Elon Musk plans to eliminate 10% of its workforce and has paused all hiring.
According to an email written to Tesla (TSLA.O) executives on Thursday and reviewed by Reuters, Elon Musk, the electric carmaker’s CEO, said the company has to “make an approximately 10% reduction in workforce.”
The warning arrived two days after the world’s wealthiest man instructed staff to either return to work or quit. According to Tesla’s annual SEC filing, the company employed over 100,000 workers by the end of 2021.
Musk said he got a “very awful feeling” about the economy in an email headlined “stop all recruiting worldwide.”
Musk informed employees on Tuesday that they could either return to work or leave the firm, a demand that has already been met with resistance in Germany, where the company has new manufacturing.
“Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” Musk wrote in that email. “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”
Twitter war.
Musk also got into a Twitter dispute on Thursday with Scott Farquhar, an Australian software millionaire and co-founder of Atlassian Plc (TEAM.O), who mocked the edict in a series of tweets, calling it “something out of the 1950s.”
Musk tweeted: “recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function” in response to a tweet by Farquhar who encouraged Tesla employees to look into its remote work positions.
When asked if the economy was entering a recession by a Twitter user in late May, Musk said, “Yes, but this is a positive thing. For far too long, it has been showering money on idiots. Some bankruptcies are unavoidable.”
