Electric vehicle company Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) has been laying off some of its salaried workers, a move that CEO Elon Musk previewed earlier this year. A new report shows exactly where those former employees have found new work, including several of Tesla’s rivals.
What Happened: Musk announced in an email that 10% of Tesla’s workforce would be cut due to a “super-bad feeling” about the economy. A separate email from Musk said the cut would be “salaried headcount” with several areas of the company being overstaffed.
Thousands of employees have been laid off by Tesla in the last month, according to a report from Electrek.
A new job survey shows where former Tesla employees are jumping to. The survey polled 457 former Tesla employees about their new whereabouts. Likely not a huge surprise that some have gone on to other electric vehicle companies. Others have found work with some of the largest technology companies in the world.
The biggest winner in the battle for former Tesla employees based on the survey is Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ:RIVN), a Tesla rival that snapped up 56 former Tesla workers.
Here are the top companies that are new homes to former Tesla workers:
- Rivian: 57
- Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL): 51
- Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN): 51
- Lucid Group (NYSE:LCID): 34
- Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL): 29
- Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META): 25
- Microsoft Inc (NASDAQ:MSFT): 23
- Redwood Materials: 12
- SpaceX: 10
- Zoox: 9
Related Link: Do Fired Employees Love Or Hate Elon Musk?
Why It’s Important: A couple Tesla rivals make the list, as Rivian and Lucid are among the biggest gainers in Tesla laying off workers.
SpaceX, another company ran by Musk, is also a company grabbing former Tesla employees.
Both Lucid Motors and Redwood Materials have former Tesla key employees as their CEOs in Peter Rawlinson and JB Straubel, respectively.
Tesla employees could be highly coveted by large companies, as seen with Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft all ranking high on the list for gaining former Tesla workers.
Electrek makes the great case that while the list shows where Tesla employees are going, it also shows where they are not going.
Ranking nowhere in the top eighteen companies presented in the graphic are the traditional automakers. Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), Toyota Motors (NYSE:TM) and others are notably absent from the list.
This could be due to a number of reasons like the role of unions, not believing in a company’s vision or comparable pay.
Based on the job survey and the large companies listed, it looks like Tesla employees that are laid off will have many options of where to work next.
