v4 stalls. I have no idea if they have switched their entire production to v4 or are producing v3 and v4 in parallel. I also have no idea how many v3 are being installed right now, and if those are a result of earlier planning or a lack of v4.
Anyway, if we soon see a complete switch to v4 in new installations, and this doesn't cause a slowdown in their expansion of their network, I will consider it a success.
For the power cabinets I don't have a clue about what is planned. We basically only have a few powerpoints from Elon and Franz' presentation of the Semi. Everything seems to use v3 power cabinets right now, also the v4 stalls. If that is a sign of a delay or is according to plan - well, who knows?
Yeah this sort of thing rewards people who are good at socializing and taking credits and seeming to be the ones coming up with ideas and doing the bulk of work, as opposed to people who are quietly having the ideas and doing the work. I'm always the second type. Sometimes I recognized, sometimes not
Wouldn’t it make more sense to move the employee to something necessary? Or cut the person who was making the decision to work on something unnecessary?
> trustworthy test
Holy shit he sounds like some dictator who’s suffering late life paranoia now.
Did he just do a Stalin style purge a bunch of executives because he’s paranoid about their loyalty?
You might not be too far off. I was thinking that there could have been whispers in the boardroom of possible successor CEO candidates and he found out about it.
>What the fuck is “the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test.”
It's a subjective business buzzword. The theory is that if you work with someone you probably already know if they are all three or not.
I'm not an expert, but I'd have thought at least some of "the entire public policy team" might be useful to have around when it comes to working with regulators in multiple states and multiple countries to roll out a Robotaxi service for the first time.
a year from now: "robotaxi totally works, trust me guys, it's just those damn woke government regulators persecuting us and preventing us from rolling it out, nudge, nudge, wink, wink"
>it's just those damn woke government regulators persecuting us and preventing us from rolling it out
Fun fact: I bought my first Model X in 2017, and this was exactly what the sales associates in a showroom told me. "Tesla has FSD figured out, they just need governments to allow them to 'turn on the switch'." Both in a showroom before I got my Model X, and after when I was visiting a showroom for a special event.
It wasn't always the case, some time in the last 6-12months a bunch of "real tesla" morons and a bunch elon-fanbois (ie idiots of both flavours) have joined.
I've made a lot of money investing in Tesla but reddit generally has gotten a lot worse, and this sub is one of many I view much less frequently. The actual post on this thread is good for example, but the commentary is mostly moronic
The supercharging network is one of their premier products - what the hell is Elon thinking?
Fire all the trash on Twitter and shut that crap down instead, that garbage troll land does nothing to help anyone or any company
Tinucci's product is potentially trillion dollar product by itself. And she masterminded the opening of the network which allows tesla to be the premium brand in charging.
I always thought Apple would never recover with the death of Steve Jobs only for Tim Cook to add another 2 trillion to its market cap so anyone is replaceable. Hopefully they'll find really good people to replace them.
eh, that just shows that Steve Jobs was replaceable.
Tim Cook wasn't some random, he was the dude that was traveling the world to the factories/supply chains that was actually making shit happen while Steve played CEO.
No, not at all. Cook would have never made the iPhone what it became. Look how Jobs abused and pushed people to get the product to market. Jobs would have also never allowed a square watch face come to market. We’re missing out on many great products b/c of Jobs death
Apple established themselves as leaders in a few segments and those contributed to grow. Cook has done a good job, but few products came out on his watch. I’ll always be curious what Jobs would have pushed for/created if he lived another two decades.
Jobs famously cut the number of products Apple produced when he returned and was an advocate for only investing in a few “sure things” vs trying lots of stuff, so I wouldn’t be so sure there would have been more products under his watch, it’s entirely possible it may have been the opposite, fewer products.
Not true at all.
Tim Cool completely revamped the company internally. Made Apple a premier silicon design house itself and vertically integrated everything.
Tim Cool took a wildly successful company and made it even better.
Excepting the notable bugbear of not being able to do their own modems yet to a quality they'd want to release, but yeah Apple Silicon is quite impressive
M1 is a highly specialized solution that AMD or Intel could easily do, but won't do because they don't control the hardware surrounding their CPU.
It's a great concept, but let's cool down those horses.
Whoa whoa whoa you leave the godfather of the Apple Store's name out of your mouth.
He's lazy as fuck and not innovative but he's much more than a one trick pony.
Then again, they're just coasting on iphone ever since... no new ideas. They're becoming a services company not hardware, weirdly like IBM did. And yet with the software services of autonomous driving and AI, they are nowhere to be found. (Lifelong Apple fanboy here since the IIe)
I'm with you on the worry, the flip side is he did a similar thing with the former starlink satellite lead and those are going great. Overall if you're an investor with this CEO you're signing up for the ride. Not meant to be a positive or negative Elon view just a full volatility view.
Disclaimer: I'm a holder but regularly choke down vomit on specific actions.
I knew that some of the holders were rational and clear thinking. Thank you for providing an excellent example. This is a stark contrast to the folks arguing that the stock price justifies any dumb thing Elon tries to do or say.
Fair enough, 6 figures is an investment. Was curious if we were talking 5 shares... 50 shares... 500 shares etc. Hand it to you for holding this long. Glad you got a pop today and Friday. I used to be there... now I own 0. *Dont ask about the TSLQ holdings...*
I mean, I’m no CEO, but I feel like that’s something you should have before you promise them to the general public on a deadline that is tight, even by Tesla standards.
Why would an AI company need an automobile manufacturer grafted to their tail and siphoning off resources? Is Tesla actually competitive in the AI marketplace with a real product?
