How would you feel if you received an email from your CEO at 1 o’clock in the morning and the email was about the fact that the company will be firing its employees in order to compete with the other companies out there? That is precisely how the Tesla employees felt on last Friday when they received an email from the CEO, Elon Musk, at 1:20 am in California.
The mentioned memo from Elon Musk highlighted the several accomplishments that the company has achieved during the last year. However, that is not where it ended. Musk went on to announce another round of job cuts that will reduce the number of full-time employees by almost 7 percent.
According to Elon Musk, the job cuts are a necessity in order to facilitate the company rise to the challenges, unique in nature, that is faces. Problems such as ‘making our cars, batteries, and solar products cost-competitive with fossil fuels.’ Musk admits that these products are ‘still too expensive for most people.’
Musk has also acknowledged the fact that since Tesla is facing off against ‘massive, entrenched competitors … [employees] must work much harder than other manufacturers to survive.’ He went on to state that all of the hard work that has been done and will be done shall be worth it to support the ‘mission of accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and energy, which is important for all life on Earth.’
The next part of the memo reads, ‘there are many companies that can offer a better work-life balance because they are larger and more mature or in industries that are not so voraciously competitive. Attempting to build affordable, clean energy products at scale necessarily requires extreme effort and relentless creativity, but succeeding in our mission is essential to ensure that the future is good, so we must do everything we can to advance the cause.’
While the personal goal of saving the planet is admirable, what Elon Musk is implying in this memo is definitely not. In fact, thanks to such actions of Elon Musk, Tesla’s employees are being hurt. Elon Musk is known for such aberrancies. We recently talked about twenty things that Tesla employees face thanks to Elon. Mission-driven organizations, generally, are more focused on the employees’ work-life balance because they understand that for long-term success it is important to have employees that are vested in the company’s goal without compromising on their life.
We are confident that sooner Elon Musk realizes that he needs to cater to the individual needs of his employees and must not discard them or ask them to work to their bone, the sooner Tesla will be able to make an impact at genuinely changing the world!