Anna Moneymaker
- Tesla laid off more than 10% of its workforce, a memo sent by CEO Elon Musk showed.
- One worker who lost his job a month after joining Tesla told KVUE he couldn't pay his rent.
- The layoffs follow a difficult first quarter for Tesla, which saw a 20% sales drop.
An employee who'd been working at Tesla for about a month learned he'd been laid off on Monday, local news station KVUE reported.
Ezekiel Love told the Texas-based station that he joined the EV maker a month ago to help assemble Model Y cars at its headquarters, but then received a termination letter on Monday, which KVUE included in its news segment.
Love said, "Wow, no warning at all. I don't have a job, I can't pay my rent."
He added, "They're supposed to be leading in innovation, I feel like that would have been the best opportunity for me to learn manufacturing."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a company-wide email close to midnight on Sunday announcing the company was laying off "more than 10%" of the workforce, globally. He said in the memo that the job cuts were to prepare the firm for its "next phase of growth."
But some Tesla employees only found out when they arrived at work on Monday. As Business Insider's Grace Kay reported, security told some of the workers that if their ID badges didn't work, they were no longer employed.
The layoffs come after a difficult first quarter, which saw its sales drop 20% from the previous quarter.
Musk appears to be taking strategic actions to correct course. This includes quietly removing inventory discounts for its EVs in the US, as Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt noted on X.
Musk responded, "We are simplifying and streamlining the whole Tesla sales and delivery system. It has become complex and inefficient."
The Tesla chief is under pressure from investors as Wall Street "wants and NEEDS answers" next week on Tesla's investor conference call, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note Monday.
Ives said in the investors' call that Musk must present his "rationale for the cost-cutting, the strategy going forward, product roadmap, and an overall vision."
Musk announced his latest moonshot on X earlier this month and said Tesla would launch a self-driving taxi called "Robotaxi," which it would reveal on August 8.
In an X post on Tuesday night, he said he was "not quite betting the company" on autonomous driving, but that "going balls to the wall for autonomy is a blindingly obvious move."
Tesla didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment made outside of normal working hours. Love could not be reached for comment.