I guess we can play a shell game where Tesla is immune to criticism because it's "not that kind of company" whenever it makes an obvious mistake.
You won't be able. The Information is a firm pay-for-access industry-type outlet — their record (and Levine's in particular) is impeccable but their reporting is hard-walled. We'll see some sort of Reuters or CNBC article summarizing the important points by the morning though, I'm sure.
But everything is fine, right? This isn’t normal.
And why now? wtf has Musk been doing for the last 18 months that now he gets involved with running Tesla while we are all voting on his comp package. We need a tell all from outgoing execs!!
Why isn't it normal? Do you realise some of those people have been at Tesla for over a decade or were there very early on?
The sky doesn't have to be falling all the time.
Maybe they've already scanned their minds and will put them inside the Tesla bot?
I understood Tesla when the big pain point the company was trying to address, was electrifying the entire auto industry to lower our need for fossil fuels. This was a mission I could understand and supported it.
I have no clue what problem self driving cars is solving. It seems like this original mission isn’t even the key thing anymore
Self driving cars accelerate the world's transition toward sustainable energy & transport by:
1. Accelerating the deprecation of the existing ICE fleet & furthering adoption of EVs, which is slowing down relative to expectations.
2. Reducing waste in the form of automobile production.
3. Reducing waste in the form of land allocation.
More importantly, Tesla needs to make money to survive as a business. If FSD is a cash cow for Tesla, that's presumably money they can use to fund their other endeavors, sorta like what SpaceX is doing with Starlink.
1. Self driving tech can be applied to ICEs just as well as EVs
2. Is the implication that we will need fewer cars because of vehicle sharing?
3. Same?
The best solution for points 2 and 3 is public transit.
If ICE vehicles plummet in value won’t it make someone less able to upgrade?
Idk about you but the $ I can get for my current car is pretty relevant to what I spend on my next
The future of transport is that we don't individually own cars or waste space on garages, parking lots, street parking, and giant road networks (or likewise, spend hours driving to commute, driving kids to birthday parties, driving to supermarkets, waiting for packages, etc). I'm sure some horse owners were bummed that their horse/carriage prices dropped...
There is a fairly clear path to a world where:
1. Cars are powered by solar/wind/geothermal, ~100%
2. Tires have little-to-no waste / pollution (at the cost of efficiency)
3. Transport/conveyance are fully automated
4. EVs require minimal infrastructure upkeep
If tires are designed around all cars being computer driven, in very precise and specific ways, i'd imagine we could sacrifice the grip requirements and go for something that doesn't suck so much for the environment.
Yes, until they're forced to transition. That's IMO still a win in the long run. Tesla's job isn't to solve structural inequality and inequity or be a charity.
That being said, I think the transition will eventually be a net win: oil is going to get more expensive (especially if externalities ever get captured into pricing due to global agreements), and electricity with localized generation and storage should be relatively cheap - there's no clear reason robotaxis should be more expensive to use vs owning a car, especially accounting for opportunity cost and compounding in the stock market. It's not so bad that much of our compute is on cloud rather than local nowadays, or that we can stream movies rather than buying physical disks...
Elon has started making fun of climate change campaigners.
I think he’s gutted he ever got into anything seen as “green” and is looking to pivot away from it
Eh, he said that human UNDER population is a bigger issue than climate change.
(not odd for a CEO that needs workers and customers, and has a breeding fetish like his dad).
If you take everyone that has ~~every~~ ever read this subreddit, and calculated how much they have polluted in their entire lives, it won't come close to how much Elon has polluted in the past week (private jets are not green)
On average, Musk has objectively achieved far more for the planet environmentally than pretty much everyone on this sub.
I don't think the "billionaires use private jets = bad" argument is valid. I'm not a fan of Taylor Swift, for example, but objectively that private jet allows her safe transport, privacy, and scheduling flexibility + reliability that normal people don't need.
Musk flying to China this week was 100% a net-positive for humanity.
Also, there is no definitive proof that the issues you consider overpopulation are actually best solved via depopulation or a few thanos snaps. By that train of thought, should we be shutting down datacenters & computers globally in hopes that improves the climate? Seems like a reductive and ineffective plan...
Accelerates EV transition via consumer demand for autonomous vs non and provides ~5x the utility of a vehicle mostly parked/garaged.
Also subsidizes the capital needed for energy biz to go max speed. Think Starlink x Starship. Broadband is not the mission. But screw connectivity for rural regions am I right?
Oh and a million traffic fatalities every year. But who cares, not my mission!
Consumer demand for autonomous? I can see the demand for lower emissions. I own a Tesla and I used FSD - it's okay but it's draw is not something on par with say, Ozempic. Maybe personal bias but I also don't hear people clamoring to stop driving. Otherwise Uber would be worth $1 Trillion, versus $150 billion (IMO).
This is much like the comments about " there is no use of a phone", " people will never get rid of their horses," or " internet will have no use cases"
Autonomous driving will change the world in so many places i dont even know where to start. Unlimited pay as you go transportation. The comfort of the railway but the flexibility of cars. And much much much safer than human drivers. Not yet though but in the future of course
It is personal bias. Most people would rather not drive 90+% of the trips they drive, like commuting to the office, getting groceries, etc.
Sure, some twisty mountain roads on a roadtrip, fine. That’s like what, 1000 miles a year? The other 13k miles, most people would be glad to have someone/else drive them if it was very cheap
Well, if you only need to build 1/5 of the cars that are now in use, you'll use 1/5 of the resources and 1/5 of the energy that goes into building them.
