By Michael Elkin
Hundreds of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) employees were laid off from their positions on the electric vehicle’s autopilot team Tuesday amid a broad workforce reduction, Bloomberg News reported. About 200 workers were let go from the company’s San Mateo office in California, according to someone familiar with the matter. The office had about 350 employees, some of whom were transferred to nearby facilities.
This is one of the larger known cuts that the company has enacted since an email was found saying that the company’s multi-billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, was looking to cut 10% of jobs globally, and that he wanted to “pause all hiring worldwide”. Later, Musk clarified that only salaried employees would be cut. Saying that the changes were "not super material".
So far, the electric automaker’s downsizing has focused on areas that the company feels grew too quickly. Some human resources workers and software engineers are known to have been laid off, and in some cases, the cuts have hit employees who had worked at the company for just a few weeks.
Tesla, Inc. ended trading Tuesday down 5%.