I've somehow survived several rounds of layoffs where I work, and over the last 16 years the whole process has gone from "let's trim spending, cut hours, offer voluntary packages, and have rolling furloughs first, before we cut headcount" to the latest two rounds where it was "everything is still fine" right up until the quarterly report when it wasn't, and that night everyone at director level and up got notified with "you will cut (20-50)% of your direct reports and all your contractors tomorrow, make it happen". Within a year of those two successive cuts, the CEO stated "that may have been a mistake" in a company-wide meeting...
So while I won't discount the idea that it's Elon having a fit of spite, it also would not surprise me if this is just typical corporate "make massive cuts in headcount to achieve short-term target numbers" BS. I would agree that Tesla at least needs its own Ms. Shotwell to take over the business side of things and let Elon do the visionary inspirational stuff.
I'll play devil's advocate for a moment though... we focus on the Supercharger network, but fast charger networks in general seem to hog all the attention. Lots of complaints about lines, wanting more sites in a certain area... are fast chargers really the answer? For travel, obviously you need them along highways and such... but shouldn't "The Answer" for urban demand be lots more (and lots cheaper) L2 charging points?