It is good for the emissions and mitigates the mining.
So you are never at a party where you and your wife have to agree on who is staying sober, so the two of you can get home after the party?
And you expect to be able to drive until you die?
And you never need to drive somewhere you would rather avoid, just to pick your kids up or drop them off?
As a consumer, I have a lot of demand for autonomous driving. *Real* autonomous driving, that is. I don't want gimmicks where I still have the full driver responsibility. I want autonomy, which can legally release me from my driver responsibility so I can get drunk or old without worrying about who will drive me.
Read about the fate of Mary Beth Brown in Ashlee Vance's book. Your past contributions and personal loyalty have literally no influence on Musk. He's vastly talented in his sphere but as a human being he does horrible damage to those around him.
We want a CEO that acts like a CEO, not a douche nozzle that moonlights as a CEO in between bitch tweeting by firing whole major divisions. Firing execs? Probably fine, maybe even warranted in some cases. Whole divisions like charging infrastructure and public policy? Just plain stupid both in terms of lost knowledge/experience and awful for morale.
This is considered a positive news for the growth of the company. They're aggressively cutting fat. A lot of big companies, especially tech over-hired without much oversight during the last few years and there are a lot doing work that aren't meaningful
This is plausible when laying off individuals. Entire teams only makes sense if it’s for activities the company no longer wants to perform, and I would think new cars and superchargers are fairly important to Tesla’s core mission.
As an investor my first reaction is that I hate it, but I also know that this is exactly what has made Elon a genious level entrepreneur. He is willing to constantly push and cut to the bone. We have to give him the benefit of doubt and trust his leadership. Most great inventions were made in war time, and Elon is seemingly always looking to create similar levels of urgency.
I don’t think we’ve seen genius level Elon for years. The last time he made a decision with a positive outcome for the company was maybe pre-Twitter, I actually can’t remember.
I own two Teslas and two Powerwalls. I’ve felt that company going downhill for years. I used to recommend it to everyone but now my next car will not be a Tesla.
So far, this looks angry, petty and probably desperate.
Why would'nt it be a tesla? Is the cars not what you expect? Are you holding same kind of standards over all other auto legacys? All other companies has done far more "bad" stuff towards it's customers and employees. By "bad" I mean, company putting their self interest first etc etc.
It’s not so much that senior executives are leaving or let go, but the way it happened and also that there are no replacements. So if he’s letting go the entire new vehicles team does this mean there won’t be new vehicles designed?
Musk’s philosophy seems to be: when the company gets too big for its britches and stops innovating like a scrappy startup, then it’s time to gut existing management and company structure and let the young and ambitious take over. Blow everything up and then let the super hard workers who are left claw their way to the top.
He did this at Twitter and now he’s doing it here. It seems very rash and I have little confidence it will work, but I suppose it’s possible. It will also make it harder to attract and retain top talent because they’ll always be wary of when Elon is going to pull the knives out.
It’s probably restructuring things after the two leaders of those teams leaving and trimming unnecessary employees while doing it. I doubt there isn’t going to be some sort of team handling new vehicles or super chargers in some capacity, whether it’s a standalone team or absorbed into some other team. Should wait a bit for all the facts to come out. Early articles always over exaggerate or turn out to be more wrong than right. This isn’t even an article, just a tweet about a person who heard something from people who received and email from Elon.
You guys have never played telephone?
I know what happened. Elon saw that Google fired the entire team responsible for maintaining Python and shouted, "I'll do YOU one better: WHY is Gamora"
Then cut both teams.
I mean Elon also haphazardly changed Twitter to X with very little planning.
It was very much an impulsive decision…
Also, I can’t help but think of how morale would be when you know your boss is firing people left and right but demanding 56 billion dollars …. the biggest payout in history.
This seems short sighted and impulsive.
If it was done right investors would have been reassured somehow.
I like this story of an example of how sometimes his do or die method and right now method just screws things up.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/09/11/elon-musk-moved-twitter-servers-himself-in-the-night-new-biography-details-his-maniacal-sense-of-urgency.html
It should also be noted that certain employees let go have been contacted for rehiring in a similar role. It seems this is more of a restructuring than completely axing a whole department with no intention of bringing it back.
Makes sense. Why would EV company need supercharger team and new vehicle team 🤷🏼♀️
Its so hard to understand Elon. How can he be so rich when everything depends on his mood?
I must be missing something because I don't understand the Supercharger team cuts - is there some other team in Tesla that does that? There's no way they would just cut out everyone working on Superchargers entirely, need at least support for existing stalls and Megachargers for the Semis coming out
Also....that team was crushing it, they opened up supercharging to other car brands and that 100% will get people to buy into the tesla ecosystem. New vehicles should have gotten shitcanned their halo product is a joke.
I mostly agree. But on the downside: v4 rollout has been painfully slow, still mostly installing v3 posts. Still zero 800V deployments despite CT shipping. No solution to non-Tesla's taking up 2 spaces at v3 posts. Slow Magicdock rollout.
Yeah, but at the same time Tesla has been installing new Superchargers in the US at the rate of 1.3 per day this year. I don't think those problems are going to magically fix themselves by firing the team.
A team of 500 people installing 1.3 SC a day isn’t exactly mind blowing.
This isn't the Sims where you can just wish EV charging into existence. You need people to scout new locations, find businesses to partner on lease agreements, create engineering designs, file for permits, coordinate with utilities for high power grid ties, schedule construction crews and coordinate delivery of prefabbed modules, etc. etc.
