He deserves to have his full remarks quoted here.
TL;DR if you think Elon has some brilliant master plan, you need to get out more. This sentiment is exactly equal to the 4 other Senior engineers I know personally who spent anywhere from 10 months to 12 years at Tesla.
Ethan Heald, public post on LinkedIn:
"[Edit: I have recieved more than a few texts from people supporting my sentiment but not commenting publicly out of fear of professional retaliation. Really goes to show how unhealthy of a work environment they’ve created, and underlines the importance of speaking out if you are in a position to do so.]
My heart goes out to my former coworkers affected by the
#TeslaLayoffs.
~20,000 employees have lost their jobs with no warning; many are here in the US on a work visa or are new parents that will lose their family’s health insurance. Meanwhile, Musk asks the shareholders for a $56,000,000,000 stock package.
I had a wild, fun, stressful, and mind-boggling four years at Tesla. I watched the company morph from a California-based electric car and solar panel start-up, owned by an innovative genius, to a Texas-based manufacturing and robotics conglomerate, (set to displace thousands of jobs) owned by right-wing internet troll.
While I am incredibly thankful to my immediate team for the opportunity and wealth of knowledge they provided me, I will not miss that job. The company is (from what I could gather as a low-level engineer) horrendously mismanaged at the top. Elon is a petty tyrant and constantly keeps everyone understaffed. He would do things like have the Lucky Charms removed from the coffee bar if we had a down quarter. The company was worth around $1,000,000,000,000 at the time.
Elon’s heel turn was especially hard to watch, because to me, he and Tesla were once such a source of inspiration and hope. The initial shenanigans could be brushed off as funny quirks. The breaking point for me was when he canceled merit awards on the same work day he spent live-streaming the “migrant crisis” at the southern border on Twitter.
I have come to accept this reality, but I still regularly see people in denial.
• The stock is down 30% YTD, down 44% from peak, on his watch.
• Cybertruck was misguided from its conception. No doubt it is a step forward for automotive aesthetic design, but it doesn’t work when the guy presenting it makes a fool of himself publicly on a daily basis.
• Over-promising wildly on CT specs and FSD timelines. Sending company wide emails that served no purpose other than to leak and pump the stock.
• Removing parking sensors prematurely. I did not meet single person inside or outside the company that thought this was a good idea.
• Buying an unrelated company and devoting the work day to fix that blunder at the expense of Tesla operations and reputation
• Many other baffling decisions that made me question what the point of an executive team and board is if they are going to just let him do whatever he wants. I understand self-preservation but at a certain point it’s just spineless.
While the board recommends voting to give him $56B and re-elect his brother and Roman Roy as directors, I recommend against it. He is the only person that deserved to be laid off."
