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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a former Tesla employee who resigned from the company earlier this year and spoke anonymously to protect their privacy. Business Insider has verified their identity and employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
My spouse and I were big space fans for a long time. I was really inspired by the Falcon 9 booster landing in 2015 and I knew I wanted to be a part of that optimism for the future. The following year Tesla and SolarCity came to my city and I started in sales at SolarCity.
Initially, I wasn't very good at it, but I made it known very early on that I was passionate about what the company was doing and what Elon Musk stood for. When Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016, I began working in sales for Tesla Energy. Since then, I've held nine different titles all around Tesla and have worked at five different locations in a variety of departments, including sales, service, and operations over the course of nearly eight years.
I was very mission-focused, and I think that's why they kept me around. I was clear about why I wanted to be there and that I believed in the future of electrification.
Tesla is always changing and you have to be able to adapt. For example, I was on the sales team when Musk announced he only wanted to do online sales. There was a lot of uncertainty at that point for the team.
You have to be ready to move fast when you work for a startup and I liked that. Once I learn how something works, I teach someone else to do it, delegate it, and then I'm on to the next thing. I was very upfront about being willing to relocate in order to grow and my spouse and I started optimizing our lifestyle around that. We even signed a month-to-month lease.
In 2022, I worked on a project that was part of a direct request from Musk. I spent weeks preparing for a presentation that was going to be in front of him, but it didn't end up happening after he turned his attention to his Twitter purchase. It was disappointing, but also kind of a relief. Most of my friends told me it could have gone badly, but I was also ready to show off my work.
There's always been this pendulum swing with Musk's attention. When he bought Twitter, he was a little less focused on Tesla and everyone generally became a little bit more relaxed. We were still working hard, but we could focus our energies where we thought they were best used. When Musk's around, he can get hyper-fixated on something, and we all have to turn our attention to that, too, which is great for fixing the problem, but not always good for balancing the rest of our responsibilities.
When he bought Twitter it was radio silence for a bit from Musk. He was pretty hands-off for some of 2023, but in May 2023 he sent out an email saying he needed to approve all hiring. It was clear he'd turned more of his attention back to Tesla.
Musk laid off more than 10% of our workforce in April of this year. He has said you need to cut to the point where you have to add people back, which might work a bit better in raw engineering terms but when you're looking at the morale of an organization, it doesn't work.
The layoffs hit me hard. A few months before, I was told my position had been eliminated due to "redundancy," so they offered me a different role at a different location. It was a three-hour round-trip commute. I was told it would be temporary when I started doing it in December.
We were trying to hire someone who could replace me so I could move to a different location, but then the layoffs happened and Tesla went into a hiring freeze.
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I'd been starting to feel like his personal mission for Tesla and the stated company mission were not the same thing anymore. It didn't seem like he wanted to grow an automotive business anymore. It seemed like he wanted to use it as an incubator for new technologies, like AI, and his other tech companies.
Early in Tesla's history, it was known for its innovation. It made sense to come out with products that were unexpected. It was a different way of imagining things and creating a better product without 100 years of design bloat, but I think it's gotten to the point where it feels forced. For example, the Model S and Model X steering yoke. It seemed like the point wasn't to design something better. It was just a gimmick.
The company has also ignored traditional automaker strategies in a way that, I think, has been detrimental to the brand. The 2021 Model S and Model X refreshes were designed to make them look the same as the old models. They didn't want to cater to an industry that has these refreshes. The statement was: "No, you're going to like the classic design forever."
I don't know when the tipping point was, but it turned from this fresh and innovative strategy to Tesla trying to convince customers this is what they actually want and I don't know that it reflects consumer interests anymore.
My decision to leave Tesla came down to a lot of different factors that had been slowly creeping up on me for a couple of years. If I'd had a better commute and a job that I liked, I might have been able to shrug it all off and tell myself: "No matter what crazy stuff is Musk doing now, I'm just going to put my head down and keep working." But with the layoffs, it all came to a head at once: I wasn't happy with what I was doing anymore and I didn't feel like I had faith in Musk's plans for the company.
Choosing to leave was really difficult. I put my whole life into that job — I moved three times and worked at five locations, supporting 35 sites.
It felt like a divorce, but I think I made the right choice. I've moved on now and my spouse and I have decided to start our own company.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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