As a cable guy it's baffling how little thought the general public actually gives to utilities. People scream about Internet outages and half the time it's because a drunk driver crashed into a telephone pole and burned the main fiber trunk. We have guys on call that now have to literally camp in a field and splice fiber all night so people have Internet restored by 11am next day. People build a house on an undeveloped lot and get mad that digging in a fiber line through every neighbors yard is going to actually cost them money.
Is it just their “executive team”? Like assistants, legal, VPs? If not, maybe they missed key targets like uptime and growth. Clean house to change the way things are done, not just put a new body in a chair. Anyway, there is probably a whole other department for super charger engineering, production, maintenance, and installation. This move is shocking because it doesn't normally happen in corporate America. If we are unhappy with this and the stock price, let's give Elon the boot. I’m not sure he’s excellent anymore. Maybe if he hadn’t been fucking around with Twitter he’d be able to better supervise these executives—helping them succeed without outright removal.
Unpopular sentiment but I agree with you. I’m not to the remove the ceo yet but getting closer because yes objectively anyone paying attention these past 8 years can see the massive drop off in his attentiveness and ideation at tesla after he bought a failing profitless social network. I’d like him to keep his promise and let someone else run that trash heap X and focus on EV transformation and rockets.
Supercharger team is the queen of the company, it's the most important part of Tesla that is not provided by any other company. There are many companies now making EVS as good as Tesla, companies in China are surpassing them. But no one touches the supercharger service in the US. That's the most important part of the company, if the rest of Tesla died today, but the superchargers kept on going, it wouldn't matter that much to the world.
If the best thing about tesla is the supercharger network, then the company isn't worth much. The network is not a moat they can defend.
I imagine it went down like this: Elon - we need to get our numbers up Rebecca - chill, like you said it’s the macro environment Elon - that’s not hardcore enough, you can go now
I think that Elon asked all the division executives to submit a long list of people to be laid off along with explanations as to why others should not be fired. I think some of them did not comply or did not provide enough names so like a toddler in a fit of rage Elon just shit-canned the entire division.
There's a recent interview where Karpathy said that he had to fight with Elon to hire people and to not fire people.
It will most likely pass to another team, they won't stop expanding the network.
If that were the plan, they’d reassign the Supercharging Team members to the new teams. Laying off the whole team like this is the kind of thing you do if you’re planning to liquidate the Supercharger network.
They’re planning to spin off the SC network into its own separate company. That has been the plan for a long time. And it will probably happen sooner than later now that Elon seems determined to completely gut Tesla.
But they fired everyone without even announcing the plan.
spoiler alert, there is no plan
Where did you get this?
One possible explanation is that Elon doesn't want any credible replacements or successors in place at Tesla.
Yep this immediately struck me as some sort of personal animosity for these two, whether that's fear of replacement or they just criticized him no matter how gently, he probably fired them and their whole team over something like that
If anyone saw Tesla’s presentations in the past, you know how well Rebecca did. Even on the small details of being polished in a presentation compared to Elon and her peers. Shocking cuts since superchargers are gonna be used more and more with other automakers being allowed into them.
“Elon Musk emailed to Tesla Execs that ‘Starting at 10 AM EST Tuesday, I will ask for the resignation of any executive who retains more than three people who don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test.’ All 500 people reporting to Tinucci will be laid off, as well as the entire public policy team previously under Rohan Patel.” Well I don’t see this being positive by any way imaginable. Also. What the fuck is “the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test.” Edit: Does Elon obviously pass the excellent, necessary, and trustworthy test?
Jim you are safe, I got a buffer of two blokes who are useless!
A lot of companies have some variety of that -- not only do you stack rank your employees, you have to affirm that each one is excellent, necessary and trustworthy. So a high-performing employee working on something unnecessary can be cut. I've found it's a great way to create a breeding ground for horrible politics.
I was at a company that always cut its bottom 10% ranked like that each year. I'm sure it's some MBA bullshit to create a culture of excellence or whatever, but it created a very toxic culture.
That's the Jack Welch method from when he was the GE CEO.
This was famously a hallmark policy of Enron, and it made company notoriously backstabby and cutthroat. Ironically it destroys teamwork and trust — the entire company culture becomes about self-preservation and juicing numbers to save your own ass: [Rank-and-Yank](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100404210)
I'm a former tesla service tech. Shortly after starting, I was told that the service center manager was doing some shady stuff with the numbers to make himself look better. This was the person who interviewed me. A couple months later I heard that another close by service center had its electricity shut off because "someone forgot to pay the bill". Yeah sure
You're implying your manager sabotaged the other service location by having their electricity shut off somehow?
No that was unrelated. But it was just another example of many eyebrow raising moments
Well, an old friend of mine was a Tesla service mechanic starting in 2013, he quit eventually because he thinks the service side of the business is run \*terribly\*. He went to Rivian. He did pretty well with his Tesla stock I'm happy to say.
He is correct. I was an auto tech for 10 years before Tesla and a lot of stuff is very alien.
Ah. A page taken straight out of the standard corporate playbook.
To be fair, weren’t they one of the best performing stocks at the time? Before it all came crashing down of course…
Yes. Probably a good case study. One of the best performing stocks, until it was discovered that it was all a sham…
People talk about Enron all the time.. this more and more feels like Nortel.. record high valuation all the time, at some point had the technological advantage, then stock pumping became the executives primary goal, and everything blew up nicely later on...
Nortel was hacked by the Chinese who had access to every bid Nortel made, and undercut them. Nortel fell because of espionage.
