Job cuts at Tesla: Elon Musk would like to be a visionary

2024-04-16 19:23:57

He would love to be a visionary

The Tesla boss wants to be special and save the world. But the current employee layoffs are neither innovative nor a long-term strategy.

Jürgen Schmieder from Los Angeles

Published today at 9:23 p.m

Elon Musk, where he feels most comfortable: In the center – here at the Breakthrough Awards ceremony on Saturday in Los Angeles.

Photo: AP

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If you had to describe Elon Musk with just one word, “special” would be the perfect word. He wants to be special, and he wants people to perceive him that way: as the visionary who initiated the revolution in sustainable passenger transport with the electric car manufacturer Tesla. Who has permanently changed space travel with recyclable rockets from his company Space-X. Who is both an opportunity spotter and voice of reason when it comes to artificial intelligence. He is not afraid to be controversial, which he has proven almost every day on the social network since he bought Twitter (now X).

The best description probably comes from Sam Altman, head of the AI company Open AI: “He really wants to save the world – but only if he is the one to save it.”

It has always been Musk’s greatest strength to explain the ordinary with the special, for example to transfigure the production hell in car manufacturing into a mystery and to transfigure layoffs as a stage in a long-term strategy. The US electric car manufacturer Tesla is now cutting more than one in ten jobs worldwide.

Musk thinks unions are useless

Musk wants to be flexible, which is why he considers unions to be as unnecessary as an appendix: no use, it hurts you more often, it can be dangerous and you have to remove it. The hire-and-fire principle, the rapid fluctuation of workers, is a “feature” and not a “bug” at Tesla, i.e. not an error, but an intended function.

“Every five years we have to reorganize and rationalize the company for the next growth phase,” writes Musk: “This will make us lean, innovative and hungry.” What else should he write? That it’s the reaction to the devastating sales figures is? Instead of being in production hell, the company is in demand hell: Tesla built 46,561 cars last year – and did not deliver them.

“He has this monumental hero complex”

Musk’s great strength was to inspire people with something special – for something that was worth making sacrifices for. He really enjoys the role of moving humanity to Mars, enabling sustainable transport and making artificial intelligence as safe as possible for people. He wants to be admired for being special. Biographer Walter Isaacson says: “He has this monumental hero complex, but he is aware of it and jokes about it.”

If there’s one thing Musk needs to read about himself, it’s this: the measures with which Tesla has so far responded to the sales and quarterly figures – such as lowering prices, free trial months for the self-driving software and now laying off ten percent of the workforce – are neither especially visionary. This is also proven by the simultaneous departure of long-standing top managers Rohan Patel and Drew Baglino. Political director Patel was there for 7 years and technical director Baglino was with the group for 18 years. The notoriously high fluctuation and the reaction of investors – the stock lost 5 percent of its value on Monday, since the beginning of the year it has been more than 32 percent – show that the measures are one thing: very ordinary and not particularly good news for Tesla in the medium term.