Blog Tesla Suffers Exec Departures Amid Aggressive Product Roadmap

[Ty_McMahan]

A company with more than 45,000 employees is undoubtedly going to have a bit of employee turnover. However, the number of executive-level employees jumping ship at Tesla has to be cause for concern. Tesla has lost three vice presidents in recent weeks. And that’s on top of dozens of high-level departures in the past two...
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[Lasairfion]

You know, it could be that training up people in the way of the spark and then sending them out to other EV and renewable energy companies could well be part of Tesla's mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

How does the rate of change compare with other companies?

 

[duncan]

That is 30 senior people in two years
15 per year

So how many "senior staff" does a company with 45,000 employees have - lets be generous and say one "senior staff" for every 300 employes
So that means 150 "senior staff"

The standard time for "senior staff" to stay in one company is what five years?

So based on that I would expect a "normal company" of that size to be losing 30 people per year

Tesla is losing HALF of that

To me that is NOT NOT NOT a sign of a company in trouble - ESPECIALLY one that has just had a period of rapid growth

 

[Dutchie]

Doesn't seem to affect sales and production

 

[Peteski]

A few random thoughts on this:-

1) There is probably some poaching going on as other manufacturers start ramping up their EV operations. If I was an ICE manufacturer or EV start up right now, the first place I would look to recruit people with EV experience would be Tesla. Given that Tesla attracted a lot of senior staff from European premium manufacturers, some of them are inevitably going to be enticed back to where they came from.

2) Considering the shambles Tesla still are in many ways, I too would be looking to hire and fire across many areas of the business as it grows. Overall it appears to be heading in the right direction and that's all that really matters to the end user.

3) I would imagine Tesla is a high stress place to work right now. There must be easier alternatives for many of their senior staff.

4) As duncan states in post #4 how does this rate of staff turnover compare to other similar sized companies, especially in a cutting edge, high stress environment?

 

[B00A]

A few random thoughts on this:-

1) There is probably some poaching going on as other manufacturers start ramping up their EV operations. If I was an ICE manufacturer or EV start up right now, the first place I would look to recruit people with EV experience would be Tesla. Given that Tesla attracted a lot of senior staff from European premium manufacturers, some of them are inevitably going to be enticed back to where they came from.

2) Considering the shambles Tesla still are in many ways, I too would be looking to hire and fire across many areas of the business as it grows. Overall it appears to be heading in the right direction and that's all that really matters to the end user.

3) I would imagine Tesla is a high stress place to work right now. There must be easier alternatives for many of their senior staff.

4) As duncan states in post #4 how does this rate of staff turnover compare to other similar sized companies, especially in a cutting edge, high stress environment?

I agree with most points and sentiment. I've been thinking along the lines of point #1 to elaborate a bit. One would think there may only be so many execs out there with real world experience that includes bringing EVs to mass production so I'd imagine Tesla's execs who have said experience are desirable investments at this point, at least to a start up. Maybe not so much to Tesla at this point, especially considering their message of financial fastidiousness they are going to adhere to moving forward. Hopefully they've squeezed out all the information and intellectual property they could from their former production exec, have learned from their time together, and are now able to move on without their input. I'm thinking that reducing senior executive overhead while continuing to lean on the intellectual property they provided during their tenure could be looked at as a positive financial and management decision.
The one comment that I think of that bucks this idea as it relates to production is the fact that demand outpaced production in Q2. Maybe production still isn't where it needs to be to meet demand and this shake up could be related to that as well?

 

[Magellan55]

This seems typical Silicon Valley. People covering the auto industry don't understand that. Let's face it anyone joining Tesla the past few years won't be mailroom millionaires, as most of the stock run up has already occurred. So instead they work there a few years, then take that knowledge to a pre-IPO startup EV or autonomous driving company where they have a chance of striking it rich with options. Or like someone already suggested, they can't take the pressure or pace and go back to a staid company.