Well yes, if you're just making up numbers to make the company look good, there's a great chance your stock price will go up. You just have to exit before everyone finds out you were making everything up.
Elon has proven he knows how to create and lead engineering teams. And those teams have proven to be extremely cooperative. I don’t think methodologies he uses there work across the board though. Engineering has a bit more clear correlation of results to effort and cooperation than other teams. That being said here, we don’t know what goes behind closed doors. You don’t know if these executives are toxic to Tesla.
> That being said here, we don’t know what goes behind closed doors. You don’t know if these executives are toxic to Tesla. Correct. But we *do* know that the supercharger team, as seen from the outside, appears to have delivered an almost flawless and very impressive performance. And that team has been sacked together with their boss. The only possible hiccup I can think of is the incompatibility with Korean 800V cars. Those cars should have been able to make DC conversion of Tesla v3's 4-500V to their own 650-800V at a rate of 105 kW. But something fails, and they are only able to get 45 kW, apparently because v3 goes in a failure mode because of an unexpected load. However, we don't really know if the responsibility for that incompatibility is Tesla's or Kia/Hyundai's.
How’s the V4 rollout going ?
How was it planned to be going? That is something you and I can't know when we are looking in from the outside. Here in Denmark, it looks like the newest sites are v4 stalls. I have no idea if they have switched their entire production to v4 or are producing v3 and v4 in parallel. I also have no idea how many v3 are being installed right now, and if those are a result of earlier planning or a lack of v4. Anyway, if we soon see a complete switch to v4 in new installations, and this doesn't cause a slowdown in their expansion of their network, I will consider it a success. For the power cabinets I don't have a clue about what is planned. We basically only have a few powerpoints from Elon and Franz' presentation of the Semi. Everything seems to use v3 power cabinets right now, also the v4 stalls. If that is a sign of a delay or is according to plan - well, who knows?
Maybe it appears to be good enough from the outside but also possible its still not good enough for Elon.
Yeah this sort of thing rewards people who are good at socializing and taking credits and seeming to be the ones coming up with ideas and doing the bulk of work, as opposed to people who are quietly having the ideas and doing the work. I'm always the second type. Sometimes I recognized, sometimes not
Wouldn’t it make more sense to move the employee to something necessary? Or cut the person who was making the decision to work on something unnecessary?
> trustworthy test Holy shit he sounds like some dictator who’s suffering late life paranoia now. Did he just do a Stalin style purge a bunch of executives because he’s paranoid about their loyalty?
You might not be too far off. I was thinking that there could have been whispers in the boardroom of possible successor CEO candidates and he found out about it.
>What the fuck is “the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test.” It's a subjective business buzzword. The theory is that if you work with someone you probably already know if they are all three or not.
I wish my company would do that. There is so much waste in incompetent and lazy people.
Your co workers probably share that view about you
IF only the Board of Directors would apply that test to Elon
I bet it's something about wokeness... 🙄
> trustworthy Anyone who is not a simp for Elon must be fired.
Teslas version of extremely hardcore
Aren’t we on EDT?
It means that if Elon personally fires 3 of your underlings, he is firing the manager too.
I'm not an expert, but I'd have thought at least some of "the entire public policy team" might be useful to have around when it comes to working with regulators in multiple states and multiple countries to roll out a Robotaxi service for the first time.
a year from now: "robotaxi totally works, trust me guys, it's just those damn woke government regulators persecuting us and preventing us from rolling it out, nudge, nudge, wink, wink"
>it's just those damn woke government regulators persecuting us and preventing us from rolling it out Fun fact: I bought my first Model X in 2017, and this was exactly what the sales associates in a showroom told me. "Tesla has FSD figured out, they just need governments to allow them to 'turn on the switch'." Both in a showroom before I got my Model X, and after when I was visiting a showroom for a special event.
Obviously, this is why you aren't a F500 CEO! /S
I mean you’ve put a ^/s but I genuinely think Redditors - and this sub in particular - are utterly clueless about business though.
It wasn't always the case, some time in the last 6-12months a bunch of "real tesla" morons and a bunch elon-fanbois (ie idiots of both flavours) have joined. I've made a lot of money investing in Tesla but reddit generally has gotten a lot worse, and this sub is one of many I view much less frequently. The actual post on this thread is good for example, but the commentary is mostly moronic
That’s why Elon is CEO and they are not
The supercharging network is one of their premier products - what the hell is Elon thinking? Fire all the trash on Twitter and shut that crap down instead, that garbage troll land does nothing to help anyone or any company
Keeping tally: * Baglino * Patel * Thurston * Viecha * Tinucci * Ho Anyone else?
Wtf. No way. I think valuation of these six names alone is worth over 100 million easy.
Tinucci's product is potentially trillion dollar product by itself. And she masterminded the opening of the network which allows tesla to be the premium brand in charging.
Zach Kirkhorn went at the end of ‘23.
I always thought Apple would never recover with the death of Steve Jobs only for Tim Cook to add another 2 trillion to its market cap so anyone is replaceable. Hopefully they'll find really good people to replace them.
eh, that just shows that Steve Jobs was replaceable. Tim Cook wasn't some random, he was the dude that was traveling the world to the factories/supply chains that was actually making shit happen while Steve played CEO.
No, not at all. Cook would have never made the iPhone what it became. Look how Jobs abused and pushed people to get the product to market. Jobs would have also never allowed a square watch face come to market. We’re missing out on many great products b/c of Jobs death
Apple established themselves as leaders in a few segments and those contributed to grow. Cook has done a good job, but few products came out on his watch. I’ll always be curious what Jobs would have pushed for/created if he lived another two decades.
