I’m not privy to whom is critical or not and the circumstances under which they come and go. Some of it may be a retention problem, demands of the job, and Musk’s own reputation for having little willingness to retain talent that isn’t meaningful to the task at hand.
The other issue is Tesla has been phasing out traditional engineering roles for roboticists and AI experts as part of its shift and focus. I don’t know anything about xAI to comment on its talent and the change over and how much that had to do with the integration into Space X and or disappointment over the progress with Grok.
Again, I don’t want to speak out of turn. I have been a long time shareholder and have stepped back from following the changes in personnel. I agree it at times has been frequent but I wouldn’t know enough of about the importance of the individuals leaving and how it might be negatively impacting the culture or the business, if that’s your point.
As to traditional engineers, there have been a slew of departures as the auto production consolidates to exclude future production of the Model X and S. They have been replaced by engineers with focus on AI and Robotics, is what I have read.
One of the things I’ve read about Musk, but a view I don’t share, is the belief in cutting personnel to the point you have to add back. He believes you haven’t sufficiently matched up resources until you know you have gone too far. I could see where that might add some angst and cause increased turnover. However, I don’t think it impacts my thesis on the culture as to its ability as a large company to think and take action like a startup.
Yeah I’m pretty sure that will come to be seen as destructive in many dimensions-: institutional memory, morale, unsustainable workloads, communication problems and so on. For a while the business community was in thrall to the “stack ranking” method of employee evaluation, which only caused people to blame shift, subterfuge, and sabotage other employees to make sure they stayed out of the bottom 10%. Just one more terrible business theory we can thank Jack Welch for (I would have thought that smarties like Bill Gates and Zuck would have figured it out long before they did, but no.)
Tesla does not necessarily struggle to attract talent—often receiving a surplus of applicants—but the company faces significant retention and recruitment friction. Major hurdles include a notoriously demanding work culture, high costs of living in primary engineering hubs like Fremont, CA, and aggressive poaching by competitors like OpenAI. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
There is always lots of speculation around the turnover at Tesla. I find little value in focusing on it as an investor. The largest criticism seems to come from people that have never worked there and don’t know the business any better than any other causal observer and usually have no vested financial interest.
He has created more millionaire employees than any other company and history. He and his teams have managed to build not 1 but 2 companies that are each worth more than the largest public company trading on the European stock market.
You don’t get to that point without a successful team of people committed to being there. The great danger to capital intensive businesses is the cost structure getting out of control. I think Musk is mindful that its survival and success is partially dependent on being disciplined about labor costs and productivity.
I do agree with you regarding Welch. Much of his legacy has been undone over the years and with good reason.