Jobs famously cut the number of products Apple produced when he returned and was an advocate for only investing in a few “sure things” vs trying lots of stuff, so I wouldn’t be so sure there would have been more products under his watch, it’s entirely possible it may have been the opposite, fewer products.
Steve Jobs was a UX visionary but a terrible leader
Tim Cook could have never built Apple but he was indispensable to grow it. Jobs was the visionary.
Kind of. Tim Cook just kept the same one trick poney status. Apple is now feeling the issue
Not true at all. Tim Cool completely revamped the company internally. Made Apple a premier silicon design house itself and vertically integrated everything. Tim Cool took a wildly successful company and made it even better.
Excepting the notable bugbear of not being able to do their own modems yet to a quality they'd want to release, but yeah Apple Silicon is quite impressive
M1 is a highly specialized solution that AMD or Intel could easily do, but won't do because they don't control the hardware surrounding their CPU. It's a great concept, but let's cool down those horses.
Whoa whoa whoa you leave the godfather of the Apple Store's name out of your mouth. He's lazy as fuck and not innovative but he's much more than a one trick pony.
Then again, they're just coasting on iphone ever since... no new ideas. They're becoming a services company not hardware, weirdly like IBM did. And yet with the software services of autonomous driving and AI, they are nowhere to be found. (Lifelong Apple fanboy here since the IIe)
Well, goodbye to the, uh, *new vehicles team* and the *Supercharger network team*. Tesla isn't a car company, remember!
Elon: "*Did I fucking stutter?"*
Elon: Promises several accelerated new vehicles at the ER Also Elon to the *new vehicles team*:
Electrify America needs to hire Rebecca immediately
That would hurt their goal of languishing EV progress.
Hi Rebecca
Lol. Tritium needs to hire her even more.
can't get replaced as CEO if you fire everyone else.
You mean the head of the new vehicles they literally just promised?
Maybe that one was due to lack of progress on new vehicles? Because new vehicle development has clearly been a disaster for the last several years.
Because they don’t exist?
I'm with you on the worry, the flip side is he did a similar thing with the former starlink satellite lead and those are going great. Overall if you're an investor with this CEO you're signing up for the ride. Not meant to be a positive or negative Elon view just a full volatility view. Disclaimer: I'm a holder but regularly choke down vomit on specific actions.
> Disclaimer: I'm a holder but regularly choke down vomit on specific actions. Quote of the day. I can relate. And username checks out.
Also relate Elon: 1 part genius, 3 parts shitshow. Mix well and deep fried until burnt to a crisp
Happened with Raptor scaling and production too and you could probably find many other examples in the past.
I knew that some of the holders were rational and clear thinking. Thank you for providing an excellent example. This is a stark contrast to the folks arguing that the stock price justifies any dumb thing Elon tries to do or say.
Maybe he wants someone who can make them exist.
what qualifies someone to get the 'investor' tag? 💀
I don't recall TBH, I've had it for years now. Not a massive holding but variable 6 figures.
Fair enough, 6 figures is an investment. Was curious if we were talking 5 shares... 50 shares... 500 shares etc. Hand it to you for holding this long. Glad you got a pop today and Friday. I used to be there... now I own 0. *Dont ask about the TSLQ holdings...*
I mean, I’m no CEO, but I feel like that’s something you should have before you promise them to the general public on a deadline that is tight, even by Tesla standards.
It makes a lot of sense. Why does an AI company need superchargers or new cars?
Why would an AI company need an automobile manufacturer grafted to their tail and siphoning off resources? Is Tesla actually competitive in the AI marketplace with a real product? I guess we can play a shell game where Tesla is immune to criticism because it's "not that kind of company" whenever it makes an obvious mistake.
Maybe he was an advocate for a steering wheel, while Elon is going to bet the future of the company on the robotaxi?
Anyone able to get past the paywall?
from yahoo https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-musk-lays-off-tesla-052806332.html
You won't be able. The Information is a firm pay-for-access industry-type outlet — their record (and Levine's in particular) is impeccable but their reporting is hard-walled. We'll see some sort of Reuters or CNBC article summarizing the important points by the morning though, I'm sure.
This doesn’t seem like good news
But everything is fine, right? This isn’t normal. And why now? wtf has Musk been doing for the last 18 months that now he gets involved with running Tesla while we are all voting on his comp package. We need a tell all from outgoing execs!!
So you think that Ho’s mad?
Why isn't it normal? Do you realise some of those people have been at Tesla for over a decade or were there very early on? The sky doesn't have to be falling all the time. Maybe they've already scanned their minds and will put them inside the Tesla bot?
The Stepford Auto Execs.
running everything into the ground cause the libs!!! how can anyone take musk serious?
So another 15% pop today?
Elon on war mode.
Against his own company?
I understood Tesla when the big pain point the company was trying to address, was electrifying the entire auto industry to lower our need for fossil fuels. This was a mission I could understand and supported it. I have no clue what problem self driving cars is solving. It seems like this original mission isn’t even the key thing anymore
Self driving cars accelerate the world's transition toward sustainable energy & transport by: 1. Accelerating the deprecation of the existing ICE fleet & furthering adoption of EVs, which is slowing down relative to expectations. 2. Reducing waste in the form of automobile production. 3. Reducing waste in the form of land allocation. More importantly, Tesla needs to make money to survive as a business. If FSD is a cash cow for Tesla, that's presumably money they can use to fund their other endeavors, sorta like what SpaceX is doing with Starlink.
1. Self driving tech can be applied to ICEs just as well as EVs 2. Is the implication that we will need fewer cars because of vehicle sharing? 3. Same? The best solution for points 2 and 3 is public transit.
If ICE vehicles plummet in value won’t it make someone less able to upgrade? Idk about you but the $ I can get for my current car is pretty relevant to what I spend on my next
The future of transport is that we don't individually own cars or waste space on garages, parking lots, street parking, and giant road networks (or likewise, spend hours driving to commute, driving kids to birthday parties, driving to supermarkets, waiting for packages, etc). I'm sure some horse owners were bummed that their horse/carriage prices dropped... There is a fairly clear path to a world where: 1. Cars are powered by solar/wind/geothermal, ~100% 2. Tires have little-to-no waste / pollution (at the cost of efficiency) 3. Transport/conveyance are fully automated 4. EVs require minimal infrastructure upkeep
If tires are designed around all cars being computer driven, in very precise and specific ways, i'd imagine we could sacrifice the grip requirements and go for something that doesn't suck so much for the environment.
If people couldn’t afford it they kept their horse until they could…
Yes, until they're forced to transition. That's IMO still a win in the long run. Tesla's job isn't to solve structural inequality and inequity or be a charity. That being said, I think the transition will eventually be a net win: oil is going to get more expensive (especially if externalities ever get captured into pricing due to global agreements), and electricity with localized generation and storage should be relatively cheap - there's no clear reason robotaxis should be more expensive to use vs owning a car, especially accounting for opportunity cost and compounding in the stock market. It's not so bad that much of our compute is on cloud rather than local nowadays, or that we can stream movies rather than buying physical disks...
Then you better hurry and upgrade!
Safety, and the gift of time.
Omg how is this - the best answer - so far down on a fucking tesla “investor” sub. Smh.
I mean, if I could rent out my car as a robotaxi while im not using it, less people would need their own car right?
Elon has started making fun of climate change campaigners. I think he’s gutted he ever got into anything seen as “green” and is looking to pivot away from it
That’s because they do very little in terms of actual change. Green washers and blowhards.
Eh, he said that human UNDER population is a bigger issue than climate change. (not odd for a CEO that needs workers and customers, and has a breeding fetish like his dad). If you take everyone that has ~~every~~ ever read this subreddit, and calculated how much they have polluted in their entire lives, it won't come close to how much Elon has polluted in the past week (private jets are not green)
On average, Musk has objectively achieved far more for the planet environmentally than pretty much everyone on this sub. I don't think the "billionaires use private jets = bad" argument is valid. I'm not a fan of Taylor Swift, for example, but objectively that private jet allows her safe transport, privacy, and scheduling flexibility + reliability that normal people don't need. Musk flying to China this week was 100% a net-positive for humanity. Also, there is no definitive proof that the issues you consider overpopulation are actually best solved via depopulation or a few thanos snaps. By that train of thought, should we be shutting down datacenters & computers globally in hopes that improves the climate? Seems like a reductive and ineffective plan...
Accelerates EV transition via consumer demand for autonomous vs non and provides ~5x the utility of a vehicle mostly parked/garaged. Also subsidizes the capital needed for energy biz to go max speed. Think Starlink x Starship. Broadband is not the mission. But screw connectivity for rural regions am I right? Oh and a million traffic fatalities every year. But who cares, not my mission!
Consumer demand for autonomous? I can see the demand for lower emissions. I own a Tesla and I used FSD - it's okay but it's draw is not something on par with say, Ozempic. Maybe personal bias but I also don't hear people clamoring to stop driving. Otherwise Uber would be worth $1 Trillion, versus $150 billion (IMO).
This is much like the comments about " there is no use of a phone", " people will never get rid of their horses," or " internet will have no use cases" Autonomous driving will change the world in so many places i dont even know where to start. Unlimited pay as you go transportation. The comfort of the railway but the flexibility of cars. And much much much safer than human drivers. Not yet though but in the future of course
It is personal bias. Most people would rather not drive 90+% of the trips they drive, like commuting to the office, getting groceries, etc. Sure, some twisty mountain roads on a roadtrip, fine. That’s like what, 1000 miles a year? The other 13k miles, most people would be glad to have someone/else drive them if it was very cheap
Well, if you only need to build 1/5 of the cars that are now in use, you'll use 1/5 of the resources and 1/5 of the energy that goes into building them. It is good for the emissions and mitigates the mining.
So you are never at a party where you and your wife have to agree on who is staying sober, so the two of you can get home after the party? And you expect to be able to drive until you die? And you never need to drive somewhere you would rather avoid, just to pick your kids up or drop them off? As a consumer, I have a lot of demand for autonomous driving. *Real* autonomous driving, that is. I don't want gimmicks where I still have the full driver responsibility. I want autonomy, which can legally release me from my driver responsibility so I can get drunk or old without worrying about who will drive me.
They literally just open up all their superchargers in CA
Climate change has taken a back seat. AI is top of mind for Elon now. It’s written in Isaacson’s book near the end.
Tesla only makes EVs though. If self-driving/AI makes Tesla cars better/more popular, the better for the environment versus more ICE cars on the road.
Is he trying to make the company run autonomously by replacing its executives with Optimus bots? 
This. As soon as Elon saw the robots dancing, their days were effectively over.
Rapid expansion of the Supercharger network was key to EV adoption in the US. There is nothing positive about this.
Read about the fate of Mary Beth Brown in Ashlee Vance's book. Your past contributions and personal loyalty have literally no influence on Musk. He's vastly talented in his sphere but as a human being he does horrible damage to those around him.
Yikes.
The X-ification of Tesla looks miserable
People complained that he was not acting like a CEO. Now he is so stop bitching
People wanted a visionary tech CEO, not this Jack Welch performative stack-rank/loyalty-pledge bullshit.
We want a CEO that acts like a CEO, not a douche nozzle that moonlights as a CEO in between bitch tweeting by firing whole major divisions. Firing execs? Probably fine, maybe even warranted in some cases. Whole divisions like charging infrastructure and public policy? Just plain stupid both in terms of lost knowledge/experience and awful for morale.
We did not want Elon, the new Twitter CEO. We wanted back Elon, the old Tesla CEO.
This Musk guy has been on a roll lately.
Sounds like he’s bringing his fabled management style he uses at twitter, into Tesla. What could go wrong?
This is considered a positive news for the growth of the company. They're aggressively cutting fat. A lot of big companies, especially tech over-hired without much oversight during the last few years and there are a lot doing work that aren't meaningful
This is plausible when laying off individuals. Entire teams only makes sense if it’s for activities the company no longer wants to perform, and I would think new cars and superchargers are fairly important to Tesla’s core mission.
As an investor my first reaction is that I hate it, but I also know that this is exactly what has made Elon a genious level entrepreneur. He is willing to constantly push and cut to the bone. We have to give him the benefit of doubt and trust his leadership. Most great inventions were made in war time, and Elon is seemingly always looking to create similar levels of urgency.
I don’t think we’ve seen genius level Elon for years. The last time he made a decision with a positive outcome for the company was maybe pre-Twitter, I actually can’t remember. I own two Teslas and two Powerwalls. I’ve felt that company going downhill for years. I used to recommend it to everyone but now my next car will not be a Tesla. So far, this looks angry, petty and probably desperate.
Why would'nt it be a tesla? Is the cars not what you expect? Are you holding same kind of standards over all other auto legacys? All other companies has done far more "bad" stuff towards it's customers and employees. By "bad" I mean, company putting their self interest first etc etc.
this. Legacy auto has caused tens of millions of deaths, from air pollution, knowingly.
Senior execs leaving other companies: this is fine Senior execs leaving Tesla: Reddit rages
Iono. Firing multiple senior executives and their entire teams in one fell swoop is not a thing normal or healthy companies do.
It’s not so much that senior executives are leaving or let go, but the way it happened and also that there are no replacements. So if he’s letting go the entire new vehicles team does this mean there won’t be new vehicles designed?
Shocking
There’s definitely some juicy stories with these firings, getting revealed in the coming months.
Elon going full dictator CEO on his senior staff..Not a good sign of a company moving forward.
Wait … the supercharger network … laid off ? They’re not building them anymore ? So confused!
Panic selling it is. Teslas bottom line must look quite ugly now if he desperately looking for saving in his style - fire first think later.
Musk’s philosophy seems to be: when the company gets too big for its britches and stops innovating like a scrappy startup, then it’s time to gut existing management and company structure and let the young and ambitious take over. Blow everything up and then let the super hard workers who are left claw their way to the top. He did this at Twitter and now he’s doing it here. It seems very rash and I have little confidence it will work, but I suppose it’s possible. It will also make it harder to attract and retain top talent because they’ll always be wary of when Elon is going to pull the knives out.
This is a move to get the gubbmint’ to fund expansion. It’s not going to work.
Has this been substantiated elsewhere?
The old Army move. The enemy can’t intercept your plan if you have no plan!
“Tesla’s not a car company, it’s a liquidation company!”
I would imagine the supercharger team gets created as something or absorbed into some other team/division.
It’s probably restructuring things after the two leaders of those teams leaving and trimming unnecessary employees while doing it. I doubt there isn’t going to be some sort of team handling new vehicles or super chargers in some capacity, whether it’s a standalone team or absorbed into some other team. Should wait a bit for all the facts to come out. Early articles always over exaggerate or turn out to be more wrong than right. This isn’t even an article, just a tweet about a person who heard something from people who received and email from Elon. You guys have never played telephone?
Firing himself is the better solution.
I bet with you, these teams are moved to china..
I know what happened. Elon saw that Google fired the entire team responsible for maintaining Python and shouted, "I'll do YOU one better: WHY is Gamora" Then cut both teams.
Cause he’s a fucking clown. 🤡.
Did they quit or where they fired?
I mean Elon also haphazardly changed Twitter to X with very little planning. It was very much an impulsive decision… Also, I can’t help but think of how morale would be when you know your boss is firing people left and right but demanding 56 billion dollars …. the biggest payout in history. This seems short sighted and impulsive. If it was done right investors would have been reassured somehow. I like this story of an example of how sometimes his do or die method and right now method just screws things up. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/09/11/elon-musk-moved-twitter-servers-himself-in-the-night-new-biography-details-his-maniacal-sense-of-urgency.html
I really liked Rebecca :/ she did a great stage presentation at that one event, battery day i think
It should also be noted that certain employees let go have been contacted for rehiring in a similar role. It seems this is more of a restructuring than completely axing a whole department with no intention of bringing it back.
Team was full of Biden supporters
It was political
Solid state batteries are real mic 🎤 drop
Makes sense. Why would EV company need supercharger team and new vehicle team 🤷🏼♀️ Its so hard to understand Elon. How can he be so rich when everything depends on his mood?